Biography - A AKERS
A. E. AKERS, who owns and operates eighty acres of land in Roodhouse township, where he is engaged in the cultivation of grain and the raising of stock, was born in Scott county, Illinois, January 20, 1864, and is a son of Stephen and Martha A. (Barnes) Akers. His paternal grandfather, Uriah Akers, was of Holland Dutch descent, and was the father of Stephen Akers, who was born in the state of Tennessee in 1824. He became a farmer of Scott county, Illinois, where for many years he carried on agricultural pursuits. He married Martha A. Barnes and among their children was A. E. Akers of this review. The father died in 1899, at the age of seventy-four years, and the mother, still surviving him, is now living in Roodhouse, at the age of sixty-eight years.
At the usual age A. E. Akers began his education, attending what was known as the Akers school - one of the district schools of Scott county. He was early trained to farm labor and when twenty-one years of age he started out in life on his own account. He then removed to Greene county, where he spent four years, and next went to Macoupin county, where he spent nine years. His first farm comprised a tract of forty acres in Greene county, which he afterward sold and became the owner of one hundred and five acres of land in Macoupin county, continuing its cultivation until he took up his abode permanently in Greene county, in 1902. He located upon the farm where he now resides and the day after he contracted to purchased the farm, the old house which stood upon the place was destroyed by fire. He immediately erected a good and comfortable residence, built in modern style of architecture, and now has a pleasant home, thirty-two by thirty-two feet, and has made other improvements which indicate the owner to be a man of practical and progressive spirit. He has eighty acres of land, on which he raises grain and stock, and the well-tilled fields return to him golden harvests for the care and labor he bestows upon them.
On the 25th of February, 1885, Mr. Akers was united in marriage to Miss Nora B. Young, a native of Winchester, Scott County, Illinois, and they have four children: Frank, who was born June 28, 1886; Clarence, born January 31, 1889; Delos, born December 15, 1896; and Mildred, born April 19, 1904. Mr. Akers gives his political support to the Democracy, which he has supported since attaining his majority, but he has never sought or desired office in recognition of his party fealty. He belongs to the Christian church and favors every progressive movement for the general good.
Extracted by Norma Hass from Past and Present of Greene County, Illinois, by Ed Miner, published in 1905, pages 627-628.
