4
HISTORY OF WEST VIRGINIA
pupils and fellow townsmen. The publication of such extracts in the local papers is one of the best ways to quicken local interest in matters of history.
Much source of material for the study of local history may still be found, although much of the earlier material was captured by Lyman C. Draper on his pilgrimages of search. The old court records contain much of human interest. Buried in dust and darkness of vaults or basements and neglected corners in West Virginia court houses are many old, time-stained records which now seldom see the light of day, because few lawyers have business with them, and no one else is supposed to have any interest in things belonging in so long a time ago. These records are full of human interest, though mixed with masses of rubbish which can never again be of any use to anybody. In a few instances local historians have had the patience and endurance to dig scraps of real history which throw light on the men who redeemed the wilderness. Rich finds have sometimes been made by those who have taken the time to search. One investigator discovered in a trash barrel in the basement of the Monongalia county court house the names and locations of 1,215 of the "tomahawk rights" men who first broke the wilderness solitude in northern western Virginia. But generally little investigation has been done in a thorough and intelligent way, though many persons have skimmed the surface
While local history has a very useful function in showing the evolution of local institutions and local life, it has a larger function to trace the relations of the local community to neighboring communities and larger regions with which its life has been connected, to trace the relation of the community to the larger life of the state and of the nation and the world. When local life touches the larger stream of national life, local history may be employed to introduce and to illustrate national history. The most natural introduction to the knowledge of the history of the region, the state, the nation, and the world is from local environment through ever widening circles of interest along lines that vitally connect the past with the present. The annals and records and life of the most quiet neighborhood may be historically important by their connection with the progress of the nation and of the world. The local history may be advantageously studied as a contribution to national history. Almost every community in the Ohio Valley has some close and intimate connection with general history.
The history of the entire region drained by the Ohio has been one of the most important factors in our national history.
Its future significance in its relation to the rising nation was early grasped by George Washington, the surveyor of lands for frontier settlements along the South Branch of the Potomac, the messenger of English civility who asked the French to evacuate the transmontane region claimed by Virginia, the commanding officer whose men near the Monongahela fired the opening guns of the world conflict which terminated French occupation in trans-Appalachian territory and in all continental America, the great American national leader who may properly be called the first prophet and promoter of the transmontane West as well as the "Father of his Country." The trans-Appalachian streams of western Virginia contributed to making the great natural waterway to the West a historic artery of commerce — and an entering wedge to the occupation and possession of the Mississippi Valley. Early communities in trans-Appalachian headwayters and tributaries of the Ohio suggested the principles of the Ordinance of 1787, the basis of the American policy of colonial government. The problems of their early development were closely related to the most important national problems of domestic policy and of foreign relations and policies. Their difficulties and necessities forced the nation away from a narrow colonial attitude into a career of territorial expansion which provided adequate room for future growth. The possibilities and needs of this
