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Interview with J. F. Parker
Tape 467A, Side 1
. . . Trying to get a special election in the county to improve the
schools in a certain county in a district, a certain precinct of the county,
and I was looking after a little county store for my brother-in-law and
while he was not busy I was trying to get people to promise to vote for
day
the bond. He came to the store and said to me one.'i when we'd been playing
checkers and I'd beat him two or three times, he said, "How would you like
to teach?"
I said, "Teach what?" He said, "Teach school."
I said, ''Why
I've not ever finished high school." He said, ''Well" says "I believe you
could teach." Well that gave me a boost.
I had never worked at anything
where it's anything more than just common labor and fact of the matter,
I'd left home when I was a boy, about sixteen, and went to work for this
man.
My job was not only putting in work 10 hours a day but when I got
in from my work in the sawmill or in the woods, I milked the cows after
dark.
A lot of times I felt for something, I says, "I think the cow's out
there, I felt her but I didn't see her." So that was my job and that's working
for 40 cents a day and I worked all slUTITler and he owed me sixty some dollars
and he didn't pay me anything.
He just fed me, and I went home on Saturday
night, went back to work on Monday morning and he owed me $6S.
When he
started to pay me, to pay me up, he said, "You know, if you worked on for
me a little longer I'll pay you SO cents a day." Well at 10 cents a day,
I jumped at it.
that.
I worked on a lot longer at
~~~~~~~~~~~~~-
But in the meanwhile I was looking out for this little county store
and the superintendent tried to talk me into going to teach school.
I'd been away from home .thru high school.
high school.
Well
You had to go away from home to
There was no high school in McDowell County and there was an
academy in the adjoining county down here known as Round Hill Academy.
�2
It was supported by the Baptist denomination and was quite a prominent
high school at one time.
and Wake Forest.
It was rated well with such places as the university
They'd accept those boys and girls who came out of that school.
And I had gone down there a couple of years ... and that tickled me and I said,
"Yes, I'll take that!"
He said "Alright, if you'll come down to Marion
we're going to have an examination for those who want to teach and
-------
so I come down here and I stood the examination and didn't
think it was very hard, and got along pretty good 1 thought.
good in arithmatic.
I was always
As I was really a year or two ahead of my class
in that, I was always interested in that and I want to say this about
arithmatic and mathematics--I have never seen a good mathematiciam who was
a blllil.
I have never seen a good mathematician that was a deadbeat.
And I ...
Of course, you say I'm trying to make you think that I'm the real thing
(Laughter) because I was good in that and I went on and did the best I could
in that work.
So I stood the examination and the last day of the examination
I was preparing to go back home and he saw me out there and he says, "Julius,
come in here."
I went on in there and he says, "The man here wants to hire
you to teach school." And I says, "I don't know if I passed the examination
or not." And he patted me on the back and said, "Don;t you let that worry you."
(Laughter)
He was going to send me on to teach school! Whether I knew anything ·
or not!
somewhere.
in there.
(Laughter)
So now he sent me
He sent me back up here in these mountains and there's no roads
Two-thirds of the way up there you were in the creek, you're
either on this side of the creek and on that side of the creek and most of
the time you're in the creek, and I finally got up there.
Well I didn't
know where to go to get a boarding place and I didn't know where the man lived
that hired me, so I
over across the field where
there was a pretty rough looking place over there and I though I'd try
to find out if something was over there.
I told them Iw-anted a place to board.
�3
The girl said to me, says, ''Well the school teachers always board with us
when they're up here."
I looked the situation over and it looked pretty
rough but I said, ''Well, do you suppose you could keep me?" Says, "Well
I guess so.
Mother'll be back in a little bit.
She could tell you."
She came in, happy also, and says, "Yes, just come on in here and stay with
us, we'd be glad to have you.'' The room that I's to, for my room, was a
side room out to the side of the house and they didn't have any floor in the
place.
that.
They'd laid plank down on the ground then put the bed kindly up on
Well, you know what?
I wasn't afraid of those people up there
although they were some of em not much.
But I wasn't afraid of those people
because I'll tell you what I was afraid of.
They's snakes all over the place
and I was afraid to get out of bed at night on the ground.
step on a snake.
I was afraid I'd
So I tried to stay in bed in the morning until I could see
where I was going, but I never did get snake bit.
But I'll tell you, that
was one of my problems.
I went on to school Sunday morning, Sunday school.
And when I got there
I hadn't quite seen anything like that that was going on there.
TI1e young
men and the young women had cornered off over there and the schoolhouse
where they'd have preaching is about half as big as this, just a little place,
hold 25 or 30 people, and these young people had cornered off over there and
they kept doing something that I didn't understand what in the world was
taking place.
I kept watching to see what it was and I'd see em move this
way and move over that away and on back around and I kept wondering, ''What's
taking place here?" And after awhile I saw that they had a snuffbox, a
great big old snuffbox, you know.
And what they was doing, they had a stick
about that long, called a toothbrush, made out of gum, and passed around to
this girl and she'd put that in there and put it in her mouth and pass it on
to her boyfriend and he'd put his stick in there and pass it on around.
And they . . . most thing that bluffed me, I had known that people dipped
�4
snuff but I didn't know it was like that.
Usually, you know people chew
tobacco, chew, and use snuff, they have to have a place to dispose of something.
And where do you suppose they put it? On the floor.
bwh r bwh!
(Laughter)
And I thought to myself, "My God!
Just . . . bwh!
Am I going to have
to teach school in this place?" Well I'd gone up there like I was going to
set the world on fire and I couldn't run off.
My brother had carried me
up there, (he) said, ''You're a fool for staying up here, let's get out of
here 'fore we get killed!"
I said, "No".
I was staying.
So :Monday morning
ent over there bright and early to clean up that schoolhouse and it
I w
tobacco, tobacco
had dried. And when I'd sweep that, it'd just, /\ you know, dust came
up in my face.
Well everybody up there told me about a little character who
had given so much trouble that the teacher just couldn't do anything with
him.
He was just a little devil and there was no way anyone else could make
anything out of him.
looking for Avery.
So I found out his name was Avery Elliot.
Everybody had been telling about how mean Avery was.
He'd tie the school up and he'd run you off and all like that.
watching for Avery and sure
morning.
bit.
I kept
enough ~
I kept
he came in with the other children one
I said, ''Hello Avery." He kinda looked up at me and grinned a little
All teachers were enemies of his.
Of general principle, there was no
teacher that was any good in his way of seeing things.
of his to start with, he'd expect it.
And they were enemies
So I was determined that I was not
going to have a fight with him.
I had been a boy myself and I knew some of
these things myself, you know.
So I determined I was going to have trouble
and I begin to try to get on the good side of him, but he wouldn't make
friends.
Didn't want you about.
So about the second or third day of school,
a little boy or a little girl one came up to me where I was behind the table
up there.
They said, "Avery has got a snake in the schoolhouse." I said,
"Got a snake!" They said, "Yes!"
I got up and went back there and says,
�"Avery, where's that snake?" · (Laughter) He says, "Down here."
I said,
''What are you going to do with it?" He said, ''Well, I guess I'll keep it
a few days and kill it."
I said, "What kind of snake is it?" He said,
"Ah, it's an old moccasin."
I said "That's interesting, where does those
moccasins live around here?" He said, "Ah, they're up and down the creek
everywhere.
You can catch em any time."
to do with it?"
I said, ''Well, uh, what we going
I says, "I want in on this thing.
I want to help you see
what we can learn from that snake." And he began to get interested.
finally said to me, he said, "Do you like snakes?"
He
I said, "'No, I don't
like em but," I said, "I'd like to know about them!" So we finally got to
where we could make the plan that we'd get a big bottle.
We'd put that
sn:.ake in it and put some water in the bottle with the snake.
And before we
put the stopper in there, we'd cut a notch on top of that up there so he could
get breath in there, and he'd have the water, and then we planned what he
was going to eat.
Well the whole school were complete1y· dtm1.bfounded.
were surprised beyond question that I didn't take him up
beat him to death 'cause he had a snake that day.
by
They
the nap of the neck and
· · We put that snake up in the
schoolhouse and he said,"The eat crawfish and they eat spring lizards."
