The dates given for the book are because the author relates history from those dates, but not universally as his single, personal recollection of the event. So some of it was taken from local records, some which later have been demonstrated as being inaccurate...,
Taking the book as equal to a 2nd or 3rd hand account, however is a spurious argument. Allow me to explain the title:
"Notes on The Settlement and Indian Wars of the Western Parts of Virginia and Pennsylvania from 1763 to 1783, inclusive," which is how most people note the title, or simply "Notes on the Settlement and Indian Wars". So his book in part, deals with those wars, however, the title continues thus: "together with a Review of the State of Society and Manners of the First Settlers of the Western Country". Now while part of the book is limited to 1763-1783, by no means does this indicate that the entire book spans a twenty year period alone, NOR does it mean it concludes in the 14th year of Doddridge's life.
This is evidenced by the information in chapter 37 "The Captivity of Mrs. Brown" which begins "On the 27th day of March, 1789..." Chapter 40 "The Affair of the Johnsons" begins its second paragraph, "In the fall of the year 1793...".
Further, I do not think that this memoir is merely the mental recollections of the man in a short period of time leading up to the finished product. I doubt he sat down and started scribbling away. I believe they are based in part on recollection coupled with his actual records of the time, however accurate those records may or may not have been.
Typically, people try to use Doddridge as a broad brush, when he specifies a rather narrow area where he is familiar, and he should not be applied outside Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. He may be accurate elsewhere, or he might not, but Rev. Doddridge does not claim to be so. This possible inaccuracy outside of Doddridge's specific geography, then leads folks outside those areas who find differences, or contradictions, to dismiss Doddridge as a whole as "mere recollections decades after the actual events".
While it is true, individual by individual, the human memory can be disturbed, BUT on the other hand it can be quite remarkable. Which either, cannot be predicted. Without evidence that Doddridge was terribly inaccurate, one must take his written account as rather valid and much better then a second or third hand account. This is not something out of ordinary for us to do. Decades after the end of WW2, concentration camp guards were ID'd by the mental recollections of former prisoners, who had been starved and exhausted at the time of captivity, to identify, convict, and execute former German SS camp guards.
LD
