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Peggy Dotterer Interview
This is J ane Efird with Marlene Deaton for the Appalachian Oral History Project ,
July 17 , 1975 .
W ' re speaking with Mrs . Peggy Dotterer at her home in Hot Springs ,
e
North Carolina .
Q.
I just want you to start telling us about the history of the Hot Springs
and who first built the hotels around hre .
A.
Ah , this is history as I have gotten it from my family and my grandparents
and ah, it is not authentic as far as dates nor bave I ever researched all this .
These are just fond memories of a past era .
And my life began in Hot Springs when
I was , came back here when I was about ah , a little over two years old .
first home here was in the old Hampton Cottage .
time .
And my
And I lived there a very short
My father was ill and my father died there .And my mother was the youngest
daughter of the Rumbos .
And so , I ah) my roots are pretty deep in Hot Springs from
ah family ties and from the fact that I have lived here .
And whenever I ' ve gone
away from here , I have been irrevetably drawn back by what I can ' t t ell you exactly .
So, I have seen it from partially the hey- day and I have also listened to glowing
tales of days that came before my time on in to very sad to say , when we no longer
can be classed as a tourist town of any kind .
was the famous Mountain Fog Hotel .
many people , summer after summer .
And it was ah , still being visited by a great
And it was the type of tourism that we no longer
have . You came and you brought your trunk .
was small .
And you spent the summer .
they do now , one night stands .
close friends .
And you came by railroad train when I
Ah , you didn ' t move from place to place like
And these people came so often that they became quite
And the hotel now as I visualize it , from this standpoint , was a great
big rambling ah , wooden structure a.r:rl the front
road station .
And the first hotel that I remember
and it faced the rail-
Because that was the center of arriving and leaving .
And then , it had the
two wings tbat went back and the middle was kind of a courtyard and on the back wing
near the bay was the big ballroom and there were very gay activi ties there .
D:l.ncing
every night , orchestras brought in to be there all summer and the thing , one of the
things tlB.t was featured besides the gay social life was the curative waters of the
mineral springs . And those mineral springs are not looked upon now as they were then
�2
but that was the era of the farm , when people were very eager to go to places of
that nature and they believed greatly in , mm, the curative powers when they don ' t
anymore .
And then ah , I was twelve years old when the end of the hotel as a real
thriving tourist business of that era which is a very beautiful memory to me . of what
people did and what they were like in the life there.
to an end by the beginning of W
orld W I.
ar
And ah , that ah , was brought
And my uncleJ by that time, was running
it because my grandfather was quite elderly and he had divided the ownership of it .
And he felt that there would certainly be no tourist business here and so he made
a lease with the government for the German Prisoners to be interned here .
And the
most interesting part that stands out in my mind from them coming , they had a
wonderful German band and it sat down on the lawn there and played all the gorgeous
German music of the Blue I.anube and all the waltzes and Strauss W
altzes .
not only heard it from them but it echoed off of the mountains .
And you
And the officers
were interned in , in the main hotel and the sailors ah , they were merchant marines
who were taken .
golf link .
An
They were interned across the road in what had been a part of the
ah , that of course went on through the war and then when the war
was over , it was an army hospital for a short time .
have the real old fashioned ah , summer hotels .
Rlt never , never again did we
And it had been the heart of the town .
And of course , there were future attempts for tourism here because we were on 25- 70 .
And that for a time was the main road .
And it was for a good many years .
all the traffic from the mid- west through to Florida .
It brought
And we lBd ah , a season of
winter people on their way down to Florida and on their way back .
Bu~as
were built , fewer and few people , fewer people came this way at all .
And it ' s very
sad really for me to have seen it go into the decline that it ' s in now .
very definitely the last stroke was the opening of I- 40 .
highways
But , it
And we tried very hard to
ge1j, bring the roads through here , but it was a sort of a political deal with who
we tried and they got I- 40 and it completely took , took the through traffic away from
us .
And even t he motel down there that was the motel of the town then ah , is now ,
it ' s grew but you don ' t see too many people there .
And the ah , cafe that was ah ,
the best one that we had is now is a liquor store , an AB:: store .
nice place , eating place there .
That was a real
And for a time we had no eating place and now we
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have a sort of a one down town here which ah , doesn ' t stay open very regularly and
isn ' t patronized much.