"Well could
we'"'catch
I says,
a spring lizard?" He said, ''Yes sir, I can catch one."
So he went down there and caught a spring lizard and we put that spring lizard in
there with the snake and put him up here on exhibition.
he was my friend.
From that day on
I saw him not long ago at a bank here in Marion.
someone call my narne--the teller or someone had called my name.
'
Heard
And there was
..
an old, old man came over there, all drooped and face wrinkled, and asked me,
he says, "Is this Julius Parker?"
know me, do you?"
I said, "That's right." He says, ''You don't
I said, I looked at him and I said, " No, I"m sorry, I don't."
He said, "I 1·m Avery Elliot".
(Laughter)
But the thing about it was that that kind of a school interested those
people up there.
And I stayed with it, I suffered through it and I had ...
�SB
where the teachers had been going up - and I'm a bragging on myself just
a little bit - the teachers who had been going up there, they a lot of times
didn't teach the school out a all but they got disgusted and just pulled
up and left, and said the number of attendance there were always gotten so
few that the teachers just quit and went on.
But the day I left up there,
in that school I had more children than I knew what to do with.
Wife:
We had a picture once of those, didn't we.
Oh, I wish I had that picture.
It'd be interesting.
But those people are .
different motmtain people of what I'm talking to you about than other mountain
people 'cause it's a difference right here in this county when you talk about
the motmtain people.
There's a distinction between . . . there's different
groups in the cotmty.
They were hardy people.
A mountaineer, a real mountain-
eer, has gone through so much hard times and everything that they are toughened.
It takes a certain amount of failures in life to make a person what they should
be.
I remember another incident about . . .
Wife:
Excuse me honey, tell em about the incident, said one day
somebody called and said the snake was eatin a lizard.
Yes! (Laughter)
That's right.
The snake and the lizard lived there together
ever so long, about 3 weeks, 4 weeks, or maybe a month, before the snake
decided to have dinner.
(Laughter)
Some child came to me and says,
'~4r.
Parker, they's eatin the lizard!" Everybody gathered up to watch him eat the
lizard.
(Laughter)
Wife:
Go ahead now.
We had a wonderful school.
The little children came and before I knew anything
about teaching at all in those days, I figured out this:
in many instances
from the simple fact that they're not interested in
what they're teaching.
Y6u must become involved in what you teach .before you
can get the pupils interested.
Interviewer:
teachers are a failure
Arn I right or wrong?
That's real true.
�6
Another instance where the mountain people here, they're not easy, they're
not easy to change their mind, was a few years ago, many years ago, it was
about 1908 or 1909 in Rowan County there's a Negro down there by the name of
Nat Crumb that tried to assassinate the sheriff of the county.
to do it.
He was hired
And he shot the sheriff of Rowan County and they found out who
it was by some means, I don't know what means, but they got after him and
tried to catch him.
Well he kept dodging the officers.
In those days you
didn't have cars., you didn't have phones, you didn't have anything like that
so you could keep strictly in behind a criminal and he worked himself on
into McDowell County.
But pretty well scattered, they were looking for him
and there was a warrant for him of $1,000 reward for his capture,
He came
here near Marion and they spotted him and had a shootout with the officers
here and he ran the officers instead of them catching him.
He ran them and
he went into the woods and they were afraid to go in after him and so he kept
working his way on up towards .farther and farther westward he got up here
to Old Fort.
Well I don't know whether you know anything at all about Old
Fort or not .
Interviewer:
Not very much, no.
Well they're a pretty tough bunch up there.
people.
It's a mountain town.
Have always been, those mountain
It was a town before Marion was ever made a
mountain town, before it was ever made a town.
Wife:
The Indians had a fort up there.
Yes, that's right.
at Old Fort.
And, uh. . .
That's the first block where we stopped the Indians there
That is from this way.
Now Daniel Boone, he went from Boone back
across those mountains that way but Daniel Boone never did come up this way.
But anyway, Old Fort was an old, old town that has a population of 600 people,
6 or 700 people.
But if you want trouble, if you're ever looking for trouble,
why . . . it's available.
Wife:
(Laughter)
What was you saying when I interrupted you?
�7
So this Negro, he didn't know what he was getting in to.
He had gone up
there into the mountains and those people around Old Fort . . . now there's
a rather odd thing about those mountain people up there, they were opposed
to the Civil War.
They thought that there was a mistake when the South
tried to succeed from the Union.
stay in the Union.
They were for the Union.
And they were opposed to the people who were slave
owners, all this section south and east of us here.
the
people was :in favor of freein A Negro.
Wife:
They wanted to
Come in Frank.
And so these mountain
Thi s i s our son, our farmer's son.
(Laughter)
We got him out on the
Son:
Wife:
They're recording.
They're recording.
Well, I better hush, hadn't I?
(Laughter)
They were in favor of freeing the Negro but they didn't like the Negroes.
They didn't want em about em.
the idea?
They didn't want em up there.
Can you get
So they wanted to free them, they thought it was wrong to do
it, but yet they didn't want them.
They wanted them to Sa.y out of their
way. Well that feeling grew up for many years after the Civil War and this
Negro who had been a shootin up these officers along the way here, he run on
to Old Fort and they found that he was in that connrrunity.
him.
Someone had seen
But at that time the Southern railway had what was called a helper.
It was an extra engine that was placed at Old Fort when the train came through
here with a heavy load going west.
They'd hook this helper on to the train
and pull it across to Ridgecrest and they they'd unhook and bring the helper
back to Old Fort and wait until another train would pull up.
So the people
there in Old Fort was armed with everything they had, pistols and shotguns.
So they's two boys, one was 17 and one was 18.
One of em was named Linville
Idle - that was the younger one of the two, and the other one was named Walt
Porter.
I think they were cousins.
He was 18, I think that's the way.
�8
And they were there at the depot that night, was a sittin there at the depot
with their
guns" ":. Well
.'
the engineer who was at that time running this, I
·-
mean the engineer who was n.mn.ing this helper out to Ridgecrest came back
from one of his trips.
He'd just pulled across, he said "Lim, I saw that nigger
up here on the railroad."
I saw him as I went up.
They said, " You don't say?"
He's on the railroad."
Said, "Yes, I saw him!
and says--those trains as they
went across there pulling a heavy load, they couldn't run fast on those heavy grades
up there, you know--and "he tried to swing a train up there,"
says, "I'm sure
he's trying to get away from here." And said "If you boys are really spunk to do
it, I believe you could go up there and catch that feller tonight.
l'm going
back and pull # 35 across in a few minutes and I Ill take you up there and
drop you off."
I~
n
Said, "we'll slow down, I'll have an understanding with the other
engineer on the other engine." They had an engineer on each one of those steam
locomotives, you know, in those days, and said, "I'll drop you off up there." Well,
they made it up how they were going to do· it and so when #35 came up, that was a
passenger train, he's going to pull across.
These boys got on the engine with
Ed Winslow and sure enough, they got to about Round Knob, that's 4 or 5 miles above
Old Fort, I'll show you a picture of that directly, they saw him. Still trying to
make his way across there walking and kept hoping he could catch a train to get
away from here.
And so as they passed by they slowed down and those boys swung out.
Well, the plan that these boys had for catching him--you know you didn't have
flashlights in those days, you had a lantern you know what an old time lantern
was-- they decided that they would put this coat over the lantern and hide on the
side of the road.
And when he came up they could hear him walking.
And when he came
up one little. boy ·would .pull the light on him and the other one'd pull the gun on him
and they'd have him.
Well when they came up there, the boy that had the light
in this lantern under his coat had smothered the light out and he didn't have any
light.
But they made a noise
�9
and he said, "OH!" Like that.
And when they did that they begin :.. to shoot.
Now they claim they told him to halt and he wouldn't halt and they shot
him, but the truth of the matter was that they shot him.
whether they shot
caught him.
And I don't know
g: running or whether they shot him, uh, when, but they
Hauled;\back to Old Fort,
Now you take boys of that type,
motIDtain boys like that, and you can't head them off.
They're determined,
that stock in them was just simply so ingraded into their lives that they
didn't like a Negro and they wanted a thousand dollars and that was it.
