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Tape # 41 & 42
Interview with Mrs. Carlton
I.
Name, age, birthplace of self and husband.
II.
Time they moved to Boone.
A. Number of children and grandchildren.
EC Reasons for settling in Boone.
III.
IV.
V.
Looms
A. How they are operated.
B. What she was making at the time of interview.
C. Types of things made and how.
Changes that have affected her.
Schooling of family.
VI. When they learned to weave.
VII.
VIII.
Patterns in weaving.
Craft house.
A. Amount of time to teach weaving.
IX. Weaving continues through the years.
A. Reasons people enjoy weaving now.
B. Reason she weaves.
X.
Hard times in life.
Interview with Mr. Carlton
I.
II.
III.
IV.
Name, age, birthplace and occupation.
Job as deputy sheriff.
Busting up the still.
A. How it worked.
B. Catching moonshiners.
Sheriff, high sheriff, jobs.
�This is an interview with E.E. Carlton in Boone, North Carolina, on March
20, 1973, for the Appalachian Oral History Project, by Lester Harmon.
We're going to be talking with Mr. Carlton and his wife, Nellie, who does
weaving and has looms in her home.
Q: I want to get your name.
A: My name's Nellie Carlton.
Q: I'd like to get your age and your birthplace.
A: My birthplace was in Wilkes County, February the sixteenth, nineteen
hundred and three and you can guess how old I am.
Q: Your husband?
A: He was born in Wilkes County. No, he wasn't, he was born in West
Virginia. And he was born July the sixth, nineteen hundred and three.
Q: When did you all move to Boone?
A: We moved to Boone - when did we, Lucy?
Lucy: Oh - when I was six year old, forty year ago.
Q: And how many children do you have?
A: Four.
Q: And do they live here also?
A: Yes, all of 'ems here now in this country.
Q: I guess you have grandchildren up here, don't you?
�A: Yeah, I have fifteen grandchildren and fifteen great-grandchildren.
Q: Why did you all pick Boone to settle down in?
A: Well, my father lived here and we just come for a :while and we just
liked it so good, we stayed.
Q: It's pretty country.
A: Yes.
Q: So you moved here before you and Mr. Carlton were married.
A: No. No, we was married and all of our children was born there.
Q: And you say your children are still in the country?
A: Yeah, all of 'em's here now. One did live in South Carolina, but she
lives here now.
Q: How long have you been doing this weaving?
A: Since '53.
See I's fifty-three year old when I started, when I learnt
to weave.
Q: And can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing now and the type
of loom you're using?
A: Yeah. Now this, see, this fastens all thread you need and you just use
one chunk. And now three or four is your pattern treadles and one and two
is your plain weave.
�Q: Now explain what you mean by that, by treadle and the plain weave.
A: Well, the treadle is what works the loom, works these up here, works the
frames, the things down here, the treadles that your feet work on. Now this
is the way the pattern will be and when you want to put another bobbin in, you
connect it like that.
And on doing this, you step on your pattern treadles and
then over on the weave. And then when you get that all done you've got to
treadle in on plain weave and then go back to your pattern treadle.
Q: How long does it take you to set up this pattern?
A: It takes a right smart while to get that set up.
See you have to thread
through all these kettles.
Q: Do you know how many of those there are? What is that called?
A: Bronson lace. Now this is what I think I made for your mother.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I'm working on a placemat now.
Q: I mean, what do you call these things?
A: You call them kettles or the needles or whatever you want to call it.
That
little loom over there in that one works like, you call these the colonial weave.
It's real old timey and this is a little later pattern than what they used to call it.
�4.
Q: Who built the frames for you?
A: Now we ordered these frames and this loom, I believe it's a store bought
loom, but that one and that one are handmade. My husband and son made
that one and my husband made that loom.
Q: How old are these looms?
A: Well, that one there is, well, I got it when I started learning to weave
in '53 and that 'un is about fifty-four and this one, I don't know, it's real
old now.
Q: What kind of things do you make with this big loom?
A: I make aprons on the big loom.
Q: Can you make things like tablecloths with this big loom?
A: Well, you can, but you have to put it together.
It's too small for a table-
cloth, but you can put it together like I showed you a little on this one.
I'm
up to where I'm supposed to put the pattern in. Now when you want to roll
it down like that and then tighten it up, you have it real tight and with two
shuttles.
Q: This one works on the same principle except you use two shuttles,
A: About the same thing only you use two shuttles. In that 'un the pattern
is threaded in the loom.
See I'm going on five and every time you put a
�pattern treadle in you have to put a plain weave and tuck in this end of
thread.
Q: And you said this was a pattern?
A: Yeah, now this is a pattern. I'll show you some of the aprons in a
minute. Now in between this I put in three, I mean nine, chalks of plain
weave. Now you want this shuttle on the left when you start putting your
pattern in. Now the rest of it's done just like that only I'm putting the sender
in the cup like that down there. I can undo that so you can see.
Q: I don't think you'll have to undo it.
A: See that? That's made with two shuttles.
Q: And that pattern shuttles used to do all this and the white is the plain.
A: The white is this plain weave, plain five threads.
there.
I had two aprons on
When I cut it I leave some on.
Q: How long does it take you to make one of these aprons?
A: I can make one of them aprons, weave it, in about an hour. In a little
less than that if I have my bobbins wound, but it takes longer to make them
up. I'll show you some in here.
mistake.
And now right here in this loom is a bad
We put the whole ways on and just section had sixty threads.
out after we got the ways on and I had to add on some bobbins to it.
We found it
�6.
Q: When you mess it up like that, do you have to go through and do the
whole thing over?
A: You have to do like I'vecbne that.
is what I make on that.
up.
I'm trying to get it wove off. This
Placemats, they've not been washed nor done
They look better after they're washed.
Q: How did you learn to do this weaving?
A: My daughter, my oldest daughter taught me and then they's a woman
taught weaving at the Watauga Handicraft Shop.
She taught me.
After all the
children got gone and I was lost for something to do and I just took up this
weaving.
Q: And you really enjoy it.
A: Yeah, I really enjoy it.
much handwork in it.
See how you have to make the aprons up. They's so
It's all handwork.
The hem, hemmed with your hand and the
band put on with your hands.
Q: They're really beautiful.
A:
Now here's another thing that I make.
Q: Now do you sell these?
A: Yeah. At the craft houses.
We couldn't last winter.
enough to keep 'em filled up with aprons.
We couldn't weave
My sister weaves and my older
daughter, well this 'un that's here weaves some too, but she works at the
craft house and she don't have much time to weave.
I do that in my spare time.
And I crochet too.
�7.
Q: You're really handy with your hands.
A: I 'bout got this critter done I think.
Q: What do you call this, an afghan?
A: An afghan.
Q: What were some of the changes in mountain life and this area and the
Boone area that have affected you most?
A: Well, I really wouldn't know how to explain.
Hit's a lot different than
what it was when we moved here.
Q: Has the tourist industry affected it a lot?
A: Well, it's helped a lot, I think, don't you?
Q: As far as economy, it has.
Did you work here in Boone when you first
came here?
A: No, I just worked at home as a housewife and maybe garden, like that.
And you know I went to school, to the college in 1920 and now it sure is
different now to what it was then.
Q: Yeah, I guess it is.
Did your husband go to college here or any of your
children?
A: No, my children all just finished high school.
Well, my boy that does that
carpenter work down there, he didn't hardly finish high school.
He didn't
�want to go to school.
Q: And he's a carpenter?
A: He does carpenter work. He can make anything he wants to out of wood.
It's like me by threads.
Q: Well are there certain patterns that are traditional kinds of patterns
that you weave?
A: Yes.
On these looms in here, I did have a sampler of all the different things
that you can make on it.
See you can make this, this on it.
All this on it.
Q: Now what is that called?
A: Miniature snowball is the name of it, but I don't know what just this
pattern would be.
things.
Now you can make it in a round circle and in different
I think my sampler is over at the craft house. I had a sample of
all the different things that we could weave.
Q: Do you know where these patterns came from?
A: No, no I don't.
Q: Is there somebody around here now that teaches weaving?
A: No, nobody but her in there.
She teaches along when that craft house
opens.
The lady that teaches weaving starts talking here.
�A: I'll be starting back up the first of April, I guess.
Q: Do you have a lot of students that are interested in doing it?
A: Well, I have four or five that are supposed to come now and I hope to
have more.
Q: Where is this Watauga Handicraft?
A: It's across from the Daniel Boone Inn.
Q: And is this funded by the town or is it privately owned?
A: No. No, it's privately owned.
Q: Does it take a long time to teach students to do work like this?
A: Oh, I'd say in about three days I could have them following a pattern
and doing their own pattern.
Q: Is there somewhere you can get the looms after you learn ?
A: Well, I'd say you would have to order them from the Hammet Loom Company.
It would be the best bet 'cause labor's so high on building them I think they put
them out by production.
to get 'em handmade.
You can maybe get 'em cheaper there than you could
Where a lot of people do come in and may try to look
at 'em and make their own you know, which they do a fine job on it.
of them though want a loom.
Most all
Once they come in and weave they like it so
well till they just, they're lookin 1 for a loom then for theirself.
�10.
Q: Have you got looms at
your home too?
A: I've got one at home and one at the shop.
Q: Are you working now, teaching?
A: No, not now, I'm off. I work till December, till Christinas and then
off till April.
I'm
So I get caught up on a lot of weaving at home.
Q: Do you think that people will continue to weave, or is this something that's
dying out?
A: No, I think that they really like it better now than they did.
Q: Why do you think that is?
A: Well, I don't know.
Q: Do you think it's because of so much, well, just the aprons and placemats
and stuff, they're all made in the big factories; do you think it's just the art
of doing it at home that people are attracted to?
A: Yes, it's something they like to do for their, for gifts and things like
that, you know, and lots of 'em are not doing anything else and they enjoy
doing it then.
Q: Do many people say they like to do it 'cause it is soothing and it gives
them a chance to. . .
�11.
A: They sure do and they usually always planning some of their friends to
give it to because they want to give it and share it with someone else.
Q: That's marvelous.
So many things are just made in factories and you
don't have the quality.
A: It's hard to get the value out of it, of what you have in it.
The time, you
really won't get anything for your time. That's why you feel like you want
to give it to a special friend.
It's more than getting the money for you really
don't get the money out of it, it's worth.
If you did, see you'd have to charge a lot
more than what we do.
Q: Well, then why do you do it?
A: Well, I just do it, well I do it to make some money out of it too. Up
in the shop when I'm not working at the front, you know or something, I'm
in the back making coverlets to sell and because I really like it.
Q: Do you do any other work in crafts besides weaving?
A: No. I make flowers, you know.
I've made flowers to sell.
Mrs. Carlton reading verses:
Trust the master weaver when and seem so out of line.
Trust the master weaver who planned the whole design.
For in life's choicest patterns some dark threads must appear,
To make the rose threads fair, the golden bright and clear.
The pattern may seem intricate and hard to understand, but trust the master
weaver and his steady guiding hand.
My life is all a weaving between my Lord and me
I may but choose the colors he worketh steadily.
�12
Sometimes he weaves sorrow and I in foolish pride
Forget he's seen the upper and I the underside.
Not 'til the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly
Shall God unroll the weaving and explain the reason why.
The dark threads are as needful in the weaver's skillful hand
As a thread of gold and silver
In the fabric He has planned.
Q: They're marvelous.
Where do you go to church?
A: Up Cool Spring Baptist Church. It's just a little ways, you can see it as you
go down this way, the Paine Branch Road.
Q: Yes, I've seen it.
It's a beautiful little church.
A: Yes, it's a little church.
Q: Does it mean a lot to you to have the kind of faith that is talked about in these?
A: Yes, it does.
Q: I suppose life hasn't always been easy when you've lived up here.
A: No, it's not always been easy and still it's not easy.
I have my problems.
But
this weaving has really helped me, because I was just restless and nervous and I
got my looms and that's good for it.
Q: And it really does make a difference, then?
A: Yes, it does make a difference.
Somebody said that they were nervous, they
couldn't weave. I told them that you can get to weaving and forget about your
problems.
You've got to when you work with your hands and your feet and your
head too.
Q: Has life become less rugged or hard up here, was it difficult when you first
moved here?
A: It was in a way. We were farming when we moved here and the first year we
�13
moved here there came a frost in June and killed about everything that we had
planted.
And then our house got burned up when we lived here.
Q: Now, what year was this?
A: What year was it we moved here, Lucy? I can't remember.
LUCY CARLTON
A: Well, I thought it was about forty years ago.
Q: Did your house burn up the same year that you lost your crop?
A: It did, didn't it?
The year that the frost killed the crops.
Q: How did you make it with no house and no food?
A: Well, you know, it wasn't so hard then.
The dollar would go a lot further.
The dollar would go a long way.
Q: Was Mr. Carlton working?
