View From the Editor’s Desk: The Strength of Family, Heritage

Three years ago, I wrote the following while in the mountains of southwest Virginia for the 2019 Grayson Highlands Fall Festival. After a two-year Covid pause, the festival resumed this year and, while unable to attend, it reminded of the last one held before a global pandemic changed the world, before we lost family members from the same genealogical branch in both Grayson and Richmond, and it pressed the urgency that tomorrow is not promised….

For over 40 years the Rugby Fire and Rescue folks have hosted the Grayson Highlands Fall Festival in southwest Virginia as a fundraiser, community event, and a way to preserve the heritage of the mountains.

Apple butter is patiently stirred and slow-cooked in an open kettle over a wood fire, then the cinnamon-spiced goodness is ladled into jars and sold to help raise money for rescue services.

Molasses made from freshly pressed sorghum extracted with mule-powered help give visitors an idea of how much work went into a jar of sweetener in the early days. Barbecued chicken is grilled on site and served along with other festival foods … vendors selling crafts, honey, starter apple trees, books, and children’s toys … a pony sale helps control the size of the herd of wild ponies that live on the high ridges of Mt. Rogers and Grayson Highlands.

And the music … bluegrass, featuring old timers and the next generation that will be keeping the tradition alive. All day the toe-tapping sound of banjos, mandolins, guitars, bass, harmonica, and fiddles can be heard as local musicians entertain while making music that has always been a way of life in the southern Appalachian Mountains.

I returned to my roots over the weekend. My grandparents and great-grandparents settled and raised families in these hills, and family members still make Grayson and surrounding communities their home, living in the shadow of the majestic heights. The history is as old as the New River that cuts through rocky cliffs and quietly flows through open valleys.

My grandparents moved away during the Depression, traveling east to Richmond as my grandfather searched for work and a way to provide for his growing family. The journey took him far from the familiar haunts of his youth and forever moved a branch of the ancestorial tree to Virginia’s capital city.

However, in my grandparents’ older years, when I was a little girl, my parents often drove them back to Grayson to visit family and friends. It was those trips that grew my love of the mountains that continues to this day. I have often thought about how difficult it must have been for my grandmother to move so far away from home, from her culture, familiar surroundings, family … and the mountains.

All those memories and more go through my mind every time I return. Those thoughts were especially prominent over the weekend because it was the first time I had returned since my mother, who loved Grayson even though she was born after her parents had moved away, passed away in July at the age of 91. It was almost a pilgrimage, an acknowledgement that my mother’s generation of our family is gone, and a realization that her passing shut the book of family history that she carried even though she documented much and passed it on.

I have done my best over the years to store away those precious tidbits of data … remembering which gravel backroad goes where, the names of trees and how to identify by their leaves and bark, how to find the remains of my great-grandparents’ cabin on the Knob, which turn off the main road takes me to my grandparents old farm place, the location of family cemeteries … which roads lead to cousins’ homes … the musicians who passed down the talent that I inherited … remembering the oral family stories shared through generations.

That love of Grayson is not as prevalent in younger generations so I will continue to document family in photos and words that can be shared with those to follow. Age has a way of bringing a greater appreciation of our roots.

Meanwhile, I will be at more festivals and on those gravel roads that my great-grandparents traveled, with my eyes on the uppermost ridges where I always want to be. Grayson … I have the mountains in my blood.

I wrote a while back about how my grandparents met, married, and lived in Grayson before leaving the mountains: Mollie and John Married August 21, 1904.

Be well….

~Lynn