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Death Date for Thomas Willis Farley

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Thomas Willis Farley was born 26 January 1841 in Buckingham County, Virginia. His father was James Henry Farley. His mother was Catherine F. Roberts, who fell over dead of a heart attack across Thomas’s crib when he was six months old.

Thomas grew up in Buckingham, and attended Hampden-Sydney College, and served with the Confederate Army during the Civil War. He married Nancy “Nannie” Montgomery Rigg and they had 10 children.

1900-census-nannie-farleyOne of the first records I found for Nannie (and Thomas) is the 1900 U. S. Federal Census for Kanawha County, WV, on which Thomas does not appear at all, and shows his wife Nannie as widowed. I had his date of death noted as “bef 1900” for many years. Then over the last few years I stumbled across several sources which jointly establish his date of death  as 26 July 1903.

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Keeney Cabin

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Catherine Lewis (1759-?) and Michael Keeney (1761-1790) were married on 11 January 1781 in Greenbrier County, Virginia (now WV). They are my 5th great-grandparents. This article about their cabin appeared in the Beckley Post-Herald on 09 October 1956. It tells a great story not only about the cabin but also about the lives of Michael … Read more

Wedding Book of Grace Campbell

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Wedding Portrait of Grace Lavenia Campbell in 1903
Wedding Portrait of Grace Lavenia Campbell in 1903

Grace Lavenia Campbell married Carl DeWitt Hopkins on 25 July 1904 in Galipolis, Ohio. Grace and Carl were my great-grandparents, and my mother remembers them well.

Grace was born in 1883, the daughter of Samuel Henry (S. H.) Campbell and Nancy Jane Meadows. She was 21 at the time of her marriage to Carl. They had two sons (Keith Campbell Hopkins, my grandfather, and Henry Frederick Hopkins), and a daughter who did not live past infancy.

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Campbell Rocking Chair

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Grace Lavenia Campbell was born on 18 July 1883 in Winefrede, a small coal mining and railroad community not far from Chesapeake and Chelyan in Kanawha County, West Virginia. She was my maternal great-grandmother. Grace’s granddaughter Carol Lavenia Hopkins is my mother, and recalls this small rocking chair in Grace and Henry’s home in St. … Read more

The Truman Shirt

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The Truman Shirt is one of the more colorful stories and artifacts of Farley family lore. The Truman Shirt was conceived in 1952 by Willis Hite Farley (1906-1983), my paternal grandfather. Politics and government were a big part of the life of Willis (“Grandaddy”); that gene clearly skips a generation as my sister Amy Farley most definitely inherited it!  The story below is told by his son (my father) Alan Keith Farley.

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