And there is really no ah , r esemblance whatsoever t o this
town as I lrn.ew it when I was growing up .
rooted here and loved it very much.
Tennessee .
My
And my family was always very ah , deep-
And there was a very_close tie in with Greenville ,
f amily had come from there .
Jr ., the president ' s son .
Ah , one of my aunts married Andrew Johnson
And the Greenville people patronized Hot Springs and for
many years they drove a railroad train over here and had an annual picnic long after
Hot Springs .l:ad faded away as being ah , a real tourist center .
They still came and
ah , had their picnic down in the old hotel grounds like they had always done .
then that passed interval .
It wasn ' t done anymore .
And
So I , I can ' t ah , I can ' t see
that we have much hope for tourism as we have knownit , but there may come a time when
this will be a sort of a retirement center .
And about the only thing we have to
off er now is very lovely soenery , ,very quiet atmosphere , and very nice all- year- round
climate .
Of course , we don ' t get terribly cold here and ah , our SUilllllers are just as
nice with a very cool m
ountain night .
And yet just ah , when or who we will attract
ah , enough of people to change the place drastically , I ' m not sure whather it will
talce a long , long time or not .
Q.
And now can you think of anything that you ' d like to.
W
ell, ah , you said that you remember some fond stories that your grandparents and
your parents told you .
Could you start , you :Im.ow , tell ing us some of those about
the ah , the old , the tourist business so long ago?
A.
Well , the tourist business long ago was just possibly , as I remember it , is
m
uch as stories passed onto me .
I must say the greatest number of stories ever passed
onto me were the things t hat went on during the civil war because that w
growing up , that was still very vital in their minds .
had happened a
d t here
I was
The epis odes were things that
are two stories of Civil W days .
ar
And one of them was that
ah, my grandmother was living in a little cottage back upon the hill and my grandfather
had gone off and he was on the Confederate side and so she was there with the children
and she ah , the soldiers were coming .
They were on the other side and we had trouble
here apparently with what they call bushwackers , deserters anything .
the mountains and they simply came in as marauders .
They hid
~ut
They weren ' t fighting for any
in
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cause.
They were, it was just a good chance f or outlaws to express themselves .
And
so when she heard of them coming , she was really a very gallant lady , and she went
out , got an old colored man to help her , and she went out and burned the bridge t hat
led over to the hotel .
Then , another story is , is when they were they came and they
were taking everything they had and she had taken up the floor in the rarlor and had
a horse in there that she loved very much .
They were going to lead the horse away
and she threw her arms around the horse's neck and the man went off with her hanging
onto the horse for dear life .
And so , the young officer on the Union side said · well ,
if the lady loves the horse that much , give it back to her . "
So , she saved it .
Then ,
this other story they used to tell was that there was a battle f ought down at the Hotel
Grand .
I guess you ' d call it a squirmish .
And the ah , this young Union soldier was
was killed and he was fatally wounded and he died in my grandmother ' s arms .
They
were out trying to help both sides .
You were
That was the way of war in those days .
out killing, but you were you had a heart f or the other
~ide
as people , human beings .
And so , when he died in her arms , he had lovely golden sort of curls and she cut off
some and sent them to his mother .
And it was a life-long friendship by way of never
meeting but writing back and forth t o each other always .
And as far as as tourism
was concerned , I think that this description that I have in this article is about the
way it was and the way ah, the first way I remember it and I say in here in order to
describe the life tl:at centered about the second hotel , we quote from a , of a , from
an article written by one of the writers in that
the
Carolina used to publish.
rom t:be pamphlet tl:a t
I say although many came for the curative
value of the water , many others of tbe South ' s elite came summer after summer to enjoy
the gay social life and whether that would be gay social life today I ' m not sure but
that was their type of gay social life .
And I go on to say mountains
has become famous and I can remember the thing that stands out in my mind , something
that people loved then and I don ' t know whether they ' d love it now or not and that
was t he amateur theatricals .
W were al ways having ah , somebody getting up amateur
e
theatricals to be put on the stage of the ballroom and I can well , the thing I re-
�5
member was a man sitting in a chair , ah, smoking his pipe and remembering his
former sweetheart .
And I can remember that I was with a sweetheart number; number
1 when I was about five years old.
W walked out on the stage and stood there.
e
And of course, he lad what his memories were recited, in some kind of verse that
had be en written local .
And I can remember all these theatricals, sort of brought
in a local picture of life around here .
