tern
antiquarians, to form the best collection of frontier life and Indian
warfare, that has been printed."
Of such a work, now difficult to procure at any price, a new edition
is presented to the public. In 1845, the writer of this notice visited
the Virginia Valley, collecting materials on the same general subject,
going over much the same field of investigation, and quite naturally,
at that early period, identifying very large the sources of Mr.
Withers's information, thus making it possible to reproduce his work
with new lights and explanations, such as generally give pleasure and
interest to the intelligent reader of border history.[1]
In 1829, a local antiquary, of Covington, a beautiful little village
nestling in a high mountain valley near the head of James River, in
Alleghany County, Virginia, gathered from the aged pioneers still
lingering on the shores of time, the story of the primitive
settlement and border wars of the Virginia Valley. Hugh Paul
Taylor, for such was his name, was the precursor, in all that
region, of the school of historic gleaners, and published in the
nearest village paper, _The Fincastle Mirror_, some twenty miles away,
a series of articles, over the signature of "Son of Cornstalk,"
extending over a period of some forty stirring years, from about 1740
to the close of the Revolutionary War. These articles formed at least
the chief authority for several of the earlier chapters of Mr.
Withers's work. Mr. Taylor had scarcely molded his materials into
shape, and put them into print, when he was called hence at an early
age, without having an opportunity to revise and publish the
results of his labors under more favorable auspices.
Soon after Mr. Taylor's publication, Judge Edwin S. Duncan, of Peel
Tree, in then Harrison, now Barbour County, West Virginia, a gentleman
of education, and well fitted for such a work, residing in the heart
of a region rife with the story of Indian wars and hair-breadth
escapes, made a collection of materials, probably including Mr.
Taylor's sketches, with a view to a similar work; but his professional
pursuits and judicial services interposed to preclude the faithful
prosecution of the work, so he turned over to Mr. Withers his historic
gatherings, with such suggestions, especially upon the Indian race,
as by his studies and reflections he was enabled to offer.
Other local gleaners in the field of Western history, particularly
Noah Zane, of Wheeling, John
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