The below biography was extracted from Lest We Forget, a family history written in 1983 and 1984 by Lucille “Tippy” Rebecca Kyle Harr, and updated in 2010 by Debra Harr.

This lady passed away before I [Tippy] knew that the Harr family existed and I only get information from the family.

I have only found two people who really knew her, here in Petersburg, Mrs. Ruth Brill and Mrs. H. E. J. Oates, now deceased.

Since I never knew her, I do not feel comfortable calling her anything except Mrs. Harr.

I write of the lady only from stories her children tell me. Dorothy, Bessie, Hester, Guy, and Debs, my husband, were her children. She found great comfort when her daughter, Bessie, was near, and after the birth of her last child, Debs.

She was a beautiful woman. She was the last child and daughter of David and Hester Hanger. While David and Hester Hanger were from Brandywine, West Virginia. Delarie grew up in the Ridges section of Grant County and a short distance from Canaan Valley, where she married John Rufus Harr on January 2, 1902, by Reverend Joseph W. Bedford.

She went to housekeeping at Buena, West Virginia, and had her family in the Canaan Valley section.

She worked for a Mrs. Scott who lived on the Courtland Road before marrying.

The family lived in the Canaan Valley section until 1920, when they all moved to Petersburg at 105 Spring Street where they remained, until the home was sold and bought by Bessie Carrol Harr, her daughter.

She taught her children the Golden Rule and all the good things she knew about. I know very little about her social life, and I don’t think she had much. The daughters tell me that her needs and desires were not completely fulfilled and that she was lonely. She was reluctant to come to Petersburg and that her home was less desirable than the one in Canaan. She found her greatest pride and comfort with her children and Lizzie Hanger, a sister-in-law.

At this point her health was not good. She had had a hysterectomy at the Davis Butts Hospital and was denied good health after that. Her health declined still more after coming to Petersburg. After being diagnosed by Dr. John B. Grove as having “blocked bowels,” H. E. J. Oates and Dr. Grove started to Cumberland, Maryland, with her, in a car. She died along Frankfort Road, and as near as can be determined it was near the [future] home built and owned by her daughter, Hester, and her husband Harold Yokum.

She was 50 years old when she passed away.

The brothers and sisters are:

• Hattie or Harriet—b. 1870, d. 1889, drowned.

• Seymour Ralston—b. 1875, d. 1939

• Floyd D—b. 1869, d. 1937

She died July 18, 1926, and is the first of her family to be buried at Maple Hill Cemetery.