R351
Husband: Samuel Lemon
Father: Jacob Lemon
Mother: Jane (Wood) Lemon
Born: 1814
Died: 11/19/1900, age 86
Wife: Elizabeth J. (Betsy, Nancy) (Wood) Lemon (Fig. R351a)
Father: Edward Wood [R003]
Mother: Sarah (Gilliland) Wood [R003]
Born: 10/26/1819
Died: 2/21/1903
Married: 5/12/1840, in Bath County. Surety, James W. Wood [R365].
Edward Wood consents for Betsy. Witnesses, Francis M. Wood and
James W. Wood. Married by James Gamble [S002].
Children:
William E. Lemon, 1841-6/19/1862, died in the Civil War
Jacob Lemon, 1843-3/4/1862, died in the Civil War
James W. Lemon, b. ~1844, served in the Civil War
Elvira A. Lemon, b. ~1850
Sarah J. Lemon, b. ~1851
Susan B. Lemon, b. ~1852
Lucy A. Lemon, b. ~1855
George Lee Lemon, b. 1857
Ida A. Lemon, b. 1859 (Fig. R351c), m. George Washington Ferdinand
Jasper Mace (his second wife; see [R272])
Betty E. Lemon (died young?)
Lelia M. Lemon, b. ~1864, m. 11/10/1885 to Charles Samuel Moore
Bedia Lemon, b. ~1867
(1996) Samuel and Betsy Lemon lived at first in Botetourt County Va., and their first two children (at least) were born there. By 1850 they had moved to a tract of land that Betsy’s father Edward Wood [R003] had deeded to them in his “Wedge Lot” (tract L1 in Fig. R361b). In 1854 Samuel bought an additional 250 acres of land (tracts L2 and L3) on the Tygart Valley River from the Edward Wood estate for $625 (DB20-60). The Lemon house appears in Fig. R351b.
The Lemons’ three oldest sons served in the Civil War, all in Company F of the 31st Virginia Infantry [R024]. Only one survived the war. William Lemon, 21, was wounded in the head at the Battle of McDowell, 5/8/1862, and died 6/19/1862 in the General Hospital, Staunton Va., of “Vulnus Scolpeticum.” Jacob Lemon, 19, died 3/4/1862 “of fever” in Pocahontas County W.Va. while his Company was stationed at Huntersville, SE of Marlinton. James Lemon was 19 when he enlisted, 5/1/63, in Beverly W.Va. The records show him admitted to the C.S.A. General Hospital in Staunton with pneumonia, 11/2/1863 and returned to duty 12/13/1863. He was admitted 5/23/1864 to Chimborazo Hospital No. 3 in Richmond with G.S.W. (gun shot wound?) and “V.S.” knee, and returned to duty 6/16/1864. He was paroled 5/25/1865 in Staunton. His parole slip describes him as 24 years old, 5’ 11” tall, fair complexion, light hair, brown eyes.
The Civil War did not spare the Lemons’ home. Gwendolyn Wood [S125], in a taped interview, relates that “...during the Civil War, when the Lemons refugeed, went to Bath County, about 1861, that was the year the war began, so it was after that...they left. But in January they were back home, and Lee’s men were camped around the brow of that hill across the road. And Grandma Lemon was living up there, and she said that they got sick with the measles. It’s in the history books...that Lee lost a lot of men from measles up here on Valley Mountain...they filled up her living room on the floor...somebody’d peck on the door, and they’d say we’re full up, can’t take any more. Fourteen of them died with the measles, and...they were buried out on the brow of the hill behind the little house that we call the Castoe house. And I don’t know whether they ever took the bodies up. They may have, because down the road here toward Valley Head at what we call the Fountain, where Tolley lived, a man was killed— a Sharp— and buried there, and they took him up and took him when they left back to Marlinton, so they may have removed these fourteen bodies.
“...then Grandma said a sleet came, a bad sleet, while the little camp... a wigwam or something, a little fire here and there, several little fires up on the brow of the hill, and she said came a sleet, and when the fires were built, it just glistened on that hill— the light would shine on the ice, and she said you could see the negro women going around the little fires, and I said ‘What? The negro women?’ She said yes, each little bunch had a negro woman to wait on them. To cook for them. And I didn’t know that. They had brought them with them. That’s the first I ever heard. But she saw them, so she said there they were.
“And they [Samuel and Betsy Lemon] had gone to Bath, and when they came back, just about this January time, everything... all their livestock had been taken. All they had left was one chicken, and it was on a pole behind the door in the house. That was all that was left.”
[S125] further reports that “When Ida Mace... Ida Lemon, daughter of Sam and Betsy, she wanted to get married and she wanted to marry Wash Mace. And he’d been married: he was a widower with two children. So the family objected, and they said Oh, he just likes to hunt, and all he wants to do is hunt, and so he evidently wasn’t as progressive as they’d like. So they didn’t approve of him, and they wouldn’t let her be married at home. So she said, all right, if she couldn’t be married at home, she’d be married out in the middle of the road. And the neighbors offered [for her] to come and be married at their house, but no sir, so she had the wedding right in the middle of the road. And she married Wash Mace. George Washington Ferdinand Jasper Mace. And went to live up at Mace, up on the mountain. On top of Valley Mountain. Lived there seven years. Now outside of that seven years, she lived in this house that stands up here [Fig. R351b]. And Aunt Biddie is 98 years old. She’s living in Elkins; that’s Ida’s daughter (Fig. R351d).”
