THE END


    "If there is one piece of advice that I would give you", said Mrs. Morton, "it
is to know when to STOP."  She went on to say that people often become so interested
in gathering genealogical information that they never do get around to writing their
books.  So I am taking her advice and stopping, although I feel that I am on the
threshold of new discoveries about our Virginia ancestors, and I would like to re-
work the New England records.  Perhaps readers of this book can help me get authen-
tic information.  I invite corrections and criticisms and hope that this work can
be a continuing one.

    Just before finishing this book, I visited my cousin Perkins Morton Flippin, of
Lynchburgh and "Pharsalia".  Perkins and I went to the Presbyterian Cemetery at
Pamplin and saw the graves of Charles Silas and Mary Lavalette.  I had a rewarding
visit with Mrs. Morton in Farmville.  The next day I visited her father, Uncle John,
at Tyro Farm next to Pharsalia in the beautiful Tye River Valley at the foot of the
majestic Blue Ridge Mountains.  He told me of his father's editorials in the Rich-
mond Times- Dispatch.  He cannot locate them now, but said that he was amazed at
how astute and ahead-of-his-time grandfather's editorials proved him to be.  He said
that grandfather urged his fellow Virginians to forget the bitterness and hatred
engendered by the Civil War and to take advantage of the marvelous opportunities for
expansion in this country.  He urged the building of railroads to open up trade with
the expanding West.  He said that the settlements made after the Franco-Prussian War
made a larger war inevitable.  I did not know until this visit that Grandfather
lectured on Physiology at William and Mary for a while when he lived in Richmond.
I am sorry that I did not have the privilege of knowing this complex and sensitive
man, but I have seen his fine traits reflected in his children.
                                                                         Top