Soon after Mr. Taylor's publication, Judge Edwin S. Duncan, of Peel Tree, in then Harrison, now Barbour County, West Virginia, a gentleman of education, and well fitted for such a work, residing in the heart of a region rife with the story of Indian wars and hair-breadth escapes, made a collection of materials, probably including Mr. Taylor's sketches, with a view to a similar work; but his professional pursuits and judicial services interposed to preclude the faithful prosecution of the work, so he turned over to Mr. Withers his historic gatherings, with such suggestions, especially upon the Indian race, as by his studies and reflections he was enabled to offer. Other local gleaners in the field of Western history, particularly Noah Zane, of Wheeling, John Hacker, of the Hacker's Creek settlement, and others, freely furnished their notes and statements for the work. Mr. Withers, under these favorable circumstances, became quite well equipped with materials regarding especially the first settlement and Indian wars of the region now comprising West Virginia; and, to a considerable extent, the region of Staunton and farther southwest, of the French and Indian War period, together with Dunmore's War, and the several campaigns from the western borders of Virginia and Pennsylvania into the Ohio region, during the Revolutionary War. Alexander Scott Withers, for his good services in the field of Western history, well deserves to have his name and memory perpetuated as a public benefactor. Descending, on his father's side, from English ancestry, he was the fourth child of nine, in the family of Enoch K. and Jennet Chinn Withers, who resided at a fine Virginia homestead, called Green Meadows, half a dozen miles from Warrenton, Fauquier county, Virginia, where the subject of this sketch was born on the 12th of October, 1792--on the third centennial anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus. His mother was the daughter of Thomas Chinn and Jennet Scott--the latter a native of Scotland, and a first cousin of Sir Walter Scott. Passing his early years in home and private schools, he became from childhood a lover of books and knowledge. He read Virgil at the early age of ten; and, in due time, entered Washington College, and thence entered the law department of the venerable institution of William and Mary, where Jefferson, Monroe, Wythe, and other Virginia notables, received their education. Procuring a license to practice, he was admitted to the bar in Warrenton, where for two or three years he practiced his profession. His father dying in 1813, he abandoned his law practice, which he did not like, because he could not overcome his diffidence in public speaking; and, for quite a period, he had the management of his mother's plantation.