Hello everyone. I wish a good morning to you all! It is actually raining this morning, the first precipitation since who knows when. Below you will find a short article about a site that contains scans of some early Virginia religious petitions. Some of the original petitions have been lost over the years, but transcriptions of them have survived. I found several family surnames in some of the documents. One of them, I believe eventually moved to Dickson county. Enjoy and good luck. Stan Magnesen Yelowstone@aol.com ************* Everything below this line is a cut-and-paste from another mail list. ************* "Early Virginia Religious Petitions" is a Collaborative Project by The Library of Congress and The Library of Virginia. Quoting from the site's purpose statement: Early Virginia Religious Petitions presents images of 423 petitions submitted to the Virginia legislature between 1774 and 1802 from more than eighty counties and cities. Drawn from the Library of Virginia's Legislative Petitions collection, the petitions concern such topics as the historic debate over the separation of church and state championed by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, the rights of dissenters such as Quakers and Baptists, the sale and division of property in the established church, and the dissolution of unpopular vestries. The collection provides searchable access to the petitions' places of origin and a brief summary of each petition's contents, as well as summaries of an additional seventy-four petitions that are no longer extant. The collection complements the Library of Congress exhibition Religion and the Founding of the American Republic and is a collaborative venture between the Library of Congress and the Library of Virginia. The mission of the Library of Congress is to make its resources available and useful to Congress and the American people and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations. The goal of the Library's National Digital Library Program is to offer broad public access to a wide range of historical and cultural documents as a contribution to education and lifelong learning. Digital collections from other institutions complement and enhance the Library's own resources. The Library of Congress presents these documents as part of the record of the past. These primary historical documents reflect the attitudes, perspectives, and beliefs of different times. The Library of Congress and the Library of Virginia do not endorse the views expressed in these collections, which may contain materials offensive to some readers. Most of the documents are from the period between the beginnings of the Revolutionary War until shortly before 1800. During this period Virginia was struggling with the issue of religious freedom and toleration. To look at the Early Virginia Religious Petitions Online, go to http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/repehtml/repehome.html ************