A: Yes, he was working and he was walking from here toBoone to work.
Q: What was he doing?
A: Carpenter work.
Q: Does he stillciosome carpenter work?
A: Not too much anymore.
He goes down in the shop and helps Paul.
Q: Is Paul your son?
A: Yes.
Q: And he owns the shop out here?
A: Well, we own it really.
Q: But he does work out there, carpenter work?
A: Yes.
�14
MR. CARLTON
Q: To start off with, I'd just like for you to give me your name and your age
and your birthplace.
A: Well, it's E.E.Carlton and my birthdate is July the sixth, nineteen hundred
and two.
I was seventy years old last July the sixth.
tractor now for the last thirty-five years.
I've been a carpenter con-
Farming some between times a little,
I have been a farming some between times. But I used to farm a right smart, but
the market got so that we couldn't make anything out of the farming and I just quit
it altogether and grassed my farm and I went to contracting altogether.
I worked
with lots of different construction companies, such as: R. K. Steward; L. B.
Guiles in Highpoint; L. B. Gallimore out of Greensboro; and another company
out of Conover.
Q: You've been around then haven't you?
A: Yeah. I worked at Durham. I built a dormitory there at Durham and an
addition to the psychiatric wing to the hospital in Chapel Hill.
Built that and
got that all done with so I just went into contracting for myself after that. And
I been retired now from that for a couple of years.
But I do have a shop of my
own here and we still make cabinets for people and install cabinets.
Q: Have you done a lot of work around here in Boone?
A: Yeah, yeah, I've done, I've built, I don't know how many house I've
built here in Boone and in Blowing Rock.
�15.
Q: When did you say you quit farming?
A: I quit, entirely quit farming in '60. Haven't done any farming since '60
except in the garden.
We raise a garden every year.
Q: I was talking to Col. Elvery last night and he said that you used to be
with the police force; is that right?
A: I used to work with the revenue officers, the federal officers.
I was
deputy sheriff of Wilkes County, deputy sheriff of Caldwell County, and deputy sheriff
of Watauga County at home here, which I have helped to cut up a many of a
still, liquor still.
Q: Has there been more crime and vandalism over the years as more people
began to come into the mountains and more outsiders began to come in, and
harder to handle?
A: No, see it's been fifteen, eighteen years, twenty, since I was a deputy
sheriff here. No, we didn't have no trouble much like they do now, no.
Q: Is there a big difference now?
A: Yeah, there's a big difference now and about twenty years ago.
Q: I was talking to Col. Elvery and he said you had an interesting story you
could tell me about Billy Stewart or Billy Stewart's father or somebody.
A: Well, we just went to a still one time. We got a report on a still and
the man that reported it, he didn't want us to give him away, you know.
�16.
And he said he'd take us and show us the still, show us right where to find it
at, then he was going to slip back home and let us go in there and tear it out,
catch 'em if we could.
So we slipped around and around in there and he
showed us that they had it lit up just like a town down in the holler there and we
slipped around down there and got down and we s-at down and planned out
how we's gonna surround 'em, surround 'em, you know and catch 'em. And
nobody wanted to speak or say anything at all till one man supposed to run
in and flush 'em out and then we's gonna grab 'em as they come out of there
and so all at once we got down, they's one of the revenue officers, now mind
you, his boy was connected with that, so we got down at a certain distance,
you know of the place and he said, "All right boy just stand still. We know
right where you're at. " So they shot and cut underbrush and we never got
'em out, narry a one.
But we did get the tools and the still boiled over while
we was running them and trying to get a hold of them, the still boiled over and
run over. We then went down to the still after we seen we couldn't get anybody
and tore down and cut up the still and took the worm in, the worm and the
still, it was a copper still, we took the worm and the still in for evidence, you know.
Q: What do you mean about the worm?
A: That's a worm that they run that water through after it condenses it back
into liquor. After that water comes through there steam comes out of that
still it condenses it back into liquor and they have a little spout, little can under
the end of that worm to catch it in.
It's all condensed through a copper worm. And
that's just the way that one went off. We didn't get anybody, but we got evidence,
�17.
we knowed who they was and we had a right to divide up the stuff that we
got at the stills and this here deputy sheriff, I mean revenue officer, one of
them, he knowed the coat and he knowed his boy was at, he knowed it belonged
to his boy so he wanted to take the overcoat, it was a nice overcoat and he
wanted to take the overcoat and I take notice to him in a few days and it was
pretty cold weather and I saw this boy with the same overcoat on.
;I
think
about the overcoat and knew it was the same overcoat that we got up at the
still.
That's the reason he wanted it back, you know. He was gonna give it
back to the boy.
His own boy was right into it.
Q: Was this a long time ago?
A: Yeah, that's been, I ' d say, forty-five years ago.
Q: Well, now, did you ever catch any of them?
A: Yes ma'am. Yeah, we catched several fellows.
At another still we caught
up on Shull Creek, we, I and another fellow, we went over and located the
still, slipped around one day and located the still and finally we found, we got
on their tracks and tracked 'em into it and finally we run into a little path, we
knew they'd see our tracks, so we gets out and crawl through the woods and
gets down to where we can see it, see the still and when we got down there, got
to where we could see the still good, we was still under cover from the laurel
bushes and things, and we heard a man whistle up on the hill, he come up there
and whistled.
He was a coming in there to watch that still.
gonna run off that day.
They was a running off,
Just me and another man, wasn't no officer with us,
�18.
but me, so we didn't need to try to undertake running in on a whole gang of
fellers there, just us two. I just had him there to go with me in there to
locate and we found it and we called revenue officers out of North Wilkesboro
to come up there and be tte re and we'd go in at nine o'clock that night. We'd
meet down at a certain place and we'd all go in there and come in on 'em
and see if we couldn't get 'em. And by granny, when we got in there to where
they's at, why they had done run off what their run was and loaded it up and carried it
out. And so we caught, as they went out of there some of 'em come in from
below you know, and they caught one man carrying two five-gallon cans of
liquor and on his back.
out and got away.
They knowed who he was, so the rest of 'em all went
So we just went down by that man's house and everything and we
poured out his liquor right there and let him carry the empty cans back to the
house and took the feller in there and let his folks sell a bond for him and then
we took papers for the other folks that we saw in there. We knew the whole
bunch of them and they took papers for the whole bunch and got them arrested.
And they paid fines and some got a month or two and some's on the road and lot
of 'em got out of it that way.
Then we, my daddy and I and this same fellow, one
Sunday, we took a notion to go out up on, up Shull Creek and ahead of it and
see if we could locate another one.
We got a sorta tip off that they was one back
in there yet, another one. So we went back in there and before we ever got to the
place we found the still hid under a laurel bush and then we went on down just
a little further and found their furnace and all their stuff there and they'd moved
out everything, they'd run it off and moved it out and hid their still so off we
started back home and in going down towards, down to Shull Creek we found a
�19.
man's tracks there.
I found the tracks myself and I said "There's some tracks
boys. " I said, "They might have walked down through here some way or
another. " And we just followed that track out around the side of the branch and
hill, the side of the hill, you know there was a branch right down through there.
And we crossed over a log and my daddy, Eugene Carlton, he says, "Look a
here boys. " He says, "Looky here under the side of that log. " And so he
turned over that log there and found three five-gallon cans of liquor hid there
and while he was doing that I scratched down on the other side of the log and
found two five-gallon cans of liquor there and so we thought we'd work a trick
on 'em. We turned them cans and poured that liquor out and shut the cans up,
you know, just like they was but we punched, they was cans that had that
wooden ring around 'em, and we just took a nail and slipped holes up through
the bottom of that thing and then in about two or three months after that, why
they put up again and used them cans to put the liquor in, poured it all in there
and set it down, went off and left it and when they come back we understood that
all their liquor had run out of them cans.
So they lost fifty gallons of liquor
there right from the same cans.
Q: Who was the sheriff?
A: It was a feller, Frank Hillby was the deputy sheriff.
We never did get him out up there at all.
He wasn't with us.
We always called the revenue officers
They, see they was government men and if anybody got killed or we had to kill
anybody or they killed somebody, why we'd have sufficient evidence to convict
'em with.
�20.
Q: What is the high sheriff now? Don't you call the main person the high
sheriff?
A: Yeah.
Yeah, he's the high sheriff of Wilkes County at that time, he was
Frank Hillby, was his name.
He was the high sheriff of the county just like
we've got over here at Boone, you know, and he's got deputies all around there.
But if he's got, if he's got a dangerous place to go into and everything to try to catch
somebody where he thinks he might run into some danger and have to kill
somebody or get killed one, why he always calls the Commissioner out of
Raleigh or head man, used to be Mr. Horn, I don't know who's our head man
there in Raleigh over that business now, but it used to be a fellow Horn.
I
know back in, how many years back has it been since those Stewards down here
got, robbed that man.
No, it ain't been forty years. It's been at least twenty
years ago that they was two Steward boys robbed an old man right over here
on, just out from where her daddy lived, Mr. West.
They robbed an old man
there and took eighteen hundred and some dollars off of him, and knocked the
pocketbook out of his pocket off on the bank of the road with three dollars and
something in it.
They didn't get it, they got his big book. So we hunted them
out and got 'em out.
I .located them one morning.
I went to these boys'
wives, they were Steward boys and one of the boys had married a Daniels woman.
She had been married before, her name was Daniels so now then she's a
Steward and so they had a little trouble, her and her man did and I slipped down there
to her house and told her, hunted her up, you know and got her to tell me
where ttoey was at and she told me that they was a leaving there. She says,
"They're about at Boone now somewhere," says, "They've just been gone a
�21.
little bit. " Says, "They're headed for Silverstone to spend the night, over
at Silverstone and then they was going from there to Ohio. " So I got that
tip off and I went over to Boone and got over there and drove around through
Boone and I saw one of 'em. And I called the highway patrolman that was over
there. I knew where he always sets, you know, and listens and I pulled around
to where he was at and he was just a fix in' to pull out and go somewhere or another.
Then I just run up in front of him and stopped and I said, "Let's go around
here and get that Steward boy. " I said, "I seen one of 'em right around here. "
And we, run around there and by the time we got around there where he was
at, he had left his daddy, he was talking to his daddy. Daddy had a horse there
that he'd rode into town and he was talking to him, but when we got around
there he had gone.
We went down to where the FCX is now. They was a road
they called the Old Popular Grove Road and we saw a boy a gettin' in a car
there and I said to the patrolman, Miles Jones, I said, "There they go in that
car right now. They're getting in there and leaving. " He said, "Surely that
ain't them. " He said, "Let's go on down the road here and maybe we'll find 'em
around here yet somewhere on the backstreets. " So we run around there and
didn't find them.
We come back down and followed the Popular Grove Road a
good long ways and we didn't overtake no car.
They was in a little old coupe,
a Model A coupe and so I had to come back home and I told him, I says,
"You take a ride over on Brushy Fork over on 421 west out of Boone. " I
said, "You take a ride over in that a way somewhere and, you and the sheriff. "
Sheriff C.M. Watson, Charlie Watson was the high sheriff at that time. So
him and Jone s drove over that way and they got down to an old store over there.
�22.
There was a feller, Doc Mast run the store and they just decided to stop in
there and ask him if he'd seen anything of them three boys anywhere around
there. And he said, "Yes sir, " he says, "There was two in here just a few
minutes ago and they left out of here. " And they asked him if he knew which a
way they went after they got out of there.
He said they had bought about four
dollars worth of stuff out of there. And he said, "Yes sir, I noticed just
which way they went.
They turned right out around behind the store and went
across, across through-there" And after he got around up to the top of the
hill, they was a long street down through there. They saw them boys there
walking down through that street and they just pulled in and run down there
to 'em, right up at 'em, you know and one jumped out on one side and the
other, the other. One little boy was on one side of the other and the other,
the other and they just jumped out there and grabbed 'em.
Caught 'em up
and put 'em in the penitentiary for, they give 'em from eighteen to twentytwo years in the state penitentiary.
And then they got away other times, they
got away, we had to run and catch 'em.
I found 'em under a rock cliff down
here one Sunday, me and another, I picked up a boy to go with me and we found
'em.
I just walked up the path toward two of them and seen they was asleep and I
didn't believe I wanted to undertake 'em by myself; I just had a civilian with me,
you know and he didn't have no gun nor nothing with him and so I just come over
to the prison camp to catch,the highway patrolman was over there, the state
patrolman to come in there with me to get them boys and they seemed to want
to call the, I forget what you'd call him, he was the head of all the sheriffs in
Raleigh, went after that feller Horn I was talking about a while ago.
So they
�23.
called him to come up there, they says, "We'll call him in case that we have
to kill somebody there or something happens we get killed and then it'll all be
over, there won't be no, he'll be the main witness in it all.
So he went with us
in there and he done surveying out for us to place ourselves, you see, all around
that place where they was at, and I told him it was getting dark when they
called Horn.
on my way.
