Dave Rock
St.
Clair County Courier
5 May 2005
A Look at History
Dave Rock and the Akers family
Dave Rock is a natural area southwest of Lowry City owned by the Missouri Conservation Commission. It is on a 133 acre tract of land and rock, one mile south and west of Lowry City. Sixty percent of this is forested. The remaining 40 percent is hay and cropland and the largest sandstone glade in Missouri, which gives the area its name.
Impervious sandstone underlying the natural area bulges up through the surface, exposing a 10 acre shelf of ancient, weathered rock. The glade is composed of bare rock covered with a wide variety of mosses and lichens. Soil ahs developed in some areas where varying small stunted plants have developed. A few stunted, twisted picturesque trees, full grown, but often less than six feet tall may also be found there. It is being managed in a savanna habitat, an open park like grassy woodland. Plants there are little bluestem, rushfoil and poverty grass. Black Jack, post oak and hickory make up the woodland.
Deer, quail, rabbits, squirrels and doves can be found here. It is a great area for nature study and bird watching. Hunting is permitted at anytime during the regular hunting seasons. Motor vehicles and horses are restricted to gravel roads and parking areas. Loitering and actions aimed at destroying the area are prohibited, which did happen and caused the area to be closed most of the time. Land around the area is privately owned and good manners are needed.
This is the area chosen by William E. Akers, 1817–1865, to settle when he and his first wife, Sarah Eliz Brown, 1820-1848, and their four children moved here from Lewis County in 1861 because of the slavery turmoil. William was a preacher in the Southern Methodist Church. He was too old for service in the Confederate Army, so he was rejected. He, being very much against slavery, was probably the reason for his merciless death. Early dawn of April 1865, three bushwackers stopped at his home asking for breakfast. While his second wife, Jane, 1827–1907, a sister to his first wife, was fixing the meal, they murdered William by breaking his neck, severing the jugular vein. This happened as he sat silently reading his Bible and some of his children were in a trundle bed near him. Jane and the neighbors buried him the next day close to the Dave Rock, enclosing his lonely grave in an iron fence, which still remains. It is still visited by many of his descendants.
Jane moved in 1865 with her children to a farm William had purchased east of Lowry City, but is no longer owned by a member of his family. William and Jane’s children were John, Margaret, Ann, Thomas Benjamin, Nancy A., James Killey, Lewis Allen, Amanda Melvina, Martin Luther and Laura Jane.
Lewis “Doc”, 1858–1933, was six years old when his father was murdered and moved with the rest of the family. He stayed on the farm and cared for his mother even after he married Jane Lyon, 1866–1924. In 1904 he began building a new house along side the log cabin that had been their home for several years. This was on Big Muddy Creek and still stands. It was designated a century home in 1985. It has had some improvements but is basically the same. It was last occupied by one of his daughters, Lesta Lucille, 1905-1997. She and her sister, Marget, stayed and cared for their mother until she passed away. Doc and Jane’s children were Melvin, Edna Mae, Beulah Faye, Virgil, Herschell, Lesta and Sarah Margaret.
Lesta never married and was a school teacher most of her life. Lesta and most of the family are buried in the Lowry City Cemetery. More of the Aker family history may be found in the society’s “Family History Volume 1”. Information on Dave Rock came from the Internet and the conservation office in Clinton.
Additional Information can be found at:
http://www.conservation.state.mo.us/areas/natareas/p112-2.htm