On a knoll east of Dailey, West Virginia is an abandoned and greatly damaged family cemetery on the property of Hubert Teter. The cemetery is that of the family of William Daniel Armstrong, an 1800s Randolph County farmer, militia fifer, storeowner, land speculator, politician, postmaster, contractor, sawmiller, and hotel keeper. While there certainly are a number of graves in the Armstrong Cemetery, the available evidence would suggest that some of the markers in that graveyard are memorials to family members who actually are buried elsewhere.

W. D. Armstrong married in 1849 to Susan Shreve. Over the next 12 years they became the parents of several children. Beginning in 1858, W. D. Armstrong began to acquire land in Randolph County by virtue of several commonwealth grants and deeds. Prior to 1869, all of the land in Randolph County owned by W. D. Armstrong was in Union Tp. (Middle Fork District and in Clark Tp Valley Bend District) on the west side of the valley.

The 1880 census of Randolph County found William D. Armstrong with his wife and children living at a Huttonsville Post Office address. At the time he owned a great deal of land on the Middle Fork. The family apparently moved to Middle Fork District by late in 1862 when W. D. Armstrong was surveyor of the highway from the east end of Shaw Run and Queen's Mill road to the top of Middle Fork Mountain east of Middle Fork River. In May of 1866 he was surveyor of roads in precinct I, Union Township, now Middle Fork District.

At the time of these appointments he was still acquiring land in the area of Cassidies (Cassity) Fork. One of these, when considering the location of family burials, is of particular interest. It was a 333 acre tract on Long Run and Three Forks of Middle Fork deeded to Armstrong by the heirs of John W. Crawford. The Crawfords had been enumerated with a Beverly post office address in the 1860 census.

Five months after the above mentioned purchase, in a 37 day period from January 15 to February 21, 1867, diptheria claimed the lives of Susan, wife of W. D. Armstrong, and at least four of his seven children. A fifth was dead before 1870 and whether or not she died at the same time is not relevant to the cemetery question, These deaths, in order, were:

One can only imagine the pain felt in the heart of William D. Armstrong. Events such as these are nearly unheard of in modern America. One can almost see the little family huddled around the grave of Cecelia, while a black dressed preacher said a few words over the little girl's remains. One can imagine the fear and devastation when the older girls contracted the disease. The passing of Susan left Mr. Armstrong without a helpmate, and the family table was soon to be robbed of the sweet voice of little William.

All of these persons have stones in the Armstrong family cemetery on the Teter farm in East Dailey. It is quite possible that they are not there. AT THE TIME OF THESE DEATHS W. D. ARMSTRONG DID NOT OWN ANY LAND NEAR WHAT IS NOW THE HUBERT TETER FARM. His father, Thomas F. Armstrong owned a small tract about 1/8 mile downstream and on the river, but this 8 acres was not the tract that the Armstrong Cemetery is on.

Four months alter the death of his wife and children, W, D. Armstrong was elected to the board of supervisors for Union Township and served for over a year, further suggesting residence in that area. The 1870 census found W. D. Armstrong once again living in Huttonsville district. At the time A. C. Currence was living on the 333 acre Long Run tract, showing that it had been improved at some point and was habitable. In 1874 W. D. got the bulk of what is now the Teter place from John Huff. An interesting deed reference, when we consider that W. D. Armstrong did not own the cemetery property in East Dailey until seven years after the deaths of his family, is in Deed Book G, page 105. It is dated April 1878 and in it W. D. is selling the 333 acre Middle Fork tract. The deed reads:

"333 acres except 7 acres deeded to Currence and 1/8 acre NOW PALED IN FOR A BURIAL GROUND" (capitalization mine)

Over a decade earlier, when the Crawfords deeded the same property to Armstrong, there was no mention of a burial ground. From all of the evidence I have presented I feel that W. D. Armstrong moved from the Huttonsville address he had in 1860 to some of his property on the Middle Fork River by late in 1862. I think he moved to the 333 acre property shortly after acquiring it in 1866, and was there in early 1867 when his family died. I believe he buried them there, remaining in the area for a time. Several years ago Tony Pastine and I hiked up Three Forks Creek to the site, and there is ample evidence of an old homeplace to be seen there, although all buildings are gone. We found an old mill stone laying in the middle of Three Forks Creek and I can say with conviction that carting that thing out of there was no easy task!

This brings us to the problem of why the stones for these people are in the East Dailey Cemetery, and to additional evidence that they do not belong there. The first burial in the East Dailey Cemetery, after W. D. Armstrong acquired the property in 1874, is the burial of his daughter Effie there in 1880. After this time the burials continue fairly regularly, as follows:

W. D. Armstrong sold the property that is now the Teter place in 1891, and in keeping with the tone of the earlier deed, he reserved the land for the Armstrong Cemetery. The fact that there is a 13 year gap between the 1867 burials and the later ones, coupled with the fact that unlike the earlier ones, the later ones are made on land that BELONGED to W. D. Armstrong, sheds doubt in itself on the location (at least originally) of the early burials. There might be a remote possibility that they were moved to East Dailey, but I can see no practical purpose to go to the expense, trouble, and indeed the abhorrence of such an action. I feel that what has happened is that Armstrong owned the East Dailey property at the time of Effie Armstrong's death in 1880, and owing to the fact that two years earlier he had sold the Middle Fork burial ground, he erected some markers, cenotaphs, to his earlier family in order to give them equal respect and remembrance.

The question of the earlier burials in the Armstrong Cemetery may never be answered. The burial place of a little family decimated by disease and death may long remain one of the mysteries shrouded in the passing time. It is entirely possible that some of the marked graves in the Armstrong Cemetery are empty, and that there is a long forgotten family graveyard at the head of Three Fork Creek near Cassity. If so Tony and I could not find any evidence of it. Perhaps Susan Armstrong and her children sleep there, phantom graves in a long forgotten Armstrong Cemetery.