He says, "I'm on my way right now. " Says, "Just right now
I'll be there in an hour and a half. " And it was about an hour
and fifteen minutes he drove from Raleigh up here. And he come in to the
prison camp there, well, the prison camp manager, he wanted to fix supper
for all us there, they fixed us all a steak supper and we ate supper there
and then come into the place there after dark to get 'em out. We come right
down here at the Forks Road and parked their car and walked down around and
went up in there to the place. And I showed Jones, the highway patrolman,
the path there. I said, "You go up the path now and follow this little path
and you'll run right into the end of the rock where they're at. " They was
awake when he slipped up there and we all scattered out around, you know,
where we could catch 'em as they come out. And I told 'em they'd just dash
off under those laurel thickets and lay down and his and you couldn't find
'em in a week going in there in the night. And sure enough we couldn't
find 'em. They was in there laying in their cots when Mike Jones, the
highway patrolman, walked in on 'em. He said, "Boys, just stick-'em-up
now and give up. " Says, "We done got you. " And they didn't do a thing in
the world, you've seen people dive off of diving boards into the water, they just
dove off into them laurels just like that and was gone and we couldn't find
�24.
hide nor hair of 'em all night. They hunted the next day, there was another
deputy sheriff, him and another feller come up to Winkler Creek a lookin 1
for 'em and they met 'em right in the road and they was in ten steps of 'em
when they saw 'em and this here feller pulled out his, Red Green was his
name, he pulled out his pistol and he shot at 'em five times right there in ten steps
of 'em when they saw 'em, and -never touched narry one of 'em and they just
walked off a little ways down across a holler and branch and walked up the
side of the mountain and him shooting him and the other feller both had guns.
He had deputized a feller to go with him, if he was the deputy sheriff at that
time too and he deputized a feller Nelson to go with him.
And they was both
a shooting at 'em a going up the hill up there and never touched narry one
of 'em; got away and finally they caught 'em, they got away and their daddy
had moved out on the north of Boone over there on the mountain.
They
slipped to their daddy's and stayed hid there for a day or two and finally
the highway patrolman, Jones, he was a riding up through there and shot
at him and hit him in the arm and then, and then, then they tracked him from
that on through the woods and on, on into, to a place they call Pottertown
over in there. Mean, rough town back in there and when we got over there then to
where he was at, why the other one was there and so they got 'em, both of
'em.
The high sheriff and Patrolman Jones, they got 'em both up there and
drove 'em back to the jail and sent 'em on back to the pen.
One of 'em so
far as I know is in there yet and the other one they say has got back in there.
Q: How long has this been since this happened?
�25.
A: Well, it's been at least twenty years.
Q: You were talking about the stills before this, did you have a lot of stills
that you had to break up?
A: Yeah, yeah, we broke up hundred of stills.
Q: Well, do they ever have much trouble with 'em now?
A: Oh yeah, they's having a little trouble yet, and it free to buy out here in
Blowing Rock and all around and made those stills, put up a little ol1 still
around somewhere trying to make bootleg some themselves, but they get
caught anymore. They can't make very long because somebody'll give it
away somewhere or another, telling, deceiving and something, give reports
to the sheriff and they go in there and tear it up, but they hardly ever get
anybody.
That's the hardest thing you ever seen in your life, to get somebody.
Now one of those Chall boys, I'd say they got down in Wilkes County, he
got over there. I caught him when we had another deputy sheriff come in
and flushed him out of the stills. I was there. It was a path that come right up there, a
a big chestnut tree and I heared 'em working the brush and running everything
in through there and tearing down and I fixed it so I, if I hear just a little
something, say it was anywhere you can get one of 'em. I sat right by the side,
right behind that tree, I heared a fellow coming up, coming up the road, he
was running through the brushes, he was give out. You could hear him a panting
far as fifty yards nearly and he come on up, he come on up by there and I
was sitting there right by the tree and he walked right by me.
I said, "Where
�26.
you going son?" And he said, "I, I's going to the house. " I said, "Well,"
I said, "I'll just go with you then to the house. " So, we got him.
He was one
of the same gang that we run out of that other still, the first one we got up
on Shull Creek.
Q: Mr. Carlton, it's been good talking to you.
It's been really interesting.
A: Yeah, I've been glad to have you . all with me, explain to you what I
know.
Show you my farm, workshop, houses, apartments and all that.
Q: What are some of the changes in this area that have affected you most
over the years since you've been here?
A: Some of the changes?
Q: Yes.
A: Well, they've changed and people's turn loose of their land and sold
lots and they's been quite a lot of building, building going on and it's, the
population of the county has advance, I'll say fifty or seventy-five percent
in the last twenty years. We really had a good advancement here in
Watauga County.
Q: What's brought in most of the people?
A: Well, we had, we first got some industrial works started here such as
the I. R. C. plant.
That was the first plant to come into town here. Then,
then we got Shadowline, we called it, to make ladies' ready-to-wear underwear
�and they worked about three hundred people.
I. R. C. worked about three
hundred people and they just kept coming in, flocking in from everywhere to work
there and they put in a tool plant then over there.
Then Lowes has put in a
big shopping center down there in the valley, you know where it is.
All
that fine stuff gone in there and the times has really been going forward for the last
several years now. Land has gone up high, land has gone up high.
Why I have land
here that I paid, say five hundred dollars an acre or less than a hundred
dollars an acre, maybe twenty dollars an acre for some of it, and my land,
I could get twelve thousand, five hundred dollars an acre for, for lots.
Just
hundred foot lots off of it.
Q: If you could change anything, like the way the mountains have changed
and everything; if you could change anything now yourself, what would you
change?
A: Well, I wouldn't know hardly what to, what steps to mate a change, to
make it better unless we just put up more industrial buildings.
for the people.
More work
They've not got a, still not got enough of the people that's
flocked in here so from everywhere.
Bought lots and built houses and
everything like that till we don't, just ain't got room for part of 'em.
having to build apartments.
We're
If it hadn't been for the mobile homes and these
ready-built homes, you know, coming in, such as the shell homes and all
those homes there, why we, we could not have had places for 'em to live because
contractors couldn't have built houses for them to live in at all to, till they
�28.
got to bringing those in and that helped out a lot.
They've got, I don't know,
I ' d say they's fifteen or twenty trailer camps around Boone over here. Now,
it's full of trailers.
They rent to people who bought trailers and make a
place to settle over in there, which I don't have no trailers on my street
through here.
It's restricted from that.
Q: Do you, do you think that the increase in population and number of
outside people coming in and building summer homes and the tourist industry
rising like it is; do you think is harming or do you think it's helping, or do
you think that there's much hope for the mountain culture that used to be?
You can see so much of it down and out.
A: Well, hopefully, hopefully I believe that, that it's going to be good for a
few more years yet, unless a depression hits the country, it's going to still
be on upward go.
Be rising, rising and people settling down in here and
everything like that and I think they're trying to get more industries in here
too, plants and things to give more people work. That's going to bring
everything up to a high standard.
�
Dublin Core
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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
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1965-1989
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Scanned by
Wetmore, Dana
Equipment
Hp Scanjet 8200
Scan date
2014-02-19
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Mr. & Mrs. E.E. Carlton, March 20, 1973
Description
An account of the resource
Nellie Calrton was born on February 16, 1903 in Watauga County, North Carolina. E.E. Carlton was born on July 6, 1903 in West Virginia. Mr. Carlton worked as the deputy sheriff in Wilkes, Watauga, and Caldwell County.
Mrs. Carlton talks about her hobby of weaving throughout most of the interview. She explains different parts of the loom along with the different aspects of weaving. Mr. Carlton tells stories of when he worked with the police department, specifically connected with the federal officers and finding stills.
Creator
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Harmon, Lester
Carlton, Mr. & Mrs. E.E.
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
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
3/20/1973
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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29 pagse
Language
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English
English
Type
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document
Identifier
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111_tape41-42_Mr&MrsEECarlton_1973_03_20M001
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Boone, NC
Subject
The topic of the resource
Law enforcement--North Carolina, Western
Weaving
North Carolina, Western--Social life and customs--20th century
deputy sheriff
moonshining
outlaws
police department
stills
weaving
-
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/9bb5d38ab2ac7dd93afbd2e75437af12.pdf
a3788980e9f9bb0a5b8458d91eaa225f
PDF Text
Text
Tape # 49
Outline
Ira Donald Shull
I.
Birthplace, farm, 5th generation of Shulls, jobs, farming.
II.
Birth, house born in.
III.
Brothers and sisters.
IV.
Property
V.
Food.
VI.
Roads and transportation.
VII.
Storing food.
VIII.
Feather beds, shuck mattresses, straw beds.
IX.
Flax, hand looms, weaving.
X.
School.
XL
Civil War stories, slaves.
XII.
Jobs, leaving home, Washington.
XIII.
Churches.
XIV.
Valle Crucis - name.
XV.
Community, leaders, size, population.
XVI.
Elections, politics.
XVII.
Mail.
XVIII.
Badmen.
XIX.
Doctors, medicines, herbs, roots.
XX.
Unions
XXI. News.
XXII.
Telephones.
�Tape #50.
Outline
Ira Don Shull
I. Telephones
II.
Farming, gambling in farming.
III.
Sheep.
IV. Electricity.
V. Depression
VI.
Government projects.
VII.
Blue Ridge Parkway.
VIII.
Bob Dalton.
IX.
Farming, markets.
X.
Banks closing.
XL
Neighbors during Depression.
XII.
Tourists.
XIII.
Selling Land after Depression.
XIV.
Cars.
XV.
1940 Flood.
XVI.
First car.
XVII.
Horses.
XVIII. Recreation.
XIX.
Barn raisings.
XX.
Weddings.
XXI.
Courting
�PAGE(S) MISSING
NOT AVAILABLE
�2.
Q: Now the first thing we want to know is about your childhood, where you
were born, who your parents were, where they're from, how many brothers
and sisters you had, how long ya'll lived around here and where everybody
went from here.
A: Well, I was born on this farm, not in this house, but in the home, the
next house up where my sisters live now when they're here in the summer.
They're in Florida in the winter, you know, up here where you're going.
In 1892, eighth of November, that's when I was born.
Q: Who built the house?
A: My daddy, J.M. Shull.
Q: And was he born here too?
A: Yes, he was born, not in that house, but in another house that stood down
where the garden is now. I can remember when they tore it down and part
of the lumber out of that house is in the house that you and Frank are moving
in, there's some of the lumber in that house.
Q: How many brothers and sisters did you have?
A: I had two half-sisters, my father was married twice.
First to Holly
Greene and she passed away and then later my father married All Baird
and had four sisters and no brothers. I'm the only boy by the last wife Ali.
Q: All this property you have, is it the same property that your father had?
�3.
A: I have a portion of it, he had more than I have.
He sold off some.
Q: Where did the land that your father owned go? Who got it and where
was it?
A: Well, he sold to various people, perhaps, I don't know, any number of
people, the last account I had there were seventeen dwellings or seventeen
people owned part of what was originally the old Shull farm.
I have been
told by the older folks, there were either 900 or 1100 acres. I never knew
which.
That was the original Shull property. All this down here and that
there, the big ridge where those folks live, there was a big boundary. I
own all of this, I think there's around 300 acres yet, I .own 225 of it, my
sisters own the balance of it.
What's left, in the neighborhood, there's
300 acres left of the original 9 or 11 hundred.
Q: Did you grow your own food on this farm when you were a kid?
A: Yeah, all of us.
We had to grow about all of it, we'd buy a little coffee
and sugar, was about the end of the buhing, so far as the eating was concerned.
We used to grow a lot of cabbage and potatoes and vegetables, stuff
like that and haul 'em to Hickory and Lenoir in a wagon in the fall of the
year and trade 'em for our coffee and sugar and maybe a little flour.
Q: What were the roads like then?
A: Just trails, just about like this right down through here.
Q: Just room enough for the wagon?
�4.
A: That was about it and you had to hunt places when you meet people to
pass.
You couldn't pass any place. You had to get out on the banks, I've
seen 'em life the wagons out of the roads so you could get by.
Q: And you'd go that way all the way to Lenoir?
A: All the way to Lenoir. Took three days to go to Lenoir and if you went
on to Hickory it took about a week. Load a wagon here with produce, 'bout
a couple thousand pounds around the tongue, ten and a quarter. Take four
horses, take it to the top of the mountain and from there on two horses could
usually take it down the mountain.
Q: Do you remember period of scarcity of food when you were growing up
here?
A: No, we never had any scarcity of food on this place that I remember.
Q: Did you store a lot of food?
A: Yes.
year.
Used to kill a dozen hogs and maybe a couple or three beefs in a
Kept a big flock of chickens, a hundred or so chickens, big flock of
geese and ducks. We used to pick the geese feathers to make feather beds.
We used lots of feather beds back then.
