A Peek into Summers County’s Past: The Tenacious Berkeley, Berkleys

SUMMERS COUNTY W.Va. (Hinton News) - This piece is about an almost unheard-of book that has ties to local history spread throughout it. "The Tenacious Berkeley, Berkleys” was written by Earl E. Berkeley from Alderson, West Virginia in 1988.

The book tells the history of the Berkley family from ancient and Celtic times up to recent times. Earl had direct ties to Ashby Berkley, best known in Summers County for restoring the old Riverside Inn in Pence Springs in the 1970s and having a colonial-themed restaurant in it for decades.

Who then ran the Pence Springs Flea Market and Spring House Antiques in the spring house. Then he restored the Pence Springs Hotel and operated it for decades. Earl sadly passed away before this book was released into circulation.

Then, when his estate was sold at auction his Uncle, Everette Berkely, purchased all of the boxes of books and stored them in his house on the Monroe side of Alderson. You see Everette was quite the “collector” and threw nothing away. When he passed away in 2017 at age 99, Danny Eggleston started the daunting task of cleaning out his house and salvaging the pieces of history that it stored.

Through the many years of scavenging through the contents, he has uncovered numerous pieces with ties to Summers County, one of which was this book. If you are on Facebook he started a page so you could follow his journey called “Broken Porch.” That details saving the historic house and the history it contains.

I will admit I have not read this book yet but I have helped Danny with preserving some of the history. I have shipped probably 35 copies of the book throughout the county to members of the Berkley family and other historians.

Even some local Summers County historians I am friends with added it to their vast collection. In flipping through the book to write this piece I noticed Earl's opening paragraph that he placed before the “Historical Ancestry” of the book.

It reads; “This story, for whatever it may be worth to future generations, is dedicated to my parents, Thomas Joseph and Rosa Lusher Berkley, for inspiring me to do more than just a simple living in the mountains of a pioneer country.”

Those few lines were simple yes but they stuck out to me. I can relate to them quite a bit. I do my part as Earl did in preserving the Berkley family history with preserving the history of Summers County thanks to the support of my parents for future generations."

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