After we picked up the car we went to Lexington, Virginia and went to see some of the homes that had a lot of history in the town. Actually my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather was a well known mason and we visited one of the mansion that he built. That was on my grandmother Austin's side of the family. That who our son Lee was named after. Interesting enough, the street that the Manson was built on was called Lee Street. We took pictures of the bricks that he made the sidewalk out of, I think some of the patterns would work for a beautiful quilt. We took photos of the house from the street and then I told Shirley we should ask the family if we could take photos of the house outside. She said no, we shouldn't... but I thought what do we have to lose. So we walked up the long walk way and bravely knocked on the door. After telling her who I was, she invited us in and then had her husband come down stairs.
His name was Grigsby and he was a descendant of our family. He and his wife had bought the house just 4 years earlier, and he had done extensive search on the history of the home and the whole town. It was unbelievable how excited he was to meet us and hear what genealogy information that we had. He went around and showed us some really neat things about the home. Like the orginal windows that the glass maker etched his name in one of the window panes. Yes, it was great that we knocked on that door!
Next we went down in to town and to a local book shop that was suppose to have some more books with information about our family history. I noticed that outside the weather was getting really stormy. We turned on the radio to find out that there was a storm watch and a tornado watch going on. I am not really fond of big storms so I told Shirley that we should probably head back to our hotel. She however doesn't have the same fear and so she told me that everything would be fine and so we went on to a local Antiques store. We bought an umbrella earlier but there was no use to open it up, between the hard wind and rain there was no use. We got into the Antiques shop called Dukes and the electricity was out from the store but they had emergency lights on and so Shirley said that was good enough. She is a die hard collector I believe! Sounds like me and the Quilt Stores! But there aren't any Quilt Shops around here, can you believe that?
Luckily the tornado touched down in Richmond and in one other town closer to Buena Vista, where we were this morning. Lucky for us that we were visiting in Lexington instead! :)
We finished up the day with dinner and then back to the hotel to swim and pack up for tomorrow. What a fun day.
Good night dear friends.

"In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future"
Author: Alex Haley
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