Appalachian History

"Everyone we knew worked in the mine or in the machine shop. Dad met Inez Thompson and at the encouragement of [his stepmother] Della, married. Then came us four children and later a divorce after a long separation (between 3rd and 4th year of school) from Inez. Later, Dad married Rose Mae Jackson at one of the Lively homes. Dad and Rose went to visit the Lively relatives on many occasions, but us children never went.

Della, Homer and Inez Thompson (background).

"My father is to be honored for his stick-to-itiveness. Everyday he went into the dark pits of the mines to earn what it took to care for us children. In the early days of coal mining the coal barons (who lived in other states) opened coal mines, built houses for the workers, built the company stores and entertainment centers for movies (bare rooms with wood benches and no back on them).

"They paid the men in scrip, with which the men bought clothes, food, and all they needed at the company store. Often the Post Office was in the company store; this leads to how my dad got into trouble. He went with a friend to get food for the family, the store was closed, and they broke into it - took nothing but milk. He was charged with a federal crime and sent to the "pen."

"This is when Dovie was left with her great-grandma Janie Miller who lived in Kentucky. My mother was pregnant with me, destitute (1930's). Mom went to the poor house in Stollings, West Virginia and that's where I was born. I didn't know this 'til I was in 10th grade. Della revealed it all. I don't know what she was trying to do. We got on a bus to go home the very next day. I was not about to stay with her any longer!

"Dovie grew up believing Janie Miller was her mother until the fourth grade, which is when Janie became ill and Dovie was sent to live with us. My father tried to get Dovie back after he was out of the pen but Janie was too attached and wouldn't let her go. It was a difficult adjustment for her to this new family she had only seen a couple of times.

"West Virginia was a beautiful place to grow up. Thank God for the beauty around us. My father went to work even when it was almost impossible to get through the snow. Ashes from burnt coal were often put in front and back of the tires to help get traction to get to the road.

"One early morning I recall vividly when dad left for work, it was still very dark. It had snowed and Rose woke us up to look out the window. The snow was deep, and so white, with no tracks at all. The moon was bright, shining onto the snow. It looked as though diamonds had been spread over the entire area, and the whole field was sparkling. I know dad enjoyed the view on the way from Mabscott to Mac Alpine Coal Mine that morning.

"The coal miners rarely saw the sun. They went into the shaft early and came out late, went to the bathhouse, then home. Carbide lamps were their source of light. I remember helping to fill the lamp with the dry carbide, and that smell when it was moistened and lit.

"Many miners ended up with poor vision and black lung disease, and until John L. Lewis fought for the miners to get better pay and health benefits, many men died with nothing for their families.

"After I graduated high school the folks bought a combination grocery store/restaurant in Piney View. We lived there for a short time. I joined the Navy and was to be gone except a short visit after Corps school. I did not see my dad until he came to California in 1957 when Glenda was a baby. That's when he went to visit his father John Lively and Uncle Edgar.

Homer Leo Tate and daughter Bobbie (Barbara).

"My brother, Homer Gene, was killed in a truck accident. He had ridden his bike up the road on Piney View to visit some friends. He got into the middle of the seat (three persons). Somewhere they hit a bridge abutment.

"He didn't get permission to go with these young boys. He was thrown through the windshield and was hospitalized. Folks did not find out for 2 days or more. Finally the boy up the road came and told Dad. He and Rose went to the hospital, but with the head injury and other injuries as well, my brother was hardly recognizable, too much swelling.

"He died I think, two weeks after Vanessa was born. I was alone, my husband, Don, was overseas, so the folks didn't inform me of this. They sent a notice to Don; he in turn sent it to me. What a shock, I thought at first it must be my dad! It wouldn't be 'til after the folks moved to Florida, 30 years later, that I could go home. West Virginia was not home without my brother!"


Excerpt from a letter from Barbara Lee Tate to her cousin Gerald Lively, July 2001. Online at www.livelyroots.com/things/homer.htm

The Calvin B. Doteys, a wealthy and greatly respected family, had a very fine old home with spacious grounds on South Third Street. Old Mr. Dotey made his fortune in, and was president of, the Jefferson Iron Works in the lower end of town. He had a daughter Molly, who became the one and only titled person in Steubenville. Long before I was born, it was said a German, Baron Lagerfelt, came to town and married Molly. Only a few months later he left his bride and skipped to parts unknown, taking with him most of his wife’s fortune. He never returned, and so far as I know, all the Doteys, probably Baroness Lagerfelt included, felt it was good riddance.

Another child of the Calvin B. Dotey family was Harry. He wore his hair long, played the piano and pipe organ, and never worked a day in his life. He left the Episcopal Church and became a devout Roman Catholic. Among his many eccentricities was his adoption of the name Harry Linwood Marie Dotey y Carr. He wore gaudy scarves and ascot ties, pink shirts, flashy suits, and always carried bright yellow gloves. A large Catholic medal on a heavy silver chain hung ostentatiously from his neck. With very large jeweled rings on both fingers and thumbs and heavy bracelets with lockets, he attracted attention wherever he went.

