Abercairn…
Haven and new beginning for the Scots who founded it.
Cradle, matrix, nourisher of her sons’ spirits ever since.
Home place, heart’s home, dearer than life to her defenders.
Abercairn is an imagined county in Virginia. The reader glimpses it a decade or so before the War Between the States and shares its story throughout the War and for some years afterwards. Contemporaries consider it a frontier area, compared to the long-settled Tidewater region of the state. It has its rough characters and its cultured ones, and its County Court which acts in legislative and executive matters as well as judicial ones. Residents make their livings from both cash-crop and mixed agriculture, manufacturing on a small and domestic scale, and, in the backcountry, hunting. They are Godly people, though a few don’t always act accordingly.
