Family Tree Maker's Genealogy Site: User Home Page Book: Descendants of William Lake 1745-1826: Register Report of William Lake

Prev Page

Prev Item

Contents

Index

Go to Page

Home Page

Next Item

Next Page

Page 35 of 97

Descendants of William Lake

117. ILA HENDERSON⁵ LAKE (JOHN AARON⁴, ILA³, GEORGE B.², WILLIAM¹) was born April 04, 1870 in Marion County, WV, and died January 14, 1943. He married EVOLENA TRAVIS December 10, 1890 in Oakland, Maryland, daughter of HARMON TRAVIS and NANCY PRIDE. She was born November 03, 1871 in Marion County, WV, and died May 16, 1942.

Notes for ILA HENDERSON LAKE:

Ila and Evolena were married on December 10, 1890 in Oakland, Maryland by Rev. J. M. Davis. Not being sure of Evolena's fathers approval, they went secretly by train to Oakland. Evolena's father was Harmon Travis (1846-1913), her mother was Nancy Ellen Pride Travis (1842-1912). Harmon served the Union in the Civil War.

Ila Lake was born on Glady Creek near the Hebron Baptist Church. Later his parents moved to Bunner's Ridge, near Fairmont, West Virginia (distance of only about 3 miles). They lived in what is now known as the John McDonald house (1975). About nine years after Ila and Evolena were married, they purchased property on Pete Johnson Run, near Fairmont, where he farmed all his life and raised his large family. He also was a reputable carpenter. Many homes still exist today as a monument to his ability in this area. He attended Lake School.

Will of Ila H. Lake
April 15, 1937

I, Ila H. Lake, knowing the uncertainty of life and the certainty of death, and being of sound mind and memory do make, publish and declare this my last will and testament.

I direct that all my just debts and funeral expenses be paid as soon after my death as may be found convenient.

In case I should die before my wife Evolena Lake, I give, devise and bequeath to her my entire estate both real and personal and direct that she be made executor of this will without being required to furnish bond.

Should my wife die before me, I desire that my executor see that a monument is placed at our graves at a cost of approximately one hundred dollars.

I also request that a monument be placed at the grave of my deceased daughter Wilda at a cost of approximately fifty dollars.

I direct the executor of this my last will and testament divide the remainder of my estate equally between my children or their heirs, deducting from the share of my son E. R. Lake the sum of $106.30 with interest from January 16th, 1930.

I hereby nominate and appoint O. D. Grubb as the executor of this my last will and testament, I direct that no bond shall be required of such executor. My said executor shall have full power at it's discretion to do any and all things necessary for the complete administration of my estate, including the power to sell at public or private sale and without order of court any real or personal property belonging to my estate and to compound, compromise or otherwise to settle or adjust any and all claims, charges, debts, or demands whatsoever against or in favor of my estate as fully as I would do if living.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand to this last will and testament this day of April, 1937.

Ila H. Lake

Witness:
Wayward Carpenter
Reva Carpenter

Ila Lake lived on Pete Johnson Run until Evolena's death in 1942, when he went to live with his daughter, Virgie Lake Rogers. He built a small one-room house on wheels where he could live alone. This house still stands today (1975) in back of the Rogers' home where he lived until his death in 1943.

Ila was a good man, but also very stubborn. He was a declared Democrat until the Grover Cleveland administration. During those hard times, he worked for 50 cents a day and declared that if he were lucky enough to survive, he would never vote for another Democrat. He lived to keep his promise. The following is a copy of his death notice in the local newspaper:

The Fairmont Times, January 15, 1943
Fairmont, West Virginia
Services in Winfield for Ila H. Lake, 72

Funeral services for Ila H. Lake, 72, well known Marion County farmer, who died yesterday afternoon in the home of his daughter, Mrs. Worley Rogers, in Winfield Road, will be held at 2 0'clock tomorrow afternoon in the residence of Mrs. Rogers, and burial will be made in the Pride Cemetery by Carpenter & Ford. The body was taken today to the Rogers home. The Rev. Foster Jones, of Shinnston, will officiate, assisted by the Rev. P. W. Arbogast, of Meadowdale.

He is survived by 10 children and 50 grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

The surviving children are Mrs. Clyde Carpenter; Mrs. Dayton Grubb and Mrs. Wayne Carpenter of Piney Run; Mrs. Worley Rogers of Winfield Road; Mrs. Stewart Morgan of Pricketts Creek; Emmett Lake of Fairmont; Wayne Lake of McCurdysville; Claude of Bunner's Ridge; Lester of Winfield; Beryl of the East Grafton Road.

