Roots

My dad’s family is from Virginia and traces its lineage back to a man called Richard Lee “The Immigrant”, an ancestor our family shares with a number of historical figures. It’s been easy to learn our family history because most of it is covered in school — settling the colony of Virginia, fighting a revolutionary war, signing the Declaration of Independence, and leading a confederate army.

But the really important family history to me is the one that’s built piece by piece from stories of strawberry picking in May, a family of twelve in a tiny farmhouse, and a horse named Peanut. During our whirlwind Lee Family weekend, mom and dad took Hugh and me to see Mitchells, where some of those stories took place.

My great-grandparents attended Mitchells Presbyterian Church where they are now buried next to my great-grandmother’s parents.

Both passed away long before I came around, but when I walked up to their headstone they didn’t feel like strangers at all. I have heard plenty about Hattie, my great-grandmother. She gave birth to eleven children, one of which only lived for three weeks. She passed away when my grandpa, her youngest child, was 15 and five of his brothers were off serving in World War II. She and I share a birthday, which grandpa proudly reminds me of every year.

And Great-Granddaddy Lee — I’ve always pictured him being just like Grandpa, and sharing the same spirited approach to life that Grandpa and his siblings and his sons have. They can fiddle with anything to fix a problem — a suspended bird feeder to keep the squirrels away, a rolling sink to reuse the frame of a grill, a trap door in the deck to more easily alleviate leaf build-up. Great-Granddaddy Lee was also the first Hokie in the family, graduating from VPI’s agriculture program in 1914.

Some families spread out over the years, going where work and opportunity and life take them. And some may think we Lees lack a sense of exploration and adventure for having remained in Virginia since, well, the beginning of Virginia. But to me, living where my roots have been planted for so many generations has given me an invaluable appreciation for my family’s history and a constant connection to its past.

Last weekend Hugh and I got to walk around the churchyard where my great-grandparents shuttled their ten kids on foot from their home just across the railroad tracks, traipsed through the same grass, and looked out at the same simple rural sky.

And that is pretty cool.