Adam Adair Coon

Adam was a small man who once traded 100 acres of land for a milk cow. Adam and Elizabeth are buried in a grave marked only by a stone on the top of the (steep!) hill behind where his house stood at Peachtree. His house burned down in the 1990's.

married step-sister

http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/23582350/person/12278846966/mediax/1...

West Virginia Statehood-Granted Statehood:6-20-1863 With the approach of the Civil War, in November 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president, with virtually no support from the South. His election resulted in the country's southernmost states leaving the Union. On April 17, 1861, days after Lincoln's order to seize Fort Sumter in South Carolina, a convention of Virginians voted to submit a secession bill to the people. Led by Clarksburg's John S. Carlile, western delegates marched out of the Secession Convention, vowing to form a state government loyal to the Union. Many of these delegates gathered in Clarksburg on April 22, calling for a pro-Union convention, which met in Wheeling from May 13 to 15. On May 23, a majority of Virginia voters approved the Ordinance of Secession. It is not possible to determine accurately the vote total from present-day West Virginia due to vote tampering and the destruction of records. Some argue that secessionists were in the majority in western Virginia, while others feel Unionists had greater support. Following a Union victory at the Battle of Philippi and the subsequent occupation of northwestern Virginia by General George B. McClellan, the Second Wheeling Convention met between June 11 and June 25, 1861. Delegates formed the Restored, or Reorganized, Government of Virginia, and chose Francis H. Pierpont as governor. President Lincoln recognized the Restored Government as the legitimate government of Virginia. John Carlile and Waitman T. Willey became United States Senators and Jacob B. Blair, William G. Brown, and Kellian V. Whaley became Congressmen representing pro-Union Virginia. On October 24, 1861, residents of thirty-nine counties in western Virginia approved the formation of a new Unionist state. The accuracy of these election results have been questioned, since Union troops were stationed at many of the polls to prevent Confederate sympathizers from voting. At the Constitutional Convention, which met in Wheeling from November 1861 to February 1862, delegates selected the counties for inclusion in the new state of West Virginia. From the initial list, most of the counties in the Shenandoah Valley were excluded due to their control by Confederate troops and a large number of local Confederate sympathizers. In the end, fifty counties were selected (all of present-day West Virginia's counties except Mineral, Grant, Lincoln, Summers, and Mingo, which were formed after statehood). Most of the eastern and southern counties did not support statehood, but were included for political, economic, and military purposes. The mountain range west of the Blue Ridge became the eastern border of West Virginia to provide a defense against Confederate invasion.

In 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed a bill making West Virginia a state including portions of the Blue Ridge, as mentioned above, and portions of Ohio (Wheeling area). Thus citizens born or resided in the state of Virginia or Ohio encumbered by this statehood, became citizens of West Virginia. West Virginia became a state on June 20, 1863.

The above extracted from the website: http://www.wvculture.org/history/statehoo.html