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Augusta County, Virginia, was formed in 1738 from Orange County and was itself the parent county, in whole or in part, of Bath, Botetourt, Frederick, Rockbridge, and Rockingham counties. A stronghold of Scotch-Irish settlement, Augusta commands great interest among genealogists because thousands of 18th- and 19th-century families passed through it en route to the West. J. Lewis Peyton's History of Augusta County, Virginia is the standard work on the county. It is essentially a narrative account of Augusta from its aboriginal beginnings and Spotswood's discovery of the Valley of Virginia through the Civil War. Most of Peyton's account follows county politics, especially Augusta during the French and Indian War and the American Revolution; however, the author also deals with the organization of churches, celebrated court cases (such as trials for witchcraft), formation of cities and towns, conflicts with the Indians, and so on. The author intersperses quotations from court records, legislative sessions, fragmentary marriage records, and other primary sources to embellish his account. Genealogists will value the book, in part, as a companion volume to such Augusta County source record collections as Lyman Chalkley's Chronicles of the Scotch-Irish Settlement in Virginia. Of greater importance to genealogists, however, are the genealogical and biographical sketches of the following pioneering Augusta County families found in the Appendix to the volume: Baldwin, Bell, Campbell, Christian, Crawford, Fleming, Hanger, Hughes, Johnson, Koiner, Lee, Lewis, McCue, McCulloch, McDowell, Madison, Mathews, Peyton, Poe, Porterfield, Preston, Sheffey, Stuart, Tate, Waddell, Wayt, Wetzel, and Zane. The Clearfield edition contains a revised and enlarged name index to the work prepared by Charles R. Carrier in 1953.