But I've had other means to find out - talking about motIDtain people
and the other more, possibly those who have had better opportlIDities than
these mountain people have - besides these occasions to know that they are of
a different background and they are interesting people.
In 1928 I was
working then
END OF TAPE I, SIDE I
when this crowd came in here from West Virginia or somewhere to organize this
help at the Marion Manufacturing Company.
I fotIDd that they was a marked
difference in the people who were reared in these motIDtains, had moved into
that village there to work,and the people who had come in here from the South
and the East.
We had two groups of people there and they all worked together,
but they didn't think alike.
So when this strike was about to come off, they
had an almost even split in the people for and against the union.
The people
from the motIDtains, they just thought to themselves that "this has been a
blessing to us that we came here and had a job." The people we~e working for
have paid us
very well.
cash at the end of each week and we~e making a · living..'.and doing
And the group that came in here from other places seemed to think
that the company were thieves and taking advantage of the poor working man
and getting rich.
And so there's a difference in that feeling there and it
developed into a very serious affair.
Do either one of you know anything
�10.
about the strike at the Marion Manufacturing Company in 1928? Have you ever
heard of it? Well it was quite a serious matter.
It went on for ... finally
closed the mill down and crune to the place where the people who were opposed
to the union decided that they were going to work.
if they could work to go work,
and let them work.
And the company told them
they'd opened the mill and turned the power on
And this group that was for the tmion, they was just as
detennined they were not a going to work.
line to stop them from going anywhere.
1hey put up what's called a picket
Well, you can see from this standpoint
that this was becomong a dangerous situation and on a certain morning and on a
certain night, they tried to rtm--they were rtmning 3 shifts then--and a certain
night, the night before the strikers had gone into the mill and interfered with
the people who were working and tore down a lot of their work and crune very near
to having a shoot out there.
But the next morning, the officers were there to
assist the people who wanted to work to go into the mill and this crowd was,
people who were striking, were just as detennined that they were not going into
the mill.
Well, that was it, the sheriff was there and he told em when they
gathered up around there, gangs of them 150 to 2 or 300 people, says, "now stand
back, these people are going to work and you got to open this up so they can work."
About that time one of the strikers had what's called a picker stick.
You know what that Is? A Picker Stick? 111.at's a stick that's on a loom to
knock the shuttle that away and knock the shuttle this away.
knocked the sherrif down and jlllllped on him.
killed him.
And he off and
Well when he did that, someone
Killed the man that was on the sherrif.
And from that, both sides
went to shootin and when the fight was over, I didn't see it, it was a little
before I went down to go to work, they was seven on the grotmd dead there
and I don't know how many got shot up.
Some of em had a bullet through their
hats and some of them had bullets in their legs and everything else.
down there that morning and it was kind of a sad time.
Well I got
Said, ''Who was killed, John?"
�ll
Bill was killed too.
And so they was one fellow there by the name of Bill
Twigs. . He was a character, he was , from back here in the motmtains.
was on the side against the llllion, and he was cut all to pieces.
knew where Bill got thsoe cuts on his chest and arms.
And he
I never
Some said Bill calimed
he's in the First World War and had to fight hand-in-hand with the Germans
and other people told me it's not so, said he'd been fightin back here.
He'd manage to get all cut to pieces.
But Bill was in it and he was the one they had accused of shootin with a
pistol in his hand and this story wouldn't be complete llllless you tell
something about Bill Twigs.
He never knew what the word "no" was.
It did
not make any difference what you asked him to do or if he could do it, the
only word he knew was "yes".
My boss talked to me about it one day and he said
'
to me, he said, : You know, if I should go to Bill and say, Bill, I've
got to go to San Francisco on a leave and just as quick as possible, I'm
going to drive through in my car and I want you to drive £or me, Bill. Now how
quick can you be ready?"
Bill would say, ""In fifteen minutes!"
He always got anything done in fifteen minutes.
(Laughter)
Bill was there that day and
he had a part in that shooting and when he was tried, was tried and such a
mess, never did convict or pllllish anybody for that killing.
know who was guilty and who wasn't guilty.
I don't
But Bill was a character and I want
to tell you ]ust a little bit about him because he was a molllltaineer of special
interest to me.
Like I said a few minutes ago, he didn't know the word "no".
He's back over here till ... back in ... I think it was in Avery Collllty
where Bill was from and he went to a flllleral.
and Bill's telling me about it.
A little girl died over there
He says, "You know I went to a flllleral
and they brought her to the side of the grave, the casket, said everybody just
stopped and stood there.
Didn't know what to do.
Couldn't seem to know how
�12
to proceed." Says, "I didn't lmow what they's a waiting on." Finally someone
turned around, said ."I don;t believe we ought to bury her without having a
word of prayer."
Looked around and nobody never prayed a prayer in their
lives, don't suppose.
If they ever did, nobody'd heard it. Finally said to
Bill, "Bill won't you lead us in prayer?" Well Bill had I reckon connni tted
every crime that you could think of.
And so I said to Bill, ''Well Bill, what
did you do?" He said, "I led the prayer."
I said, ''What did you say?" Says,
"I told the Lord Mary had been a good little girl and I wanted him to take
care of her." And he said, "Before I got through, I said 'We'll be along before
long, better take care of us too.
Make preparations for us.' " (Laughter)
So I said, "Well how did you feel?"
Bill said, "I felt good." And I thought
to myself, ''Well it's a fime thing because it's possibly the first time you
ever prayed or ever will pray!"
Son:
(Laughter)
Oh Lord!
I don't lmow what he's told you but another interesting story at ...
you can't stay for a while, you could stay for three days and he'd still be
talking.
The flu epidemic, when he was working for Marion Manufacturing Company,
just about wiped out everything back in '18.
Flu epidemic was in 18?
Yes.
Son:
Okay,
That was an interesting story about you and the black fellow
whose name I've forgotten.
Yes, well in 1918 and 1919, there was the most deaths that I every lmew from
any cause.
It was the flu epidemic.
talk here, heard about this flu?
times of my life.
Have you ever heard people in your
-----
Will I think that that was one of the trying
I never went through a time like that because it caught the
people completely by surprise.
just began to get sick.
And people began to die.
Nobody had warning that it was coming.
The plant had to shut down,
Nobody able to bury the
Everyone was sick.
People
�13
people. To get a doctor was impossible and they's just 2 of us left.
I was
paymaster at that time at the mill and where we had 6 or 8 or 10 that worked
in the office there, they's all out sick.
1here was one black man by the name
of Hal Carson that didn't get sick and I didn't.
For what reason, I don't
know what I went through it because I was with it everyday.
there and say,"please call the doctor.
get a doctor."
1hey'd come in
Somebody's going to die if you don't
I'd go to the phone and try to get him but the girl at the
office would say, "1he doctor can't possibly come.
He's got, I guess 50
people here wanting him and he just can't possibly come.
Well the first year,
32 people died in a village where the population was about 500 and the second
year, the same thing with 29 died and my friends, people that I knew
and everything.
I told, uh, talking the other day, that I think it was the
most trying time that I ever was.
We hauled coal, the colored man delivered
coal to them, he dilivered wood to them becasue we was selling wood and coal
too along to help.
The store was there adjoining the office, nobody in the store.
People would come by and just want flour and meat or something to eat and
I'd just dish it out to 'em.
1hey never paid for it.
I kept a little record of it
and went on til this dreadful epidemic was passed and I sit down and began to try
to find out who owed what.
Never could do anything much about it.
So we just
forgot it, 'cause the company I expect, spent $10,000.00 just helping the people,
just for everybody.
Now, those are stories connected with the mountain people.
people are different.
about it.
1hey've got a great background.
1he mountain
There's no question
But when this thing about finding out about those people, the time
is so fast passing that what you called "Oral History", I understand that's
where you don't have any documents or records of it--just what people says about it.
It's soon going to be a thing of the past because those people are not
mountain people any mote, in a sense of the word in that they are just like
�14
any other people.
times.
I know you're tired of this.
Interviewer:
Son:
Their children are educated and so on and it's a changing
Oh no ...
Tell 'em about Epler (?) Dad.
Who?
Son:
Tell 'em about Epler.
