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BY WAYNE F. BALDWIN
Rappahannock News
Contributing Writer
Saturday morning, Feb. 14, 1998 my sister, brother-inlaw and two nephews met me at Beech Spring Church to begin our hike up Beech Spring Hollow.
Having a particular interest in the area, especially the Hazel Mountain region which had been home to many of our maternal ancestors who included the Burke, Jenkins and Dodson families, we headed out hoping to find a cemetery.
Our grandmother relating the story of going up there by horse and buggy taken by her mother to visit Aunt “Zooie”. However, time and distance to a child is a fleeting thing and to try and retrace the route taken more than 70 years ago from a memory is no easy task. Memory lapses, water courses and roads change naturally, not to mention the handiwork of man upon the environment, and 60 years of re-growth of the forest.
Other folks have also added to the background information, still without personal investigation and no hard evidence before the curious seeker, the endeavor becomes even more complicated.
With food supply and map, all the necessary hiking equipment, we set off at 10 a.m., with a fine but brisk snow falling out of the clouds covering our destination. We found several old home sites on the trail up. The final one was atop a high hill with a curved road leading up. It must have been a house with rooms built on either side of a central chimney. Many old relics such as barrel hoops and tubs lay about, even one blue rimed white pot which was apparently a flower pot after its original intesions sprang a leak, evidenced by the nail holes in the bottom of it. My information says this was, at the coming of Shenandoah Park, the home of B. Dodson.
My six year old nephew proving • his mountaineer integrity by wailing every step of the way encouraged his elderly uncle.
Although it was rather early in the year, we found evidence spring was coming by some patches of daffodils near budding. However, finding these hallowed places of early habitation was not our only desire. The matter at hand, close to my heart, was locating
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