Charleston WV – The following events happened on these dates in West Virginia history.
To read more, go to e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia at www.wvencyclopedia.org.
June 6, 1892: Entrepreneur Donald F. Duncan was born in Ohio but grew up in
Huntington. Duncan founded the Duncan Yo-Yo Company and the Duncan Parking Meter
Corporation.
June 6, 1954: Cynthia Rylant, author of more than 100 books for young people, was born
in Hopewell, Virginia, and raised in southern West Virginia. She has been honored with the
prestigious Caldecott and John Newbery medals.
June 7, 1899: Congresswoman Elizabeth Kee was born in Radford, Virginia. She became
West Virginia’s first female member of Congress in 1951.
June 7, 1926: An explosion at a sand mining operation in Morgan County killed six men.
Their deaths were the inspiration for the ballad “The Miner’s Doom.”
June 9, 1927: Karl Dewey Myers was named the state’s first poet laureate by Governor
Howard Mason Gore. Myers held the post for 10 years.
June 9, 1957: T. D. Jakes was born in South Charleston. As a boy, he preached to
imaginary congregations and carried a Bible to school, which earned him the nickname “Bible
Boy.” He is the senior pastor at the Potter’s House, a nondenominational church in Dallas,
Texas.
June 10, 1775: The Berkeley County Riflemen were organized by Capt. Hugh
Stephenson of Shepherdstown, in response to a call for Revolutionary War soldiers by Gen.
George Washington.
June 10, 1921: Labor leader Daniel Vincent Maroney was born on Cabin Creek,
Kanawha County. Maroney served as international president of the Amalgamated Transit Union
from 1973 to 1981.
June 11, 1866: Architect Elmer Forrest Jacobs was born in Preston County. His work can
be seen particularly in downtown Morgantown, in residential South Park, and on the West
Virginia University campus. Most of his Morgantown buildings are now listed in the National
Register of Historic Places.
June 12, 2006: Robert C. Byrd became the longest-serving United States senator in
history. He served in the Senate from 1959 until his death in 2010. His record was broken in
2013, by Congressman John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, but Byrd still retains the Senate
record.