And they used to have people in the hotels
that were called the entertainment and they not only ran t he hotel , but they felt
responsible f or keeping t he guests very well entertained .
And we did have horse-
back riding and there were trails around here and there ' s an old road on the mountain back of the cabin I used to live in , that was called Dead Park Road .
originallY, I remembered is wide enough for a buggy to go
OL
And
and the people from the
motel would be taken out buggy riding up on the mountain and ah , ah around the hotel
there were things like ah
i g watermelon cuttings where the where they would pick
the watermelons in the garden dovm here , put them in a wagon and then the man would
ride into the center and then we ' d have a watermelon cutting and all the guests would
be there .
gether
thing .
And so it was the type of entertainment t!at would bring the people torather than everybody going out like they do now and doing their
-Own
It was an era of ah, enjoying social activ planning social activities of rather
a grandiose nature,
I ' d say .
many ideas like
The
Bapt~st
people weren 't really sold over to too
I can remember these beautiful evening dresses and they had
the dresses had trains on them and there was a loop
int~
d of, on the edge of· the
dress and the ladies put these over their wrists and that lifts the train and then
they waltzed and I was very small and used to sit on the back porch and and look
-
in at what was going on and I thought that was the most beautiful thing I ' d ever
seen, all these ladies holding their
running in t he fields with
One of the young ladies just asked me if I knew ah could remember any.. of the ah
sgrt· of famous people or
famous ~ to~me
mind is O' Henry , the author .
people and the one that stands out in my
And he had married a lady from Asheville and he
�6
came down here on his second honeymoon because he ' d already been married before .
And I remember , I don ' t know i f this is out of place, but I remember they served
mint julips up at my house and there were quite a l arge crowd that came and participated in this event and so I got to see the real live O' Henry .
And we had good
friends that came but as f or really famous people, I ' m not sure that I can remember .
Let me think i f I can remember anybody .
W had a great many New Orlean ' s
e
people-the far south people because I guess t hey found this so delightful for summer .
Q.
You don ' t have to tell us about famous people but any certain people that
you you know were good, just real good friends with or anything like that .
A.
You see , I was pretty young and ah , so my friends were some of the children
down at the hotel and I missed that very much after there was no more hotel because
that ' s where I f ound all my playmates .
It ' s been s o many years ago I ' m not sure I
can remember anybody by name particularly but I do remember the that people talked
about later by the family.
And they had , evidently , become close personal friends
and they were mostly far south people and I wish I could could remember better , but
you don ' t remember too well when you ' re my age .
Q.
Tell us about ah the first inn and then when the second one was built , and
each of the owners - ah, how the ownership passed down through the generations .
A.
The f irst that made this part of the country famous was t he era of the drovers .
Do you know anything about the drovers?
W
ell, ah , by way of the Buncombe turnpike
which went through here , M
adison County, through Hot Springs , they used to drive the
there were pigs and turkeys and those were the two most famous things that you heard
of being driven through down to Charleston , South Carolina , down t o the coast and
probably in between .
And inns were spotted all through Madison County because of
the drovers and you see that was a profitable thing .
they also had to provide feed for the animals .
turkeys and pigs .
The man stayed in the inn and
I ' m sure they had cattle as well as
And t he local farmers could sell the grain . So , I guess I would
say that probably Madison County was as prosperous in the drovers era as it was , ha s
ever been since .
And the first inn that I ever heard of was run by the Neilsons .
And I knew descendents of that fami l y w were G
ho
arretts and the one of the Garretts
�7
that I knew real well was named William Neilson so, I ' m certain of the tie in there .
And that was not on the present site of the present hotel , it was down the river a
ways on the other side .
And then the first hotel that I ever knew of here , whether
it was built by the Pattons or bought by the Pattons , I ' m not certain because I ' ve
seen it written both ways .
And all of our history , even though it had been written
down in late years , perhaps isn ' t absolutely authentic as to ownership , but we always
seemed to be quite proud of the fact that the man who later became the Civil War
governor of North Carolina , Governor Vance, was a clerk at our hotel .
And the first
hotel was the one that my grandfather bought and he bought it from the Pattons .
And
I never have known why but the deed says "the Pattons and Grand Master Rascal ," and
what a grand master was I ' ve never known .
So , the days when my grandfather first
bought it was just prior to the Civil War and so after the Civil War was when its
greatest development came .
