Marshall County, West Virginia    Biography of Robert Gillespie DAKAN

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Submitted by Valerie Crook, <vfcrook@earthlink.net>, March 1999
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The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., 
Chicago and New York, Volume III, pg. 32-33

ROBERT GILLESPIE DAKAN has developed at Rosbys
Rock, Marshall County, a large and prosperous general
merchandise business, in which he is now associated with
his sons Joseph E. and George B., under the firm name of
R. G. Dakan & Sons. Mr. Dakan was born at Glen Easton,
this county, November 3, 1861, and is a son of John M. and
Eliza (Terrell) Dakan, the latter's father, Amos Terrell,
having been an influential citizen of his day in Pleasant
Valley, Marshall County. John M. Dakan passed his entire
life in Marshall County and was eighty-two years of age at
the time of his death. His father, William Dakan, came
from Pennsylvania and became a pioneer settler in Marshall
County, the Terrells likewise having come from the old
Keystone State, and the wife of Amos Terrell having been a
member of the old and prominent Braddock family of Penn-
sylvania. Amos Terrell reclaimed and developed one of
the excellent farms of Marshall County, and was one of the
expert hunters of wild game in this section in the early days,
he having died at the age of seventy-eight years. John M.
Dakan learned and followed the carpenter's trade, and later
he engaged in farm enterprise, besides conducting a general
store at Rosbys Rock. For a number of years he con-
ducted a hotel at Weston, Lewis County, and he passed the
closing years of his life in the home of his son Robert G.,
of this sketch, his wife having preceded him to eternal rest
by about three years and having been about eighty years
of age at the time of her death. John M. Dakan was left an
orphan in early youth, and he depended upon his own re-
sources in making his way in the world. He was a man of
sterling character and ever commanded unqualified popular
esteem. Of his children eight attained to years of maturity,
and of the number two sons and four daughters are living in
1921, the elder of the two sons being Joshua, a resident of
Limestone, Marshall County.

Robert G. Dakan gained his early education in the common
schools of his native county and as a boy began to assist
in his father's store. In 1878 he went with his parents to
Weston, and there he assisted in his father's hotel until 1880,
when he returned to Rosbys Rock and became clerk in the
general store of William Lutes, whose daughter he later
married. He has continued his active association with the
mercantile business at this place during the long intervening
years, and now has the distinction of being the oldest mer-
chant on the Fourth Division of the Baltimore & Ohio Rail-
road, between Wheeling and Grafton. In 1882, when Mr.
Dakan purchased the business of his father-in-law, his was
one of three stores at Rosbys Rock, the other two having
been conducted by S. J. EIliott and L. G. Martin, both of
the other stores having eventually been purchased by Mr.
Dakan, who consolidated the stocks of goods with that of
his original establishment. He has been a successful buyer
and shipper of grain and live stock, besides which he is
associated with Mr. Cox, of Cameron, in the buying and ship-
ping of wool upon an extensive scale, the firm having shipped
more than 300,000 pounds in the season of 1921, and its
average annual expenditure for wool being $100,000. For
several years Mr. Dakan was a member of the firm of Dakan
& Sivert, which conducted a store at Moundsville. The
mercantile trade of R. G. Dakan & Sons at Rosbys Rock
has grown to large volume and extends over a wide radius
of country tributary to this thriving village. The two sons
were admitted to partnership in 1917. Mr. Dakan has been
prominent in the local councils of the democratic party, and
was his party's nominee for sheriff of the county, but was un-
able to overcome the large republican majority. For the
past twenty years he has served as delegate to the state
conventions of his party in West Virginia.

At the age of twenty-one years Mr. Dakan married Miss
Elizabeth J. Lutes, and of their four children the eldest son,
Henry G., died at the age of thirty-two years, he having
had active charge of his father's farm at the time, and his
widow and four sons being still on the farm, the sons being
Harold, Robert, Lawrence and Howard. Bessie, eldest of
the children, is the wife of C. E. Bonar, of Lisbon, Ohio;

and Joseph E. and George B. are partners in their father's
mercantile business. Joseph E. married Rhea Gorby, and
they have one son, Joseph E., Jr. George B. married Miss
Eliza Kull, and they have one son, George Bruce, Jr.