Martha Louisa Pogue Moffett

Compiled from "The Early Days" by Nora Montgomery. Presented on March 21, 2015 at the Lemon Cove Women's Club Annual Open House, and enacted by students from Sequoia Union School, Lemon Cove, California.

People called me Lydia. I am the oldest child of JWC Pogue and Nancy Blair Pogue. Mama and Papa came out on a wagon train in 1857. Our road to Lemon Cove came through the Willets area, then to Venice Hill, then on to the Bravo Lake area, and in 1868, our family came to live in Dry Creek. Then in 1877, the family (there were six of us kids now) moved across to this side of the river. I was married two years later to William Hamilton Moffett, whose family came out on the same wagon train as my folks did.

I wasn’t married in this hotel, but our first child, James Aubrey was born in this old house. Hamilton and I made our home in the Antelope area near Woodlake for many years. Mama died in 1891 here at the hotel. So Ham and I came back for about 3 years to help papa manage the hotel. Hamilton opened a livery stable in Visalia, so we moved into town for about 10-12 years. In 1906 we, along with our son, Aubrey, bought the big brick Pogue Brothers store from my brothers J.E. and T.A. We changed the name to Moffett and Son, and Hamilton became the new postmaster. It was located where the Post Office is today. We built a house down this street on the left and established the water works for the town of Lemon Cove right there on our property. That house is still standing and currently being used as the Manse for the local church.

Besides our son James Aubrey, Ham and I had 2 girls, Elsie and Mildred. My Hamilton died in 1911, and I continued to live in the house we had built.