And then he came back after the Civil W and
ar
hotel and a resort of those days .
the sta e coach line .
South Carolina .
, opened up the hotel as a resort
So , his chief interest then was the hotel and
And he ran a stagecoach from Greenville , Tennessee to Greenville ,
Of course, it didn ' t carry many passengers at one time and the most
famous stories that have passed around the ·family about the stagecoach were that they
didn't keep up the road very well and it was on the old Buncombe Turnpike which WBnt
down by the river .
It was full of great big boulders and they ' d have floods and
nobody would fix up the road and it was pretty rough on the passengers and the stagecoach.
And so , Grandfather mounted the stagecoach one day with an axe in his hand
and he cut down the toll gate because he said he had paid enough tolls for them not
to use any of it to fix up the road .
So , then , there became an agreement whereby
he kept up the road and didn ' t have to pay any toll.
And his main interest was getting
a railroad through here and it took a good many years to get it through Hot Springs .
It came as far as W
olf Creek , Tennessee and then they ' d have to come on from here
by a horse-drawn vehicle .
And it was very rough terrain we had that made it difficult
to put a railroad all the way through here .
But , about the late 18e0 1 s , and I have
the exact date somewhere because somewhere I rave a letter that he wrote from Greenville ,
s .c.
to my grandmother and he says that last night they got the railroad through which
�8
means he ' d been to a meeting .
And so, of course , it was the days of the railroad
when people tourists moved by railroad that was my early childhood that was most
impressive to me and I can remember looking out of the windows with my aunt and seeing
how many people got off the afternoon train and the Negro porter would have the ,q ags
up in the car and the people all came strolling down the main road under the trees
to the hotel .
It was a very long walk , but you might say they arrived by railroad
and then by f oot .
grea t deal .
And that didn ' t last for much of my life , but it impressed me a
And I spent a great deal of my lif'e around the hotel because my grand-
parents lived there and of course it was wonderful for a child to be able to go into
his grandfather ' s hotel dining room and eat whatever you wanted to .
And we had a
great long family table and this old Nigger man tl:nt we all called Uncle Simon waited
on tables and Uncle Simon always went around behind us fussing about what we did and
didn ' t eat .
And so , but , all of this was way back in my early childhood and I didn ' t
get very much of it before VAVI came along and that was the end of that .
The present
building t hat we have down that we have down here now the present brick building has
never been used except temporarily as a small inn which was never. r.un very long by
anybody and it ' s n ever been very successf ul .
center came t o i ts end wi th WWI .
To me, t he Hot Spr ings as a tourist
It might have gone on a little while longer had
the building not burned in t he 1920 1 s , but my thought is that it would have terminat ed anyway because lifestyles were changing •
Automobiles were coming in and I
n ever considered it at all the same t ype of tourist resort when the automobiles came
and the boarding "houses and the motels .
didn ' t even have bathrooms in them .
Of course , t he f irst tourist cabins , they
They were just little well ,
The firs t ones I remember , it was just a little log building , but suprisingly enough
people traveled in those days and they weren ' t v ery particular about it and then of
course , motels became j ust like expensive hotels .
To give you a little of t he history of the place , now this i.s. not authentic history ,
this is as I got i t from my family .
The Indians used to meet here to use the water .
It was a meeting place of various tribes of Indians . And they were discovered , we ' ve
a lways been told , and then the story is of t wo men , the scouts , who were watching
�9
for the Indians and they were had gone on out
around .
a~ad
to see if there were any Indians
This was during the time when I guess they had squirmishes with Indians , and
they discovered them near Hot Springs .
But , it had been known , as far as I ' ve always
been told , by the Indians long , long before that and I wouldn ' t doubt at all but what
it had not been used by the Indians
becau~ e
even though they say now days that you
can get in the bathtub and get just as much benefit , I ' ve always felt that mineral
water of the type we !ave is really very superior .
than Hot Springs , Arkansas .
the hotel was going on .
It was always rated even better
W certainly saw some very interesting cures here when
e
I well remember a family friend that they lifted off the
train on a stretcher and he took the baths and before he left at the end of that
summer he danced in the ballroom .
And he became a lifelong family friend and would
come back and visit us even when there was no longer a hotel here .
are curative values I can assure you .
