A Gathering of Feathers

Feather burials in the Lenox Memorial Cemetery, Lenox, West Virgina, 1832-2023

More than 100 individuals with the last/maiden name of “Feather” have been buried in Lenox Memorial Cemetery. For descendants of Jacob and Mary Feather, who are buried at Lenox Memorial, this is hallowed ground. But, with the passing of generations, the stories of German-immigrant descendants have been forgotten or lost.

In A Gathering of Feathers, Carl E. Feather, a seventh-generation Preston County resident, goes beyond tombstone dates to tell the life stories of many of the individuals who are buried here. The lineage is first presented, then their obituaries, newspaper accounts, and personal memoirs of life in “Crab Orchard” shared. The book is an extension of My Fathers’ Land, which tells the story of Carl’s immigrant ancestors and his personal journey of coming full circle in high places, the Allegheny Mountains of Somerset County, Pennsylvania, and Preston County, W.Va.

This is not a book about only the Feather family, however. The biographies delve into the families of those who married Feathers, many of them early settlers of this region and first- and second-generation Palatinate immigrants. Surnames include Ervin, Martin, Broomhall, Dunham, Summers, Kelly, and others.

Extensively indexed, A Gathering of Feathers is a story spanning nearly 200 years of rural Preston County history and genealogy. It also includes extant minutes of the Feather Family Reunions from their inception in 1909 to 1972.

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