Well let me first tell 'em about ... now really and truely, when you get enough
of this, be frank and say that's enough.
I'm not sure we'll ever get enough, to tell you the truth Mr. Parker.
Interviewer:
Just either one of you say, "Well that's okay, We got enough for today."
Interviewer:
We don't want you to get too tired.
Well, but first, I want to go back Frank and tell about this.
had~been
The crime
corrmitted of the mountain people which is completely a closed matter.
There's no way in the world ... Now for instance, what I started to tell you was
this.
Not long. . . Well many years ago "tis now, I was sitting one day
at a desk and I wasn't very busy and I picked up a paper, a Morganton paper.
At that time, the editor was Mrs. Beatrice Cobb (?) and she was the editor and I
knew her in a certain way.
And it was interesting to me because she had brought
this out on the paper and made kind of a headline out of it and I got to
reading it.
And it said, in that article, says, ''We have been trying to make
a complete record of the people who have been hanged in Burke County."
And it said one of the famous trials and hanging was the, what? Silvers ...
the name of that ... Silvers woman ...
Son:
Frankie.
Frankie Silvers.
Have you ever heard of Frankie Silvers?
The only
woman who was ever hanged in North Carolina for a crime and she was here
in Morganton.
And Mrs. (Miss) Cobbs said, "In connection with that trial, says,
�15
"we ran across another hanging which took place in Burke County by the name of
a man by the name of Ralph Noblett."
Says, "I have searched my records here
far as I know, everywhere, and I can't find anybody who knows anything about
who Ralph Noblett was, what the crime was or any of the details whatsoever."
But when she said Ralph Noblett, a bell rang in my brain.
a person who knew about it.
It happened to hit
Now this crime was cormnitted before McDowell County
was made a county which was in 1843 and we were at that time a part of Burke
County.
And so the crime was cormnitted in this part of Burke County but they
carried him to Morganton to try him and that's where the trial was.
So when I
was a boy, a small boy, I'd say not more than 10 or 11 years old, I remember
this story.
There was an old lady who then was almost as old as I am now who
lived over on that side of us.
She had a daughter who lived over on this side
of us and she walked from her home over to see her daughter occasionally and
we were friends.
She always stopped at our house and had lunch.
she was sitting under an apple tree.
And one day
I can almost see that apple tree now.
It was a warm day and we were sitting there and she told about the murder that
Ralph Noblett cormnitted when she was a girl and even before the year 1843 this
crime was corrunitted but she was a young lady at that time, or girl, and for
some reason she was stmm1oned to Burke County as a witness.
story of Ralph Noblett.
And she told the
Now it seems that there was a difficulty came up
between Ralph Noblett and a man by the name of John Davis over hogs getting
into the Davis' cornfield and eating up his corn.
And knowing those days, can
you imagine it, if you raised a corn field, you had to fence your land to keep
the stock who was running in the mountains.
that?
You know . . . did you ever hear of
So that was back in those days, so the Noblett's claimed the reason was
he didn't have any fence.
If he'd built a fence, it'd kept the hogs out.
And he claimed that they were just downright thieves and (would) tear down any
fence to go in there.
And the trouble came up so one afternoon this fellow -
�16
they had became such enemies, had such dreadful hard feelings for one another that this fellow Ralph Noblett decided he ' d settle it with John Davis.
And he
went down there somewhere and found John Davis going from his house down by
the mill to feed his hogs, to feed his own hogs .
He killed him, just hit him
with a club, and he just came down across him and killed him and threw his body
in the mill pond.
Well, they caught him over in Georgia and brought him back
here and tried him and that ' s where the end of it was .
In those days, and I
asked Frank about that the other day, they didn ' t bury that fellow, Ralph
Noblett's body, take it back to the graveyard where other people were buried.
But they buried it off on a lonely hillside by himself and as I used to go to
school as a boy, the trail where I went by the grave of Ralph Noblett, there
was a rock at the head and a foot there that ' s still standing there when I was
a boy.
I never passed there without feeling lonely .
It felt like something
about to . . . kind of sacred ground or something, I don't know what.
And I
went back to see about it several years ago and see if I could find that grave
and long trees was standing there, that big arolilld, you know.
It'd grown up
and not a shadow.
Son:
Dad,
you asked me about that the other day, why he
~~~~~~~~..-:
was buried there.
I referred to that story Secret of Harvest Home, where's
buried outside the cemetery.
Biblical.
And I got to thinking about that and that is
Do you remember the money that Judas took to the priest to give
them for the betrayal? Judas, the Iscari ot
\vhen he betrayed Jesus?
He took the money to the church or to the priest and tried to give it to em .
They took that and bought what became Potter's field and buried him there
and not in the other burial ground and that ' s where that thing . . . I
told you I thought the idea came from Europe somewhere, they brought it over
here.
But when I started thinking about it, it came from the Bible.
the reason they did that .
That ' s
They wouldn't bury him out in the cemetery because
�17
he was a murderer just like Judas was.
(Laughter)
Well I had wondered if you had run across anything like that where it was a
custom that criminals not be buried in there.
Interviewer :
right.
Does that . . .
I haven't heard anything like that.
But I'm sure that's
I haven't . . .
Son : Did you see Secret of Harvest Home . . . on television?
Interviewer:
Son:
Okay.
I've read that book.
You know the woman was buried outside the cemetery . . . I'm
internipting here, I gotta go . . .
Interviewer:
Son:
Oh, no.
That's okay.
I know what you're talking about though.
I thought that might give you some insight as to why Ralph Noblett
was buried over on that hill and not in the cemetery, because the mountain
people, the traditions that they brought with them over here, they stick
to them very closely still now.
If you get back in the mountains, which
if you probably done, you'd find em.
Wife:
Son:
I figured he'd tell about Efler(?)
Okay, I thought that was interesting because of the circumstances
of the hanging .
He is the one they hung at Cross Mill and rode his coffin
up . . • okay I ' ve got some business to attend to.
I hope I see you before
I leave, but if I don't, take care of yourself .
Well I could go on and on and on but I . . .
Wife:
Well you have to tell about Efler?
(Laughter)
He was hanged in
Marion.
Tell about what?
Wife:
Efler.
He's the one Frank had you tell about when you got off on that . . .
�18
Yes that's right.
County .
Now they's only one man that was ever hanged in McDowell
They've been men sent from here to Raleigh since they've had the
electric chair and the gas chamber.
Wife : Maybe you've had that told before.
Interviewer:
No mam, I haven't heard that story.
I sure haven't.
But he was the man that moved from Yancey County across into McDowell County
and here at Buck Creek.
I dont' know whether you noticed Buck Creek as you came
in this away . . . right down here before you got to Pleasant Garden.
back here in these mountains.
Runs right
And on the head waters of Buck Creek there's a
man moved over there and he, for some reason, I don't know why, killed his wife.
And he was hanged here in Marion, the only person that was ever put to death here
in the county.
He was a mountaineer, of course, and they said the whole affair
was almost unbelievable.
That they gave him so much whiskey that morning before
they took him out there to bury him. I knew people who was, when I was a boy,
were at
who
./\ this hanging and they told about it. And told about how drunk he was .
He was so drunk he couldn't stand and possibly didn't know when the execution
took place or anything.
of that rope.
But there was a boy who worked with me who had a piece
His grandfather was one of the ones who helped do the executing.
I think he cut the rope thru the trap that took his life.
I wanted to show you.
. . . pictures . . . which was very co:rrrrnon in . . . I can
remember . . . there's a man plowing , plowing with his ox.
this fellow is riding a donkey somewhere.
I don't know that one.
called Uncle Tom's Cabin, surely nothing could possibly
It's
~~~~~~~~~~-
But these was old pictures taken back when the railroad was cut thru
these mountains.
shovel.
And here of course,
And here's some of the old homes down
here that the mountain people often lived in that.
that.
There's something here
Now those railroads, that railroad was built with a pick and
They had no steam shovels in those days and they just simply had
_mules and ...
END OF TAPE I
SIDE 2
�19
Tape 467B, Side I
That's an old, old picture.
Interviewer:
This is a hotel in Asheville.
And that's the French
Broad River.
Is there a train there somewhere?
Interviewer:
There's a track right there.