And so , there
And my family , my mother and my aunt always
felt that whatever you had , if you ' d just go down and take a bath and drink the mineral
water there you ' d be fixed up fine and so the two things the things they emphasized
then were the curative values and then they went in big for the type of entertainment
that people liked then and enjoyed .
The widows were not too terribly
though they were much more so than they
are now , but they developed a scheme by which in the month of February , I think from
Christmas on , it was probably pretty slow . : You see , the fall was very lonely here .
It would sort of linger along til perhaps November and I guess they didn ' t mind the
slow season in there when they didn ' t have people .
And then they ' d contacted some
people in Akron , Ohio and rented them an entire wing of the hotel .
filled it themselves with their friends .
Thereby , they
In February was mild then and the early
winter was the part that was cold and so they used to help out that way .
you would get picked up because April was quite a warm spring month .
And by March
So , I don ' t
think they had to struggle through too many winter mont hs and then I imagine that
they had a few people that came and went regularly such as the Drummins who used to
go through the country
the country store and they always had to put up some-
where , And Hot Springs had a good m
any boarding houses back in those days for people
�10
that did not stay at the hotel .
And right back of this house , right over there
there ' s a famous old boarding house run by Lancefords .
in the summertime even after the days of the hotels .
accomodations all over town .
then .
And ah , it used to fill up
And there were boarding house
And Hot Springs doesn ' t look at all now what it looked
So that main street ' s become acrossed with bridges of that was where people
lived and the stores and the post offices and whatever other business buildings like
the livery stable which every town had one then .
t'ha railroad station when I
was growing up .
Ah , somewhere in my possessions and I ' m not sure where right now because things
are kind of mixed up , I rave a little book that you just called a brochure that were
mailed out and I would say the greatest advertisement was word of mouth and I think
people became more familiar with a place because somebody went there that liked it .
.
\
Ah , because people didn ' t rave radios , t . v . s , and barely even newspaper advertisements .
M
ost advertising , I ' d say the greatest, by word of mouth .
Ah , well , the efforts were made you see by the building of superior court
here .
And all along , through the year , as I described to you a little bit ago ,
in those days .
there were
Trat was
And I remember we didn ' t have a lot of automobiles travelling here as early as they
did other places because our roads weren ' t very good around here .
I know when
I learned to drive a car in 1925 there wasn ' t a paved road around here anywhere.
The road over this mountain that you came over was practically single-laned and
a dirt road and the first road I remember didn ' t even have
It was just a dusty road .
rock
The dust maybe hid you in the summertime .
So, the efforts
have been here to encourage tourists , but the ah , things just haven ' t worked out .
If we had maintained a steady tourist travel it wa.ild have certainly required ah,
very good roads that we don 't have because when the railroad travel went out entirely
at all.
Ah , people moved only by automobiles , tourist travel .
can understand what I thought it was .
And you
�11
No, I don ' t remember .
Ah , of course, I was very young during the days of the
hotel and it was all very glamorous to me and I thought it was lovely .
And I
ah, thought it was quite beautifully run because my grandfather ran it I guess .
And it was a tie-in with the family and this house that we ' re sitting in right
now was built by my grandfather in 1868 and it has been completely remodelled .
But , you can look over there and see a picture of it as it was .
And as it was,
as I lived in it as a child and in fact until not too many years ago before it was
remodelled like it is now .
It was my grandfather ' s home .
My
mother was born here .
And ah , it has never been, except for rented for a short period of ti.me a boarding
house while the family lived in Asheville a little while during the days of
southern
company, the Civil W aftermath and it ' s always been mentioned
ar
by the family . It was never owned by anyone else .
�
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.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview.
Efird, Jane
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed.
Dotterer, Elizabeth
Interview Date
7/17/1975
Location
The location of the interview.
Hot Springs, NC
Number of pages
11 pages
Date digitized
9/16/2014
File size
8.11MB
Checksum
alphanumeric code
8df455f77e2183ea64b8c3af6459e207
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_tape300_ElizabethDotterer_transcript_M
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Elizabeth Dotterer [July 17, 1975]
Language
A language of the resource
English
English
Type
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Document
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Efird, Jane
Dotterer, Elizabeth
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<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
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Hot Springs (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century
Community life--North Carolina--Hot Springs--History--20th century--Anecdotes
Description
An account of the resource
Elizabeth Dotterer talks about growing up in Hot Springs, North Carolina, where many tourists would come and stay over the summer. She explains: "It was the type of tourism we no longer have. You spent the entire summer." After the outbreak of WWII the nature of tourism changed. Dotterer reflects fondly on working at the hotels and spending time with the summer tourists. She explains that the opening of the I-40 highways had a big impact on tourism as well.
