06/10/2026
For this week's Homesteader Highlight, we're focused on the Pysell Family.
Perry Ray and Goldie Naomi (Lambert) Pysell moved into Q-6 with their daughter Martha Lucille who was about five. He was one of the eleven men from Preston County who were originally chosen to be homesteaders. They had been living in Reedsville where he was a miner. While Arthurdale was under construction, he worked as a plumber helper and later went back into the mines.
Lucille remembered that she and her friend Betty Wiles briefly met Eleanor Roosevelt. It was at a garden club meeting, and they were placed in the front row of a group picture. They were only five or six years old and, unfortunately, she misplaced her copy of the photograph.
After graduating from Arthurdale High School in 1947, Lucille attended Morgantown Business School. In the 1950 census, Lucille was living with her parents in Q-6, working as a secretary for West Penn Power in Morgantown.
A close girlfriend introduced her to Paul E. Edwards, whose family had moved to Morgantown from Huntington. He had served in the Army Air Force during WWII then earned a BS in Business Administration at WVU. They married February 8, 1952. In that year’s Morgantown City Directory, Paul and Lucille were living in Arthurdale with her parents and Paul was the assistant manager for a finance company.
They moved to Pittsburgh where Paul worked for General Motors Acceptance Corporation for many years. They raised their three sons there. His marriage to Lucille lasted 55 years until his death at the age of 80 in 2007. Lucille died at the age of ninety-three in 2023.
