THE DONOHOE FAMILY
Recollections of an Irish immigrant of his early 1800s voyage from Ireland to America: “I was sick most of the voyage, if you could call it that – packed like spoiled fish in a slimy tub we were, stinking and sleeping on the floor with vermin and rats, eating moldy bread and thin gruel, watching some passengers die of disease and starvation and dumped like galley-garbage into the sea. Talk about haunted ships – every one carrying immigrants is full of the ghosts of them that didn’t make it. For six weeks it was like living in a floating coffin, and sailing to netherland. No priest aboard, and didn’t seem to be no God aboard either. As for the luck of the Irish – some folks knelt and kissed the earth when we landed. Trent Patrick Donahue fell on the ground and puked up his guts.”
Two brothers, William E, and Thomas Donohoe, came to America from County Cork in Ireland to Craig County, Virginia, on the road to Norfolk, to a settlement called Paint Bank. There they respectively married Sarah Jane Walker and Harriet Frail. Children of William E. and Sarah Jane were: Isaac A., George Edward, Thomas, William, Eliza, James, John, Robert, Mandy, and Matthews “Mac”.
During the Civil War, William and Thomas, along with their sons and Alec Looney, started north from Virginia to West Virginia which had become a Union state on June 20, 1863. There were eighteen in this group that hid in caves during the day and traveled under cover of darkness to avoid Confederate troops that were forcing all males 14 years and older into service in the Confederate Army. William spent the winter working in Charleston cutting cordwood. The following spring, Sarah Jane and Harriet, wives of William and Thomas, left Virginia and joined their husbands in West Virginia. They came by two ox-drawn covered wagons with the younger children and the families moved to the John Jones farm at the head of Cotton Tree in Roane County.
One year later, William died, and during the next five to six years that they lived there Thomas and three others also died. One son of Thomas was killed when a tree he was cutting fell on him. At the end of a meadow on the old John Jones farm, there are five graves at the edge of the woods. They are believed to be William, Thomas, Thomas’ son, a young girl, and the other is unknown. In 1955, Ott Donohoe, descendant of William, placed a stone marker on the graves.
After the deaths of William and Thomas, the families moved to Green Creek and Long Ridge where their children married and settled. Sarah Jane and others of the Donohoe line are buried in the Cummings Cemetery just above the Sandy Knob Church. Isaac, oldest child of William and Sarah, built a house for his mother on Green Creek that is still standing.
George E., son of William and Sarah Jane, married Elizabeth Mahan. Their children were: Laura who married Jack Good; Ollie who married Charlie Lowe; and Irvin C. who married 1st Margaret Good, 2nd Ellie Good, 3rd Nellie Thomas. Elizabeth died shortly after the birth of her third child and George married Emma Catherine Mahan, younger sister of Elizabeth. Their children were: Lawson H. who married Clara Lee; Roma P.: Lottie Myrtle who married Lewis Linwood Hall; Ruby; Radie E. who married Worthy Hunt; Mallie D. who married Parma Abbot; Marshall A.; Sylvester; Cecil B.; Dosha Pearl who married Grover Smith; Elmer E.; Austin who married Wavy Smith; Ovie E.; Edith Gay who married Earl Bagley; and Oris Oral.
George E. Donohoe was a storekeeper on Long Ridge, Roane County, and frequently traveled in a peddler’s wagon throughout both Roane and nearby Kanawha counties selling and trading his wares. He often traded for farm produce and products including butter. He would take the butter home and Emma would wash it and work it down until it was solid, then make it into pats or put it into buckets. George then took the butter and other farm products to Charleston where he would trade them for new supplies.
Lottie Myrtle Donohoe, daughter of George E. and Emma, and Lewis Linwood “Woody” Hall met in Roane County while Woody was working in the oil and gas industry and boarding with the Donohoes. Lewis Linwood Hall was a son of Albert Jenkins Hall and Lillie Adelaide Burke; and a grandson of John Hall and Matilda Caroline Webb and Robert Peter Burke and Sarah Florence Amos. Myrtle and Woody were later married in Akron, Ohio, and their first child, Forest Ray Hall, was born there March 22, 1913. They then moved to the Hall homeplace on Johnson Creek in Roane County where Basil Meredith Hall was born in 1916. In 1917, they returned to Akron where Clair Linwood Hall was born, then returned to West Virginia and built a house on Thorofare Road, approximately one mile north of Clendenin, Kanawha County, West Virginia. Their youngest child and only daughter, Wilma Arlene Hall, was born there June 11, 1924.
These excerpts of Donohoe family history were first recorded by Lewis and Myrtle Donohoe Hall on February 1, 1940. They were revised by Wilma Arlene Hall Sears, daughter of Lewis and Myrtle on September 17, 1977. Recent revisions were made by Larry Ray Hall, son of Forest Ray Hall and grandson of Lewis and Myrtle, on November 27, 1998.
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