Andrew Johnson Jr
Asheville
automobiles
Buncombe Turnpike
cars
Civil War
drovers
Elizabeth Dotterer
formal balls
German band
German prisoners
Greenville
Hampton Cottage
Hot Springs
hotel entertainment
Hotel Grand
Madison County N.C.
Mountain Fog Hotel
Native Americans
railroad
Tennessee
tourist business
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https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/74f1927f4e7baa04fde1ffc3c674d110.pdf
2cee9b841fba1c3ba7b9ee2453db9121
PDF Text
Text
Tape # 46
Outline
I.
Name and birthplace of parents.
II.
Parents schooling.
III.
Occupation.
IV.
Churches in the area.
V.
Community
A. Formation.
B. Change.
C. Decision makers.
D. Minority groups
E. Population.
VI.
Politics
A. Change.
VII.
Transportation
A. Layout of roads and railroads
B. Building of railroads.
C. First cars.
VIII.
Mountain crafts and customs.
A. Courting.
IX.
Outlaws
X.
Legends, folktales, supersitions
XI.
Depression
XII.
Shull's Mill
XIII.
Honorary degree of Kentucky Colonel.
�This is an interview with Mr. N.D. Shull for the Appalachian Oral
History Project by Bill Brinkley on March 27, 1973.
Q: Could you give me the name and birthplace of your parents?
A: Well, my father was born here at Shull's Mill. My mother was born
over on Cove Creek.
Q:
What were their names?
A: R. L. was my father's name; Mamie D. Graybeal was my mother's name.
Q: Did you have any brothers and sisters?
A: None alive.
Q: But you did have some?
A: Two.
Q: What were their names?
A: They died when they was small. William, and I forget the other one's name.
Q: How much schooling did your parents have?
A: I have no idea.
Q: What is your occupation?
A: Engineer.
�3.
Q: When you lived in this area, what sorts of churches were here? Have
you lived here all your life?
A: Well, I was born here and stayed here until I was about 18.
Q: What sorts of churches were in this area when you came back, or in
the earlier days?
A: Well, in the early days the same churches were here except Hebron
bought out the Presbyterian Church.
The other churches were the same.
Q: To which of these churches did most of the people belong?
A: Well, they were divided.
There was no particular preference.
Q: How do you think that they have changed over the years, if any?
A: I can't see any change.
They still have the same beliefs they had earlier.
Q: HOT# did this community get its name?
A: Four brothers came over, one of them settled here, had a mill out here
on the river, and it was called Shull's Mill.
Q: How was it formed in the first place, just because of this mill?
that reason?
A: That's where it got its name.
Q: How do you think the community has changed over the years?
For
�4.
A: It was strictly a rural farming area, and now it's gone into a summer
resort area.
Q: Who have been the community decision makers? Mainly the Shulls
or other people involved also?
A: I don't see that there was any one person that was the community
decision maker. It was all handled through the individuals that owned the
property.
They made their own decisions.
Q: Are there any minority groups in the community?
A: None.
Q: Has the population changed greatly in the community?
A: Well, since Hound Ears and some of the other resorts being here, of
course the population has increased. But if you discount that, the population
is about the same as it was when I was growing up.
Q: On politics*
do you have any memoires of specific elections, local
or state?
A: When I was growing up, they always had a big fight, and everybody got
about half drunk, that's about all I remember. Republicans wouldn't vote
a Democrat ticket, or vice versa.
Q: How do you think the politics have changed over the years?
�5.
A: I don't think it's as clean now as it was; it's a dirty bunch of politics,
a dirty bunch of politicians.
Q: How did the people get around in the community? What sort of
transportation did they use?
A: Horse, buggy, foot.
Q: Where did the roads and the railroads run?
A; Well, the railroads ran from Johnson City to Boone, that was Tweetsie.
With the exception of this new 105 they built in here a few years ago, the old
roads were essentially in the same location, but they weren't hard surface.
They were just dirt roads, the first ones, maintained by county labor.
Q: When were the railroads built?
A: About 1914.
Q: Do you remember the first cars in the community?
A: Well, my father had about the first car that was right in this community.
