On the Historic Trail at Lewisburg

Hey. I’m Cody. Last name is Etu. Have you been reading my dispatches on the family vacation to West Virginia? If so, you know by now that I’m 17 and traveling with mom and dad and grandpa and grandma.

When we came down from the hills my cell phone started to work again. So I texted my buddies back home about the cool stuff I was seeing. First, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank. Then the Cass Scenic Railroad State Park in Cass.

Now here we are in a tourist town called Lewisburg. It is one of those towns that make you feel you are on vacation: lots of restaurants, shops, antique places, and tourist attractions. Dad booked us into the General Lewis, a country inn with an old black buggy out front and a big porch.

We no sooner had put our bags in the room than dad and grandpa had a Manhattan cocktail in their hands and were rocking in rocking chairs on the porch. Mom and grandma came out, too, but they were holding iced tea.

"Cody,"mom said. "Why don’t you explore the town a bit. Come back in an hour for dinner."

I knew what that meant: adults only. Teenagers not allowed. So I started walking past the shops in town, looking in the windows at the antiques and real estate photos and the menus posted for diners. Luckily, I had a Walking Tour of Historic Lewisburg booklet with me I picked up at the General Lewis inn. There are 72 sites to see, from old homes, businesses, and other buildings that have been around longer than my grandpa.

Strange that there would be two cemeteries in this small town. One is next to the Old Stone Presbyterian Church. Let me tell you, I’ll bet on a foggy wet night under a full moon this is one scary place. These aren’t exactly recent burials. One gravestone marked the birth as 1766; the one next to it at 1776. There were plenty of fresh flowers at the headstones. The stones were tilted this way and that, aged and weathered, but unmoving. Check out the photo I took.

Up the hill a piece is the Confederate Cemetery. When I got up to it I found one huge gravesite, spread out like a giant cross, rather than single graves with headstones. Turns out this is a mass grave for 95 unknown Confederate soldiers who died at the May 23, 1862 Battle of Lewisburg. The brochure said these soldiers were "unclaimed." That got me to thinking: I’ve been gone more than an hour, and my parents or grandparents haven’t shown up to claim me. With that thought in mind, I skipped, hopped, and jogged back through town to the General Lewis.

"Cody," mom said, "for God’s sake! Where have you been?"

Hey. It’s a good feeling to be "claimed."

Check Lewisburg out at www.greenbrierwv.com.