There's somewhere where there's a train pulling that mountain that I was
telling you about awhile ago.
Wife:
Is it over here somewhere? Well, maybe it's on this.
Turn on the light and you can see better.
Now this road was a1t through western North Carolina.
thru the Swannanoa Gap at Ridgecrest.
And there's the geyser.
Old Fort.
There'·s where it went
That was all done by pick and shovel.
By the way, they've restored that geyser up here above
I wish you had time to go up there and look at it.
Interviewer:
Well that's really pretty.
There's a train on there.
That
might have been the one that you were thinking about.
There's the little train that was pulling up that mountain.
grade there on those mountains.
That's very steep
I know you're interested in . . .
Wife : You didn't get thru with Efler, honey.
Don't forget him.
Let me see, there's something here that I thought about.
Now, uh, you 're
talking about education and after the Civil War, the North never helped the
South anywhere.
After the war, the South suffered.
They lived someway they
could and it's right interesting to me to notice now that we even help Japan,
�20
Gennany, and all those countries get back on their feet, but after the Civil War
arolll1d
we scramble~d lived somehow or another but there's nobody on relief. We were
poor but everybody else was poor and we didn't know it.
we didn't know it.
We had horses and cows and plenty to eat.
removed off of the table ever meal more than we ate.
not to have an ablll1dance of food.
clothes.
We were poor people but
We had, my mother
We didn't know what it was
We didn't have many clothes, had one suit of
But there's nobody begging.
Nobody living off food stamps.
is a letter that might be of interest to you.
1bat there
1bat letter was . . . now my son who
is in Texas, he is a dean of a textile school at the University of Texas.
my yolll1gest son.
He's younger than Frank.
And he wanted this letter, the original
letter, so they made me a copy of that before he took it off.
And you'll notice
that person there that wrote that letter could write pretty well.
writing.
1bey never went to school a day in their life.
after the Civil War and that was my alll1t.
1874.
1bat was 105 years ago.
1bat's
It's very good
1bere's no schools
And that letter was written on March 5,
And if you could read it, it's quite interesting.
You see, she . . . now this is one . . . she wrote on both sides of her, that . . . and
see here's where it starts.
And that's the second sheet over there.
Read it out
if you can.
Interviewer:
Okay.
1be state of Tennessee, Cooke County, March 5, 1874.
Dear Mother and Father.
I write you a few lines to let you know that I am
well and hope these lines may find you and all well.
it is a girl.
I have another child,
Her name is Tennessee . . . (maybe Ester, maybe).
months old the twelvth of this month.
She is seven
Pap, I (Oh she's seven months old this
month).
No periods, no cormnas, or anything.
(Laughter)
Interviewer:
Pap, I want to know what is the reason you and mother don't
write to me.
It looks like you have forgot me.
all but I can't come at this time to see you.
would come and see me.
I would like to see you
But I would be glad if you
(She has a very good handwriting, she really does.)
�21
I want you to write to me and tell me who is dead and who is married since
I left there .
I want to know what has become of Noah Southers' girl and if
they are married.
duce.
Bacon
12~¢
Give them my respects .
a pound.
Flour 4¢ per pound.
I will give you the price of pro-
Corn 60¢ per bushel .
Wheat $1 . 25 per bushel .
I hear that the Bald Mountain shakes three times a day .
I want to know if it's so .
James is putting out a big crop on the Whitter
(looks like) Luttens ' plantation two miles from Parrotsville.
So I will
close at this time by asking you to write to me and direct your letter to
Parrotsville ML Bearhill Cooke County , East Tennessee .
Now by the way, do you know who John Parrish is?
Interviewer: The writer, the man who writes for the Asheville Citizen
sometimes .
You know who John Parrish is.
Interviewer:
Uhm, Uhm.
Well now read this right here.
Interviewer :
Okay. . . there were widely published reports of volcanic
disturbances about Bald and Stone Mountains in 1874.
These are the highest
peaks in the ridge of mountains a few miles east of the Blue Ridge between
the gathering points of the head waters of the Catawba and Broad Rivers .
Clingman's
reports, articles, and addresses describe many
phenomenon occurring in western North Carolina.
Now that was not too· long ago in the Asheville paper . And this is referred to
in this letter .
Interviewer : That's what she's talking about, isn't it? Volcanic . . .
Rather coincident, i sn't it?
�22
Interviewer:
I never heard of that before.
anywhere in these mountains.
I never heard of volcanoes
What about that.
Sort of like earthquakes
and disturbances that way, wasn't it?
Ulun, uhm.
Interviewer:
Well that's really interesting.
It's rather interesting.
Interviewer:
It certainly is.
She has a fine handwriting.
I can't read aloud as well as I should be.
But she couldn't spell anything, you know.
She really does.
(Laughter)
She couldn't spell anything.
But the
poor thing did well to be able to write and in those days they just didn't have
any books or anything else.
Interviewer:
Well at least she had it spelled where you could figure out
what she was talking about.
That's right.
And that's what the English language is for.·
out what's going on.
Wife:
(Laughter)
To find
Well, I don't know of anything else . .
Are you not going to finish about Efler? Efler, wasn't that his name?
Well, they, that's all they was to that, that I remember.
Wife:
He rode on his coffin to the gallows.
Oh, let me see . . . that's something . . . the reason I have kept that, that was the
uh, called Custard's Last Rally.
You know what that was, when Custard and his
forces were completely destroyed in South Dakota, I reckon it was.
Dakotas.
And I knew him personally.
he was not a fake either.
. .one of the
The only man that survived that fight and
Because he had papers to show from Washington that he
�23
belonged to Custard's a11JlY at this time.
And he had been dispatched with an
Indian guide to go back to General Reno's office.
back to Reno's forces and ask for help.
slaughter.
Not his office, but
And he was away at this
And I knew Mr. Knight, Dan Knight, and I worked with his som.
I knew two of his sons well.
One of them was a graduate of Duke University or
Trinity College at that time, and his other son worked with me and I knew Mr.
Knight well.
And that's the reason I kept that, is because of the fact that,
it's just because I did know the man that wis in that.
you've seen that possibly.
Interviewer:
The only surviving .man ...
(Shuffling papers)
No, I don't believe I have.
Now you know who Frankie Silvers was.
Interviewer:
Uhm, yeah I've heard of her.
Well, have you ever seen that poem?
Interviewer:
I don't believe I've seen the poem, no.
Well, you want to read it too.
Both of them copies are the same.
That's what
she's supposed to have composed before she was hanged.
Interviewer:
Oli, I see.
And she's the only woman to ever be hanged in North
Carolina?
Yeah, Uhm, that's right.
Interviewer:
It was pretty gruesome business wasn't it?
It really was.
Wife:
Would you like a cup of coffee and a piece of pumpkin pie?
Interviewer:
Water'll be fine.
Thank-you mam.
�24
I don't know, goodness knows, that I was possibly the poorest prepared person
that ever tried to teach in the world.
demands than I could possibly fill.
They had no vacation.
But for some unknown reason I had more
They was one year that I taught a solid year.
When they found that I was not busy they asked me to
come to that school and take up in the st.mlJller time when they's supposed to be
farming if
Now I don't say this boastingly because it's
just as much a mystery to me as it is to you, why that was.
But it's so.
And so I went on and I was asked to be principal of the school here at Pleasant
Garden.
Now that was only when they had three teachers down there then and then
they had a school that was considered better at a town called
ville.
I don't suppose you ever heard of it, it was a little place back in the Southern
part of the county here.
It was a gold mining region and they had some stores
there, two or three stores.
Two or three places that sold whiskey and so on.
And so I was asked to come there and I stayed there three years and finished up
my, what I had tried to do as a teacher there.
And I folllld that some of the
brightest students that I'd ever run into were right there in that school.
That
the truth of the matter is that they knew as much as I did and I had to study ever
night to keep them fooled.
(Laughter)
I stayed up to midnight studying my lessons.
And I kept them fooled til the last day I was there.
had me cornered time after time.
(Laughter)
And you have no
But I made it thru.
~ <lea
how they
(Laughter)
I fooled them to the very end.
