A Tale of Two Mapmakers

The Shenandoah Valley was Home to Both

As a child, I was always fascinated by the Nineteenth Century maps drawn by Jedadiah Hotchkiss. The Civil War mapmaker provided detailed surveys of many places in the Valley and they were works of art. I drew a modern map that imitated Hotchkiss' style for Rob Hewitt's history of the Church in Rockingham County. Modern surveys allowed me to see fairly detailed massings of topography where Hotchkiss had simply placed ridge lines. Modern mapping methods have given us a greater knowledge of the physical features of our world but we produce few maps as beautiful and informative as those of Jedadiah Hotchkiss.


Francis Collins

In our time, another Shenandoah Valley native has mapped the human genome. Francis Collins calls this complex code "The Language of G-d" and has authored a book by that name. Originally a chemist, Collins went on to study microbiology, fascinated by the complex nature of DNA. His boyhood was spent on a farm in the Valley and his mother homeschooled him up until the sixth grade. He was initially drawn to study chemistry at the University of Virginia and sought to avoid what he called "the messy field of biology." Collins wrote The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief and calls scientific discoveries an "opportunity to worship." Collins believes in a process of Theistic Evolution, where the process is divinely directed. Collins sees what amounts to the design documents for life in the DNA.

The work of Francis Collins holds great promise for understanding and conquering many of the diseases that trouble us. He is in every way a modern pioneer.