Detour on the Road to Finding Henry

My wife who, with apologies to Horace Rumpole, Esq., shall from now on in these blogs be referred to as, "she who must be obeyed" or simply SWMBO, came up with "the MacBeane Gene". It refers to the Clan MacBean who seem to have some peculiar characteristics. Others have noticed this also. One of these is the spelling is the name which can be; MacBain, MacBean, MacBeane, Bain, Bean, Beane, and the most notorious of all, MacBeth (but that was some time ago shortly after Donaldbain, a ninth century King of Scotland started the whole line), or so the story goes. Another inbred trait seems to be a dissatisfaction with their place of residence. We relocate and change our names like we are being chased by the high sheriff. I started out life as a Beane then became a Shultz and have wound up a Noyes. More on this at some other time. Now that should play havoc with some poor descendent trying to trace his line back in a hundred years. I've also moved several places in Indiana in my youth then to Florida then to Baltimore then to Virginia.

I had discovered that one Henry Beane had turned up in Wytheville, Va. in 1786. He was my ggg grandfather.
Now SWMBO and I had a wedding anniversary comming up and I thought there would be no better way to spend it then looking for Henry's history in Southwest Virginia. What wife doesn't dream of spending their nuptial celebration looking for her husbands dead relatives? She knew I had booked us into a Bed and Breakfast. But she didn't know it was as close as I could find to Wytheville or of my ulterior motive. This is where I lost control of the whole thing and the happy little accidents started taking over.

We traveled Interstate 81 to Route 8 just south of Christiansburg, Va. and then through Floyd Va. winding our way up to the Blue Ridge Parkway. When it leaves Floyd route 8 becomes a beautiful white knuckle experience. Ones sole intention becomes keeping from falling off the mountain. In Woolwine we turned onto an even more trecherous route 40. The B & B and the weekend were fantastic and because it was the weekend the historical society in Wytheville was closed. So much for Henry and my wives dream weekend.

What we did do that weekend is fall in love with the area. But the best was yet to come. After repeated return trips we figured it was better to live in the mountains then keep driving back and forth. At the least motivation, like it's Saturday and nothings on TV, we would drive six hours down and back six regretful that we had to leave hours. That's what happens when the MacBeane gene meets the happy little accidents. But the best part is we didn't wind up in Floyd (which people refer to as that "hippy town") or Woolwine.

Floyd and Woolwine seem to be going through growing pains and proprety there, if found, is EXPENSIVE.
Our realtor said she had a place about 20 miles down the Parkway in a development. A development, yuck!
The development has about 25 homes in the forest, four of us live up here full time. The rest of the poor souls have to spend most of their time somewhere else and can only come up occasionly. We couldn't have picked this place, some Devine hand has led us here. We have gravel roads because no one here wants them paved. You should have heard the uproar when the county put up the manditory 911 road signs. Our water comes from a natural spring and much of our food from the local farmers. It's not your typical development. People name their homes here and more then one makes a reference to heaven. As our friend recently remarked in a positive way, "we're all dead".

There's not a lot of people who live in this area full time. I think the mountain has to call them and they have to respond. For a MacBeane that's easy and with a little help from happy little accidents even easier.