A brother, Elza Lake, lives in Mannington and a sister, Mrs. Sarah Poe, of Cross Roads.

He was a son of John and Margaret Henderson Lake of Marion County.

The following was published in The Fairmont Times, Fairmont, West Virginia, after the death of Evolena Lake:

In Memory of Evolena Lake
Died May the 16 Day - 1942

Dear Mother, how we miss you
Since God has called you home
How lone and dreary are the hours
Since we are left alone.

Oh how we long to meet you
In that land beyond the sky
Where all is peace and quiet,
And we'll never say goodbye.

You were so kind and loving
Until the day you died
Your memory will be cherished
While we on earth abide.

Your loving voice is silent now
It is heard on earth no more
But we feel it swells the chorus
On that everlasting shore.

Your teachings we'll remember
Since you have left our home
And hope to meet up yonder
Around the great white throne.

You were so very good, dear wife
Until the day you died,
God must have loved you dearly
When he took you from our side.

Ila H. Lake
and children

Memories of Grandma and Grandpa Lake - by Velma B. Lake Conner

He was a tall man, slim and had small light blue eyes that were close together. When I was about 8 or 9 years old, I would stay with them two weeks, then my sister Lorraine would stay for two weeks. We would give Grandma food and water when Grandpa was out working in the fields. Grandma had tuberculosis and was always very weak. I don't remember ever seeing her standing or walking. She had silky white hair and when she asked me to comb it, I wouldn't get the tangles out because I was afraid I might hurt her. I admired her very much.

Grandma sat in her rocking chair all day and I brought food and water to her. Whenever I smell celery and pineapple, I think of Grandma Lake. There was always some in the little ice box on the back porch. Grandpa told me not to eat it because it was for Grandma. If he only knew how bad I wanted to eat some of that celery! I was used to only the vegetables raised in our garden. She liked to eat brains, so when anyone butchered they brought her the brains. I'll never forget what they looked like laying in a bowl in the icebox. It gave me the 'willies'.

Aunt Mamie (Mamie Lake Carpenter) would come and spend all day baking and cleaning. I remember how good her lemon pie would smell. Grandpa made the best thick pancakes I ever ate. I still compare them with my pancakes today. He always had a big box of cornflakes on the little side table in the kitchen where he and I ate. He also kept the water bucket and dipper sitting on it. He would cook oatmeal and we put cornflakes in it for breakfast. He put lots of black pepper on many things he ate, said it was food for him, gave him extra energy. He bought one bag of candy each week when he took the eggs to town to sell. He had a big basket with a handle he carried over his arm. He would fill it with fresh eggs and start walking down the road. When he returned it would be full of groceries. The one bag of candy had to last a week, so when any kids came, he gave each a piece of candy and put the rest back in the "press" so there would be some for the next kids.

I especially remember one Christmas tree, because it was a laurel bush about three feet high with a few big bulbs on it. I remember a wheat field on top of the hill, Grandpa, Dad and I think Uncle Beryl were planning to harvest it. They cut it by hand using cradles. The cradles were like a scythe, but had several wood slats above the blade to hold the wheat. Then they tied the wheat into bundles. The grainery was a building above the yard where Grandpa had barrels with lids in which he kept the different grains to feed the chickens and his horse. He said the lids were to keep the rats from eating the grain. The upper side of the building was a corn crib.

Grandpa had a big flock of white chickens. I liked to watch him feed them, the way he spread each handful so evenly and each one reaching out farther than the last one. He grew buckwheat and mixed it with other grains, a small round one he would pick out and eat. I didn't know that he had glass eggs in some nests to encourage the hens to lay, so I gathered them too when he sent me to gather the eggs. He explained them to me and told me to put them back in the nest. Sometimes I would watch him working in his wood shop when Grandma would send me after him. He had all sizes of wood planes and was making runners for a big sled. The shavings would look like curls. I gathered some in a box and took them to the kitchen, where Grandpa used them to start the fire in the wood burning cook stove. It heated the tiny kitchen, and a grate fireplace heated the other rooms, which were living room, dining room and bedroom all in one. The furniture in the room was a double bed, a long table and several chairs, a long homemade bench behind the table, a small rocker, Grandma's rocker and a small stand that held her Bible, water glass and tissues. Whenever company came, they just turned the chairs away from the table to sit on. There were hooks on a board behind the door to hang the coats on.

