June 16, 2012 ~~~ Went to Lewisburg this beautiful sunny 75 degree day to visit the Historical Society.  Found a few records of the Thompson/Workman family, but not too much.  Will share what we did find, and plan a trip in Monday to the Greenbrier Courthouse to see if they have anything else.  Then we took a trip out in the "country" to see if we could find the community of Trout.  I was told years ago that Riley William Thompson, Sr. was born there.  And we FOUND it!  Nothing left of the "town" now except an old boarded up grocery store, but quite a few houses scattered around... after traveling up a single track slightly paved "road" that had many many twists, blind corners, 100-foot+ drop offs, etc.  Here's a photo of the old store, followed by some of the road we drove, some of the houses we saw (all occupied), and the view from the top looking out of the community of Trout.

The first photo is the old store at Trout, the last photo is a little church nearly next door to it.  These photos cannot do justice to the road, the drop offs, or the narrowness!   We also saw a lot of houses that we decided we didn't want to get caught taking photos of .... we were concerned that the locals might object.  :-)   And we were a long ways from town.

We kept seeing these bushes loaded with red berries all along the roadsides that looked a lot like huckleberries, only redder, so Darrell decided he would try some.  He started spitting them out after a 2-second "munch" and kept spitting for 5 minutes, then rinsed his mouth out with coffee and spit some more.  We don't know what they are, but there is apparently a reason why no one is picking them!  I asked him what they taste like, but what he said is unprintable.  I decided not to try any.  Here's what they look like, in case you're ever tempted to try them for yourself.

I don't think I would recommend it. 

Tomorrow we will go for a longer ride up around the same part of the county.