January 12: Dorsey Akers

Dorsey Akers (1892-1967)

Dorsey Akers, my great-grandfather, was a  man I never met.  He was my mom's paternal grandfather.

Anecdotes from my faulty memory include

• Referred to as Dadu by his grandchildren (along with his wife Nanu)
• He was a drunk (in that he did not attend meetings, har-har)
• Maybe a little bit of a pervert (in that he gave granddaughter and her friends a nickel for kisses)
• Painted my mothers childhood home by jumping the two story ladder along the dirt road on the side of a mountain.
• Lived at the top of a steep street, 1603 Whitney, Charleston, WV,  where the bus dropped you off at the bottom of the hill (You can still see the house on the googley map street view.)
• Was a convenient relative for Mom to use when she wanted to stay out all night from the Morris Harvey College dorms.

Notes from my father's genealogy profile from the early 1970's

• Educated in Monroe County, WV schools
• Democrat 
• Member of the Methodist Church [New Hope Methodist Church, Marie, WV]

  

  
  

• Member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows [Mount Olivet Lodge]
• "About 1930, when the depression caused massive unemployment, Dorsey moved his family to Kaymoor, a coal mining camp in Fayette County, West Virginia, where they lived until 1936.  He worked as an electrician at the tipple of the mine.  His father, Charles Fillmore Akers, worked as a stone mason on the coke ovens and his mother, Mintie [Garten] Akers ran the company’s “club house”, a boarding house for the unmarried miners"

1930 Census from Kaymoor, Fayette County, West Virginia, showing Dorsey, wife Fatima, and son Charlie living in the boarding house run by his parents, along with tenants.

• "Because it was the height of the depression, the miners often worked only six (twelve hour) days per month, for about 20 cents and hour.  They lived in company owned houses, fuel for heating and cooking (coal) was plentiful, and the men were generally paid in “script”, company coinage that was used to purchase the necessities of life at the company store"
• "He left Kaymoor about 1936 when he got a job as an electrician in DuPont’s Belle Works, a chemical plant near Charleston, from which he retired"

Facts discovered through my own genealogy research

• Born January 12, 1892 in Summers County, West Virginia, with 1900 and 1910 census' listing their location as Red Sulphur District. Son of Charles Fillmore Akers and Mintie Burke [Garten] Akers
• Married Fatima Todd, September 4th, 1915, where the City Directory of that year lists them as residents of Charleston (116 1/2 Charleston, which Ancestry-dot-com lists as 1164, which I have not located)

  

  Fatima Todd Akers (1888-1962)

• 1917 Draft card and 1917-18 City Directory has them in a house on the even side of the 1100 block of Bigley Ave, which is now located under I-64.
• After moving his family to Kaymoor during the depression, returned to Charleston and bought the house at 1603 Whitney sometime between the 1940 Census and the issuance of his 1942 WW2 Draft card
• After retiring from DuPont, he was employed at the A & K Market, Bridge Road, Charleston, WV
• Dorsey died in a Parkesburg hospital in Wood County, while visiting/living with his son and their family
• Buried at Tyler Mountain Memory Gardens in Cross Lanes, WV, in a plot shared by his wife Fatima, son Charlie, and daughter-in-law Della