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Joined: Apr 2004
Posts: 42,697
Campfire 'Bwana
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OP
Campfire 'Bwana
Joined: Apr 2004
Posts: 42,697 |
Was surfing on line, just researching family history... I am lucky due to the fact that my family history dates in places all the way back to Jamestown Va on my grandfather's side. But this time I was researching my grandmother's side of the family. Came across this from a Book published in 1952, about historical sites and trips thru West Virginia... Flat Top, 3350 ft altitude, Pop 30...
a tiny trade center on the mountain plays host for two days in Mid August each year to some 75,000 guests who come to attend the Lilly Family Reunion, held annually since 1930.
Robert Lilly was one of three sons, of an associate of Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore who came to Maryland in 1640. All three sons migrated, one to Georgia, another to the Kanawha Valley, the third "Father" Robert Lilly married Mary Fanny Moody.
The couple left Maryland in 1732 to settle at the mouth of the Bluestone River, about 10 miles east of Flat Top. Father Robert Lilly died in 1810, aged 114 years oldand his wife Fanny died in 1807, aged 110 years old They were the first permanent and continual settlement started in what is now the state of West Virginia.... seems a little 'iffy' that they could have lived to be those kind of ages back in those times...but records indicate their birth years as 1696, and their dates of death were on their original grave stones... which were moved in the 1950s, when the small town of Lilly, was to be underwater due to a new damn being built... They are interned at the Family Reunion Grounds at Flat Top.. Here is a pic of their grave marker after they were relocated during the 1950s... Guess clean mountain living back in those times... Digging into this sort of stuff is fun and amazing what you can find...even tho my family has a lot of traceable history, still doesn't mean everyone else doesn't have some great family history to share...each of you are descendants of people who were alive in those days as well... These are the folks that started this country and gave us what we have today....
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Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 67,667
Campfire Kahuna
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Campfire Kahuna
Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 67,667 |
John, that is some interesting stuff. We can trace Dad's family back, generation by generation, to the 1300s in England. Mom's as well, back to Bavaria and Austria, even earlier. Here is a picture of me with Mom, her Dad, and his Dad, the one with the beard. Peter Wesley was born in 1849, SW Virginia. next, is picture of Joseph Sampson, PW's father, who was born in 1821, again in SW VA. That is the furthest back I can go with pictures.
Sam......
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Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 3,891
Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Sep 2010
Posts: 3,891 |
Se afire. Wasn't there a famous lion & bear hunter named Bob Lilly . Is there a branch of the family that left W Va. and moved out west by chance.
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Joined: Dec 2009
Posts: 31,599
Campfire 'Bwana
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Campfire 'Bwana
Joined: Dec 2009
Posts: 31,599 |
Se afire. Wasn't there a famous lion & bear hunter named Bob Lilly . Is there a branch of the family that left W Va. and moved out west by chance. That was Ben Lilly
Founder Ancient Order of the 1895 Winchester
"Come, shall we go and kill us venison? And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools, Being native burghers of this desert city, Should in their own confines with forked heads Have their round haunches gored."
WS
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Joined: Jan 2010
Posts: 732
Campfire Regular
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Campfire Regular
Joined: Jan 2010
Posts: 732 |
My wife and I took the family to Gettysburg for the first time. Well, except for my father-in-law, whose been there and studied enough to teach tour guides. He's big on genealogy and traced three of his ancestors to the Civil War. Two fought for the north and one for the south, who was actually a governor after the war. One of them who fought for the north signed up for two additional tours. Pretty amazing for the time.
"Honey, when I die, sell my guns for what they're worth and not what I told you I paid for them."
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Joined: Apr 2004
Posts: 42,697
Campfire 'Bwana
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OP
Campfire 'Bwana
Joined: Apr 2004
Posts: 42,697 |
Just here in Oregon alone, I am aware of a branch of the Lilly family that settled up north by Portland, and another over by LaGrande OR. The Lilly Family Reunion held on Flat Top, has made the Guinness World Book of Records, multiple times as both the largest family reunion held in the USA but also in the World several times. People show up from every state in the country. Haven't been to one since I was a kid. Just this week, discovered that I am related to another forum member here on the Campfire.. I'll let him remain anonymous, until he wants to step up and admit, he's related to Seafire... some might consider than an embarrassment. but if someone has the last name of Lilly or Meadows, in North America, Australia, NZ, Canada or from the home country, Great Britain, they are probably related.. both date back to the Norman Conquest in Britain and even further back in Normandy... which were descendants of Vikings who occupied the north coast of France, before 1000 AD.
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Joined: Jan 2012
Posts: 26,444
Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: Jan 2012
Posts: 26,444 |
Boatloads of Lilly's and Meadows here in the new river valley[as you know] Good friends with some of them. Kin to any McCoys[from McCoy]?
FJB & FJT
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Joined: Oct 2005
Posts: 79,321
Campfire Oracle
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Campfire Oracle
Joined: Oct 2005
Posts: 79,321 |
If you really want to get involved with it, pay ancestry.com $90 for their DNA test kit.
