Many years ago, a love story was ignited between the future residents of Virginia House, Alexander and Virginia Weddell. 

When she was in the third grade, a classmate asked her to pass the “skin-colored” crayon—a familiar request heard at her Leesburg elementary school. She understood her friend was asking for the peach-colored crayon, but it bothered her.

On the starry night of April 14, 1912, halfway through its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York, RMS (Royal Majesty Ship) Titanic sideswiped an iceberg in the North Atlantic, and in the early morning hours on April 15th, it sank with a tremendous loss of life.

The cynical among us may claim a conspiracy among greeting card companies, restaurants, and department stores in pushing holidays to celebrate mothers, fathers, grandparents, third cousins once removed.

James Allen Kline (1874–1944), a bicycle maker in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, became fascinated with automobiles and the future of transportation when he witnessed a demonstration of a horseless carriage—a steam-powered car called a “Locomobile”—in New York City in 1899. He placed an order for the car and then devised improvements to it.

Technological revolutions, increased urbanization, and advances in civil rights created the commonwealth we know today.