Eve wrote:
>In working with land
descriptions to locate topographic features with changing names, I have
pondered the question of what is an original source. Images of the
hand-written pages of the land patent and grant books are available at the
Library of Virginia web site. They are helpful in locating old land
boundaries, but they are not the original sources of these boundary
descriptions. The descriptions were copied into the books by a clerk from
the hand-written land patents. The descriptions in the land patents came
from the surveyors who surveyed the land.



It seems to me that the word "original" is much like the word "truth." We
use it to signify an ideal, but we can never be sure of what the "original"
or the "truth" actually is. As a practical matter, the most that "original"
can mean is "the *most original* form of the record that is known to exist.

On the other hand, the work of those who strive to FIND that "original" and
that "truth" tends to be far more reliable than that of genealogists who are
willing to trust whatever they see.

Elizabeth

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Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL, FASG

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