Damon Wilsey Pugh
b. 15 May 1913, Shelburn, Sullivan County, Indiana, to Robert Webb and Flossie Mamie (Smith) Pugh
d. 4 September 2002, Hohenwald, Lewis County, Tennessee
m/1. 11 August 1934, Sullivan, Sullivan County, Indiana
Doris Esther Harris
b. 26 July 1914, Prairie Creek, Vigo County, Indiana, to Elza Wales Jennings and Bertha Florence (Clouse) Harris
d. 23 June 2001, Terre Haute, Vigo County, Indiana
m/2. 1961
Doris Jean Fanning
b. 24 Mar 1931
d. 26 October 2002
Children with Doris Esther Harris:
- Shirley Arlene (b. 1936) married Thomas David Thomson
- Kenneth Duane (b. 1937) married Janice Southwood
- Glenn Harold (b. 1941) married Carol Ann Curry
Children with Doris Jean Fanning:
- Susan Jean (1951-2006) married (1) Thomas C. Kilpatrick, (2) Malcolm Sidney Wright, Jr.
Damon Pugh’s ancestors, Evan and Sarah (Cloud) Pugh migrated to Madison County, Indiana in 1826 from Licking County, Ohio. The family remained in central Indiana in the area of Madison and Delaware counties until early in the 1880’s when the Damon’s grandfather, Joseph I. Pugh, moved, following the death of his first wife, to Sullivan County, Indiana. In 1885, Joseph married Clara Delia Dudley in Sullivan County and became parents of ten children. Today their descendants continue to live in Indiana’s Sullivan and Vigo counties.
In 1960, Damon and Doris Harris divorced. It was then that he left Indiana. He lived for a time in Mississippi and married a second time to Doris Jean Fanning Thrash. Later they made their home in Hohenwald, Tennessee, where they lived and worked for thirty-five years. They died there in 2002.
Damon produced a memoir in 1994 entitled, “My First Eighty Years: Memories of a Man of Sullivan County, Indiana.” It includes stories from his early years on a farm in Sullivan County. As an adult, he mastered a variety of occupations, acquiring a handful of patents in the process. The first two were created for coal processing when he ran the above-ground operations at Jonay Coal Mine near Sullivan, Indiana. He spent the last forty years of his life in sales of heavy equipment used in farming, lumbering, and building operations.
Submitted by:
Shirley Pugh Thomson
Walnut Creek CA
E-mail: thomsonsa@astound.net