In the past couple of days on the Augusta Co., VA mail list there was a question that evolved from why an Augusta Militia was formed to dates for the Engles/Draper massacres...I started looking at my various books to see if I could answer the question...but others beat me to the answer...but I found something that sorta made me pause in my tracks.. "Trans Allegheny Pioneers" by John P. Hale, published 1886, Chapter 36. The purpose of this chapter was to make a chronological record of important events along the western border of Virginia. He stated that a lot of what he wrote came from those who had experienced it, or had heard a parent or grandparent relate the event. The following is two paragraphs before he began the chronological events...which begin in 1654 and end in 1886. QUOTED from book: Their {the pioneers} goings and comings and their doings were not guided by fixed rules nor programmes, nor cramped and fettered by cold records. They had a contempt for calendars and a negligent disregard of dates. Facts they remembered, and could relate with minutest detail; but they neither knew nor cared whether the events related occurred five, or ten, or twenty years earlier or later; all that they knew or cared to remember was, that they occurred, "in an early day" - in the dim, indefinite and distance-enchanted past. THEN he wrote the following: "To get early historical dates with accuracy is no easy task, as those who have tried it know." Now this poor gentleman was having problems in 1886 getting reliable data....and it is 116 years later and look at us.....who says history doesn't repeat itself???? LOL Peace, Vivian