The Grayson County, Virginia Heritage Foundation, Inc. is very excited with the progress this brand new organization has been able to accomplish since it was formed in June 2007!

The Grayson Heritage Foundation was established to promote, preserve and educate the cultural and family heritages of Grayson County, Virginia. While there is currently an emphasis on family history it is expanding into other areas of Grayson Heritage. Grayson’s musical heritage will be a new area of focus in 2008.

The organization has organized and published the first annual journal “Our Grayson Heritage” with photos, stories as well as historical documents. There are some very talented folks associated with this group that are committed to getting things done and done right! Quite an achievement for such a young organization. The plan is to publish “Our Grayson Heritage” annually.

Our next plan is to publish a Galax Cemetery book early in 2008! We will be accepting orders for this project very soon. If you live in the area, go to the office and inquire as to details.

On December 15th the organization welcomed its 100th dues paying member - quite an accomplishment for such a young organization. Of course, as the numbers of members grow, so do the family surnames that are being actively researched! We have very experienced volunteers to assist members and non-members who are interested in researching their family history. There are other resources that are available in the office as well.

The office is located at Guynn Shopping Center Mini Mall on East Main Street, Independence with winter hours of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Fridays at present. If the Grayson schools are closed due to weather then this office will be closed as well. The office will return to being open Thursdays and Fridays beginning in May. You can schedule to meet a volunteer at other hours if you can’t can’t get there during normal office hours.

A new initiative for this group is a musical committee that is hard at work collecting Grayson music and information on the musicians. They plan to have them in a digital format in the office available to those who are interested. When available, they are collecting photographs, stories or interviews and the history of individual musicians.

Grayson music is very much a part of Grayson history and we feel that we must try to conserve that as well as the family history piece.

There is a website that has been constructed with the url http://graysonheritage.com/ Check this out. More information about the
organization is there as well as how to make arrangements to research if you cannot be there when the office is normally open. For more information send an e-mail to research_support@graysonheritage.org or call Gil Wetmore at (276) 744-7839.