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has organized and published the first annual journal “Our Grayson Heritage” with photos, stories as well as historical documents.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.

We now have the capability to accept orders and payments on this web site. Go to the Product$ tab to see what we have for sale and place an order.

Your orders are sent to us via e-mail as soon as PayPal verifies your payment. You can use your credit card or PayPal account to pay. You don’t need a PayPal account.

Although we receive orders immediately we will probably not process it until the next Thursday or Friday. We just don’t have enough business or volunteers to promise any faster response.

There’s at least one bug we have seen in the software. Some people who have paid for membership or made a donation have seen a $3 shipping charge reported in the automatic response sent to them or in their optional Account page. So far this charge has not shown up in charges against the credit cards.

We’ll keep an eye on this and try to take appropriate actions to correct any mis-charges.

If you experience this or other problem you can post a comment here or send a message to admin admin@graysonheritage.org.

I’ll post any additional details here.  Hopefully we won’t have any major problems.

We have established a permanent office schedule.   I have posted these on the Home and Research pages of the web pages.  Look there for the details.  Basically we plan to be opened two days a week May - September and one day a week for the remaining months.

This schedule will be permanent until we change it.  If we get enough volunteer staff and interest from visitors we will look at opening additional days.

Gil has volunteered to keep the Heritage Foundation office opened one day a week on Fridays. Hours will be 10AM to 4 PM. Normally weather that closes the county schools will also close the office.

If you would like to do research but cannot get to the office during these hours go to the Research Office tab for information on how to arrange meeting Gil or another research assistant at the office.

The office will return to being open at least two days a week by the 1st of June.

We are in need of volunteers who can help researchers and possibly help us expand the number of days the office is opened.

Through the month of September we are maintaining office hours from 10 AM to 4 PM on Thursdays and Fridays.