According to a 2003 article in The Richmond Times-Dispatch, when Robert Alonzo Brock died in 1914, he had accumulated probably the largest and most valuable collection of documents and manuscripts related to Virginia history ever held privately.

After Brock's death, Virginia was offered the complete collection for $1,500, but the General Assembly failed to provide sufficient funds to acquire it.

When the entire collection was then sold to a private collector in California in 1922, Richmond News editor Douglas Southall Freeman suggested, "Virginia's history is hemorrhaging away and Virginia has only herself to blame."

The happy ending to this story is that the value of these documents is now realized. The microfilming of the collection, at a cost of $250,000, will return the information, on microfilm, to Virginia by 2007, Virginia's 400th anniversary.

Currently, the fate of another part of Virginia history is being decided: Crow's Nest.

Will the Stafford County Supervisors and K&M Properties allow what Freeman deplored so many years ago, losing a "priceless slice of history"?

Or will they work together to prevent it from being bulldozed, paved, and commercialized, and stop the hemorrhaging of Virginia's history? If this is lost, it cannot be saved on microfilm in the future. Crow's Nest is living history.

We urge our elected Stafford supervisors and K&M Properties to have the wisdom to realize the unique historic value of Crow's Nest and to have the foresight to preserve this piece of Stafford County for a purpose perhaps yet to be determined.

We hope they have the confidence to say, "We can find a way to save Crow's Nest. I will work with others to preserve this land. It will not be said now or in 80 years that I was a party to Virginia's history hemorrhaging away."

John and Marilyn Sue Bland

Stafford