It was, I believe, a 1914 Ford. That's somewhere around '20 I guess, '18 or
'20 when he got it.
Q: Do you know very much about the mountain crafts and customs?
Soapmaking, curing, weaving, anything like that?
A: No.
�6.
Q: Are there any mountain cures that you are familiar with?
A: Well, there's an awful lot of them that people use and talk about, but
I'm not familiar with any of them.
I believe in a good ol' doctor.
Q: How would you compare the courting then and now? Dating back then?
A: Well, back then you either walked or rode a horse. You usually stayed
at the girl's home, didn't wander around much. Now, I don't do any
courting now. Looks to me like they're all over the country.
Q: It was more back then, you traveled in groups didn't you? If you went
to the girl's house, weren't you more with a group than like now it seems
that they're alone so much?
A: No, I'd say you were more by yourself back then.
Q: I was thinking that maybe a group of them got toether in a horse and
buggy, went somewhere, picnicking or something like that?
A: Oh, well. When you got together, that's right, on an outing or something,
you traveled in groups.
When you went courting, you went by yourself. You
had no competition or interference.
Q: Bedtime was pretty early back then wasn't it?
A: They sure was, but getting-up time was a lot earlier.
Q: Were there any badmen back in the area during that time?
�7.
A: Oh, sure. We had a few that were considered a little wild, but I don't
imagine they would be considered bad now.
Q: No outlaws ?
A: Not in this particular section that I know of.
Q: Are there any folktales and legends associated with this community, or
any superstitions that were maybe passed down from your father or mother?
A: There's a lot of tales about how tought living was back then, as far as
legends, I don't know .
DEPRESSION
Q: When did it start as best you can remember?
A: Started in the early '30's, maybe '29.
Q: How many years did it last?
A: Well, I believe you could feel it up until the war started in,the '40's,
'41.
Course, it wasn't as bad in the latter part of the 30's as it was in the
early part.
Q: Were you living here at the start of the Depression?
A: No.
Q: Where were you living then?
A: Tennessee.
�Q: How many were in your family?
A: There was just my mother, my father, and myself.
Q: Did anyone else live with you? Any boarders?
A: No.
Q: What was the effect of the Depression on your family?
A: Well, you just didn't have the money t o spend, didn't buy the clothes
and food that you normally would. You made do with what you had.
Q: How did it effect the working conditions?
A: There was no work to be found.
Q: Were you working during the Depression?
A: No, I was in school when it started. I got out in '32.
Q: Did you ever hear of any government projects, WPA, CCC?
A: Yes, had WPA here, and CCC camp was not too far from here. It wasn't
in Watauga County.
Q: What did they do exactly?
A: Most of the WPA workers worked on the roads, including the roads,
highways; and the CCC Boys were brought in and taught how to survive in the
wilderness. They built trails, and I think they grew some timber.
�9.
Q: When did the welfare program, start?
A: Are you still speaking of WPA, CCC. . . ?
Q: Yes, something like that.
A.
Best I recall, it was in the early '30's.
Q: Was any of your family affected by those projects?
A: No.
Q: Was there a scarcity of food?
A: Not in this particular section, because as I said before, this was strictly
a rural area and all the local families raised their own food.
Q: What crops did you raise?
A: Oh, outside the gardens which we raised everything we ate, main crops
were cabbage and potatoes.
Q: Did you have any animals?
A: Well, we always kept a cow. I had a pony when I was growing up.
dogs, normal animals on a farm.
Q: Were prices higher or lower during the Depression.?
A: Prices were lower.
Cats,
�10.
Q: Were there any new ways of making money that arose, such as maybe people
took up making moonshine, gathering ginseng?
A: Well, I don't know if people took it up or not, but that's been going on in
this section of the country as far back as I can remember. And it's still
going on.
Q: Do you remember any of the banks closing?
A: I remember when the President closed the banks in order to get them
reorganized back then.
Q: Do you remember any in this area particularly that closed?
A: Well, they were all closed for a few days.
Q: What was the community reaction to the banks closing?
A: Oh, I guess, it was pretty evenly divided. Some thought it would never
open again, and others agreed with the President's idea.
Q: What date was it that the banks closed?
A: '31, 1931, I'm sure.
Q: How was the community affected?
Was there any profound effect, or
did things stay pretty much the same?
A: Things stayed pretty much the same.