You send it in and they tell you the DNA makeup of your ancestry.
That in itself is interesting enough, but ancestry.com is also compiling a data base which will list all of your relatives who have been tested.
They listed several hundred relatives of mine in their database. Some of them are very close relatives that I have lost track of over the years.
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Joined: Nov 2011
Posts: 3,184
Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Nov 2011
Posts: 3,184 |
I'm afraid that if Lilly blood entered ancestry.com data base it would crash the whole system. The reunion is a sight to see. No matter the time, day or night some old timer will be up on stage with a banjo or fiddle and a pretty girl with a voice 5x bigger than she is. If you polite to the locals you just might get to sample some moonshine made with water from springs that have been pumping sense the beginning of time. If your driving thru and you see a group of men out front of the local store and there squatting down saying their hello's, don't worry there not crazy. They are miners. They, just like their fathers and the grandfathers live their life in a 20" seam of coal deep down under those hills. I long for the days when you could load the truck with friends and beers and hit the back roads of Panthers Knob. Skinny dipping with the girls at the Blue Hole on Streeter creek was pure heaven. If you have Lilly blood in you there are no strangers in this world. They're just family that you haven't met yet. Sea Fire, I have no problem owning up to having your blood in my veins.
Want To Buy; Form die for a 7mm Mashburn Super. .284 Hornady AMax 162gr. .224 Hornady AMax 75gr. 22-250 bushing die Bushing die that will work with the 7mm Mashburn Super A couple Glock 42 380ACP mags
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Joined: Jan 2012
Posts: 26,444
Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: Jan 2012
Posts: 26,444 |
Aww hell, another one with ties....
FJB & FJT
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Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 28,411
Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 28,411 |
Obama, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton went all the way back to Africa together to look up their family tree only to have a monkey schittt in their faces. True story.
The degree of my privacy is no business of yours.
What we've learned from history is that we haven't learned from it.
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Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 4,469
Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 4,469 |
Seafire, I live about 20 minutes from Flat Top and I also have a 29 acre place about 7 miles from Flat Top on Ellison Ridge road.
Lot's of Indian history also. Bluestone Lake took the old cemetery you are referring to.
It's a small world. My SIL is a Lilly. Hundreds of Lilly's around here.
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Joined: Mar 2003
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Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 4,469 |
Les...are you talking about Streeter near Cool Ridge, WV?
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Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 4,469
Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 4,469 |
I'm afraid that if Lilly blood entered ancestry.com data base it would crash the whole system. The reunion is a sight to see. No matter the time, day or night some old timer will be up on stage with a banjo or fiddle and a pretty girl with a voice 5x bigger than she is. If you polite to the locals you just might get to sample some moonshine made with water from springs that have been pumping sense the beginning of time. If your driving thru and you see a group of men out front of the local store and there squatting down saying their hello's, don't worry there not crazy. They are miners. They, just like their fathers and the grandfathers live their life in a 20" seam of coal deep down under those hills. I long for the days when you could load the truck with friends and beers and hit the back roads of Panthers Knob. Skinny dipping with the girls at the Blue Hole on Streeter creek was pure heaven. If you have Lilly blood in you there are no strangers in this world. They're just family that you haven't met yet. Sea Fire, I have no problem owning up to having your blood in my veins. Here's Everett Lilly, the king of Lilly music: https://youtu.be/yb4YJrBk_68
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Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 4,469
Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 4,469 |
Se afire. Wasn't there a famous lion & bear hunter named Bob Lilly . Is there a branch of the family that left W Va. and moved out west by chance. That was Ben Lilly Ben was quite a character: http://www.legendsofamerica.com/we-benllilly.html
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Joined: Dec 2005
Posts: 13,004
Campfire Outfitter
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Campfire Outfitter
Joined: Dec 2005
Posts: 13,004 |
I know where that Lilly reunion happens to take place. I killed a deer not that far from there with another forum member here. Very pretty area if you don't kill yourself in the hollers.
"...aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one." - Paul to the church in Thessalonica.
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Joined: Mar 2003
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Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 4,469 |
I know where that Lilly reunion happens to take place. I killed a deer not that far from there with another forum member here. Very pretty area if you don't kill yourself in the hollers.
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Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 4,469
Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Mar 2003
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Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Nov 2011
Posts: 3,184 |
Les...are you talking about Streeter near Cool Ridge, WV? Yes Sir. That is my old stomping grounds. Born and raised on Ellison Ridge on the Jumping Branch side.
Want To Buy; Form die for a 7mm Mashburn Super. .284 Hornady AMax 162gr. .224 Hornady AMax 75gr. 22-250 bushing die Bushing die that will work with the 7mm Mashburn Super A couple Glock 42 380ACP mags
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Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 4,469
Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Mar 2003
Posts: 4,469 |
Les...are you talking about Streeter near Cool Ridge, WV? Yes Sir. That is my old stomping grounds. Born and raised on Ellison Ridge on the Jumping Branch side. That's pretty cool. My property is half way down Dunn's Road from Ellison Ridge road. Bought if from the Clarks in '72.
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