Greenbrier County WV Archives Obituaries.....Long, Clarence Elmer
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Louise Perkins <perkins @digital.net>, September 20, 1998


Clarence Elmer Long, the fourth child of Achilles Murat Long & Nancy 
Ann Bennett, was born and raised in Irish Corner District, Greenbrier 
Co., on Monroe Draft Road about three miles south of Caldwell, West 
Virginia. When Clarence was sixteen years of age, he went to work as a 
laborer in the Maintenance of Way Department, Chesapeake and Ohio 
Railway Company with his brother Vernal who was section foreman at 
Renick, West Virginia. Greenbrier sub-division.  Shortly after this, 
he worked for several years as a laborer with his Uncle Obie T. 
Bennett who was section foreman on the C&O main line at Caldwell, West 
Virginia.  Clarence and his brothers, who worked in the Maintenance of 
Way Department for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, were called out to 
work at all hours both day and night, in all kinds of weather due to 
train derailments, slides, washouts, broken rails and almost anything 
else that needed immediate attention.  One of the hardest things to do 
was go out in the middle of the night to remove dead bodies from the 
track.  On one occasion, the county coroner had to view a body before 
it could be removed from the track at Backbone, Virginia.  It was a 
severely cold and windy night when Clarence met the coroner at Moss 
Run, Virginia, and took him to Backbone on his open top motor car.  
They were both about to freeze making the four miles round trip. It 
was determined that the man had been previously killed and placed on 
the tracks in an attempt to cover up the crime and place the 
responsibility for the death on the railway company. In 1911, at age 
21, Clarence married Effie Myrtle Morgan, daughter of Andrew Jackson 
Morgan and Rebecca Jane Honaker Morgan.  He was still working as a 
laborer at Caldwell and they set up housekeeping in the section 
foreman's house.  Two of their children, Oleta and Shirley, were borne 
there. About 1917, he was assigned section foreman of section No. 106 
at Backbone, Virginia, on the east slope of the Alleghany Mountains 
where two of their children, Edna and Hazel, were born.  In 1920, he 
bought a house on East Main Street, Covington, Virginia, where their 
only son, Roy, was born. They disposed of the house in Covington and 
bought five acres of land at Moss Run, Virginia, from Hugh McAlister 
and contracted Arch Morris to cut the timber and saw it into lumber 
for use in building their new home.  In the meantime, while the house 
was being built, they moved back in the C& O section house at 
Backbone.  In 1923, they moved into their new home at Moss Run, 
Virginia,  where their other children, Ina Mae, Enscovene and Arlene 
were born. Clarence retired from the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway 
Company in 1958 after having worked fifty years.

Clarence Elmer Long, 85, died Thursday, January 22, 1976, in Emmett 
Memorial Hopsital, Clifton Forge, Virginia, after suffering a heart 
attack. The son of the late Achiles Murat and Nancy Bennett Long, he 
was a retired employee of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company and 
was a member of the Johnson Creek Ascension Reformed Presbyterian 
Church. A funeral service was held at the R. M. Loving Funeral Home in 
Covington, Virginia, Sunday, January 25, 1976, with the Revend Lester 
Dottler officiating. Interment was in Greenbrier Memorial Gardens, 
Lewisburg, West Virginia.

(born in Ronceverte)