We did have some old shuck
mattresses I guess back in the early days.
and you'd roll over it it and the feathers
you'd sleep warm and snug.
Q: What's a shuck mattress?
Put these feather beds on there
would come up around you and
�5.
A: Well, it was a mattress similar to the ones they have now, but made out
of corn husks.
straw beds.
They called 'em shuck mattresses.
Straw beds, had lots of
Have a big tick and fill it with straw and sleep on that; lot of
people did.
Q: When did it change?
A: Oh, I don't know, it changed over the years so gradually I couldn't pinpoint
it.
I doubt if a person could sleep on a feather bed now, I couldn't*
Q: Where would they get cloth to make things like mattresses?
A: I don't know. They used to grow flax.
didn't I?
I showed you an old flax plate
They used to grow flax right here on the farm, break it and weave
the cloth on these old hand looms.
when I could remember.
They had a couple of 'em up here since
My mother would weave.
Q: Would she get together with most other women and they'd all sit around
and do it?
A: Everybody in the country had a loom.
If you couldn't weave you couldn't
be a wife hardly, or a housewife, if you couldn't weave cloth.
Q: Were your sisters taught to do all those kind of things.?
A: No, I don't remember that they were.
Q: How about school as a child here?
A: We had four months school; had to walk four miles to get there and back.
�6.
Q: Where was the school?
A: One of them was way down yonder, you know where the next bridge is across
the river down here below Valle Crucis.
You ever been around that a way
to Boone?
Q: Down 194 towards 421, that way?
A: Yea.
You went over to Mountain City didnU you, in the night other night?
On Mast Gap Road? The school house that we walked to down there was right
on the hill. This end of that big bridge that's there now. We also walked to
Shull's Mill to school, went both ways. We little fellows, we had to walk, too.
You didn't ride then.
Oh occasionally we'd maybe get a ride on a wagon or
something.
Q: What was the school you told me once that was in Boone you had to walk to?
A: I don't know, what they'd call, common school I reckon's what they called
it back those days, I don't know.
There wasn't any graded school and terms
they use not, that I remember.
Q: Were all the different ages of students in one room?
A: Yeah. They were all in one room, with one teacher.
I remember some of
my old teachers, Frankham was one. He was a great big, dark complexioned
man with gray hair and had great big eyes half as big as that and he'd scare
you just looking at you. Miss Kephart was another.
Kepharts we have now, I don't suppose.
No relation to the
I never thought about it 'till this very
�7.
minute.
You know Miss Kephart?
Q: How did they keep discipline in the schools then?
A: You'd get hit with an ox whip almost. Make you go out and cut your own
hickorys to give you a lickin 1 with.
Man they'd lick ya, too.
Yes sir, whenever
you got out of line back then you got it and when you got home you got another
one if they found it out.
We were taught to the tune of a hickory stick.
Q: Did your father go to school?
A: Yeah, he went to school.
Q: Sime place you went?
A: Oh, lawd no. The schools he went to wouldn't be a comparison either.
Q: What were you gonna say?
A: Almost as far behind these today, there wasn't ihat much difference.
Yes, he went to school.
One of his brothers, Uncle William, he went to
the state Senate, I reckon it was the Senate or Legislature or maybe both
in Raleigh, I believe he was both.
He was a one-armed man and my father,
let's see, Phillip, Noey, and Benn, all four of 'em went through the Civil War.
Q: Did he ever tell you about what it was like around here during the
Civil War?
A: Yes, I heard a lot of stories about what it was like around here. I forget
what they called them, Rebels, they called them Rebels, when they came
�through here and camped right up here, what they call the old Muster Field
around the bend of the river up here, it's all growed up now, where they
camped and they had to come down here to Grandfather Shull's. They had
big log barns up there and big cribs of corn.
They drove in there with their
wagons and back up to the side of his crip, shoveled his crib out in the wagons
and hauled it off.
Q: These were the Rebels or the Yankees?
A: Yankees, I guess they were.
think.
And they did take some of his horses I
I heard them talk about they had one bay mare, an awful pretty bay
filly and a young mule or two or something and some of them slipped down
to the barn and turned them out, they'd run them across the river in this
big field and the soldiers fell on their tracks. They wanted them and some
of them went down there, according to the story as I got it, they tried to get
them up but they could smell that campfire or something.
They said that
there weren't enough soldiers to get around them to bring those horses in,
so they left 'em there. They had three left, this mare and a pair of mules.
And they took their meat way down yonder in the swamp across the river and
buried it right out in the muck to save it.
Those were old stories before my
day, that were handed down to me.
Q: Were the men in that family fighting in the Rebel forces ?
A: They were in the Rebels, the sourtherners you see.
Q: Would the men in the family have been home here on the farm or would
they have been out fighting somewhere else?
�A: Oh, they were all gone, the men were gone, nobody here but my old
grandfather and grandmother and that old nigger slave I believe they had. And
she stayed right here, Grandfather Shull bought these slaves, he bought a
mother and her child and old Will.
He was an old man when I knew him but
he was young and old Tuck was his mother.
They called her Tuck, she passed
away and Will grew up and stayed right here. Well, he ran away and married
a white woman. Took a white woman and stole one of Grandfather's horses
and run off to Tennessee or someplace, Virginia.
And when boys got up the
next day and found this good horse gone, they called the Shulls (the slaves had
to take the same name as their owners) found him gone along with their good
horse, they inquired around and found that he'd taken this woman, her name
was Lyon something, they were getting their horse to go get him.
"We'll go
get that nigger. " Grandfather Shull came out and told 'em, "No, you're not
going anywhere. You go to work, " he says, "That nigger will be back. " And
sure enough after he'd sold the horse and run out of money and nobody wanted
him, he came creeping back and they lived here on the place the rest of their
days, raised a family, they all worked here. Grandfather Shull just let them
stay up here and they worked right here on the place til he died of old age.
He died while I was in the West.
He was as white-headed as that when I left
here but he was gone when I returned and I just inquired the other day about
Gilbus Mitchell who was the only man I could thing of in the country. Boyd
and I were talking about what become of old Will and I asked Gilbus if he
knew where old nigger Will was buried and he said that he thought the county
buried him on the county jfarm over near Boone. When they were freed they
took off. He just stayed here and worked right on.
�10.
Q: What are some of the j-obs you've had?
A: Oh, Lord, I've had so many, honey.
From pillar to post, happy go lucky,
didn't care much for anything, whether the boat landed or whether it didn't,
just roving around.
Got quite a bit of experience out of it, I don't know. I
never had any education to amount to anything so far as books were concerned.
Q: How far did you go in school?
A; Eighth grade. What they call eighth grade now, they didn't have any
grades back then.
Q: When did you leave home to get your first job?
A: Seventeen years old.
Q: What job was that?
A: I went West, landed in the state of Washington, sixteen miles out of
Spokane, a little town called Cheny.
Q: What job did you do then?
A: I got a job with a man had a ranch with the name of McDowell, Shirley
McDowell.
First job I ever had away from home. He had a ranch outside of
Cheny there and he also owned mining stock up in the Cortalane, you've
heard of the Cortalane Indian reservation in Idaho, have you?
Q: No.
�11.
A: Well, he had some mining stock up there in the Cortalane.
Cortalane
was mostly Indian, and he would go up there quite often, 'bout once a week
I guess, to see about his interest there.
The Indians were friendly with him,
he was a friend of them, they liked to see him.
other words.
He got along with them in
I worked for him, that was the first job I ever had away. I
can't remember Mrs. McDowell's given name but they were a young couple,
they just had two children, a boy and a girl, I remember.
the girl Zona.
Q: I guess.
I think they called
Is that right for a girl's name?
Inver heard it.
A: I believe Zona was her name and I forget the boy's name but they were an
awfully nice young couple.
They were just as nice to me as they could be.
Q: What kind of work did you do?
A: I just worked there on the ranch.
Anything that had come up that he had
to do. He had machines, thrashing machines and some cattle.
I did every-
thing that come up on the ranch and got scared to death there, I never been
scared before in my life or since.
Q: What scared you?
A: Well sir, that was the worst scare any man ever had, to live through it.
They had a big old well out in the barn lot 'bout as big as this table is round.
And Mr.
McDowell had gone that day across the Cortalanes over into Idaho
across the state line. Quite a ways over there. And the school marm boarded,
that's what they called
'em then, school marms, boarded at McDowells and
�12.
and Elizabeth, she'd gone to school, and Zona and the little boy had gone with
her.
And Mrs. McDowell was going to wash.
Well-water was awful scarce and hard
to get where you could find a well that would supply water, great big old
well, it just had a big old wooden door, platform of a thing built to slip over
this well. Hinged over there and you could take a hold of it here and turn it
around until the whole well opened. Great big thing.
Well, Mrs. McDowell
was fixing to wash and I went to get a load of wood and she had her clothes
out there and she's all round thre and I'd built the fire and when I came back,
Mrs. McDowell was gone, there was the clothes, the water was hot and this
well was open. Imagination, I just knew Mrs. McDowell was in that well. It
just scared me; I hardly knew what I's a doing.
I knew I's a stranger out
there three or four thousand miles from home and they'd say,
"Well, that
fellow pushed Mrs. McDowell in that well. " That was just imagination, you
know, and the longer it went and I went all over the place a yelling for her and
a hollering.
Doors was open in the house.
Things scattered all over just like
it was when I went after the wood. And I was so excited and so scared.
His
brother Jim lived up the road about a mile, and always kept a bunch of horses
around.
Two or three saddle horses and a saddle on one most of the time. I
caught that saddle horse and I jumped on him, left everything just like it was
and I just flew up to Jim's, told Jim about Mrs. McDowell had disappeared
and he saw how excited I was and scared and me just a young lad.
he caught a horse and started back with me.
I think
If I remember correctly, he
said no, just forget all that, that wasn't nothing, talking 'bout me pushing
her in the well that's why I's scared.
We met a neighbor or someone. They
�13.
were scared then.
Not many people ever traveled but someone come along
and said she'd gone into town with another neighbor down there that drove up
there in a buckboard, and she just jumped in the carriage and went with 'em
and never left me a note or anything and scared me to death, never thought
about what it would do to me, you know. Didn't intend to be gone long. It
was 4 or 5 miles up to town. I won't forget that scare, never.
Q: How long did you work on that farm?
A: I didn't work there too long.
I went there in spring of the year. Now when
harvest season come along up in June or July, I got to seeing in the paper
where they was advertising for harvest hands down in the Paloose country.
And I talked to fellows around there that had followed the harvest season.
$2. 50 a day then was tremendous wages.
Nobody'd ever heard of such wages.
Well, I decided I'd go down and follow the harvest. I went down there. I
was down there two or months I guess.
Q: Where is the Paloose country?
A: Paloose country? Well, it's south of Spokane. It's all Paloose country
between Spokane and Walla Walla.
forget.
country.
I believe they call it the Downem or, I
Anyhow it was along the R&N railroad, R&N they called it the Paloose
Very rich section of the country. North of wheat country.
Q: How long did you work harvesting?
A: Oh, I worked several harvests, different ones.
I got in with a Richard
Hagaman, Hagaman brothers. They were big operators. I got in with them
�14.
and they were originally from this country.
Kelly that I was with.
I called 'em Uncle Joe and Aunt
There was Joe and Tom and Robie and four brothers.
And I always called Uncle Joe and Aunt Kelly my home. I stayed with them.
They were awfully good to me.
I stayed right with them.
Q: I think we better get back to Valle Crucis.
What do you remember about
the churches that were here? Did you go to church?
A: Yes sir, my father was Sunday School superintendent for years, 'bout as
long as I can remember. We had to go every Sunday.
Q: Where was the church?
A: Right where it is now.
Q: Did most of the people in Valle Crucis go to that church?
A: Yes.
It was called Valle Crucis, too.
Up where I go to church now was
known as Upper Valle Crucis and this down here at the Methodist Church,
they called it Lower Valle Crucis.
Q: How has the church changed?
A: Well, it's been added to quite a bit and more or less modernized, I
suppose you'd call it.
Q: How do you mean?
A: Well, it was a little room to start with. Now they've built Sunday School
rooms.
�15.
Q: Did they have hymnals?
A: Oh yeah, they had hymnals.
Q: Who was the preacher?
A: Oh, there've been half a dozen,
every so often.
I couldn't tell you. Yeah, they change 'em
I don't know who all; I can remember a few names, Dawson
and Burris, Ader at the Methodist Church and I can remember a few up at the
Episcopal Church.
Q: Do you know how Valle Crucis got its name?
A: Yeah.
From the three creeks over there. No one ever explained that to
you? To save my life, I've thought about it a lot.
I don't get it but Dutch
Creek comes down through here; Clark's Creek comes down through here;
Crab Orchard comes in here. Not to a pinpoint, but I understand that it
was named from them,three creeks forming a cross.
That's the old story
I've heard.
Q: Maybe it was valley of the cross.
A: Vale of the cross.
