North Carolina Genealogy

I found this news story of a woman on a bus trip in North Carolina that convinced the driver to visit Waynesboro, NC where her great-grandfather had helped build a Quaker Meeting House. (This from the News Argus of Goldsboro.) It really can add another dimension to research to take a name out of paper and notes and connect it to a real physical place and structure. I’m sure they got plenty of pictures – what do you think?

It sounds like they were wrapping up their trip – on the way back to RDU to head home I suppose, when she convinced the driver to make this sidetrip.

A California woman convinced her tour bus driver Tuesday to veer off his scheduled route and stop in Goldsboro so she could visit the Quaker meeting house at Waynesborough Park that one of her ancestors helped build.
“This is wonderful,” said Dorothy Burroughs of Murrieta, Ca., a descendant of William J. Cox. “I knew they were coming to North Carolina, and I had been doing genealogy and knew my great-grandfather was one of those who helped build it.”
She and several friends toured the Bethany Meeting House that originally stood on Cox’s farm. The group, making a cross-country tour, left the Outer Banks on Tuesday morning en route to the Raleigh-Durham Airport. Ms. Burroughs convinced the driver to stop long enough for the group to visit the park.
Velma Vaye Howell, the curator of the Bethany Meeting House and member of the Waynesborough board, and her husband, Bobby, talked to the group about the meeting house and about Waynesborough before the group reboarded their bus.
It’s rare for a tour bus driver to deviate from his route, said Ms. Howell, who greeted the group abaout noon.
She said had received a letter from Ms. Burroughs, asking about the meeting house and helped her arrange the stop.

You know – I’ve got to say, it’s nice to see that a story like this still would make news some places.