Now I was talking to a young man, and I've had people visiting me here of all
kinds of people, the poorest needy, like myself, and some of the richest, some of
the high salary people, some rich people.
I had a man to visit me from New Jersey
not long ago who is a multimillionaire and he came to see me.
still alive and he came up here to see me and talk to me.
He heard that I was
And I have talked to
all groups of people of every strata of education of people down here, and I have
always got something out of talking to those people just as well as to the person
up here that was well educated.
I had a young man who is the yollllgest official
�25
that the Carolina Power and Light Company has ever employed to visit with me here not
long ago and he and I were talking about what education means.
where do we go to from here.
Where have we come to,
And I have made up my mind it's something like this.
That
you find very few high school students, now I don't know, I went to college just a little
bit but not enough for it to do me much good, and I don't know how it is now.
been 65, 70 years since I was in college.
That's
And that was Old Trinity College which is now
Duke Univer· sity.
In talking to this young man who is an official of the Carolina Power and light Co.
he told me some things that he had observed and the very things that I am conscious of it.
That education today is made up of so many graduates out of colleges and universities who know
something about everything.
You can't start to touch one of them but what they know
something about it and talk to you intelligently about it.
But when you pin down on some
of them, "just what do you know about this particular thing," you soon have them
cornered and they know a little about everything and not a great deal about anything.
(Laughter)
A young lawyer here was talking to me not long ago and he said his mother, now
he was a graduate, he'd taken his degree at the University of North Carolina before he
entered the law school, and he had, I don't know, 2 years or 3 years , whatever it is,
you know, I don't know.
I believe it's two years.
after they finish their 'regular education.
I believe they finished in two years
..
And he said his mother was talking to him
one day and she says, "Bob" says, "you amuse me".
Says,"You know a littlebit about
everything and you don' t know much about anything.'.' ''Y6u can't read, you can't write,
and your spelling's awful." (Laughter)
And he said he got to studying about it and looking
at his writing and he said, "I couldn't read it, part of it. says, "I'd write it and forget
what I wrote and couldn''.t read it." And like an old man back over here in the mountains,
\
he's looking after a mans pasture over there, taking care of his cows.
in town.
He's a doctor.
The man lived here
Bought him a farm back there and had cattle on that farm over
there and he wrote, ·this doctor wrote him a letter and told him what he wanted him to do
with the cattle over there.
And the man got it, the old farmer over there, got
�26
the letter and he couldn't make out anything.
to him.
So he didn't know what to do.
(Laughter)
It was a lot of cooking bark
Said he decided to come to Marion and take
it to the doctor and say to the doctor, "Doctor, I just got your letter, I
appreciate it, but I couldn't read it," and said after he carried on the conversation a little bit, after the doctor had quit thinking about him a telling
him, he got the letter and so on, says, "Here's a letter I want you to read to
me."
Said he pulled the same letter out of his pocket and handed it and said
the doctor looked at it a little bit and turned it up this way and he said, "What
son of a bitch wrote this?"
read his own writing.
(Laughter)
(Laughter)
So that's the way Bob was.
He couldn't
So I was talking to this, going back to my
story again, I was talking to this young official of Carolina Power and Light
Company.
He's a high paid man.
I think his salary is about $45,000 and he has
taken his degree out of college and his postgraduate.
And I don't know how much
maybe his father met.
And he was talking to me about the same thing that we are
about education today.
And he said, "I'd like to see some of your books. Do you
happen to have some of your old books there that you are talking about so much?"
And I says, "Yes, I've got some.
They're almost torn up."
see em." Says, "How old are they?"
Says, "I'd like to
I says, "75 or 80 years old." He says, "Hunt
em up, I'ct like to see em." Now I'm going in here and get some of those old
books just to show you what we was talking about.
Now I declare I got completely
off this mountain story.
Interviewer:
Wife:
That's perfectly alright.
Maybe I didn't get enough ginger ale in that, did I?
Interviewer:
Wife:
Oh that's okay.
Oh it's good, it's fine.
I picked up the bottle and poured some in it and didn't taste it.
I don't know what you believe in religion churches.
a Catholic (Laughter), you may be a Protestant.
You may be a Jew, you may be
And the same thing with you Judy.
�27
Let me call you Judy will you?
Interviewer:
Oh certainly, certainly.
And you just call me Jeff.
Uh, but there's one thing about the churches that
have been the most change taken place of anything in my life and I can't yet
understand what is taking place.
Interviewer:
Now do you attend church?
The Presbyterian Church, yes sir.
Do you attend church?
Interviewer #2:
Episcopal.
Well now I don't know about the Episcopals so much, but I'll take the churches
that I do know about.
Now you're the Presbyterian? Okay.
where I was reared they had a Presbyterian church.
Now in my coTTUTlunity
Not right close to where I
lived but they had what's called a United Methodist Church now and a Baptist
Church in that corrnnunity.
Well the services in those days and the doctrine in
those days, it was preached to the people by, we assumed, a qualified and
dedicated preacher, was so different from what they preach today that there's
just as much difference as they is, I think, to believing Mohammedan and Jesus
Christ, almost that same difference.
Now in the church where I was reared they
had, if you, before you joined the church you was supposed to show to that church
that you had a change of life.
That you were what they called a conversion,
i:::'
which means turning up and going the wrong(??)way, that everybody was born in
sin and they had a certain amount of responsibility to God to change this way
before you were accepted as a qualified member to join the church.
Alright, now
in my church the way they did, they formed what they thought was a conversion and
I've heard people good and bad claim that they really had a change in life at a
particular moment.
That you were one way one way and suddenly that you became
a Christian and felt in your life that that was so.
Well they had what was
�28
called a alter and as the preacher preached and gave the invitation to those who'd
accept Christ to come forth and bow for prayer and kneel for prayer.
Well, that's
the kind of a church that it was and I didn't know, I thought, now I don't think
your church ever practiced that.
I don't really know the doctrine of your church.
But I have friends who belong to the Episcopal Church and I know that we don't
talk
what
and I
find out anything about that.
And after they were converted,
they call a conversion, a change in their life. what they called a heart-
felt religion, that you felt the change in your life, that you were a changed man.
'Then you were eligible to be admitted to the church but not before.
would get up and preach about hell.
He'd preach about heaven.
really there was a hell, and I thought there was really a devil.
was a heaven, I thought it was a good place to go.
'The preacher
And I thought
I thought there
So I remember one night
I went to one of these big, what they call a revival, and the preacher got up and
preached the sermon and the sermon was like this.
he didn't.
He knew all about it.
He made hell hot, don't you think
And it was a tent meeting out in the country
with such a great big tent out there.
All the different denominations came in
and took part in this and he made that thing real hot.
a lot that night.
here.
And I studied about that
And here's a little story . . . now please, let me make a request
If you get enough-· of my talk, I want you to say this is it, that'll do for
this time.
END OF TAPE 467B, SIDE I
Tape 467B, Side 2:
and they thought he was going to die.
and looked after them.
didn't have hospitals.
.
. the
In t hose days peop 1e went into community
""
'They didn't have nurses, didn't have doctors to come in,
care of
And they went in there to take I\ a sick man and said his
friend was over there that night and they said that uh. . . the man, the sick man
�29
got quiet, quleted down, and that man that was sitting there by his bed went to
sleep!
And said he had a dream and said this man, this was his dream ... he
dreamed that his ... while he was there that his friend died.
And when he died
that he'd been a very sinful man and said when the man died said there's a devil
come into the door.
But he said before this devil came in the door, says a
little creature about that high with horns and a tail and all that you know.
And he
~aid
that before this devil came in the room, the man died and said he
saw the spirit of this man come out of the body and said the spirit begin to
look all around, here and there, and everywhere, as looking for a place to hide.
And said finally it ran out, the spirit ran out the door and they watched it,
went across the road and off down like that, in the woods somewhere.
And said
all at once the devil came in and said the devil came in, told what the devil
looked like, said he came up to his bed, looked at the man, the man was dead.
Said the devil began to look for the spirit of this man, said he went and looked
under the bed, and went and looked behind the door, and he went- - - - - - - And so after a while, the devil went out the door like a hound ... a bloodhound.
He seemed to have a instinct or smelling to know where that spirit went.
