Albert Rogers

James Albert Rogers was born on September 28, 1903, in Powell County, Kentucky, the eldest son of Hezekiah Rogers and Rutha (Bishop) Rogers. He entered the world in the hills of eastern Kentucky, where family, faith, and hard work shaped daily life.

Albert’s youth was forever marked by loss. In December of 1918, during the devastating influenza epidemic, both of his parents passed away within days of one another. At only fifteen years old, Albert and his siblings were left without father or mother. By 1920, he was living in Rogers Chapel in Powell County in the household of relatives. Childhood ended early for him, and responsibility came sooner than it should have.

On December 30, 1925, Albert married Mary C. Jones in Powell County. A marriage notice described him as the orphaned son of “Izzie Rogers” and noted that the young couple would begin housekeeping on the Bratton lease where Albert was employed. Their beginning was modest, but it was built on determination and steady effort.

That same year, Albert was appointed legal guardian of his younger siblings. At just twenty-two years of age, newly married and establishing his own home, he accepted the duty of helping guide those who were still underage after their parents’ passing. It was a quiet but powerful testament to his character.

In 1927, Albert and Mary welcomed their daughter, Glenda Lee Rogers. Photographs from the late 1920s and early 1930s show Albert standing beside Mary and her sister Nannie (Jones) Tipton, and gathered with his siblings and extended family. Those images reflect the closeness that held the Rogers children together after hardship and loss.

By 1940, Albert was living in Clark County, Kentucky, working as a grocer. A decade later, he was employed as a truck driver for a bus company in Winchester. In his later years, he worked for the Kentucky State Highway Department, remaining steadily employed until the time of his death.

Photographs from the late 1950s and early 1960s show Albert standing outside his Winchester home on Hughes Avenue with Mary, and sometimes with their daughter Glenda and her husband Calvin Herndon. The young orphaned son of 1918 had grown into a husband, father, and provider. He had built a home and carried his responsibilities faithfully.

James Albert Rogers passed away on October 21, 1966, at St. Joseph Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, at the age of sixty-three. He was laid to rest in Winchester Cemetery in Clark County.

His life was not marked by grand headlines, but by steady duty. Orphaned young, entrusted with his siblings, devoted to his wife, and faithful in his work, Albert lived the kind of life that anchors a family — quiet, dependable, and rooted in Kentucky soil.