Q: Who were the community leaders?
A: My father was one of the leaders, Jim Shull, D.F. Mast, W. H. Mast,
C.D. Taylor, L. H. Taylor, D.F. Beard, old Uncle Henry Taylor, the ones
I can remember that were the leading citizens in the community.
�16.
Q: Why were they community leaders?
A: Well, just like any other community, every other country, and every
other community you know has leaders, don't they?
Q: Yeah.
A: Well, how would you describe it?
Q: Did they have the most property, or were they just. . .
A: Just prominent men, that's the best I could term it.
Men stood up for
what's right. Wouldn't that be the way you'd describe it?
Q: I sure would. I sure would.
A: They were church going folks.
Q: How many people were in the community then and how has it changed?
A: Comparatively few from what there is now and there wasn't but one house
between my father's house, this house wasn't ihere, these houses down here,
there was one house, little old log house stood up at the holler was the only
house between my father's house and Uncle Fin's down there at Joe's where
these folks bought me the pie the other night live. That house and one other
between the store, just the three houses betweenvthe store and my father's
back at that time. Now then there's another one isn't there?
Q: What were the politics like?
�A: Well, just of the immediate community it was mostly Democratic but for
the township as a whole, it was Republican.
Q: What constituted the township?
A: Township's Republican.
Q: The township of Boone, do you mean?
A: No, Boone township's different, this is Watauga township.
cut up into townships.
The county's
Let's see there's Shawneehaw, Watauga, Aho, Boone,
Meat Camp, New River, Elk, Cove Creek is eight, Brushy Fork, I don't know
whether there's eight or nine townships in the county or what.
Q: Do you remember any particular elections?
A: One more than the other you mean?
No, I don't believe I could name one
right at the moment that was outstanding. Most of the folks in this township,
they're pretty level-headed, give and take in other words, give and take.
I
get along mighty well, this is a Republican township, but I get along with the
Republicans mighty well.
We joke back and forth.
I'll go at a bunch of 'em,
"Hi, Republicans" which used to back in long ago days would make 'em mad.
They won't anymore, they'll take it" good naturedly.
They'll say, "Yeah, here
comes that lousy Democrat. "
Q: You'd say at one time people wouldn't take it good naturedly?
A: That's right, there was a time when anything mentioned in the political
line would create friction.
But that's all gone, people's got above that.
Yeah,
�18.
Jim Church, his father's a Republican, Jim was raised a Republican, fellows
up 'there around the filling station, man that made that remark is dead and gone
now but he was a sort of a tight Republican, he said, "Jim", he was teasing Noy
more or less, Jim's father, owns a motel and says, "Jim married in that
Shull family down there and they made a Democrat out of him, " and said,
"Now Jim's darn near made a Democrat out of Noy. " That's the way we get
along, we just have fun out of it.
over his politics.
I'm not a gonna fall out with my neighbor
I don't care how he votes, it's immaterial to me.
He's
got a good right to vote his way as I have" mine.
Q: How did people get around in those days?
A: On their, what they used to call 'em, mother's, got around by foot, that's
the way you got around. Walkway wasn't crowded. Well, you could ride
horse back some as some of the folks.
Q: Did people around here have carriages?
A: Oh yes, the country was full of buggies and surreys. Stagecoach line
used to run through here and that was long before my day. Had a station up
here at Grandfather Shull's where they changed horses, four, six horse team
to the stagecoach.
You've seen 'em on the movies.
They had a station up
here, he had a big barn and plenty of everything around him and they'd change
horses there, that was a station to change horses.
Q: Where were they coming from?
�19.
A: Running from. Butler, Tennessee, then to Morganton, N. C. was this run
and I don't know where they went to from there any other place. It had quit
running but I have a piece of the old stagecoach. It was up here for a long
time.
Grandfather Shull was a blacksmith, he had a blacksmith shop. Shoe
the horses and help keep up the carriages, and I have a piece of that, we kids,
my sisters and I, we played with that old stagecoach and climbed in it and out
of it and make out like we's a driving it.
Til it run it down, went to the bad
and tear it off by souvenir hunters and I have one piece of it out there in the
cellar now. The old original stagecoach, it run from, I bet it's the only piece
left.
Q: Where did the carriages and coaches come from?
A: That's beyond me, that's what I don't know.
I read something not too
long ago about someone down this state I believe, either in this state or
South Carolina that made those things, built 'em.
Q: How did the mail work?
A: Mail was carried by horseback mostly.
Q: How often did it come?
A: Once or twice a week, I think.
Q: Did you ever remember getting things by mail order back when you were
young?
A: Yeah, yeah. Yes sir, used to order lots of stuff mail order.
Yeah, I
�20.
can remember that. We get stuff yet, we very often order stuff by mail order.
Til it come into the post office though we bought from Sears and Roebuck
mostly; it always come to the Sears in Boone, went out there to pick it up.
Q: Were there any notorious badmen and law officers in this area?
A: Yeah! ; My Grandfather Baird was sheriff two terms of this county, and that's
my mother's father, and there were plenty of badmen and plenty of mischief a
going on. I can't remember hardly, yeah, I can remember it too, barely.
Grandfather Baird that was sick, got rheumatism or something, and my father
sherriffed for him that winter; he did the sherriffing for him.
I remember him
having one man in the county they called Wilson, Lucky Joe Wilson, called
him Lucky Joe.
And he was a bad actor and everybody was afraid of him, I
don't know why, but Lucky Joe was considered dangerous, I think, and had to
be arrested. He sent my grandfather word, called him Uncle Dave, that was
his name, Dave.
"If you'll come after me yourself I'll go with ye, but don't
send them damn little deputies, I'm not blind. " Grandfather Baird got on his
horse and went over there after him by himself, everybody begging him not
to go, said Lucky Joe would kill him; Lucky Joe would do this. He went over
there and Lucky Joe come out and invited him in to have dinner, he went and eat
dinner with him, and after dinner Grandfather said, "Well, Joe, " says, "You
have to go along. " Old Joe went with him right on to jail. Not a bit of
trouble.
Q: Where was the jail then?
�21.
A: In Boone.
'Bout all there was there in Boone then was a courthouse and
a jail, that's all they had.
Now that story's before my day. That was handed
down to me but it was right, because I know it was right. I believe he was
the man.
I'm not sure whether I ought to tell these old stories or not.
I think
he's the man that died out of jail on the doctors over there at Boone one time.
Q: Lucky Joe?
A: Yeah.
I think it was Lucky Joe, now I won't be too sure, but he took a
notion he wanted out of jail and he just died,
^hey laid him out, they had what
they called cooling boards then, they laid him out there, used to have what
they'd call watches or sit ups with the corpse. Anyhow, they shut Lucky Joe
up in this room and all went out and he heard 'em lock the door.
After they
went out, Lucky Joe got up and opened the window and when they come back
to look, Lucky Joe was gone.
He wasn't dead after all.
I think that was Lucky
Joe.
Q: That's pretty lucky, I'd say.
A: Yeah, I've heard so many. Yeah, he said, "Aw, the doctors don't know
anything about you anyhow, only what you tell them. " I guess the doctors
didn't know too much back in those days.
Q: Were there any doctors in this area?
A: No, very few. Very few.
I can remember, I don't believe there were but
two doctors. I don't know whether there was any other doctor in the county or
not.
Dr. Phipps and Dr. Philips. Philips lived in that end of the county and
�22.
Phipps lived in this end. Those are the only two doctors I can remember
hearing mentioned back in those days.
I don't know there might have been
another one, but I never heard, don't remember it.
Q: Did people use doctors much then?
A: No, no. They made their own teas out of roots and herbs and stuff.
They
didn't have much medicine except what they made at home.
Q: Do you remember any roots or herbs that they used in particular?
A: Yeah, sure I can remember some of them.
Not too long ago, I remember
one til now. People used to have a lot of sore mouth. This yellow root that
grows on the bank of the river down here, I gathered it for someone a year or
two ago, they sent here. You get some yellow root. This lady had had a sore
mouth for, oh, just a year or two ago, and wanted to know where to get some
yellow root.
Q: Yellow root's the name of it?
A: I don't know whether it is or not. It's what I call it.
I guess there's
some other name for it, I don't know.
Q: Do you remember any other roots and herbs that they might have used?
A: Yeah.
They made lots of sassafrass tea out of sassafrass and spricewood
and catnip tea.
Yeah, I can remember several of those.
Q: What were they used for? What was sassafrass used for and what was
catnip used for?
�23.
A: Hoarseness, sore throat or congestion or something like that.
Q: Did people use ginseng for much here?
A: Sang? Ginseng? Yeah! They hunt that yet.
house where you're moving in, he was good at it.
This man that lived in this
He'd sell three or four
hundred dollars worth of ginseng nearly every year. He'd get out here on
Sundays and scour the mountains, he knew every holler, rock and spring in
this country. His father was SAP.d at it and he'd been trained good at it and
they'd just hunt ginseng and sell it.
Made good at it.
Q: What did they use if for?
A: I don't know what it's for.
It's high priced stuff.
Q: So people around here really didn't use it much, they just sold it.
A: Yeah, they sell it.
Q: That's still going on a lot?
A: Yeah, sang business is big business.
high priced stuff.
Not big here of course, but it's
Howard Mast down here at this store, I don't know, he
did, he may not no more but he did buy it for a while.
Q: I know they buy it in town too.
A: Yeah, they buy it.
The wild, they have it cultivated, but the wild ginseng
brings nearly two times the money that the cultivated does. Now I don't know
why, I never knew. Oh, these old stories, I don't know.
�24.
Q: When did the unions start coining in?
A: The union, labor union?
Q: Yeah.
A: I don't know. I wish to the lord it'd never been born.
Q: Did you feel it much in Valle Crucis?
A: No, no.
Q: How did you get the news then?
A: We didn't get much news other than local.
referring back then.
Back in those days, you're
You know how we get it now, don't you?
Q: Yeah.
A: There wasn't much, maybe we'd get our newspaper once a week or
something like that.
Q: Where was the newspaper printed from?
A: Well, Charlotte mostly.
Charlotte.
I believe the first good newspapers came from
Charlotte Observer, Charlotte Times; Observer I guess was about
the first one I can remember.
Q: When was that?
A: I don't know. Years ago.
once a week.
Wasn't many newspapers.
You might get it
�25.
Q: Were people much concerned about national politics?
A: No, no, wasn't much concerned about no politics 'cept at home. No, they
didn't take any of it too serious. Good thing they didn't. Those were the good
old days.
People was honest.
You could leave everything unlodked and go back
home and find it like you left it.
Now, you can't sleep with it and keep it. Keep
everything under lock and key and that don't do much good.
Q: What do you think's the cause for the difference?
A:
Greed, I guess, don't you? What would you think?
Q: I guess so.
A: I don't know how to put it any simpler, would you?
Q: No, I think you've 'bout got it there. So, now tell us about when you helped
start the telephones in this area.
A: Oh, yeah. Well, we had a little old local system around here as long as I
can remember. Them little old crank things on the wall.
Did you ever see any
of them.?
Q: Yeah, on T. V.
A: Well they had those 'bout as long as I can remember but they wasn't very,
they's better than no phones. Daddy had one.
There's several in the country.
We couldn't hardly get into Boone or out of the valley, just call your nearer
neighbors.
But this new system came along, Skyline I believe is what they call
�26.
it, isn't it?
Q: Yeah.
A: And the way it all come about, I was in Boone going down one side of the
street, David Farthing, his father had it, the little old system and David had
been in this telephone meeting that I'd never heard of, I didn't know anything
about it.
When he hollored at me across the street and said, "Wait a minute,
I want to see you. " Came over and he told me, says, " If you guys want a
telephone, you'd better get busy. " And I asked what he meant by getting busy.
Says it cost him so much to keep it up and people, lot of them didn't pay for
the phones that had 'em and they's behine and David said, "Tell me, " says,
"I'm not a going to break myself up nor mortgage my farm to keep up this
telephone system. " Says, "What I mean and I been in a meeting down here and
you have a chance of getting a telephone system that will work. " And I got him
to explain it to me, REA sorta behind it or something like that, you know, in
connection with the REA Electric, they got it on their poles.
meeting in Boone and I went, he told me about it.
Well, they had a
That was the very first
thing I ever heard, just fell on to me out of the clear, blue sky.
I went to this
meeting and the people promoting this system refused to come what they called
west of the mountain, the Rich mountain over there, you know what the Rich
mountain is.
Q: Yeah.
A: They would put it into Boone and east but they refused to come west of it.
And I asked him what it would take to induce 'em to come west.
They said if
�27.
we could get a hundred signers, a hundred telephones, they would consider it.
Well, I asked him what a hundred telephones would mean, what it would take to
get 'em.
Took $35 deposit to get a telephone.
it was our only chance.
I went to work on it.
miles, I don't know how much.
