R516

Joseph Samuel (Joe Sam) Burger
Father: David Warner Burger [R517]
Mother: Priscilla (Hepler) Burger [R517]
Born: 12/22/1849
Died: 4/13/1938, see below

Unmarried

(1996) Bachelor Joe Sam Burger lived most of his life on his parents’ Echo Valley farm, on the Cowpasture River just downstream (SW) of Lewis and Emma Wood’s farm (until they moved to Nimrod Hall in 1907; see Fig. R005b). After his parents died he and his unmarried sister Katherine Anne [see R517] stayed on together at the farm. In the fall of 1924, when they had grown old, they left the farm and went to live with their sister Ida Ellen (Burger) Moore and her husband William John Moore, of the Mingo W.V. Moores [see R350], who lived in Lewisburg W.V. Emma Katherine (Burger) Wood disapproved; on 11/14/24 she wrote “Well cousin Kate has moved to Lewisburg & I certainly did hate to see her go. It seemes almost like a crime for people as old as they & who have spent all there days in that dear old home, & then forsake it. I just cant feel that the Moores have done the right thing. They should have gotten a family in a little house on the place to look after them if they wanted to do any thing...” [S089].

I understand that as the end approached, Joe Sam expressed a wish to “sleep one last night in [his childhood home].” Accordingly, his coffin was kept overnight in the old Burger house before his burial in the nearby family plot [see R517]. Joe Sam must have been one of the last Burgers in Bath County [S045].