Edited by H. R. McILWAINE, State Librarian. SEPTEMBER, 1925. Nos. 2-4 EDITORIAL NOTE. It is one of the functions of the Board of the Virginia State Library to foster historical work in Virginia. From the time that the Board was entrusted with the management of the affairs of the Library it has had charge of the expenditure of a special publication fund and later of appropriations for publications that have been relatively generous. Out of these has been paid the cost of publishing the Library Bulletin and the Journals of the House of Burgesses and of the Council, while the general printing fund of the State has borne the expense of printing the Annual Report of the Library. First and last, the publications of the Library constitute a notable series. In 1916 the General Assembly, because the right of the Library Board to print anything in its Annual Report other than an account of the actual work of the Library for the year had been questioned, passed an act specifically permitting it to print as a part of its report such special matter as its members thought of sufficient historical importance-provided the number of printed pages in any report should not exceed six hundred. It was the intention for some time to have these notes printed as a part of the Annual Report, but this plan has given way to the plan to have them printed in the Bulletin, the Bulletin being for more reasons than one, which need not be detailed here, always a preferable vehicle of publication to the Annual Report; provided, money may be found in the Library appropriations to pay-as, fortunately, is the case at the present time. The material appearing in the notes varies from hasty sentences jotted down in note-books and on scraps of paper, through carefully made abstracts from records in clerks' offices, to what appear to be completed biographical sketches (vide the sketches of George C. Dromgoole, William Branch Giles, and Dr. James Jones) which give an intimation of what Judge Watson's whole work would have been had he lived. The material, as he left it, however, is of sufficient value to justify publication. Others engaged in the co-operative work of setting forth the history of Southside Virginia will be much aided by his labors. H. R. McILWAINE, FOREWORD. My desire to make some valuable use of the labors performed through many years by Mr. Watson in collecting these notes decided me to have them published, fragmentary though they were. As the difficulty of their orderly arrangement was great and the extensive distribution of the finished work improbable unless through well directed channels, the opportunity afforded me for their present publication was accepted with genuine appreciation. But for the untiring and efficient direction of Mr. Wilmer L. Hall, Assistant Librarian, these notes would have been a disordered mass of small value. To him I wish to express my deepest gratitude, and I wish also to express the hope that the publication may be of sufficient service to the historian and genealogist of the Southside to compensate Mr. Hall in some manner for his labors and to justify Dr. Henry R. McIlwaine, State Librarian, and the Library Board in the decision to send it out with the authority of the Virginia State Library. CONSTANCE T. WATSON. RICHMOND, VA., July 30, 1925. |