Said he
followed him off over that hill there, and he said you know when that devil got
down there, siad I had gone to the door and looked out and watching that and
he said the spitit of that man screamed.
everywhere.
He says that you could hear him all over
And he says, "All at once I woke up." Says "I got so excited in my
dream',' says, " "I woke " and said "when I woke", said "the man was dead." Now he said
that creature
says, now if that part of the story did, if he actually died, the rest
of this story's true.
And he had me scared to death. (laughter)
go to the mou01er's bed in a hurry. (Laughter)
night, I went over to
Oh!
I thought better
He had me scared.
So that
and I lived about half a mile beyond where my friends lived
and I went with them along, and I kept riding because they were older men and hadn't
paid no attention to it, of course.
didn't want them
But I was taking it very seriously, and I
�30
to lmow I was scared.
But I haa made up my mind along ago that the distance
from this house to our house has never made as quick- by a hoyse or anything else.
(Laughter)
I lost no time (Laughter) because I didn't lmow where he might jl.nTip
out you lmow, on me, yes sir.
(Laughter)
Now they said preaching is that,
you lmow in those days, and they had what you called people 1vould shout
They get up and say, "Glory to God!" Thank the Lord that the
sometimes.
blessings that you see
If that thing like I have seen in that old
-----
church back then should take place now in the First church in Boone, they'd call
out the riot squad, every officer in town, the sheriff, and everybody else.
Say there's a riot taking place.
What is the truth?
Interviewer:
It's hard to say.
Interviewer:
I said that's hard to say.
Hm?
Some of the churches up in the
motmtains way up in the mountains, way back, are still, still like that.
They are? Do you have any snake handlers?
Interviewer:
There aren't any snake handlers right there around in Boone,
I don't think.
But there's some over in, towards Johnson City.
some over that way.
There's
But I don't believe there are any, I haven't heard of
any right there around in Watauga Cotmty .anywhere.
There may be some but
if they handle them, they don't, it's not real widely known I don't think.
Well I have gone to churches when you leave a church you felt like it was good for
you to be there.
It's just,you had a betterfeeling,y0 u•·s just glad to be there
and have a part in it.
and dead.
(Laughter)
worse shape.
And I've gone other times and it was so formal and dry
You was sorry that you went.
(Laughter)
Interviewer:
Uh, uh.
You felt like you was in
Now, you've been down to Beaufort.
�32
Well, here's a direct example.
You can size it up, put an interpretation on
anything I say about this, but I know this will be so .
The people in those
days in the country church where I was, they believed in helping the needy.
If you had sickness in your home, they'd go there and help in .case of sickness .
If you had a death, they'd help you bury the dead .
you planted your crops and
yo~
If you were a farmer and
couldn't cultivate it because of sickness in your
family, they went in and cultivated that land for you .
Set a day, the church would say
"a certain day we're going to go over here to John's house and we're going to work out
his crops."
Now said, "every one of you come and bring your mules and your plows
and get over there and you people with a hoe" . .. I don't know whether you've
seen much of that hoeing going on now.
But in those days, the hoeing, taking
all the weeds out of the corn and so on, was just as important as the plowing
or the cultivating part .
They don't even plow now, they do it with spraying to
kill the weeds out, you know .
But then they did.
Now here's an example of how
seriously they took that. Now that was part of their religion. They not only claimed
,., , ...,
to be what the Bible teaches them to do, but they put it into practice. When
the Union Tanning Company came to Old Fort, they came there to Old Fort
because of the fact that they'd get tan bark, what's called tan bark out of
these mountains. It's an extract. (wood ground up and make an ooze for tanning
leather hides.
And a lot of those farmers quit the farm and went to Old Fort and
got a job in that.
Well they'd worked not five days a wecl) they worked six
days a week from ten o'clock in the morning to six in the afternoon.
Saturday and all.
But they were off on Sunday . Well now here's an example where this church put
their religion to practice.
One Sunday morning they were in church and they said,
"Well, how's John over here getting." "Oh, he stays in bad shape, been sick now
for two or three weeks, and his crops going to grow up in weeds and nobody's done
anything about it." And says, what do you know about it? And they said,
"Well, I tell you what we'll do. Next week certain times we'll go over there and work
out that man's corn crop for him." And on that day, they went over there and cultivated
that soil.
Maybe twenty
�33
five men and plows and so on go in there, and one day they cleaned that whole
man's crop out.
And then on Sunday, the next Sunday, there's this crowd of men
there at church and said, ''Well," said, " we were not able to get off our work to
help," says, "what should we do, do about it?" One man said, "I'll tell you what
we're going to do."
Says, "We're going home, we fellows that didn't get to help
last week, get a quick dinner, put on your overalls, Sunday afternoon, we go
down there and finish that crop." Not only did they work 5, 6 days a week . . .
now I don't know whether you call that breaking the saddle or not (Laughter).
Does that answer your question?
Interviewer:
Oh, yeah.
There was a man by the name George Truitt.
heard of him.
th e days.
George W. Truitt.
You know, orators.
knew how to talk.
I don't suppose either one of you
He was an orator.
There's just a few orators
I'll tell you Appalachia used to have one that
But that's before your day and your day. Did you ever hear
of I.G. Greer?
Interviewer:
Uh, huh, yeah.
You know who I'm talking about?
Interviewer:
Yeah.
He knew how to talk.
everyone else.
He could quote you as such, he could quote better than
And you'd listen to him ; he's
boy, wasn't he?
Interviewer:
smart.
And he was a mountain
Over there right around Boone.
Yeah, yeah, he was over there from somewhere.
So I heard Dr. George Truitt preaching one night and he told this.
Now he believed
in what you called a heartfelt religion, not a dry formal religion that is more or
less made~£ education and culture, and no emotion.
There's a lot of people that
�34
don't want to go to any church where there's any emotion at all.
They want it
to be just as same as if you go to a lecture, and anything else.
A dry, fonnal
affair
There's other people that does not appeal to them, that
they feel like when you go there, that I don't know, it's just sort of good
music, and so on, and it's just awesome, just does something for you. ---------.
And we call that sometimes, we call it emotion.
So Dr. George Truitt who ·
served at one church in Dallas, Texas for 40 years, he went there as a young
man, and he'd never held the pastorage of any church but hhis one church.
He was there at the First church in Dallas, Texas and I heard him tell this.
Wife:
He came to Ridgecrest.
He came to Ridgecrest , yes.
Wife:
He'd come up every stumner for a week.
And he said that he was at a church and preached.
\
...
··,
•
And he said that some
•I
woman got up in the audience and said, "Glory to God!" (Claps hands) And begin
to what they say shout.
"Cause I was telling you about awhile ago when you were
here, now if anything like that happened, they'd call out the riot squad. (Laughter)
And he had, Dr. Truitt had a brother-in-law who was a medical doctor.
And when
this medical doctor who was at service saw this woman there, he felt like that
woman was physically upset over something that she needed attention.
got up and went back to where she was at.
and said, "John, leave .her alone'.'
And so he
And said Dr. Truitt, said he called him
So people changed.
I heard a woman, heard of
a woman, she didn't tell me this, belonged to the church where I belonged to.
She said absolutely, "!don't want any of that emotion when I go to church."
Says, "they can get up and preach a straight sermon or something or other." Says,
"Appeals to my eye.
Me, intellectually,"
religion stuff about me."
says, "I don't want any of that heartfelt
So there's a feeling in the world today between the two
peoplP., the two classes of neonle yon take your choice.
Pay your money.
�35
take what you want.
we
The church that I belong to received about
(Chuckles)
three letters a year, four letters a year, reminding us to be sure to give the
tenth.
That was the Lord's.
But I have never heard of anything that they did
in return for the people who was giVing this money.
But they always have somebody
way over yonder in Africa, or Europe, or Asia, somewhere else, needs help.
And they're trying to help those poor souls over there.
say this recently.
But I heard a man
certain
He said 11 if I were in trouble today ,11 says ' r belong to ~church,
but if I were in trouble today," he says, " to whom do you think I would go? "
11
I says, well, I know who I 'd go to .' ' And he said ," I ' ll tell you who I 'd go to ,
I'd go to my banker first. ' (Laughter)
And he said," I think I'd get some
help there / he says, 11 if I didn't I'd go to my doctor ,'' says, ''he's a good
friend of mine," says, he'll help me .