One time Grandma sent me to tell Grandpa it was dinner time. I found him out in the field with his horse and sled. He had several big buckets and tubs on the sled. They were empty, so I didn't know what he had been hauling in them. As he drove the horse out the bank to turn around, the buckets and tubs all slid off and rolled down the hill banging and clattering. We stood there laughing as we watched them rolling in all directions and listening to the noise they were making. When they stopped rolling, he said he would have to pick them up, for me to go on back to the house, that Grandma might need me. She wanted to know what he was doing. When I told her what had happened, she said, "you mean he didn't swear"? I told her we had just stood there laughing and she said "that just doesn't sound like him at all". He didn't mention it when he came in for dinner.

Grandma was very religious, she read her Bible through more than once a year. She was liked by everyone who knew her. I heard several people say what a good person she was. She must have saved every get well and birthday card anyone sent her. She had boxes and boxes of them.

Grandpa would send me to George Robe's (behind the Bunner Cemetery) to get a pound of homemade butter. They didn't have electricity, so Grandpa made a box approximately two feet square and one foot high with a lid. He put the butter and milk into it and lowered it by a rope to just above the water line in the well. It kept nice and cool, but whenever it thundered, the milk would sour. That was a mystery to me and still is today. To draw water from the well, they had a bucket with a rope tied to it that they lowered into the well. Sometimes the rope would break and drop the bucket back into the well. Then he got his three pronged hook and got the bucket out. It was a lot easier to retrieve if it stayed on top of the water, but if it went to the bottom of the well it usually was hard to hook onto the handle.

Grandpa would pour salt in his hand to take to his horse "Mack". He would lick some of it on the way to the barn. He said everyone should eat some salt. It was good for you. I tried it and it made me sick. Then he told me he had eaten too much once and it made him sick also.

Their neighbors were Mr and Mrs Thompson, a Negro family. She would come out and do things for Grandma when no one else was around. I saw her once when she was milking a cow. We kids hung on the rail fence and stared at her. She was the first Negro that I remember ever seeing.

On rainy days sometimes Grandpa worked on Mack's harness. He rubbed something into the leather to preserve it. He had some kind of white and colored beads and he decorated some of the harness with them. Mack was an all white horse and easy to see against the green grass. Grandma had lots of nice homemade quilts. They had a trundle bed upstairs. It was about 12 inches high with a straw tick on it. It was made low to slide under another bed. There was a feather tick on the bed that I slept in. It was so "snugly" warm. I thought it was like sleeping on a cloud.

Grandma must have really liked wearing nice hats in her younger years. There were several boxes of them packed away upstairs. When she didn't need me to do anything for her, she would let me go upstairs and look at things. She had several books up there too. I liked the book about Wiggly Rabbit. Grandma especially liked white flowers. She had a white rambling rose bush and some white iris near the well. She would ask me to tell her when they were blooming. Grandpa made a board walk from the kitchen porch to the upper gate that led to the grainery building and along side of it were pansies. Beside the board walk that led to the gate where people parked their cars were bleeding heart flowers and a pink and a white rambling rose bush. On down along the fence was a yellow rose bush and a lilac bush. Below the milk house were sweet peas. She had a red rose bush on a trellis at her bedside window, so she could see it bloom.

I was interested in the milkhouse. It was a building probably eight feet by ten feet with fruit shelves on one side and a platform under the shelves to put potatoes on. The floor was hard dirt with places dipped out about ten inches wide and two or three inches deep. These places were filled with water and crocks of milk were placed in them to keep cool, later to make butter. There was a little brown jug sitting on the shelf that always caught my eye.

When we visited there on Sundays, the grandkids liked to sit in the porch swing. One time we tried to all get in it at once. There were three rows with the biggest kids on the bottom and the smallest one on the top. The swing chain broke and the only one that got hurt was the smallest one. That was Doris Carpenter. She was probably about two years old. Grandpa had a big barn. It had four different floor levels. He let a big black snake stay at the barn. He said it would get rid of the rats. There were lots of rocks in the pasture field, some big ones. But on the hill above the barn was a big - big rock. It had a cave under one side of it. Mom said they had boarded up the front of the cave to store apples for the winter from the orchard nearby. Dad used to have an arrowhead that he had found inside the cave where the Indians had used the cave.

On the mantel in their main room over the fireplace, they had a beautiful mantle clock. It was smaller than most clocks I've seen. It had a big key to wind it, probably once a week. It had such a beautiful chiming sound, not a bong sound. They also had dark green glass hobnail canister jars and matching salt and pepper shakers that sat on an open top shelf of a homemade cupboard beside the cook stove. Grandpa had probably made the cupboard. It was about five feet tall and a curtain covered the other shelves that were for groceries. On the other side of the black cook stove was the wood box. As Grandma's health got worse, they got a woman to take care of her. She said "don't mind me, you can go ahead and kiss your grandma". We did and it was the only time that I ever kissed her. Mom said I looked like Grandma Lake as a young girl and that I took after her. I told her that was the nicest thing she could say to me.

