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Augusta County, Virginia
In this astonishing array of men and women from Augusta county, Virginia, the author has given from his collections names of the period, 1735-1815, which are not found in the index of the "Descriptive List of the Manuscript Collection of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin," containing the Draper collections, valued at several hundred thousands of dollars. The Draper collections extend over the years, 1735-1815, and the field east of the Mississippi, with some trans-Mississippi material, such as that on the Lewis and Clark expedition. The writer of this study has investigated others after 1815 all over the United States, whom he shows. He has also ascertained the origin of literary people of southern antecedents whose names are not furnished by Lucian Lamar Knight's biographical dictionary in the "Library of Southern Literature." The author indicates for the first time in print the fountain head of many great Americans. There are here hundreds of names not in the two histories of Augusta county by two talented sons of Virginia, Joseph A. Waddell and John Lewis Peyton.
He intimates he may have missed some who should appear, but no history is ever complete. To represent positively that all of the various categories below have been included would require a knowledge of the ancestries in all lines of all Americans from the date of the founding of Augusta county to the present.
Unexplored Kentucky was once a part of Augusta county.
The names are arranged alphabetically, thus saving an index. — Mrs. Jennie C. Morton, Regent of the Kentucky State Historical Society.
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Being asked to write from my unpublished historical notes and collections relating to the history of the South and West — sections of the country heretofore neglected so much by investigators — upon the "influence of Augusta county, Virginia, in the history of America," it is believed the title would be a better one if it were the "men and blood of Augusta county, Virginia, in the history of the United States."
When a historian saw the following, he exclaimed : "Is there any county in the United States or locality of equal population in the world, which has in so short a time produced so many famous states-men, soldiers and pioneers?" I am not prepared to go so far as he, but the exhibit is remarkable.
There have been many unscientific generalizations upon ethnographic, geographic and political divisions. Unfortunately, some American university professors and some American writers do not gather much new historical material. They vamp what has appeared in printed productions accessible to them. Roosevelt, who in his valuable "Winning of the West" in part covers the scope of this monograph, has to a great extent therein repeated secondary sources.
Therefore, if this lore be of any value to the historian, antiquarian or eugenist, it is pleasing, from what I happen to possess upon Augusta county, to designate some of the Augustans who resided within the limits of the old county previous to 1776 and descendants in one or more lines of these and others who have at some time been its countymen and countywomen.
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