The below was extracted from Lest We Forget, a family history written in 1983 and 1984 by Lucille “Tippy” Rebecca Kyle Harr.

At the end of the 1942 school year, Bessie moved to Canaan Valley to be with her new husband [Vic].

Bessie and Vic were to take care of Vic’s mother, Ida Wolford and inherit the 83 acre Wolford Farm. With her [Bessie’s] hard work the home got floor covering, electricity, and indoor running water. The home soon became a gathering place for the family and a respite for Bessie.

Bessie peddled dairy products, and it wasn’t long until Canaan Valley started to grow cauliflower, the finest in the state.

She was forced into selling the farm when the State wanted it for the Canaan Valley Park. She went to court to get more money for the 83 acres than the state allowed and won her suit. 

The below was extracted from A Local Long Ago Love Story: Miss Bessie Harr Weds Canaan Valley Farmer, an article written in 2009 for the Chronicles of the Tucker County Highlands History and Education Project by Debra Harr.

Looking back on his days in Canaan Valley, consider that Vic lived alone on the farm in winter months while Bessie taught in Petersburg. Those days were marked with woodcutting for the wood burning stove in the kitchen and managing livestock, at least one cow, chickens, sheep and some hogs. Snow drifts in the lane to Route 32 kept him isolated at times from his friends, family and neighbors for months at a time. In the 1950s a snowy TV broadcast of “Sky King” and “Roy Rogers” on a Sunday afternoon in his living room was all that you could make out on the TV screen. There was country music from a whistling radio that was broadcasting from a Wheeling, WV radio station. A single light bulb from the ceiling was light in the barn.

He, a special kind of man, survived these winters and was always there in spring, when the Harr family drove out to deliver Bessie at the end of the school year in the damp and snow-crusted soggy bottom that landscaped their home. There, crocus followed by iris of deep purple eventually made their way to full bloom. They still bloom today in this very place.

Summer was extra busy at Vic and Bessie’s farm. Vic and Bessie had livestock, sold dairy products and grew cauliflower for Birdseye Vegetable Products of Pittsburgh, PA. Bessie canned their garden vegetables and chicken and made butter. They sold milk and eggs. There was the practice of hiring young boys to help in putting up hay. Sunsets on the porch after dinner were always warm and refreshing as the breeze blew the sycamore leaves. At night an occasional bear and many deer grazed the field above the house. There were visitors: Tom Wolford, Vic’s brother; the Raines family and Hoy Smith and his wife, Louise came often. There was quiet and peace on this farm as Mother Nature with her magnificent beauty graced the landscape through summer, fall and into the snow white of winter. As years passed, they took in hunters and gave them lodging and food for deer season. Many were from Ohio. The Wolford’s also had a Christmas tree farm at one time on the property.

Bessie was forced to sell the farm in 1967 to become part of Canaan Valley State Park. Helped by her brother, Debs, and other siblings, there was an auction of all farm machinery and equipment. They even sold the porcelain doorknobs from the house. I [Debra] recall her last day there: she took Vic’s farm hat and her garden bonnet and hung them in the mud room off the kitchen, in their usual place and walked out of the door for the last time.

In short order, the state-owned bulldozer knocked down the house and barn and other out-buildings and burned them. It was the end of a chapter in all of our lives.