Well, I come on home and I seen
I guess I drove two or three hundred
Sight on earth, though, my own car, gas and
expense, and everything a selling those telephones and I had an awful time,
I
go t way up to 85 or 90 of 'em somewhere and I just about got burnt out and
disgusted. I had an uncle that sorta half way opposed it and he said, "You're
running around here selling folks things they don't need and don't want and not
able to pay for. " Anyway I kept a going on with it and I got up 85 or 90 I give
every man that bought a phone from me my receipt for his $35. And I turned
the money in, that was a very dumb thing of me and I poured business to him
but I never took any receipts, I just turned the money in. Well, the administration changed, went from one administration to the other.
Q: In Boone?
A: SJo, in the nation.
Q: What administration was it?
Which one did it change from?
A: I don't remember which a way it went, but anyhow whoever went in up there
in Washington held the thing up. Well, I got out here and sold all these folks
telephones, majority of them Republicans, that's where your politics comes in
again, me a Democrat.
couple of years.
They got so when they'd see me, it was held up for a
"Where's our telephone?
We want our telephone or we want
our money. " Put me on the spot. I didn't have either one, their money nor
�28.
their telephone either one and we had a little meeting one day. They had a right
to demand their money or a phone. One day, when I thought a bad day Saturday
afternoon, I went to the store, Foscoe and a bunch of 'em in there and they
commenced talking about it,
"We want our money or we want our telephone. "
I talked a little with 'em, I told 'em, "Why, gentlemen, I don't have either one
and I don't have money enough to pay you but I'm here to write checks just as
long as I've got a dime to write on. Now, who's first?" And they commenced
talking among themselves a little bit and one of 'em spoke up and said, "I don't
believe it's fair to make Don put up that money out of his own pocket. " I'd
explained to them that I didn't have a thing to show for it and they got to talking
among themselves and I told 'em, I said, "if you'll j u s t bear with us and go
along with us, we'll get these phones but I can't promise you when. " After
discussing it pro and con, "Well, I guess that's about the only thing to do. Say
you haven't got money enough, there's no use in some of us getting money and
some not. " And they just went along with me and the things come through and
now every feller and his brother's got a telephone.
They wouldn't part with
them at all.
Q: So they finally came?
A: Yeah, they finally came, but it leaves me in the position of kinder being a
daddy of this system, you understand?
Q: Yeah, yeah.
When was that?
Do you remember what years that would have been?
A: No, I can't remember. It's not been long, many years. We haven't had
this system too long.
�29.
Q: Would it be like the '30's, '40's, or '50's?
A: Oh, it must have been in the late '40's or early '50's, somewhere in that
neighborhood.
This Mrs. Ayers that died the other day up here was one of the
first 'uns to take a telephone off of me.
She took a telephone and plunked down
here thirty-five bucks, one of the first ones.
I guess I was really the first one
to sign the thing, I imagine I was.
Q: Were you living here then?
A: Sure, yeah.
I guess my sisters was about the next 'uns, a working up the
road.
Q: What kind of operation were you running here on the farm?
A: Oh, I've done a little of all of it: livestock, crops, and produce to general
crops.
Sheep and cattle was my first start.
Did that for a number of years, I
have some things out there in the garage that the bank gave me for being, go
out there and read 'em, they'll tell you better than I can, couple of them. One
of 'em was on sheep, livestock and other one was on the first man in the country
to grow 135 bushels of corn an acre, I think. They gave me something. Wanted
me to put 'em up out here at the road and I wouldn't do it, I stuck 'em up out in
the garage.
Wasn't trying to advertise because you had a little streak of good
luck one year, might have had bad luck next year.
make a little this year and lose it next year.
on the face of the earth.
Q: Hew do you mean?
That's the farmer luck; you
Farmer's the biggest gambter
Did you ever think about it ;
�30.
A: Takes more chances than any other one man.
You gamble again' Nature.
When you're farming, you plant a crop a hoping to do something but it takes
twelve months to find out.
If you play your money on a horse race here you
know in a few minutes, but if I play my money in a big crop down here in the
field, I've got the hailstorms, the windstorms, the floods, the drought, I'm a
gambling again1 Nature.
Q: Does the amount of money you'll make on a certain crop change a lot from
year to year?
A: Oh yeah, you might make some this year and lose it next on the same crop.
Yeah. I did very well in the vegetable business, that is, I didn't go to the poor
house on it.
What I did, when I went to growing potatoes and beans, they call
it majoring in school, I don't know what you'd call it on a farm, but I went to
cropping; let my livestock slip. I sold my sheep.
Well the dogs ran me out of
the sheep business, I just drifted down on them and played vegetables along
here several years, paid off and did very well through the Second World War
period.
them.
They were clammering for something to eat.
I did very well through
Now then I played out of cattle or out of vegetables, I did, two years
ago, quit that, drifting back towards livestock.
Now I'm going to try to finish
out with livestock a little bit.
Q: Who sheared the sheep when you used to deal in sheep?
A: They used to be some men in the county that made a business of it.
Q: Traveling about from farm to farm where they could work sheep?
�31.
A: Yeah, yeah.
We had a man in the community, he's dead and gone now, by
the name of George Lester.
He's almost a professional sheep shearer. He
could shear sheep, did a good job.
Q: How were the sheep sheared before electric equipment?
A: I've a hand shearer up there and a pair out here too.
I can show you the
very first ones that they used. They clipped 'em by hand this a way and this one
up here I have, it turns with a crank.
Clippers they call it. And then the
electric one, I had an electric one. My uncle and I bought an electric shearing
machine together.
And I finally let, I don't know, Frank may have it down
there yet, I don't know.
Q: When did electricity come in here?
A: Our first 'lectricity here came from the dam up the river yonder. You
remember seeing that ol' broken down dam up there right this side of Hound
Ears on'the river?
Q: Yeah.
A:. Well, that was where the power plant was, way down the road here just
off below the road right on the bank of the river. And the '40 flood wiped that
all out, the power plant.
Most of it stopped over here in my bottom, awful lot
of it.
Q: The dam and the equipment, the power plant?
�32.
A: Some of it.
Stopped right over here in my bottom, that great big metal
iron thing as big as, oh, these two rows put 'together. I had to get a settling
torch and the man worked nearly a week cutting that thing up 'til I could load
it and haul it out.
I have a picture of it somewhere.
I climbed up on it and was
sitting there when George Farthing made my picture. It should be here someplace.
Q: When did electricity come in?
A: Well, it had come in before '40. We got it from that little old dam up there.
I don't know, in the thirties, late thirties I guess it was.
thirties. That all washed out and washed away.
Sometime in the
This system that has it now,
whatever it is, Blue Ridge Electric? They rebuilt it and took over after that
system went out by the '40 flood.
Q: How did it get started? Was it part of that government funding that got the
electricity and the dam started?
A: That first one?
Q: Yeah.
A: No, I don't thing it was.
I think it was a local concern. What did they
call that, Blowing Rock Electric or something? I don't rmemeber what they
called it.
It wasn't much service. It was just little better than none.
Q: During the Depression how much did the government, like the national
goverment function in here? I mean how much help was given by the national
government to hereJ?
�33.
A: I wouldn't know.
Q: Did the Depression affect you very greatly here?
A: Yes ma'am.
I'd go farther for a dime in those days than I would for a
dollar now. A dollar's easier got than a dime was then, and worth more when
you got it.
Maybe that's a little far fetched.
Q: I remember you told me that there was a time when money just wasn't
changing hands that much, it was what you grew on your farm.
A: That's right, by golly there just wasn't any money hardly.
Q: By the time of the Depression were you using money more and missing it
more ?
A: You didn't have any. Couldn't miss it much because you didn't have any.
Q: Before the Depression, was money being used more than, say, crops and
barter?
A: Aw, was it ever.
If thre's any way in the world to get along, use what
little money we had and any barter we could stir up. Yeah it was tough times.
I remember one time it took every hoof that we could rake and scrape on this
farm to pay our taxes.
Q: Every hoof of what?
A: Cattle and sheep or anything we could sell to -even pay my taxes. Now
that was a pretty tough time.
�34.
Q: How much was taxes running then?
A: Oh, I don't remember.
Probably half as much.
Not like they are now. Not near what they are now.
I just remember we have to save about every dime we
got all the year to have money enough to pay our taxes.
Q: Doesn't seem quite fair, does it?
A: No, your tax had to be paid.
You have to pay them.
If you didn't pay em,
they'll advertise ya and sell ya out.
Q: But it seems like if you gotta pay more taxes than you do towards your own
living, it's not quite fair.
It seems like if you're paying more taxes to the
government than you are to your own living; if you have to pay more money to the
government than you can pay yourself, it's a little too much. Did any families
around here go out during the Depression; did they have to sell out because
of taxes?
A: No, no. I don't remember anybody being sold out for taxes.
Yeah, there
were, there is yet, not around here though I don't think. Ever once in a
while you see something advertised for taxes.
Q: How did the Depression affect your daily life, like getting shoes or things
like that? How did it affect your children and family?
A: Well, we got along on what we had. We just had to get along on less. We
didn't get everything we wanted. Like Uncle Billy Caringer used to say, "it
was good we didn't want everything we seen. " Maybe that helped some. Now
�35.
a days people wants about everything they see.
Q: Did you have to work any other jobs beside your farming to make ends meet?
A: No, I don't remember doing' that. Oh, I'd log,
yeah. I'd do logging' and
lumber but that was off of the farm here usually.
Q: Sell your farm you mean?
A: Yeah, yeah.
I did lots of that.
Q: Did you ever hear about any of the government projects like the WPA and
the CCC?
A: Lord, did I ever hear 'em. The WPA built this road out here just about
it.
Yes sir, the country was full of WPA hand. That was a fraud, ever I
ne'er saw.
That WPA gang made me sick.
Q: Why?
A: Way they piddled along.
Q: They didn't have to work hard?
A: No, never earned their money.
More or less of a dole the way I figured
it.
Q: Where were they living when they worked on the roads?
A: At home, what homes they had. Anywhere around here in these hills.
�36.
Q: What kind of things did they do, was it mostly building roads and all, that
you remember?
What kind of things do you remember them doing for the WPA?
A: What did they use you mean, the tools?
Q: Well, no. Whad did they do? I know they built roads, what else did they
do or did they do anything other than build roads ?
A: The road building was about all I know of. They might have had other WPA
projects a going but I didn't know anything about 'em.
Q: Do you remember the Parkway coming in? The Blue Ridge Parkway?
A: Sure, sure I remember the Parkway.
Bob Dalton is the daddy of the Parkway
through here. You've heard of R. L. Dalton. He was one of the oldest
congressmen in Washington for years. He's one of the old timer big shots up
there, like Sam Ervin is now. You read about Sam Ervin? Well, Bob Dalton,
they listened to Bob Dalton then like they do to Sam Ervin today. And Bob
Dalton, I don't know how, but my wife was related to the Daltons. When she
was up in Washington, Bob Dalton was there and they called her Bobby after
Bob Dalton because she looked like him.
Reba, Bob Dalton1 s daughter just
passed away, it was in last week's Democrat. Did you read it, Jane?
Q: No.
A: Well, I knew Reba well. I know Hort and Claude. They had the three
children.
They all visited in our home up here. Reba was there,
oh just two
or three years ago she come by here to see Boyd. She and Boyd were
�37.
relation.
She was Bob Dalton's daughter an.c£ they were related and now then
Claude and Hort and Reba, Mr. and Mrs. Dalton, they're all gone, the Dalton
family's gone.
Q: I don't know my history well but did the TVA have much effect
here? Or
was that all in Tennessee?
A: I don't recall anything about that affecting this section.
I don't recall
anything.
Q: Did you have to cut down on the people you could hire and did thegirls,
your daughters, work in the fields with you more than during prosperous times
during the Depression?
A: They worked in'the field a lot when I's in beans and vegetables.
yea, I had hands here from all over the county nearly.
Law,
Truckes a running
from Elk, I had two trucks hauling hands from down in Elk, east of Boone.
You've heard of Elk?i
Q: Yeah.
A: I had one hauling hands from the Beech Mountain and Banner Elk country
and I had one or two hauling out of Grandfather country up here.
I don't remember, Boyd and Bill Leek lived here then.
son and Bill helped out a lot.
We had hands,
Bill was my sister's
Boyd and Bill run the bean picking end of it.
I
was out most, took me all night selling beans and I was out in the night and I
had to sleep a little. I remember Boyd saying, I think she said seventy-five hands
one day was the top number down there. We had 'em all the way from a half
�38.
a dozen to seventy-five in here picking beans.
Q: Who would drive those trucks?
A: Well, I drove it.
Q: Oh, you'd go haul the hands in and take 'em back?
A: Oh, those coming in?
Q: Yeah.
A: No, men that lived in those sections of the country. I had them trucking.
