Conger, Elijah Hagens

Elijah Hagens Conger

Elijah Hagens Conger, born on 22 Oct 1878 in either Shiloh, Randolph county, AL or Dempsey, Clay county, AL was another person who was very interested in Conger genealogy and history.

He learned that the papers of Charles Leslie Conger, including the correspondence, was in the Rare Book Division of the Library of Congress. In 1941, while living in Caliente, Nevada he mad these records available to the public.

In a letter to Maxine Leonard dated, 4 Mar 1963, Elijah's wife, Carrie, wrote, "My husband did so much research and received so much information from so many different people. I am quite sure that he received the information from Charles L. Conger's widow that he had deposited these eight volumes in the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. I know he wrote to the Library and made arrangements to have the eight volumes microfilmed. Cost $32.00. Then he had to buy a reading machine, $75.00, so that we could type them back into book form. As my husband was practicing his profession (dentistry) at this time we could only do this typing in our spare time, it took us three years to complete the assignment. As you can see the spelling is far from correct. That was one thing my husband just couldn't master. He wrote a beautiful hand, though. When we finished typing the films my husband deposited them in the Genealogy Library in Salt Lake City, UT."

In another letter Carrie explained that Charles Leslie Conger's eight volumes were made into four books in re-typing the records, and that there were 990 pages. They made two sets -- the original and one carbon. One set was given to Dan Conger (nephew, Dan Lewis Conger?) and after Elijah's death the other was given to his sister, Era (Conger) Jones of Overton, Nevada. (Of the 990 pages, much space was wasted by so many indentations. Copies of all correspondence was included also. [Probably a comment by Maxine Leonard. REH])

Era (Conger) Jones later let Maxine (Crowell) Leonard copy the books one at a time.

Elijah Hagens Conger died on 2 Dec 1950 at Las Vegas, Clark county, NV. His wife, Carrie Iola (Braden) Conger, who was born on 19 Apr 1880 in Wildwood, Randolph Co. AL, died on 5 Jun 1966 at Oakland, Alameda Co. CA.