Chapter 1: What they told me
My full name is Robert Preston Akers. I was given this name because I was first seen in this family on the date of Preston Osmon Howard’s birthday.[1] He was my great-grandfather. My mother always said he was a very good man and she insisted that I be called after him.
The date of my birth is March 7, 1917, and the place is Andover, Maine. My brother Guy had been born thirteen months earlier, in March of 1916, in the Howard farmhouse in East Andover — the same house where my mother had been born. I was born about thirty days before the United States entered World War I. Having two children and a farmer’s occupation was probably the reason my dad was not drafted into the army. He always said it wasn’t because of that but because of his flat feet.
My mother, Lucetta Dorcas Howard, was born on May 23, 1894, in East Andover. She was the second daughter of Mary Glover Howard and Marshall Hazen Abbott Howard. Dorcas is a biblical name. She was known locally as “Letty” even though she disliked nicknames.
When my mother was a girl she lived on a farm about a mile north of the house in North Rumford where her great-grandfather, Osmon O.P. Howard, had lived — a house that is now on the National Historical Record.
She graduated from high school in Andover and then went to Gorham Normal School, which is now part of the University of Maine. She was very homesick. Grandfather Howard took time off from his work on the farm to go see her. Now, you have to understand that my grandfather was not a man with leisure time. Everything he did was seasonal — if the work didn’t get done on time, it didn’t get done. For him to leave the farm and travel to Gorham meant that he thought the situation was serious. My mother stayed and finished the two years. She was raised to work and raised to learn, and there was no contradiction between the two. She then taught in Rumford and in Andover.
The green Andover book — a local history[2] — has a photograph on page 97 of Letty Howard with her grades one through four in front of the Elm Street School in 1915. The same book lists Lucetta Howard as teaching in the winter and spring of 1915 and 1916 in the Village Primary School. I question this, as my mother and father were married on June 30, 1915, and my brother Guy was born in March of 1916.
My father, Guy Leroy Akers, was born on February 19, 1892, in Andover. He was the second son of Lewis Crockett Akers and Annie Andrews Akers. His family consisted of brothers Lewis Webster, George, Victor, and John, and sisters Effie and Olive.
He graduated from high school in Andover and was admitted to Kent’s Hill School as a post-graduate through the influence of a doctor friend of his father’s. It is unclear whether he finished one year at school or if he quit. I am inclined to think he didn’t finish. He got a job driving a stagecoach, probably in the Lewiston-Auburn area, where he had to carry a nickel-plated handgun. He did not like carrying the weapon and did not like handguns.
He also worked for a time in the wood scaling camps, measuring timber that had already been cut so that the men would get credit for doing the cutting. It got awful cold in those camps. He wrote home about how cold it was. Grandfather Akers wrote back, but he did not ask about the cold. He asked about the mice.
Dad said they grew and multiplied. My grandfather wrote back to say get some new thermometers that have mercury in them. He was to put food around the thermometers for the mice. When it got too cold the glass broke and the mercury shot out and killed three of the mice.
This was one of my dad’s favorite tales to tell.
Numerous stories have been told about my mother’s childhood. One of them I find particularly delightful.
When my mother and her sister Gladys were small girls they spent a good deal of their time outdoors. That was the way it was on a farm — the children were expected to keep themselves occupied, and the fields and woods around the house were where they went. One day the two of them had been wandering in the field when they came across a group of animals cavorting in the grass. The animals seemed to be unaware of the girls. They had black fur, white stripes, and seemed cuddly. One of the girls said they thought the animals must be orphans.
The girls gathered them up in their aprons and brought them home to their mother, Mary Howard. Mary took one look at the animals and screamed, as she knew right away that they were baby skunks. She almost fainted with shock.
I can remember my mother telling this story over and over again.
My father and his brother Webster told the story that one time they wanted badly to go fishing at the start of fishing season. They were told by their mother that she expected them to attend the revival meeting that was planned for the next three days. When their mother expected something, that was the end of the discussion.
Their only hope was Uncle Charles. Uncle Charles was a faithful attendee of revival meetings, but he was also an old man, and old men sometimes fell asleep during long services. The boys figured that if Uncle Charles dozed off, they might be able to slip out without being noticed.
So they watched him. For three days they sat through the services and watched Uncle Charles. He tossed and he turned. He shifted in his seat.
But even though his attention seemed to wander, he never closed both of his eyes. The boys watched him for three days and he watched them right back. The start of fishing season came and went.
It was many years later that the boys found out Uncle Charles had a glass eye — and that he couldn’t have closed it if he’d tried.
My dad and his brother, Uncle Webby, courted the Howard girls. I do not know how long the courtship lasted or how it began, but I know how one evening of it ended.
One winter night the young men were visiting at the Howard farmhouse in East Andover. At some point they were asked to leave, as it was getting late — probably around 8:30. That was the way courting worked in those days. You came, you sat in the parlor, and when the family decided the evening was over you were expected to go. Each young man had come in his own horse and carriage. Somewhere between the front door and the road they decided to race home against each other.
Now, on the way into Andover center there was a covered bridge. This bridge was wide enough for only one carriage. The boys knew this perfectly well. It did not slow them down.
They drove those horses hard through the dark, and the teams arrived at the bridge at exactly the same time. The carriages ran into the sides of the bridge, the horses kept on going, and the two young men were left standing in the road with what was left of their carriages.
These are the same two youngsters who painted a single black stripe around their mother’s house. She is reported to have said, “Guy and Webster, I will lick you when I have the time.”
The Andover Town Records list the marriage plainly. Guy L. Akers, aged 23, of Andover, a laborer, and Lucetta D. Howard, aged 21, of Andover, a teacher, were married on June 30, 1915, by Geo. M. Graham, Clergyman. The young man who had raced his carriage into a covered bridge was now on the town record as someone’s husband. The young woman who had stayed and finished at Gorham was listed by the occupation she had earned there.
That same summer they both went up to the Rangely House in Rangeley — my father to be a groundskeeper for the summer people, and my mother to wait on tables. By the following March my brother Guy had arrived, and I followed thirteen months after that.
Late in the fall of 1917, my family moved from Andover to Massachusetts.
The spelling of the middle name varies across family sources: “Osmon” in Robert’s narrative, “Osmond” elsewhere in his draft, and “Osman” in the FamilySearch genealogical record (Preston Osman Howard, 1837–1910). The correct spelling has not been confirmed. ↩︎
“Andover: The First 175 Years”, prepared by the Andover Friday Club, Andover, ME, (1979). ↩︎