Family Stories 4

As I mentioned earlier, I'll occassionally use this space to chronicle some of my reflections and writings on my family history, particulary the stories that my grandpa Coleman passed down to us. Here's the fourth part of that journey, some of the stories about life in Fayette County WVa. I remember my grandfather telling this to me when I was small child, sitting in his living room and hearing the mantle clock tick away the moments...

This tale goes along through a good many years. It is all very true, and to this day proof is available.

There was a family in the Salem area that lost some property at a tax sale. Now Grandpa Dooley (my mother, Eleanor Mae Dooley Coleman’s Dad) wanted to move from Kanawa County up to the Fayette County area to work in the mines there because better jobs were available, and not knowing about the tax sale, he bought the property--but even if he had known it did not change the fact that the land was for sale and he was a buyer. As I recall, the family’s uncle had lost the property for the taxes. As you can imagine, they did not like it that an “outsider” had bought “their” property, so there were bad feelings for many years between the two families, and the old man of the family would always go out of his way to make things difficult for the Dooleys.

As so often happens in the times of life, the son of Grandpa Dooley, Roger Dooley, fell in love with the daughter of this clan. Now they were married, and Roger went over to live with his wife and her people. Roger worked in the mines until late at night and would come out in the cold, even in the winter, and fall asleep by the big fire that was built at the mine entrance. When he woke up he would then go on home to eat breakfast. He always did this because the old man had to get up early to go to work and he did not like Roger coming in so late at night and waking him up. Now, Grandma Dooley did not like her son having to sleep outside so many nights in the cold weather at all.

Then, in 1912, Roger Dooley died of pneumonia. Grandma Dooley and the Dooley family always blamed his death on Roger having to sleep outside in the cold because the old man didn’t want to be woke up. Now the funeral was held and Roger was buried in the his wife’s own family cemetery.

Also during this time, Nate Coleman and his wife Eleanor, and their children Decima, and myself were living over in Concho, which was another mining camp. One day my Mom, Eleanor, was out on the porch sweeping; at this time she was expecting her third child, which was Mary. One day, the head of this other family just walked up the road and hollered out to Mom that “Ol' man Dooley got killed in the mines this morning”, and then he just walked away. His son worked in the store at that coal camp so he went there to see his son. No one could believe that he was so cruel to tell Mom in that manner that her father was killed in the mines.

Well, Grandma Dooley asked these people if Grandpa Dooley could be buried by his son Roger at their family’s cemetery... and they said that he couldn’t be, that only their kin could be buried there. So Grandma Dooley said, “Then bury him here on our own home place up on the hill, as it is pretty there. We always wanted to build a house there someday.” So that is what they did. Grandpa Dooley was buried in March of 1913, not too many months after Roger had died.

After Grandpa Dooley had died, my Dad and Mom, Nate and Eleanor Coleman , Decima and myself (I was about 3 1/2 years old at the time) moved from Concho to Salem to live with Grandma Dooley so she would not have to live by herself. Her last son, Rex had recently left home to work in another area.

Now my Dad, Nate Coleman, went over to Fayetteville some time afterwards, and asked a friend of his that was a judge if there was anything they could do to get Roger moved into what was now the Dooley family cemetery. The judge said they could get a lawyer, and go through a lot of legal stuff that would take forever, but if it were him- “off the record”- he would just do something about it himself. So Dad thought about it awhile, and then plans were made.

Some of my Dad’s brother’s from Kanawa county, and some of the Dooley clan all decided to go out fox hunting one night. They built a big fire, and turned the hounds loose and they sat around the fire and listened to them bay and chase the fox- but not all of them were at the fire.....some of them were up digging in this other family’s cemetery, which was not too far away. They dug awhile, and then they would rest, and the others would dig while they sat by the fire. After they had dug Roger’s coffin up they put it on a wagon and moved it back down the road (it was a pretty far piece) to the Dooley cemetery and then they began to dig. The next morning, when the old man came by and saw them digging., he asked them “Who died?” And they said “Roger Dooley.” And the old man said, “But he’s buried down the road!” And they replied-- ”Not no more he ain’t!

So in the Dooley/Coleman clan we are also grave robbers...

Narrator's Note: I went out to the "family’s" cemetery back in the 1980’s to check things out again for myself. Now the last person buried at that cemetery was buried around 1915 and the very hole that Roger Dooley was buried in is still a sunken place in the ground as no one ever filled in the grave after he was dug up. Years have made the mound of dirt they dug up go mostly away, but there is definite proof to authenticate this story.

Editor's Note: As Emmet’s daughter, Cheryl, I have seen the "family’s" cemetery, although I have not been in it. I have been to Grandpa Dooley and Roger Dooley’s graves in the Dooley Cemetery out on the Salem Road Dooley home place. Grandma Eleanor Coleman, Grandpa Nate Coleman, Grandma and Grandpa Dooley, Roger Dooley, Aunt Mary Coleman Pennock, Theodore Pennock, her husband, and Decima Coleman (the oldest child of Eleanor and Nate who was 19 when she was killed in a car accident) are some of the ones buried there. Others of the Dooley clan are also buried there.

Some time after Roger died, his wife came over to live at the Dooley home as well. She said her folks were “just too mean for her to stay there any longer.” My mother Lorene Coleman met her and said that when ever she came up from Kanawa County to visit, she always went to see the Dooley family , and she might go over to see her mom for an hour or so, but mostly she stayed with the Dooley’s and visited with them.