�11.
Q: Was there anyone that you blamed for the collapse of the banks?
A: The bank's didn't collapse here. The banks were financially in good
shape. And as for other sections of the country, I have no idea, poor
management, I guess.
Q: Did the schools change during the Depression?
A: Yes, they did. We had better buildings, we built some new buildings.
Course, I believe we had better schools.
Q: How about the churches and businesses, the country stores?
A: They was about the same.
Q: What do you think caused the Depression?
A: Well, looked like the stock market was in pretty bad shape; too many
people over bought, caught up with them and from that it snowballed into
a very uncomfortable situation.
Q: Who was hurt worst by the Depression?
A: Small investors.
Q: Do you think there was anything particularly good about the Depression days?
A: Well, at least during the Depression days a dollar was worth a dollar,
and if you wanted somebody to work for you or if you wanted to work for
somebody else, you could put out a day's work.
All in all, I think our economy
�12.
was healthier than it is now.
Q: How is life different today than from the Depression, such as the family
life, education, etc. ?
A: Back then, all you had was a newspaper and a radio, and the newspaper
got here when the mailman rode his horse. Now, you got television, good
automobiles to travel, and naturally you have a little more interest in what
is going on.
Q: What do you like best about today's way of living?
A: Retirement.
Q: If you could change anything about the way they are now, what would
that be?
A: I'm not too fond of these subsidies that the government hands out for not
growing some crops.
I believe that the old law of supply and demand would
help us a lot.
Q: What I want to get you to do now is to tell me all about Shull's Mill if
you would? The founding.
It's effect on the community. The history of it.
A: Well, the founding and the effect of the community, I don't know anything
about that. My grandfather was the postmaster back in 1879. That's a grant
that was given to him.
The fact that the railroad came in here, and then
Whiting Lumber Co. moved in here, and cut out all the timber on Grandfather.
�13.
Had a little narrow gauge railroad that went up to Boone's Fork, hauled logs
in on that.
Plants were just across the river from here. They had quite an
operation here. At one time they were here. We had a hospital, summer
drug store, a big commissary, theatre, I think it was 500 families.
large, or larger than Boone at that particular time.
It was
Course, after the
timber supply was depleted on Grandfather Mountain, they all moved to
Butler. Families, of course, migrated out of here. There's very few of
them left, in this section now. The older families that were here before the
mill, their descendants are here.
Q: What was the mill exactly?
A: Just a lumber mill. They made lathes, you know wooden lathes, that they
used in place of metal lathes. They were strictly a lumber mill. They cut
timber in the woods, hauled it in, ran it through the mill. Then they dried
it and sized it and shipped it out.
Q: Did they ship it all over the United States, or just to North Carolina?
A: It was shipped out of here on Tweetsie.
After it got to Johnson City, I
don't know where it went.
Q: What is the Kentucky Colonel over there? I noticed that last time I was
in here.
A: My wife and I both were appointed Kentucky Colonels a few years ago.
�14.
Q: What is that exactly?
A: It's an honorary appointment that you get from the Governor of Kentucky.
Q: What is that for?
A: It's just one of those honorary commissions that they give you.
Q: You got it from the Governor of Kentucky? How did you manage that?
A: Well, it was managed through my sister-in-law. She's the one who had
the influence.
�
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Title
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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
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Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989
Date
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1965-1989
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Wetmore, Dana
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Title
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Interview with N.D. Shull, March 27, 1973
Description
An account of the resource
N.D. Shull was born in Shull's Mills, North Carolina and worked as an engineer throughout his life. Mr. Shull and his wife were appointed Kentucky Colonels through the Kentucky governor.
Mr. Shull describes his childhood including topics such as church, politics, and transportation, specifically cars and the railroad. Mr. Shull lived in Tennessee with his parents during the Great Depression, and describes what that was like. He also explains the background of Shull's Mill.
Creator
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Brinkley, Bill
Shull, N.D.
Source
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<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>
Date
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3/27/1973
Rights
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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.
Extent
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14 pages
Language
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English
English
Type
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document
Identifier
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111_tape46_NDShull_1973_03_27M001
Spatial Coverage
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Boone, NC
Subject
The topic of the resource
Watauga County (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century
Watauga County (N.C.)--History
automobiles
cars
Great Depression
Kentucky Colonels
Politics
railroad
religion
Shull's Mill
transportation