It can well be imagined what a stir such a person created in a small sleepy town over sixty years ago. He loved to ride for hours on the old streetcars engrossed in reading books and magazines. A great student of art and an accomplished musician, when grand opera came to Pittsburgh, Harry Dotey always bought two seats and appeared at every performance. He placed his hat, gloves, coat and cane on the adjoining seat. Music lovers in the city of Pittsburgh wondered who the strange man was sitting alone on the aisle.

Both he and his sister, the Baroness, did a tremendous job at squandering the money which their father had worked so hard to accumulate. The walls of the old house on South Third Street were hung with rare paintings, and the home was filled with priceless objets d’art. Most of these treasures were bought from the Wunderly Brothers of Pittsburgh, who for generations have owned an epecially fine art store. One of the Wunderly Brothers told me years ago that Harry Dotey’s knowledge of art was amazing. He bought extravagantly and was notorious for never paying his bills. About the time the Wunderlys felt forced to bring suit against him, he would come into the store and pay a long outstanding bill. But, according to Mr. Wunderly, when he left the Gallery he invariably had bought additional treasures, and owed the Wunderlys an even larger amount than when he came in.

At Christmas Harry and the Baroness sent the most elaborate and expensive presents to all their friends, including my father and mother. They were always beautifully wrapped and tied with wide satin ribbon in tremendous bows. For many years a framed picture of a nude was turned to the wall on the floor of our bedroom closet. Harry and the Baroness had given it to my father and mother, but my parents immediately relegated it to the darkness.

Unfortunately, old Mr. Dotey made my father guardian of his two spendthrift and eccentric children. Father had a terrible time with them. Harry could have made a little money by playing the church organ for pay, but he pretended righteous indignation when any such degrading suggestion was made to him. The Baroness finally died, and poor Harry lived on for several years in the Massillon Insane Asylum, which while he wasn’t actually insane, seemed a more suitable place for him to end his days than in the Jefferson County Poorhouse.

When Baroness Lagerfelt signed herself in to the poorhouse, it made national news. Here’s a June 17, 1909 writeup from the New Orleans newspaper L’Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orleans.

Father, who was the epitome of generosity, preached economy to us incessantly, and frequently held Harry Dotey and his sister, Baroness Lagerfelt, up to us as horrible examples of what happens to people who spend more than they should. The Dotey family’s going from riches to rags and the Poorhouse was a shocking example. Father told us that when the old Dotey home was dismantled, the third floor was filled with the most expensive and beautiful toys which Mr. and Mrs. Dotey had bought for Harry and Molly when they were children. This great store of playthings, any one of which would have made some child happy, was allowed to accumulate dust over the years. The old colored man who spent his life working for the Dotey family had many children of his own, but in the end Harry Dotey stood adamant over him and watched closely to see that every sacred article which he had enjoyed in his childhood was burned, so that no lesser child could defame it.


Father and his Town A Story of Life at the Turn of the Century in a Small Ohio River Town, by Wilma Sinclair LeVan Baker, Three Rivers Press, 1961

The only asylum
Was the poorhouse, and those who could afford,
Rather than send their folks to such a place,
Kept them at home; and it does seem more human.
But it’s not so: the place is the asylum.
There they have every means proper to do with,
And you aren’t darkening other people’s lives....

Robert Frost (1874–1963), "A Servant to Servants"


Poorhouses (or Almshouses) were tax-supported residential institutions to which people were required to go if they could not support themselves. They were started as a method of providing a less expensive (to the taxpayers) alternative to what we would now call "welfare" - what was called "outdoor relief" in America’s early days.

People requested help from the community Overseer of the Poor (sometimes also called a Poor Master) - an elected town official. If the need was great or likely to be long-term, they were sent to the poorhouse instead of being given relief while they continued to live independently. Sometimes they were sent there even if they had not requested help from the Overseer of the Poor. That was usually done when they were found guilty of begging in public.

"Day laborers, who had worked all summer for a quarter a day, were lucky to get bed, board, and roll-your-own Bugler tobacco in exchange for help with winter chores. Some, in dire straits, went on relief or to the county poorhouse. Many times, farmers just took their tobacco checks to the grocer or the banker and turned it over to them to pay off bills and notes, maybe holding a little out for Christmas. Some got their checks cashed, got drunk, and lost it all in a poker game in Huntington, WV. Then the whole process started over."

Tragedy on Greasy Ridge: True Stories from Appalachian Ohio
Danny Fulks, Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2003

By the 1930’s, the poorhouse population became increasingly more narrowly defined, as social welfare legislation (Workman’s Compensation, Unemployment benefits and Social Security) began to provide a rudimentary “safety net” for people who would previously have been pauperized by such circumstances. Eventually the poorhouses evolved almost exclusively into nursing homes for dependent elderly people. But poorhouses left orphanages, general hospitals and mental hospitals -- for which they had provided the prototype -- as their heritage.

Source: www.poorhousestory.com


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