#52 Ancestors 2020 Week 28 Multiple: The Marrying-est Man in Mercer County

My sons' 3X great-grandfather, Elijah Preston Meadows nicknamed "Lige," was noted in his lifetime for holding the record in Mercer County WV for the most marriages--five (although technically he was actually married in Raleigh County, next door to Mercer.)

The much-married Elijah Preston Meadows was the son of Richard Meadows and

 Mary Moye, born in 1852 in Wyoming County WV.  He spent his life farming in the Slab Fork District of neighboring Raleigh County WV. Slab Fork, so named because it is on the Slab Fork of the Guyandotte River in Southwest West Virginia, became a coal-mining town in 1907, and the Slab Fork Coal Mining Company operated there until 1983.  In its heyday, Slab Fork produced more than 400,000 tons of coal per year.

Somewhat ironically, Wikipedia's description of Slab Fork today (population 202) says that the community's percentage of married households is lower than the national average.  Lige certainly did his part to raise the average.

Lige's first (and longest) venture into the bonds of matrimony was in 1875 when he married his cousin, Jemima (Mima) Meadows, the daughter of Elijah Meadows and Naomi Cox.  Elijah and Mima had eight children:
William 1876
Elijah Richardson 1878
Netah Mahala 1880 (my sons' 2X great-grandmother)
James Albert 1882
George Washington 1884
Mary 1887
Thomas Stealbert 1889
Henry Everest 1891

Elijah and Mima divorced about 1895 and each of them moved on to another marriage.

Lige's second matrimonial venture was with 16-year-old Nancy Clementine Tilley in 1896. Nancy, born in Tennessee, died in Slab Fork in 1900.  She and Elijah had no children.

Lige's 3rd marriage occurred in 1901.  (He did, after all, still have quite a few children at home.)
He married 49-year-old divorcee, Martha Jane Farley Sneed, the mother of ten Sneed children with her previous husband, Wiley Everett Sneed (who promptly remarried).  I'm not sure how many of the Sneed children moved to the Meadows farm with their mother, but it must  have been quite a houseful. Elijah and Martha's marriage ended four years later with Martha's death in 1905.  Elijah and Martha had no children together.

Byre Mills

Lige married for the fourth time in 1906 to the 31-year-old widow Byre Mills Mitcham, who was the mother of five children with her first husband, Dennis Mitcham.  Byre and Elijah had two sons: Admiral Dewey Meadows in 1907 and Norman Alderson Meadows in 1912.

Sadly, Byre died on Christmas Eve 1912, when her youngest son was only a few months old.  She apparently had a heart attack on her way back from milking the cows.  

The 60-year-old Lige married for the fifth and final time in 1913 to the 44-year-old widow of Jarrett Mann, Virginia Bowles Mann.  She was the mother of five children with her first husband, but did not have any children with Elijah.  It was this marriage that earned him the marriage record. She outlived Elijah, dying in 1955 in Mercer County WV

Elijah Preston Meadows died in 1929 at the age of 76.  He is buried in the John Mills Cemetery in Egeria. 

Among Elijah and his five wives, they racked up a total of nine marriages. 

I feel I should add here while I am discussing the theme of multiples, that although Lige may have the most marriages, his career was perhaps not the strangest matrimonial saga in the family.  His first father-in-law, also named Elijah Meadows (my sons' 4X great-grandfather), was married four times, including twice to the same woman.  He married Naomi Cox in 1857, had 13 children with her, divorced her, remarried, and then married Naomi again in 1898.  I'm sure there is an interesting story there, and I wish I knew it.