Malinda E. Merrell was born in May 1843 and married James P. Keefover about 1859, at sixteen. She bore eleven children and by June 1900 five of them were dead, which is the whole shape of the family in two columns of one census page.
Three of those five can be named and all three went inside three years. Her daughter Mary Alice died in Monongalia County on 24 June 1893, her son James at Rivesville on 22 September 1893, and her son Benjamin in Marion County on 20 November 1895.
She died on 30 May 1902 in Monongalia County, aged fifty nine, and her husband was a widower on the 1910 sheet.
Her maiden name is MERRELL, and nothing filed in her lifetime says so. Her own death record gives her birthplace as America and nothing else, which is a clerk with an empty column. The name comes off the death certificate of her son Leroy, who died at Clarksburg in Harrison County on 15 April 1951, eighty five years old and never married: parents James P. Keefover and Melinda Merrell.
And one of her daughters married back into the name. Charlotte, called Lottie, married a James Merrill at Marion County in 1890. Merrell and Merrill are the same name in that country, and nothing shows whether he was her mother's kin.
Her parents are not known. She was not a daughter of the one Merrill family in Marion County, Burr Merrill, born 1806, and Melinda, born 1818, of Magisterial District 5 and later the Paw Paw District. Their 1850 household is Tazwell at eight, Ann at five, Linnaeus at two and Joseph at some months. There is no daughter born in 1843 and the birth sequence leaves no room for one.
Sources
West Virginia, Deaths, 1804-1999, Mary A. Glasscock, Monongalia County, 24 June 1893, v 1 p 131. United States Census, 1880, Paw Paw District, Marion County, West Virginia, household of James Kefover. United States Census, 1900, Paw Paw district east side, Rivesville town, Marion County, West Virginia, household of Jas P. Keefover, ED 61 sheet 5B. United States Census, 1910, Paw Paw, Marion County, West Virginia, James Keefover, widowed. West Virginia, Deaths, 1804-1999, James P. Keefover, Paw Paw District, Marion County, 3 May 1925, no. 112. West Virginia, Deaths, 1804-1999, Malinda Keefanver, Monongalia County, 30 May 1902, v 2 p 14. West Virginia, Deaths, 1804-1999, Benj. Keefover, Marion County, 20 November 1895, and James Keefover, Rivesville, 22 September 1893. West Virginia, Births and Christenings, 1853-1928, Sarah B. Keefover 1863 and Leroy Keefover 1865, Marion County. West Virginia, Marriages, 1854-1932, J. Coleman Glasscock and Alice M. Keefover, Marion County, 4 May 1884.
West Virginia, Deaths, 1804-1999, Leroy Keefover, Clarksburg, Harrison County, 15 April 1951, v 17 p 134b. West Virginia, Deaths, 1804-1999, Malinda Keefanver, Monongalia County, 30 May 1902, v 2 p 14. West Virginia, Marriages, 1780-1970, Charlotte Keefover and James Merrill, Marion County, 1890. United States Census, 1850, Wirt County, Virginia, household of William Merrill. United States Census, 1850, Marion County, Virginia, household of Harvey Merrifield. West Virginia, Deaths, 1804-1999, the returns of Allison E., Sidney Waitman, Charles A. and Columbus Newton Merrifield and of Belle Eakle.
Virginia, Marion County, marriage licence register, 1856, page 12, J. A. Leonard and Joann F. Helmick, 27 March 1856, and Abraham I. Conaway and Emily Merrell, 24 March 1856. West Virginia State Archives, Vital Research Records, film 835626 image 75.
United States Census, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920 and 1930, parents' nativity columns, eighty six sheets, read on the FamilySearch record pages.
Cite: Heirology, "Malinda E. Merrell (1843-1902)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/malinda-e-merrell-1843-1902-4479dc.