I pulled off the road that summer day because the Light felt right and the sky looked like it didn’t know what it wanted to do—typical for mid-summer afternoons in southern Virginia. I knew the historical marker was there and meant to photograph it, but I was also pulling over beside three and a half centuries of family history.

Sometimes you don’t go looking for a story. Sometimes it’s already standing there, waiting on you.

According to this road marker, some of my kin passed through here long before I ever did.

Thomas Batte — often misspelled Batts, here and in many old accounts — was my 6th great-granduncle. (Around here, when you’re family, you’re family, no matter how distant. Except when sometimes you’re not, no matter how close you are.) Ol’ Uncle Tommy was part of an early expedition exploring Virginia in 1671. By their own records, they would have passed through this very area—Keysville—on September 3rd of that year, heading west.

They became, by most accounts, the first Anglo-Virginians to see the New River Valley and to establish early connections for trading beyond the settled parts of the colony. (They also thought they had reached western tidal waters, turned around, and headed back home.)

Almost 347 years later, in late July 2018, I stopped along this same stretch of road and made this photograph. I was headed back to the Shenandoah Valley then — to the place I called home at the time.

I’ve done family research off and on for years, and finding this marker — knowing it was my line — felt like adding one more small piece to a very large puzzle.

Thirteen months after I made this image, I moved back home to Southside.

Thirteen months after that — give or take a couple of weeks — I started work at an auto parts store less than a mile from this sign.

That was almost five and a half years ago.

The sign has been updated since I made the first image, including a name correction and some added history. I’m glad I have this photograph, and I’m glad I stopped when I did.

Sometimes it feels like I’ve been walking these same trails for centuries.

Sometimes I think about that old line from Scripture about asking for the ancient paths and walking in them.

Maybe that’s what this sign has been all along — a quiet reminder that the road behind me is part of the road ahead.