Adam Proctor and Minnie Keller Proctor of 111 North High Street in Martinsburg
Minnie Keller grew up in the late 1800s as part of a typical rural farming family in West Virginia, with many siblings who spent their days working the farm and pitching in around the homestead.
Minnie was born in 1866 in Franklin County, Pennsylvania. But by the time she was 4 years old, her family had resettled in the Arden district of Berkeley County.
She was in the middle of nine siblings, although two of her older brothers appear to have died young. When she was 10, another of her brothers died of cholera as an infant.
Minnie was 14 when her father died of tuberculosis in his mid-50s.
At age 18, she married a 24-year-old farmer named Adam Proctor.
They welcomed a daughter the next year, followed by four more children who arrived every two years like clockwork. Their sixth and final baby, Addie, then came along after a six-year break for Minnie in childbearing.
The family at some point moved to a two-story Martinsburg home at 111 North High Street, built in 1900.
When Minnie was 49, her 43-year-old sister Ann "Nettie" Hoffman died during the winter of 1916.
Minnie died at age 62 in 1929.
A year later, the 1930 Census shows that her surviving husband, Adam, was living in the family's High Street home with his and Minnie's bachelor son Roy, a veterinary surgeon in his mid-30s; along with their daughter Addie and her husband George Jacobs and children Beulah and George Jr.
Also living under Adam's roof were two of his granddaughters, Dorothy Malatt, 20, and Cora Belle Malatt, 18. The oldest two offspring of his oldest child, also named Cora Belle, both of the young women were working as knitters at the hosiery mill.
By 1940, Roy had moved in with his older brother Henry and his family, and lived with them for at least a decade. Roy remained unmarried at age 53 in 1950. He was the last of Adam and Minnie's offspring to survive, passing away in 1986 at age 91.