Has anyone read this new book by T. Keister Greer? "GENESIS OF A VIRGINIA FRONTIER: THE ORIGINS OF FRANKLIN COUNTY, VIRGINIA, 1740-1785" Including the names of its first settlers, their property, and how the county evolved in its earliest years? Who is in it? I bet it covers the northeast and not the southwest side of Franklin County. Speaking of books - I have just finished Carolyn and Charles Bruce's brilliantly illustrated quick history of Virginia and feel that it is a perfect book. It confirms what I have been suspecting since my first trip to Williamsburg in 2002. Virginia is the center of the universe. I have been on two school field trips to Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts, yet I had no idea that there were English settlements south of Cape Cod. The Pilgrims working in the village never mentioned being second place. Yet, on my first trip to Jamestown, we were clearly told over and over that Jamestown was here long before the Mayflower. This was shocking to my New England ears. Can this be? There were others involved in the birth of our country besides Paul Revere, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, and the Adam's? I began to dig deeper. I traced my family roots, and found some of the terms confusing, but now, thanks to Carolyn's complete coverage of anything that matters I now understand terms such as "Purse, Person, Cavalier and Old Dominion." And how about all those presidents born in Virginia? What I found most amazing was that Lexington, Virginia was named after the town where the first disorganized, skirmish of the American Revolution broke out; Lexington, Massachusetts. What most Virginians probably don't know is that there is still a battle going on in Lexington. This ongoing fight is against the neighboring town of Concord, where the second, more organized, out and out battle occurred. It seems that both towns want to claim "The shot heard round the world." This famous phrase was penned by Ralph Waldo Emerson while sitting in his grandfather's home, overlooking the Old North Bridge in Concord, MA. Concord residents feel certain that when Ralph wrote the poem he was gazing out towards the North Bridge and he was referring to "the first organized armed resistance of the Revolutionary War on April 19, 1775." Concord historians will also let you know that whatever happened in neighboring Lexington was an accident and a mess. In fact, this modern argument is so bitter that at a Concord town meeting, when some citizens proposed to install public restrooms somewhere in Concord center for the many tourists, a resident cried out, "Let them go in Lexington!" Now, please don't think that because I was born in Connecticut that I have any Yankee ancestors. I did happen to marry a second generation American who grew up less than a mile from the famous Lexington battle green, where the Minuteman Statue attracts many a visitor. And, his birthday happens to be April 19th. So, every year when Lexington holds its annual Patriot's day parade, my husband thinks the parade is for him. I only bring this into my review of Carolyn's easy-to-read and extremely informative Virginiana book, because he did have a bitter response when I read to him the page about the first documented Thanksgiving occurring in 1619 along the James River in Virginia. He said, calmly, "The Thanksgiving that occurred in Plymouth in 1621 actually involved Native Americans sitting down and sharing a meal with the survivors of a long hard year, not a bunch of British guys kissing the ground, grateful that their own lives were saved." Well, that's some kind of attitude! Fortunately, as I help my 5th grade son with his new American History book, I can see that the Southern Colonies are covered in immense detail, and he even has a chapter on the Scots-Irish, the Great Wagon Road, and frontier life. At least he'll grow up knowing where he came from. Linda Jo Groton, MA However, if my mother was born in Endicott, then I am still a daughter of the South.