Piedmont Trails exists for two prime reasons. Number one is to share our journey of discoveries from the past forty years of research. Number two, to document and prove the first national migration route in our nation’s history, The Great Wagon Road. The second has kept us very busy during the past two years. It’s with certainty that the Great Wagon Road Project will occupy much of our time for the next three to four years as we continue to prove this historic route one mile at a time. To share our past discoveries with you, we created a page on the website entitled The Attic Files. When you visit the page, you can follow along with the outline to learn how our research has progressed through the years. The question is, how can we share this information with all of you?

Placing all the material on the website is impractical due to storage space and time constraints. After much thought, we decided to add the family files as part of our online Piedmont Trails Library. By going with this method, we can add crucial details such as dates, places, events, and summaries. The specifics enable you to understand the contents of each file. Two steps are needed to gain access. First, visit the Piedmont Trails Library. Second, click on the Attic Files tab located in the collections section. That’s it! You have now entered the attic at Piedmont Trails. Pull up a chair and begin viewing the surnames. You can also use the search tab in the upper right corner to search the entire library. The advanced search allows you to concentrate on specific surnames or other keywords of interest that involve your research. Once you find a file of interest, click on it. The next page will highlight the file’s contents. For quicker access, click on the description tab on the right; this will take you directly to the summary. All files listed are family lineage files and contain generations of data here at the Attic. We hope to create future pages on Piedmont Trails that will include early settlement files and local histories from the 18th century.

Keep in mind that we add these surname files periodically as our schedule allows. We encourage you to check back often as we continue adding them to the library site. Using LibraryThing for this purpose is a trial run. We hope this method works well for us. But we are mainly concerned with the best way to share our files with you. To learn more about the contents of a specific file, contact us. We offer three ways to do this. You can easily use the website form, direct email, or regular ground post. To access the addresses, click on the Contact Page. Since we added the post office box last year, we have received many letters requesting information from us. After sending our replies, we often receive an encouraging card filled with thanks. We appreciate these so much. The communication doesn’t stop at that point. Whenever we receive a card, we consistently mail one back to pass on that much-needed encouragement on your journey to the past. Emails may allow us to respond faster, at times, but we find that the ground mail allows us more time and puts us to work, and we generally add material copies with our responses. Either way, you choose the best communication tool to use that benefits your schedule and needs.

We are excited about this opportunity to share portions of the Attic Files. The attic is our happy place, filled with many memories, notes, photos, and more. The files are part of who we are. Our research is continuous and never stops. We are constantly digging deeper into genealogy and history. We want to encourage others to do the same. That’s why Piedmont Trails exists today. It’s all about sharing the past and enjoying the journey.