Plot

The town prepares for a Founder's Day Celebration. Who settled there first? The Baldwins, the Waltons, or the Godseys? Jason has to prepare a piece of music for graduating from the Kleinberg Conservatory.

The Baldwin sisters were cleaning out thier family records when they have an idea that they want to display these items. Meanwhile Jason is composing his final peice for Clyneburg and is having difficulty, he thinks because of the constant level of noise at the Walton home. To find peice and quiet, he heads over to the Baldwin sisters where he is caught in the debate over what to do over the records. An idea of Founder's Day is concieved and Mary Ellen, Corabeth Godsey and the Baldwin sisters forment the committee. Then the Baldwins and Corabeth find "proof" that thier ancestor was the one who settled the mountain first instead of Rome Walton. Grandma puts a stop to that by revealing Rome's diary which stated he was definately there first. Meanwhile Jason still has trouble which Elizabeth, reminding him of their oldest brother's policy of "Writing what he knows," solves it. Showing his finished "Appalachian Portraits" to his professor, he is distressed that the prof will not accept it as a project because it is not in the way of Bach or Beetoven but is too "contemporary." Elizabeth to the rescue finds the prof and gives him a copy of Walton's Mountain (the book JohnBoy wrote) and John Sr. gives him an impassioned plea to come to Founder's Day to hear the piece's debut. Founder's day goes off with barely a hich except for a verbal faux pas from Corabeth and Jason plays his peice with the prof in attendance. Then Earl Hamner's voice cuts in for a tribute to mountian, family, and love, and as Jason finishes his peice the prof looks very proud upon having such a man, such a musician, as a student.