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  EFFIE KILGORE
  in West Liberty, 1880--1903
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West Liberty, circa 1910 Courtesy of Helen Price Stacy
Effie Kilgore Congleton was ninety-five years old when she died. During
the last years her eyesight was virtually gone, her memory waning, and she was
frequently troubled with severe back pain. But at those times when her condition
permitted, she would take up a bold marking pen and carefully record fragments
of her lingering memories of West Liberty’s Neal Valley where she was born:
How dear to my heart...the Old Reed home built by my great-
grandfather [Thomas Reed]...hidden in the beautiful valley over the
hill...on a slight incline near a bubbling spring, facing the
spring...where my grandfather [Ananias Reed] and my mother [Lucy
. Reed] were born .... There I was born as well as my brother Emmett
and sister Mollie.
And the graveyard and orchard just back of the house where my
father Elijah Kilgore is buried by the side of two of his infants...and
perhaps my mother’s first-born baby George [Barber] whose father
I was killed by lightning .... I recall peeping over a picket enclosure at
the decorated graves.
And the old schoolhouse over the hill where I went for the first
j school years, built on the plot of ground given by my
grandfather...where we children brought pieces of broken dishes and
gathered moss for our playhouse...under the trees by the school.
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