Zachariah Lilley
BIRTH 6 Jul 1812
USA
DEATH 14 May 1896 (aged 83)
St. Clair County, Missouri, USA
BURIAL
Osceola Cemetery
Osceola, St. Clair County, Missouri, USA
LILLEY, ZACHARIAH
Zachariah Lilley (1812-1896), one of the eight children of Noah Lilley, a native of South Carolina, and Curry Barnett (North Carolina), was born in Rutherford county, Tennessee, July 6, 1812 and died in St. Clair County, Missouri, May 14, 1896. When Zachariah left Tennessee in 1836, his family was living in Hardin County in that state. Most of his brothers and sisters moved to Texas, which as a new state, was offering opportunities to settlers. Some of Zachariah's relatives had preceded him to Missouri, so he was not a complete stranger when he arrived at the settlement on the Osage River in Rives County, and took a position as clerk in the Cox Brothers Store. On May 30, 1837, he was married to Agatha Lewis Nash (born August 19, 1819 in Roanoke Co., Virginia; died December 4, 1888 in St. Clair County, Missouri). She was the daughter of Dr. Gabriel Penn Nash and Elizabeth Madison McClanahan, who had now become Mrs. P.M. Cox, Sr. In 1840, Zachariah Lilley signed the petition to make St. Clair County from a portion of Rives County. Zachariah and his wife Agatha lived in a small house in Osceola, then purchased several hundred acres across the Osage about a mile from Osceola, and with the help of slave labor, operated the farm. Known as the Beers place today, it was then called Cedar Cliff. The old house was on the bluff, the corn fields were in the rich bottom land and the famous watermelon patch was on Lilley's Island. Mrs. and Mrs. Lilley and their eleven children are buried in Osceola Cemetery. -- St. Clair County Democrat, 14 March 1940
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/63820723/zachariah-lilley
