The Virginia Research Council's Road Order series is a wonderful resource. Besides locating specific people, you can build general neighborhood maps of a county from them. And in among the lists of overseers and gangs, social customs and tantalizing stories peek through. A big thank-you to the creators and researchers of these books.
   
  The two I found most helpful for history and description of the Road Order system are the Introduction in "Orange County Road Orders 1750-1800" by Ann Brush Miller, at
http://www.virginiadot.org/vtrc/main/online_reports/pdf/90-r6.pdf
   
  and  "A Brief History of the Roads of Virginia 1607-1840" by Nathaniel Mason Pawlett, at
http://www.virginiadot.org/vtrc/main/online_reports/pdf/78-r16.pdf
   
  While we're on roads, can someone please track the Spotsylvania County "Pamunkey Rolling Road" and "Ridge Road" for me? Is there any kind of map for Spotsylvania like Scheel's great maps of Culpeper, Rappahannock and Madison that give the old names of roads or where old roadways went?
   
  Thanks. --Joan


Bill Trout <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
  I hope everyone is aware of the series of Virginia county road order books 
published by the Virginia [Highway and] Research Council over the years, and 
still progressing under the Council's historian Ann Miller. All or most of 
these books are now online on vtrc.virginiadot.org. Years ago, the Council's 
Howard Newlon and Mason Pawlett published a long-running series of 
historical articles called "Backsights: Essays on Transportation History" in 
the monthly VDOT newsletter, which alas, these days, has no historical 
articles anymore. About half of these essays were collected into one volume 
and published in 1985. The rest were collected and ready for publication 
when VDOT ran out of funds for such things. It's time for this second volume 
to be resurrected. For people like me, the Council's historical work is the 
best thing VDOT ever did.

Bill Trout
Virginia Canals & Navigations Society
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