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A family’s mission to restore oldest house in Cass

Pocahontas Times photo by Suzanne Stewart The oldest house in Cass, built by Allen Craig Burner in 1885. Burner’s great-granddaughter, Louise Burner, and her daughter, Alison Flegel are pursuing funds to restore the house and make it a museum.
Pocahontas Times photo by Suzanne Stewart
The oldest house in Cass, built by Allen Craig Burner in 1885. Burner’s great-granddaughter, Louise Burner, and her daughter, Alison Flegel are pursuing funds to restore the house and make it a museum.

MARLINTON, W.Va. — In the mid-1880s, Allen Craig Burner – a farmer and carpenter – left his childhood home in Green Bank to find a place to build his new house. He found a clearing of land by the Greenbrier River in Cass – land that had been timbered.

Burner’s home, built in 1885, still stands today, and his great-granddaughter, Louise Burner, and her daughter, Alison Flegel, are now working to raise funds to restore the house and make it a museum.

The house pre-dates the town of Cass by 16 years and was one of the first homesteads in the area.

“There was at least one other house down here,” Burner said. “The town of Cass didn’t really exist but there were two or three settlers in this area. They [Burners] lived here – he died in 1905 – and his wife [Virginia Clark] lived here until about 1922 or maybe 1920. She moved to Durbin to live with my grandfather, her son [Dr. Allen Eugene Burner].”

The house has had several different renters from the 1920s to 2012 as ownership of the property passed from generation-to-generation.

It is now owned by Louise Burner. At first, she thought about selling the house, but she and Flegel decided to keep the family history alive…

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