They'd get up their own load, say they come from Elk down there, had a man
by the name of Watsonlived down there. The other man, I had two of 'em
coming out of there, Carlton and Watson. They'd hunt up these hands themselves
and I'd give them so much for bring in the hands. They'd bring 'em in and work
their bunch of hands, say a man brought in twenty on his truck.
He would work
that twenty in the field, would make him oversee his own gang and then would
pay him so much for bringing the hands in and taking 'em home.
Q: Do you know of any farms around here that still have an operation to such
an extent that they have to bring in hands ?
A: No. Nothing like that now. I don't know of a thing like that.
Q: When did that stop?
A: I doubt whether there's a thing like that operation in the county or not.
�39.
Q: When did that stop? When did the farm start getting smaller?
A:
Stopped, oh, not long after the second World War.
When they were
pushing so hard for the war.
Q: And then what happened?
A: Well, we just drifted off into this general trend, what I've told you.
Q: You do like a smaller area of beans and a smaller area of cabbage so you
can take care of it all pretty much with less people.
A: Yeah, I drifted out of vegetables, back into livestock and I've been a
drifting along with livestock since, doing no good.
Make a little money one
year and lose it the next.
Q: You think the smaller farm will ever have a revival?
A: I wouldn't know.
business.
I think each way, you change your mind ever which
Advocating here a few years ago to either get bigger or get out.
You might have seen something to that effect.
out.
It was either get bigger or get
This is not a farming country here no way.
Q: Anymore?
A: No, this isn't a farming county, Law, no.
Q: Would you say that it ever was really a farming country? In the mountains?
A: Yeah, back in the days when there wasn't any big farming.
It was all small
�40.
farming.
People made a living.
Q: And I guess your farm was like supplying people in a smaller area, whereas
now a days the trucks have to go all over the country, when they get ~ a truckload
of canned beans they might go all the way to California with them or something,
whereas those days they didn't.
A: No, they didn't have to go so far.
We had canneries nearer. The bean
market was in Mountain City and they got one in Boone after that and they got
one in Jefferson. You let one thing start off and do very well at it for a year
or two, anything that you make a little money at, then the others will all jump
in and try to get their fingers into the pie.
Have you noticed that? I happened to
be in with Mountain City when the bean market started over there, in fact I got
a little share in it, I just stuck to Mountain City.
Q: Are there still markets in Mountain City and West Jeffer-son now?
A: I don't know whether they're buying beans there or not. I quit and forgot
about the beans.
There wouldn't be any way now to get 'em fixed.
I'd like to
see ya get seventy-five hands down here now. Money couldn't get 'em.
Q: Do you remember during the Depression any banks closing around here
or stores closing up?
A: Yeah, seemed like there was a little bank in Boone that folded up, they
called it the People's Bank I believe.
up.
I'm not too sure but I believe that folded
I think they started a little bank over there they called the People's Bank
and I don't know whether the Depression was responsible for it or not, but
�41.
I imagine it was.
Q: Did any stores have to close down?
A: I don't remember any at the moment.
Q: Was there more of a feeling during the Depression of neighbors helping
neighbors rather than there is now?
A: I believe they were a little better to cooperate in that respect. I've always
had good neighbors. I could go out most anytime and get some of my neighbors,
if I's in a pinch, I could get help.
Q: When did the recreation aspect of tourists start coming in?
A: Law, they had tourists before they ever got to.. . , they didn't know the
word tourist, I reckon.
It was 'bout as long ago as I can remember, better
homes of the community kept what they called 'em then, boarders. Summer
people that had a little money and wanted to get out of the hot weather down
south, come up to the mountains. And the various homes would take in a few,
whatever they could handle.
My mother up here used to keep, well, she 'tised
to could take care of fifty or twenty boarders and had hired help.
Aunt Josie
Mast do the same, and Aunt Vick Taylor. The better homes would take these
folks in. There wasn't no motels those days and mighty few hotels. And that
was way back yonder, quite a while ago.
Aunt Josie.
Q: What would they do during the day?
Yeah, mother used to keep 'em and
�42.
A: Aw, they'd fish a little, some of 'em.
Some of 'em hike a little.
Q: Watch ya'll work?
A: Yeah, and lay around in the shade mostly and watch the rest of us work,
make a living for it.
Q: Where did they come from?
A: Down anywhere, down the country where it's hot weather or be hot.
Most
of 'em out of South Carolina and southern Georgia and down in there where it's
hot; get out of the heat. They wouldn't stay long; they couldn't afford it I don't
reckon.
They's all comin' and a goin', it was just to come and a go.
You'd
get application like you wanted some one come next week, three in a party or
four or something.
You might have three or four going out and you could take
'em in on a certain date; keep filled up as you could.
It was just a constant
thing.
Q: Did that continue during the Depression?
A: Not much.
People too hard up. Didn't have anything to board on.
�
Dublin Core
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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
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
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Scanned by
Wetmore, Dana
Equipment
Hp Scanjet 8200
Scan date
2014-02-18
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Title
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Interview with Ira Donald Shull, March 27, 1973
Description
An account of the resource
Ira Shull was born November 8, 1892 in Valle Crucis, North Carolina on a farm where he grew up. During his young adult life, he moved out west to the Washington area, specifically Spokane where he worked on a ranch. Mr. Shull had a hand in bringing telephone lines to the Boone area in the 1940s.
Mr. Shull refers back to his childhood and community life in Valle Crucis including politics, transportation, postal service, outlaws, and homemade remedies. He goes into detail about his experience farming livestock and crops. Mr. Shull also talks in detail about the Great Depression including the WPA projects going on at that time. He shares stories of outlaws and the Civil War his grandfather shared with him as a child.
Creator
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Hallstrom, Jane
Shull, Ira Donald
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
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
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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44 pages
Language
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English
English
Type
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document
Identifier
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111_tape50_IraDonaldShull_1973_03_27M001
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Valle Crucis, NC
Subject
The topic of the resource
Farm life--North Carolina--Watauga County--19th century
Farm life--North Carolina--Watauga County--20th century
Watauga County (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century
Depression--1929--North Carolina--Watauga County
Ranch life--Washington--Spokane
Boone
Civil War
Great Depression
outlaws
telephone
Valle Crucis
Washington
WPA
-
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/d0485fd74f5e05df52012b3553c39d89.pdf
b00bf27a59c06c4a8346d18fd3cd95d9
PDF Text
Text
1.
This is an interview with Walter Culler for the Appalachian Oral History
Project by Donna Clawson at Rainbow Trail Road on June 11,1973.
Q: Grandpa Culler, where were you born?
A: I was born in Boone.
Q: What was the year you were born?
A: 1882.
Q: 1882. Where were your parents born.?
A: My father was born in Wilkesboro. And I declare, honey, I don't know where
my mother was born at.
Q: What were your parents' names?
A: John.
John Culler.
Q: What was your mother's name?
A: Nancy.
Q: Who was she before she married?
A: She was a Beach.
Q: When did your father come to Boone?
A: I declare, honey, I don't know.
Q: How many brothers and sisters did you have?
�2.
A: I had five sisters. I had five sisters and four boys.
Well, they was six
boys but two of them died in infancy.
Q: Have you lived in Watauga County all your life?
A: All my life.
Q: How long did you go to school?
A: Honey, I couldn't tell you how long I went to school.
Q: How rnany months out of the year did you go when you were going to school?
A: How many months in school?
Oh, about three months.
Q: How many different parts of Watauga County have you lived in?
A: I've lived all my years in Boone Township except five years I lived in
Watauga Township.
Q: When was it that you moved to Watauga Township?
A: I declare, honey, I don't know what year it was.
Q: Was that after you were married?
A: Yeah, yeah.
It was after all the children were born that I moved over there.
I went over there when they had that big works over there. That big timber
works over there, you know. I went over there. We stayed over there five
years. Then we came back here, down in the holler down there, to take care
of my wife's daddy and mother. We took care of them.
�3.
Q: When you were a young boy did your family grow your own food?
Did you
live on a farm?
A: Yes, we lived on a farm.
All my childhood days, we lived on a farm.
Q: What kind of work did you have to do around the farm?
A: Oh well, different kinds of work. We done all the farming.
Planted potatoes,
corn, and rye and wheat, like that cabbage.
Q: What was your biggest money-making crop?
A: Well, our biggest money-making crop was corn.
Q: Where did you sell it?
A: We didn't sell it.
We used it.
We never sold no corn. We just made enough
for us to live on. That's what we had to live on then.
living on our farms.
here.
We had to make our
On, we'd go to the store and buy what we couldn't make
W e ' d go to the store and buy that.
But what we could make on the farm,
why, we'd use that.
Q: What kinds of jobs have you had throughout your life?
A: Well, my biggest job I've had throughout my life was a carpenter.
Q: I've seen some of your work.
A: Last house I built was Joe Miller's house down there.
house I built.
Except this one.
I built this one.
That's the last
�Q: Have you been a carpenter most of your life?
A: Most of my life I've been a carpenter.
Q: Have you ever had a hard time getting a job?
A: No. I never had a hard time getting a job.
Q: Can you see any way that work has changed over the years?
A: Yes.
Q: What ways are they?
A: Well, I don't know, honey, hardly what to tell you about that. Of course
the carpenter work has changed a whole lot from what it used to be, you know.
Used to, we just had to do it all by these here (indicates his hands) you know,
just main strength. Now they got that machinery, you know, and they can do
most of that work with that machinery now. We didn't have that then. We just
had to do all that work with our hands.
Q: What year did you get married?
A:
The year 1900.
Q: What was Granny Culler's name before she married you?
A: What was her name?
Q: Wasn't she a Hodges?
�5.
A: Yeah, fa Hodges. Minerva Hodges.
Q: Where was she from? Was she fromaround here too?
A: She was born over on Meat Camp.
Q: How many children did you have?
A: We had five.
One little girl died when she was twenty months old.
Q: What are your children's names?
A: The oldest one's Vance, then Tracy, then James, and then the little girl
that died, and Beulah.
Q: Do you remember how much schooling your children had? Did they go
to school mic h?
A: No, they just got a common school education. Back then, we just had about
three months of school a year, you know.
Q: Do you think children are brought up the same way now that they were
when you were bringing up your children?
A: No, I don't.
Q: What ways are different about the way they're brought up?
A: Well, the difference is that then children would do just exactly what their
parents said to do, and now the children do about what they want to do. We had
to obey our parents, and if we didn't we got a whooping for it.
�Q: You don't see too much of that anymore, do you?
A: Don't see much of that anymore.
Q: That's right.
Can you remember any of the disasters around this area,
like the 1916 flood?
A: No, not that I know of.
Q: Or the one in 1940?
A: I don't remember that, about what time it was.
flood through here in the 1940's.
didn't put them down.
They was a right smart
I can't remember the dates or nothing. I
I don't allow nobody did.
Q: I guess you weren't affected by the flood too much then, were you?
A: No, we wasn't affected by them.
The greatest flood that we've had here
was the time it washed those folks away down the other side of the mountain,
a few years back.
I've got the history of it here.
A woman wrote it down there
and had it printed in a book and I've got one of them.
Q: What kind of churches have been in this area, like were they mostly one
kind or the other?
A:
Most of the churches, back in my time, was Baptist.
Boone , lived in Boone till I was twelve years old.
I was born in
Then my father bought a piece
of land back here on the mountain and we moved back there then.
there when I was married, 1900.
I was living
�7.
Q: Do you think that the churches today are the same that they were when you
were younger?
A: No.
Q: How are they different now?
A: Well, the difference between now and then is the difference between the
members of the church attending the church.
Back then, if you didn't attend
that church why you went out. Now, they can just do what they please and
stay in church.
You had to obey those church rules.
They was strict on it.
Throw you out if you didn't obey them.
Q: What are some of the things that people got thrown out of church for doing?
A: Well, most of the people, honey, got thrown out of the church for non-attendance.
Those church rules said, the Baptist church rules now, I don't know nothing
about them other churches.
But in a Baptist church the rules said if you miss
three meeting times they'll come and see you. And what's the matter, and if
you ain't able to attend the church you're free.
can't attend it, why you was free of that.
Or if something happens that you
But you didn't stop going just
cause you didn't want to go, they'd tell you now next meeting time if you
ain't there we're going to turn you out. And if you wasn't there, out you went.
See how strict them rules was back then? If we used them no they wouldn't
be nobody in the church would they?
Q: What about things like cussing and lyingchurch for things like that?
Did people get thrown out of
�A: Yeah, yeah.
Throw you out for lying.
You had to walk those church rules
if you stayed in there.
Q: Do you think that made a better church, for people to obey the rules?
A: Yeah. When we disobey them church rules we're disobeying what that
Book says. I've read that Book through five times.
Q: I'm sure you've lived it too.
A: I've tried to.
Q: Was there any way,to get back in the church after you got thrown out?
A: Oh, yes.
You go back there and make your acknowledgement to the church,
why they'd forgive you and take you back.
