Since I grew up in the mountains of Virginia and my family and relatives were supposedly Scotch-Irish I just assumed most people around Blacksburg had similar heritage. I learned I was wrong when I took time to read the historical marker in Price's Fork, a small community about 5 miles from Blacksburg. I also visited with a high school class mate of mine, Jimmie Price, who pastors a church near Price's fork. He gave me a short history lesson about the area and community: " We are obviously a rural, farming, coal mining, and stone-cutting community which sprang from the German-American and Colonial Heritage. Our German-Immigrant ancestors had planted a frontier settlement by the year 1745-some 29 years before Colonel Wiliam Preston built Smithfield at present-day Blacksburg. In recorded history, that settlement is known as 'The German New River Settlement.' Price's Forks is the visible remainder of that early colony. Price's Forks is said to be the oldest, continuous European settlement within and west of The Alleghenies in Virginia. Saint Michael Lutheran Church on Merrimac Road; first church planted in that same region, circa 1745."
Fam!
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