I was almost 11 years old when Grandma Lake died. Dad and I stopped by to see her. She didn't even know we were there. Grandpa said she couldn't talk. About five minutes after we left, he said she just passed away.

Grandpa went to stay with Aunt Virgie (Virgie Lake Rogers) after Grandma's death. Not long after, Aunt Virgie said Grandpa had a cold and went out building fence in the rain. She tried to get him to stay in, but he wouldn't listen to her. He got pneumonia and died.

(1) Marion County Deed Book - Ila purchased property from John Hayhurst in 1899.
(2) Marion County (WV) Will Book 15 - Page 64 (Ila).
(3) Family records of children, including family Bible of Evolena. Claude Lake family has this Bible.
(4) Marion County (WV) Death Book 1 - Page 126 (Walter), Book 6 - Page 273 (Wilda), Book 8 - Page 120 (Evolena), Book 8 - Page 121 (Ila).
(5) Pride Cemetery, near Fairmont, West Virginia (Ila, Evolena, Wilda, Walter).
(6) Marion County (WV) Birth Book 2 - Page 35 (Emmett), Book 2 - Page 60 (Jettie), Book 2 - Page 85 (Mamie), Book 3 - Page 92 (Claude), Book 3 - Page 94 (unnamed infant).
(7) Special write-up by Velma Lake Conner.

More About ILA HENDERSON LAKE:
Burial: Pride Cemetery, Bunner Ridge, Fairmont, WV
Will: April 1937, See Notes

More About EVOLENA TRAVIS:
Burial: Pride Cemetery, Bunner Ridge, Fairmont, WV

More About ILA LAKE and EVOLENA TRAVIS:
Marriage: December 10, 1890, Oakland, Maryland

Children of ILA LAKE and EVOLENA TRAVIS are:

WALTER ODRA⁶ LAKE, b. February 15, 1892; d. April 06, 1893, Marion County, WV.

More About WALTER ODRA LAKE:
Burial: Pride Cemetery, Bunner Ridge, Fairmont, WV

180.	ii.	BESSIE MAY LAKE, b. April 15, 1894, Bunner Ridge, Fairmont, WV; d. December 26, 1969.
181.	iii.	EMMET RUSSELL LAKE, b. December 10, 1895, Marion County, WV; d. March 08, 1974.
182.	iv.	JETTIE ANISE LAKE, b. August 25, 1897, Marion County, WV; d. February 01, 1974.
183.	v.	MAMIE ALTA LAKE, b. November 29, 1899, Marion County, WV; d. October 22, 1960, Marion County, WV.
184.	vi.	GARNET WAYNE LAKE, b. February 11, 1901; d. September 23, 1970.
185.	vii.	VIRGIE VIRGINIA LAKE, b. December 20, 1902; d. May 05, 1964.
	viii.	WILDA GLADYS LAKE, b. April 05, 1906, Marion County, WV; d. December 05, 1932.

Notes for WILDA GLADYS LAKE:
The family Bible shows her name as Gladys Wildie. She never married. She was still living with her parents when she died of typhoid fever. She was a very religious person and loved animals. Her pet squirrel (Ranger) could only be handled by her. It would bite anyone else who tried to play with it. She is buried at the Pride Cemetery on Bunner Ridge, near Fairmont, West Virginia beside her mother and father.

(1) From family records of Velma Lake Conner.

More About WILDA GLADYS LAKE:
Burial: Pride Cemetery, Bunner Ridge, Fairmont, WV

186.	ix.		CLAUDE DAYTON LAKE, b. March 01, 1908, Marion County, WV; d. April 12, 1975.
	x.		UNNAMED GIRL LAKE, b. October 02, 1909, Marion County, WV; d. October 02, 1909.

More About UNNAMED GIRL LAKE:
Burial: Pride Cemetery, Bunner Ridge, Fairmont, WV

187.	xi.	GENEVA IRENE LAKE, b. October 16, 1910.
188.	xii.	LESTER LEONARD LAKE, b. October 30, 1912, Fairmont, WV; d. May 20, 1991, Fairmont, WV.
189.	xiii.	BERNARD BERYL LAKE, b. April 25, 1915; d. January 24, 1977, Fairmont, West Virginia.

Page 35 of 97

Prev Page

Prev Item

Contents

Index

Go to Page

Home Page

Next Item

Next Page