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, By DOUG COCHRAN• Harrisonburg News-Record STANLEY (AP) - Pine GroveHollow is losing a trade — and ,a tradition.• For up to five generations, ••the people of this remote mountain community in eastern Page .County have made their livingalmost exclusively by shaping ■ and building with the stone that -so abundantly surrounds them.• But times and building ways • change, and stcne is giving wavto brick and wood.^ Since the early 1800s. the Pine •Grove mountaineers have mor-tared stone to stone and built houses, fireplaces, walls and bridges throughout Virginia..“At one time, everyone in the hollow seemed to be a stonoma-son,” recalls retired mason , Charles Gray Sr.“Now they’re slim through here.”... Out of some 30 families now , Jiyjng in Pine Grove, only four full-time stonemasons remain. ' Perhaps a half-dozen more hollow men have some experience or training in stone work but spend most of their working time as brick masons or carpenters.No one knows who the first stonemason in Pine Grove was — only that he was the father of William Gray, who was the frandfathcr of several still living hollow masons.Local tradition says the Gray family, stonemasons even then, was brought from Scotland by Gov. Alexander Spotswood in the L700s to work at Gcrmanna. A descendant of this family supposedly crossed the Blue Itidge Mountains in 1800 to become the first Gray and the first stonemason in Pine Grove Hollow.The trade was taught to each succeeding generation until it reached Shirley Gray who, after 22 years in stone work, is the youngest full-time mason in the hoi low.Two olher families, the Pettits and the Weakleys, married into the Gray family and adopted its trade.Just as most of Pine Grove’s
Newspaper Details
Danville Register
Danville, Virginia, US
Fri, Mar 26, 1971
Page 9
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
FL, USA 01 Mar 2017
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