If they hadn't, it wouldn't of been
according to the Bible. God'11 forgive us for our disobedience if we'll come
and ask Him to.
If we ask Himwith a repentant heart. Just go and tell I'm
going to do this, that, and the other. He won't pay any attention to that. You
come to Him and repent about what you've done and then He'll forgive you and
you can go back to the church.
Put you back in the church.
Q: Do you know how this community got its name, Rainbow Trail Road? Do
you know how that name came about?
A: Well, it's been Rainbow Trail for, let's see, about I guess twenty years ago.
It was Rainbow Trail Road when I came back fromShulls Mills when I lived
overthere, I came back over here to take care of my wife's daddy and mother.
They were building this old railroad went around here where they got that
�9.
timber out up in here, you know. And they called it Rainbow Trail because of
that train coming in here. That's been about twenty years ago.
Q: How has this community changed over the years?
A: Oh well, the community has changed a whole lot.
There was nobody living
here then, much. Nobody lived past, Gov Lane, they lived right down in a
house down in the woods there. That was about all the folks that lived here
except my wife's daddy andmother.
They lived down in the holler down here.
When we moved in here, that was about all.
know if they lived in here then.
And Ed Hardy's, let's see, I don't
I don't know if his father lived in here when
we moved in or not. I believe he did. He had a little log house right down
there. But that's about all the houses tkoAt were in here then.
Q: How did you get around back in those days?
A: Oh, we went by wagon or horseback. We went afoot most of the time. Didn't
have nothing to go in.
Q: Can you remember the first car you saw?
A: No, honey, I don't know what year it was.
But the first car I saw was in
Boone. And that car was built like a hack. I don't know whether you ever seen
an old hack or not.
Q: I don't know either.
A: Big old hack, pulled by horses. It was made just in the shape of that. And
�10.
it had, the motor was in thefront end. Of course the motor's in the front end
of a car yet.
But the motor was in the front end, and they had a chain belt
then, that would run from that motor back to that back axle back there. And
it backed around that axle there and had little places on it for them chain makes a
hook in. And when they started why that got to going and rolled that hind wheel.
Course the hind wheel is what rolls now. But it was a lot like a chain belt.
And it went about as fast as a horse could trot. That's the first car I ever seen.
Q: They'll go a lot faster now, won't they?
A: _,Oh Law, yes. A mile a minute now.
Q: Wherewere most of the roads? Can you remember the main roads that
were around here?
A: No, I don't.
Q: What about railroads?
You just mentioned the one that ran through here.
Were there any more railroads in the area?
A: No.
Q: Was that used just mainly to take the lumber back and forth?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you remember when that railroad was built?
A:
It was built about 1921, cause I came back here in 1922 from Shulls Mills,
�11.
and that railroad was, they had just built it when I came back here. Because when
I came back here they were hauling those logs out of this country and back away
back in here plumb back to Rich Mountain back yonder to the Bald.
They went
plumb back there and got all that timber in there and hauled it out here. When
I come back here I worked on this old railroad here.
They had a bunch of
hands stayed on it all the time to keep it fixed up, you know,
-"-nd I worked with
that. That was 1922 when I come back here. That's when that old railroad
was built.
Q: How much did you get paid for working on the railroad?
A: Oh, we got about a dollar a day.
Q: I guess it was hard work, wasn't it?
A: No, it wasn't too hard a work. Three or four of us worked on it,
and the boss man along with us.
ride from place, to place on it.
on it; we just pushed it along.
you know,
We had a little old car we kept on the road to
We just had to push it.
We didn't have no power
Going downhill we'd all jump on that thing and
ride down. We kept the presses all fixed up so they wouldn't have a wreck or
something.
Q: Are you interested in politics of any kind?
A: Yeah. (Laughter)
Q: Do you remember any elections in the past? Any that stood out in your
mind maybe?
�12.
A: Well, I don't know. I know a right smart about the elections.
There's some
I remember but don't know what I could say about them.
Q: Can you remember anything about local elections, like county elections for
sheriff, and the county officers and things like that?
A: Well, I don 't know that I could. You know, when I first got to vote, the
first time ever I voted, why the Democrats held this county, you know, for
years and years. My generation was all Democrats and we all voted a Democrat
ticket.
Yeah, the Democrats held this county here for I don't know how long.
I guess fifteen^or twenty years.
Q: When was that? Do you remember the years that they held power?
A: I don't remember the years.
Q: Do you think politics today are dirtier than they were in the past?
A: Yeah, they're dirty now. They're dirty. On both sides.
Q: How do you think they're dirtier now?
A: Well, I think one thing, the main thing about them being dirty is trying
to buy people over and such stuff like that you know. My generation was all
Democrats.
My grandfather was a Democrat. And all our generation was.
My grandfather lived to be 128.
Q: My goodness! He had a long life, didn't he?
Did he live around here?
A: He was born and raised in Orangeburg, South Carolina.
He came to Williies
�13.
County when he was forty years old.
He rode from South Carolina on horseback
to Wilkesboro. He came to Wilkesboro when he was forty years_old and married
a woman there in Wilkesboro.
He wasn't married till he was forty years old.
He stayed there a while and then he moved to Boone and spent the rest of his
life here. Well, the last few days of his life he spent, he went back down to
Wilkesboro.
But he spent most of his life in Watauga County.
Q: What was his name?
A: Benjamin. Benjamin Culler.
Q: Why did he leave Orangeburg and go to Wilkesboro?
A: I don't know. Now his father, his
niother was a German, his father was
an Englishman. His father died when he was six years old.
then, you know, had a bunch of niggers.
It was slave time
He had 640 acres of land there, his
father did, in Orangeburg, South Carolina.
Course he come over from the old
country there and when they come over in that time they gave them so much
land.
They gave him 640 acres, his father. His father died when he was six
years old, and there was another boy and a girl, that's all.
Three of them.
Grandfather, and Uncle Frank, and Aunt Frances. That's all the children there
was.
He came there to Wilkesboro. He stayed there a while and then he married a
woman there and came on to Watauga County. Now after I was big enough to
know anything a 'tall about it, there was a Clarence Glover, a lawyer in Orangeburg,
South Carolina, wrote Granddad a letter and said, "Your brother and your
sister's dead, and they weren't ever married, they didn't have no children. "
�14.
And he said, "I want you to come down here now and take charge of this land.
This 640 acres. " Granddad never did go down there. Now that 640 acres of
land down in Orangeburg would of made the Cullers all rich, wouldn't it?
Q: It might have.
A: He didn't even go down there to see about it.
Q: Well, do you know what ever happened to the land?
A: No, honey, I don't know.
Q: When somebody in your family got sick, what could you do for them?
Could
you get them to a doctor?
A: Well, we had different doctors.
oh, I couldn't mention them all.
We had a Dr. Council and Dr. Reeves, and
That old Dr. Council was the first doctor they
was in Boone, over there. And then Dr. Reeves came there, I don't know how
many years Dr. Reeves stayed there.
There's been so many doctors in there
I can't remember them now. But old Dr. Council was the main doctor there in
the time of the Civil War.
Q: Do you remember any stories about the Civil War that you heard your parents
tell about or anything?
A: No, honey. I don't know nothing about that. Only the time they came here
to Boone, you know, and shot up Boone, down there. Killed three people there.
I've heard them tell about that. I didn't know anything about it though. That was
before I was born.
But I've heard an old soldier that lived here, old man Max
�15.
Norris over yonder, he was one of the soldiers, I've heard him tell about it.
They killed one or two of them there too.
Boone cemetery, over there.
I saw them buried over there at the
That was the North against the South, the Civil
War.
Q: Do you remember hearing about any badmen or outlaws, any stories about
any of them ?
A: No, I don't honey.
Q: I heard people mention Clarence Potter and Boone Potter. Do you
remember anything about them?
A: Oh, yeah.
I knowed about Clarence Potter and Boone Potter.
they killed him.
Clarence Potter, they tried him in the court here at Boone
for killing a man, and sentenced him to be electrocuted.
hun him.
Boone Potter,
I don't really know.
I reckon maybe they
And he took an appeal to the Supreme Court for
a new trial. And they granted him a new trial and the next trial he was clear.
And then after that they had him in court up yonder again for throwing a rock
through a man's window, over there in Pottertown where he live, you know. And
the same judge that was there, when he come to trial for throwing that rock, the
same judge was there that gave him the sentence to be electrocuted. And when they
called him up there, the judge said, "Clarence, I convicted you to be electrocuted,"
And he said, "They pardoned you. The governor pardoned you. " And he said,
"Now you're right back here before me for throwing a rock in a man's window. "
And Clarence just got up there and said, "Judge, your Honor, " he said, "I
never killed that man. " The judge said, "You didn't ?" "No," he said, "I
didn't." The judge said, "Who killed him then? " He said, "Boone Potter killed
�16.
him. " "Why didn't you tell it?"
Says, "I was afraid to.
Boone would a killed
me if I'd a told it! " See, he suffered all that time. He stayed in jail now while
he was trying to make his appeal to the Supreme Court.
two months, till his other trial came along.
Tried him again and he come clear.
you know.
He stayed in jail forty-
They was going to try him again.
Yeah, he come clear. Told who done it,
Judge said, "Why didn't you tell it?" Said, "I was afraid to. Boone
would kill me if I told it. " But they finally killed Clarence.
him.
there.
Had up a watch for
Took a bunch of deputy sheriffs or sheriffs or deputies or something over
Send plumb iover thereto get him.
Clarence put up a fight with them
and shot them and finally they shot him and killed him,
Q: Were there any other outlaws or badmen in this area?
A: No, not that I know of right around close here.
Q: When somebody got sick or something, did you use some cures?
A: I guess we used some cures.
Mulligan tea.
Homemade cures.
Make catnip tea for colds,
And different things for hoarseness, you know.
Something like
that.
Q: Did the cures work?
A: Yeah.
Q: DCF you remember any folk tales or legends from around this area?
A: No, I can't.
�17.
Q: What about mysteries? Can you think of anything that happened that never
was solved?
A: Well, no.
Q: What about superstitions and things like that, like planting in the signs and
all that kind of stuff?
Did you go by that?
A: Well, yeah, people went by those signs. Went by signs of the moon, and so
on like that.
Most people way back then, you know, would wait till the moon got
in a certain place before they'd plant a crop or something like that.
Q: Do you know if there's any difference in courting or sparking today than
what there was when you were growing up?
A: Well, I don't know. I guess there is a difference now. Looked after
them more than they do now.
Q: When you were courting how did you get to your girlfriend's house?
A: I walked.
Q: Then did you just stay around her house?
A: Yes.
We walked to church then, you know. Some folks had horses, they
rode horseback.
Most of us poor mountain folks here, we had to walk to church.
Q: How far did you have to walk?
A: The farthest ever we had to walk, I guess was about two miles.
Some people
�18.
had to walk more than that. Where we lived in my boyhood time we went to church,
and we lived about two miles from the church house.
Q: Did you do that in the winter and all through the snow?
A: Oh, yeah.
We didn't care about the snow. We went right on.
Q: There's a lot of people that wouldn't go now if they had to do that.
A: That's the truth. Snow was so deep, why we'd take something along with us
and come back that evening. Course the most of us then had to walk.
have no other way of going.
know.
We didn't
Some people had horses. They could ride, you
But we didn't have horses.
Q: Are there any preachers that stand out in your memory?
Can you remember
any of the names ?
A: Yes, I can remember nearly all of them.
Uncle Ed Greene, he was the
pastor of Doe Ridge Church. And he was pastor of Howards Creek Church for
a long time. I don't know much about any of the other churches.
all the churches we ever went to.
Doe Ridge and Howards Creek.
That's about
Oh, we'd go
once in a while to Rich Mountain. I don't remember any of the pastors' names
there.
�
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
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Scanned by
Wetmore, Dana
Equipment
Hp Scanjet 8200
Scan date
2014-02-18
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
Interview with Walter Culler, June 11, 1973
Description
An account of the resource
Walter Culler was born in Boone, North Carolina in 1882 and grew up on a farm. He lived in Watauga County his entire life and made his living in carpentry.
Mr. Culler begins his interview discussing his childhood on the farm. Mr. Culler talks about transportation in the past like cars and the railroad. To end the interview, Mr. Culler recollects the stories he heard of Boone outlaws.
Creator
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Clauson, Donna
Culler, Walter
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>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
6/11/1973
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.
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
18 pages
Language
A language of the resource
English
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
document
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
111_tape69_WalterCuller_1973_06_11M001
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Boone, NC
Subject
The topic of the resource
Farm life--North Carolina--Watauga County--19th century
Farm life--North Carolina--Watauga County--20th century
Watauga County (N.C.)--Social life and customs--19th century
Watauga County (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century
Mountain life--North Carolina--Watauga County--History--19th century--Anecdotes
Mountain life--North Carolina--Watauga County--History--20th century--Anecdotes
carpentry
farming
outlaws