In 1844, Joseph Lively, father of Elias and Rufus, came to Paint Creek and made a deal with Town Creek settler Archibald Van Waters for the 791 acre tract on which the Van Waters cabin stood, paying the sale price and receiving a deed from Commissioner Dickinson in 1846. The tract extended three quarters of a mile below Town Creek to the Plum Orchard tract and an equal distance above, bordering the Horse Creek property on the east for some distance. The first of Joseph's sons to come to Paint Creek, and the first permanent settlers of the community later called Lively, were Elias and Rufus. Elias came to Town Creek in 1846 at age 19, and by the middle of the next year both Rufus and Elias appeared in the road orders of the Paint Creek precinct. Joseph Lively, a prosperous Monroe County, Virginia farmer, invested around $3,000 in Paint Creek land, purchasing three different tracts on Paint Creek and its tributaries between 1845 and 1853, and his holdings eventually increased to 6,500 acres. Elias settled on the 791 acre Van Waters tract and first lived in the old Van Waters cabin, then later moved with his wife Letha into a new cabin he built a short distance below, at the bend of the Coal Road where it turned down to the creek. Rufus Lively's inheritance was a 1070 acre tract on Horse Creek, bought by his father in 1852. His cabin had been built before that tract was acquired and stood on the Coal Road below William Humphreys, at present Long Branch, about a mile above his brother Elias's Town Creek cabin, on a 40 acre plot Rufus bought from Humphrey in 1847. He later built a two story frame house on the same site. Elias raised a large family of boys and girls, C.C., John, Andrew, George, Amelia, Eliza, William, Kennel, Cena, L.C. (Bud), Mertie, and Enoch, all of whom were given huge farms by their father. Rufus and his wife Melinda Williams, daughter of Isaac Williams, were the parents of seven children: Elizabeth, Jacob, Wilson, Letha, Henry, Jennie, and Lucinda.