It is springtime 2023, and my husband and I walk around the area where 83 years ago, the town of Lilly, West Virginia, ceased to exist.
It was first settled in the 1700s by two families: Robert and Frances Lilly and my GGGGGreat-Grandfather, Josiah Meador. It is told that they came to the area with only a Bible, an axe, and a gun. The town eventually had a church, school, grist mill, Cooper’s Mill, and several homesteads along the Bluestone River in what is now Summers County, West Virginia.
Cooper’s Mill is still standing along with a blacksmith’s shop upriver on Little Bluestone River. My second cousin just turned the property over to the Summers County Commission and the West Virginia Land Trust. They will be making improvements and turning it into The Little Bluestone Community Forest. Cooper’s Mill is registered as a national historical landmark. We have created this video about Cooper’s Mill.
As we stand among fallen trees and briar thickets, you wouldn’t know that there was once a thriving community here. There are a few physical reminders like the cornerstones of the church and the foundations of a few homes and the schoolhouse. We can see the cemetery gate posts still standing proudly, but they lead to sunken, empty graves marked only with yucca plants.
Prior to the 1940s, the towns downriver were always under the threat of massive floods. The Presidential Executive Order of 1935 was to build the Bluestone Dam at the confluence of the New and Greenbrier Rivers.
https://www.lrh.usace.army.mil/
Engineers believed at the time that the town of Lilly would be underwater, so all the residents were told to leave their homes, farms, and orchards. Then they exhumed hundreds of graves and relocated them to Lilly Crews Cemetery on Sand Knob Road, Nimitz, West Virginia. Shown is the tombstone of Josiah Meadow/Meador. The Findagrave site has information about his family, as well as his Revolutionary War pension application.
The Bluestone River has been designated as a National Scenic River. This National Park Service article tells more about the community of Lilly. The location of Lilly is shown by a National Park Service historic marker.
NPS photo
May we keep this history alive in remembrance of those first pioneers of Summers County, West Virginia.