Athens Taxi Service

Margaret Ann Scott, in 1984 Mercer County History stated that “Charlie Martin for a time in the early 1900s ran a taxi service from Athens to Princeton.” Charlie Martin was the father of Dorsey Martin, a teacher at Athens High School.

Emmett Lee ‘Zeke’ Rutherford (1893-1972) was the son of Thomas Rutherford and Mary Richardson. He first married Gladys Lucille Roseberry (1894-1942). After her death he married Ruth Dexter Caperton (1901-1977) in 1948.

According to information furnished by long-time  Athens resident Nancy Belcher, “Zeke Rutherford owned the Athens Taxi Service during the late 1940s and early 1950s.”  In a local school yearbook he advertised modern cabs, courteous service, low rates, telephone #74 in Athens, West Virginia. The two digit telephone number was the same number used by White’s Cash Store. This suggests that the Taxi Service was located in the building on State Street where the Athens Town Hall is located.

In 1940 Zeke Rutherford and David A, Snider were neighbors, living beside each other in Lerona, West Virginia.  Both Zeke Rutherford and David Snider were managers of a retail grocery store at that time. David’s son Arlie Conley Snider and his wife Cora Ann Huffman ran a retail grocery store, probably Athens Cash Grocery, in the same building on State Street that is now the Athens Town Hall. 

Over the years, Zeke Rutherford had been a teacher, a school bus driver for Mercer County, retiring in 1958, and an employee of Concord College. 

Mrs. Nancy Belcher remembers that Zeke Rutherford was once the town policeman.  She said, “Athens had parking meters at the time Zeke Rutherford was the town policeman. When he was patrolling the streets and saw the time had expired on the meter, instead of writing a ticket he would put money in the meter.”

As reported in the Beckley Post Herald and Register on August 9, 1959, Zeke Rutherford had a 112 acre farm in Lerona, West Virginia, where he raised Hereford beef cattle. Because of all the improvements he had made to the farm, in 1959 he was chosen the winner of the Southern Soil Conservation contest. Except for seasonal help he and his wife Ruth, who was a teacher at Knob School in Princeton, ran the farm by themselves.

Emmett Lee ‘Zeke’ Rutherford died in 1972 at the age of 79. He is buried in the Athens Cemetery.