Fellow List Members:

The Virginia chapter of the "Atlas of Historical 
County Boundaries" is a welcome addition to our 
arsenal of on line resources for carrying out 
Virginia history research. The Atlas will no 
doubt provide good service when used in 
conjunction with other Virginia County resources 
such as Martha Hiden's "How Justice Grew" and the 
on-line county road order files provided by the 
Virginia Transportation Research Council.

Because I am particularly interested in the exact 
location of the 1772 Botetourt-Fincastle county 
line, which runs through present-day Montgomery 
County, I downloaded and examined the 72 megabyte 
zipped Virginia County file provided on line by 
the William M. Scholl Center for American History 
and Culture at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

By way of illustration, I note that the Virginia 
County pdf file provides nineteen versions of 
Montgomery County outline maps, beginning with 
the county's formation on 31 December 1776 from 
Fincastle County and concluding in 2000 with the 
post 1977, 1980, and 1986 annexations of parts of 
the county by the City of Radford. Interestingly, 
the authors of the Atlas cite 1994 correspondence 
with the Radford City Zoning Department in 1994 
as authority for their map making decisions in 
versions 16, 17, and 18, and 2002 correspondence 
with the Radford City cartographer as authority 
for their map making decisions in version 19. So 
doing shows an impressive level of commitment to scholarship.

On page 91 of the pdf file, version 2 of the 
Botetourt County outline map correctly cites 
Hening Volume 8, pp. 601-602 as the source of the 
southwestern border of the then Montgomery 
County. At that citation, which describes the 
boundaries of Fincastle County, we read in part 
"…within a line, to run up the east side of New 
River to the mouth of Culbertson's creek, thence 
a direct line to the Catawba road, where it 
crosses the dividing ridge, between the north 
fork of Roanoke and the waters of New River...."

The location of the boundary-defining 
Culbertson's Creek is not well settled. Mary 
Kegley (Kegley and Kegley 1980: 22) notes a land 
grant on Culbertson's Creek that does not mention 
the Greenbrier River. The Greenbrier River is 
near the Googlable Culbertson Creek in 
present-day Greenbrier County, West Virginia. 
This Greenbrier County Culbertson's Creek does 
not geographically fit the above language 
specifying the boundaries of Fincastle County.

My present guess is that there was a 
now-forgotten Culbertson's Creek not too far from 
the present day Glen Lyn power plant on the New 
River at the Virginia-West Virginia border. It's 
just a guess, but it would fit the above cited language.

In any event, looking at the map on page 91 of 
the pdf file one can see the dilemma facing the 
team of dozens of researchers who put together 
the nationwide "Atlas of Historical County 
Boundaries" over a period of more than thirty 
years: They had to draw the lines, even when their evidence was vague.

So congratulations to them for their 
accomplishment and grateful thanks to them for 
making their work available under a Creative 
Commons license. To have completed this job nationwide is a huge undertaking.

However, on the basis of the one example I have 
examined, Virginia users of the data base should 
be aware that while the Atlas makes reasonable 
interpretations of historical evidence, the shown 
county boundaries are just an interpretation, and 
that for early Virginia the mere availability of 
lines does not call for suspension of our  judgment and appropriate skepticism.

Jim Glanville
Blacksburg-in-former-Fincastle-County (I think)

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