ELEVENTH GENERATION

4284. Orville Clyde Dotson was born on 5 Aug 1911 in Wirt County, WV. He died unknown. Part of The Story of Orville Clyde Dotson:

I was born about 2:00 P.M. on a rainy Saturday August 5, 1911 in the same house my mother was born in. Her parents were Henry and Elvira Miller. The house was about a quarter of a mile from Buffalo settlement that had Lee Collins' Country Store, a Methodist Church, and a two-room elementary school that my four older brothers attended. Grandfather Miller had given the land for the church and was a trustee.

We moved to a newer house that Dad had built for his brother and sister-in-law Orville and Della Dotson, almost in sight from the old house. While lumber was being cut to build our new home at the head of Falling Timber Run, a huge pile of sawdust was created, about as high as a house. When Reedy Creek froze over Dad and Cale Thompson, our nearest neighbor, sawed blocks of thick ice and buried them in the sawdust pile. We had ice to use well into the following summer.

Mrs. Thompson, Arizona, babied me, and I loved it. She always had cookies for me, and I would help her, I thought, with her housework. I especially loved to churn butter with the old-fashioned dasher-type churn. Mr. Thompson made me a churn with a half-gallon sized jar made by A.P. Donehue of Parkersburg, WV. He made a recessed cover with a center hole for the dasher.

On March 25, 1917, on my brother Claire's birthday, we moved to Spring Creek.

Our new homestead was wonderful in many ways. We were not long in giving the farm a name. We named it Spring Dale Farm because of the many springs it had. Very close to our house was a spring of water we never used since we had a well just outside the kitchen door. Granddad made use of the spring for soaking out salt fish. He had a pipe to the spring on which he could hang a screened basket so the water would wash the salt out of the fish if he left them there overnight.

From sister Evelyn 2/1994:
I can remember so many things he did for me. When Ii was sick with "yellow-jaundice" he walked to the store lots of times to try to find something I could eat. I remember the first things I was able tto eat. Oyster crackers and pink and white marshmallow cookies with coconut on them. When we were in high school, he always had a nickle for me so I could get an ice cream cone like all the other girls I ran around with. When he would give Polly a pack of gum he would tell her to leave a stick for me. He was and still is a very good friend.

He was married to Dorothy Pauline Walker on 4 Jun 1939 in Grace Community Gilboa Baptist Church, Roane Co, WV. Orville Clyde Dotson and Dorothy Pauline Walker had the following children:

+4944 i. Erroll Walker Dotson.
+4945 ii. Betty Kay Dotson.
4946 iii. Philip Harmon Dotson was born on 4 Dec 1953 in Wood Co, WV. He died on 4 Dec 1953. He was buried in Hodam Cemetery, Roane Co, WV.
+4947 iv. Patricia Helen Dotson.