11
And he says, if I didn't get all I
needed there, he says, then I 'd go to, my;' sanebody else.
where does your church come in?
11
I says, " I thought they were to help the poor
I
and the sick, and the needy. ' He says, "Oh .
(Laughter)
Now that's the feeling.
'i)
Says mark it off, says they don't.
How much better are you off if you belong
to a church, than if you were not a church member?
mind?
And I said, 11 well
Is there anything in your
If there's no reason for it, only to support somebody that you don't
know where the money ever gets to them or not.
There's a big question mark in
my mind. And I began to think differently. What do you think about it?
Interviewer:
Well,
I feel like there's a lot of churches where there's
not very much spirit left in them. these days.
And I don't know what to do.
Well, I am glad that you're a young man and all and I think it's nice that you
have that feeling.
Wife:
I think it's corrnnendable.
One of our church members said that our preacher didn't know the
scripture
enough
to preach from it and the people in the .audience
didn't know enough to know whether he was preaching from it or not. (Laughter)
Didn't know the
scri~ture
either.
�36
Now there's a lot of people that believe the Bible so thoroughly that they can't
figure out whether it can possibly be one pronoun or one adjective used for what's
absolutely true, it's directly from God.
Well I was talking to one of those, now
I believe the Bible reasonably well, but the Bible has been taken from scrolls
through the hands of people who have translated from those scrolls into what we
call the Bible.
Now I don't know any Greek.
Do you either one of you study
Greek? Did you ever study Greek? Well I am told that the word that was placed
in the scripture there, that said that when the thief on the cross said to Jesus,
"Remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom," if you've read the scripture,
you've read that possibly.
paradise today."
And he says to him, "Behold thou shalt be with me in
Now I'm told by a Greek scholar that that word where it was
translated there, into paradise, the very identical same Greek word as translated
in other places in the Bible was the word death.
So here you are.
1bat's what
people think, paradise is a certain place that Jesus is talking about, special
place that you, we will be there together in paradise.
1be other thing said that
it didn't mean a thing more than what Jesus said back to him.
going to die.
(Laughter)
Same Greek word.
that, one in particular, I pin down on him.
Today we're both
And I've asked Greek students about
I said I want you to look
word up for me and tell me for sure what it means.
that
And he went off and says
well I have to look up my, and I never could get anything more out of him, I don't
know
where · he got stalled, didn't know what he was talking about, just didn't
want to talk.
Now I'll tell you another instance if you're a Bible student and read the
Bible, where there's a difference that's questionable.
In Matthew, in the gospel
of Matthew, it said when Peter denied Christ, that there's a girl come to Peter,
says, "You're one of His followers." And he said, "No, no I'm not." And then
Matthew goes on to say that later on another woman said to him "Surely thou art
one of His followers because you speak of as Galileans speak," had kind of a
different accent on the way, and he denied it again.
And then a third time a man
�37
said to him, "I know you are one of . . . " and he denied him a third time.
Well, now what does, what does
~ays
Luke, Gospel of Luke say about it? The Luke
this, Luke says, "And a girl," a damsel I believe it says, said to Peter
that "you are a follower of Jesus Christ." And he said, "I'm not, I'm not a
follower of His." And then Luke says, a man said to him, "You are." He denied
it again.
Then another man said to him, "Thou art," Now there's two, there's
two just point out little things like that that you have to allow things like that.
One gospel said that there's two women and a man.
two men and a wol'Tlan.
The other one says there's
Now when you say that the whole Bible is ever word true,
that I don't say that the trouble is with the Bible originally, but it's gone
through so many hands and the translations, been translated and translated.
The fact of the matter is when the King James, now if I'm wrong about this, you
correct me, you've possibl s t udied this, when King James had the Bible translated
<yes the
from the Greek
from th); New Testament is
in Greek I believe and Old Bible's
in Hebrew.
When they had that . . . when they's appointed some monks, King James
appointed some monks and there's one
he~
kinda
head monk who was seemed to be
the thing that ran things and they picked up all these different scrolls and
decided then and there which were the scrolls that should go in the Bible,
and they classified them and ever since then everybody says this is the Bible,
it's all true.
I don't believe, just be honest about it, I don't believe the book
of Job and the book of Jonah, swallowing the whale.
Wife:
You know that story.
Jonah didn't swallow the whale, the whale swallowed Jonah. (Laughter).
I don't think that was ever intended to be put in the Bible.
exactly like the book Pilgrim's Progress.
Don't know whether you ever heard of
the Pilgrim's Progress? The Pilgrim's ..ProgTess is the story
as simply fiction.
I think
that
It was never intended being there.
I think it was
of~
Christian's life
the book of Job, was a work of fiction.
It's a good book, it teaches us a lot of good
things to live by, and all like that, but to say it was a direct work from God
�38
be nrinted like that.
Now for instance
in that book of Job, now please stop
me if you get tired of this stuff.
Interviewers: No.
Wife:
You've talked enough for all day.
Interviewer:
Go ahead.
(Lau12:hter)
In the book of Job, it said . I think it's in the chapter, second chapter of Job,
it said that t.he nevil accompanied by somebody came before God in passing and it
said, the devil said to God. he said, the devil said, "if vou turn your back on
people and are not a friend to them," says, "none of em will serve you.
What
people serve God for is the good they get out of it, financially and things like
that." And God said to the devil, "Have you considered my servant Job?" And the
devil said. "If you turn your back on Job or turn him over to me and let me deal
with him, you' 11 find he' 11 turn his back on you too." And said the Lord
permitted him to be turned over to the devil.
Now can you imagine, can you
imagine that God/ the Creator of the heavens and the Earth and everything to
the stars would have a little enough care for a creature to turn him over to the devil?
Just to prove to the man, you can't prove anvthing to the devil, turn him over to
him and let him ... vou know the boils he went through, sores, how his property
was taken from him1 sons killed and all that.
Can you imagine our creator
and a man who has created the heavens and the Earth, things like eternal that
is just so unreasonable that I just simply can't accept it.
God he is, we're in bad shape. (Laughter)
END OF TAPE
If that's the kind of
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region.
The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students.
Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU.
An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school.
This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1965-1989
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed.
Parker, J. F.
Location
The location of the interview.
McDowell County, NC
Number of pages
38 pages
Date digitized
9/23/2014
File size
25.8MB
Checksum
alphanumeric code
7f2651391849c681b3916ffa79f9c215
Scanned by
Tony Grady
Equipment
Epson Expression 10000 XL
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal; non-commercial; and educational use; provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records; 1965-1989; W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection; Special Collections; Appalachian State University; Boone; NC). Any commercial use of the materials; without the written permission of the Appalachian State University; is strictly prohibited.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
AC.111 Appalachian Oral History Project Records; 1965 - 1989
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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111_tape467_JFParker_transcript_M
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with J.F. Parker
Language
A language of the resource
English
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Parker, J.F.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Appalachians (People)--North Carolina--Marion County
Appalachians (People)--North Carolina--McDowell County
Appalachians (People)--North Carolina--Rowan County
Marion County (N.C.)--Social life and customs
McDowell County (N.C.)--Social life and customs
Rowan County (N.C.)--Social life and customs
Parker, J. F.
Description
An account of the resource
J.F. Parker talks about his experience as a teacher with the mountain people living in Old Fort. Although he had never finished high school, he got a job as a teacher. He said: "He was going to send me on to teach school whether I knew anything or not." He talks about the hardships living up there, how school attendance was often very low and the kids brought snakes to the schoolhouse. He says the mountain people were a different breed of folk and they understood that "it takes a certain amount of failure in life to make a person what they should be." They were hardened, but strong and firm.
Civil War
Custard's Last Rally
Custard's Last Stand
Episcopal Church
flu epidemic
Frankie Silvers
hangings
J.F. Parker
Marion County N.C.
Marion Manufacturing Company
McDowell County N.C.
Morganton
mountain people
Old Fort
Presbyterian Church
railroad
Ralph Noblett
Rowan County
schoolhouse
Sunday School
teaching