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https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/1fbd66f7d563f355b9b46038529a8345.pdf
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Ti1is is an interview with Hrs. Jennie Horton of Boone, North Carolina, done
for the Appalachian Oral History Project by Mabel L. Brooks.
Mrs. Horton: My name is Jennie Horton. I'm sixty-seven years old. I'm
retired. I used to cook, mostly I have always cooked. I worked pretty hard
in my younger days. I worked in Monroe, 11ichigan seven, six years, I left
there and worked in Pennsylvania up in the Pokenoles for four years. And
when I worked up there, I was working with my son-in-law, and that work was a
little too heavy for me so I quit and got a lighter job at a camp where they
have young people come in on week-ends. And I stayed there six years . And
then it was time for me to retire, so I came back home. This i s my home,
Boone. I signed up for social security. Then I worked four years down here
at the hospital, down here at Watauga, I got arthritis and that really threw
me, so I haven't worked anywhere in three years. I have two children, a boy
and a girl. My son is married and he lives here on 8 North Street. My daughter
lives in Strausburg, Pennsylvania.
Interviewer: Could you tell us about life during the depression and how you
made a living?
Mrs. Horton: My children were small then. I worked at a hotel. I didn't
make very much, we didn't make very much in those days. We got b~, but it
was close and very hard. I ah1ays had a garden. I had a pretty good little
garden, and I would can different things that I could get, and what I could
buy.
Interviewer: What food was most scarce at the time? Like now we are having
a beef shortage . What was in shortage during the depression?
Mrs. Horton: Just about everything. I tell you, seems like I don't recall,
any beef being in shortage, just meat. Just pork meat. Sugar, it was rationed
also flour and coffee, and stuff like that, just about everything. You could
only get a certain amount.
Interviewer:
Was it per week or per month or what?
Mrs. Horton: Per week. And I sold, let me see what else . I believe thats
all. Most of the food was rationed. They ~ allowed you to have so much a week.
I don't remember about the beef, I guess it was too, but ... you had such a
little money to buy things like that. If ~e could really do without it we
would.
Interviewer: My grandparents said they couldn't get much meat so they had
to eat horse meat on the table.
Mrs. Tiorton: Oh there wasn't anything like that here. Two, Three months
ago, I heard some say they have been eating horse meat. And you know I said
if it ever comes here t6 North Carolina especially here in Boone, I'll never
but it. I'll never eat it. Cause if you read the Bible you aren't going to
find where Christ ate horse meat, nor any of his Disciples, why should I eat
it? When it gets down that low, I just hope the Lord will take me on out
of the way . Horse meat? Uggh.
�2
Interviewer : Well Y.rs . Horton could you tell us about getting medicines and
visiting the doctors and things?
Mrs . Horton: Well it seems like it wasn ' t too hard to get a doctor. Seems like there weren't as many prescriptions filled. They didn't write you prescriptions
as quickly as they do now for medication . But mostly, if you weren't too
awfullu sick, just with a cold and had to have something like that , the doctor
generally gave you a medication, something you didn't do yourself.
Interviewer :
Were home remedies more of usage then?
Mrs. Horton:
Yeah, home remedies were pretty useful then.
" ~
Interviewer : What do you think works best, home remedies, or that you recieve
from the doctors?
Mrs. Eorton : I don't know. Sometimes that old time stuff is pretty good,
yes it is. It really is. Of course the doctors make light of it and all .
I have heard in my younger days where people would have pneumonia fever and
they ' d make onion polysis and put on the patient, and give them some kind of
tea, and it would break up the fever. If you put onion polysis on you, on
somebody now, I guess the doctor would throw you out of the house .
Interviewer:
You said you had a garden before, what kind of tools did you use?
Mrs . Horton: I had hoes, shovels, madigans, what I got now . I raked in the
garden last year . This summer I had a pretty good garden, but last year, I
didn't do any good. I was on crutches with my knees. I had arthritis so
bad and I was on crutches just about all summer last summer, but by the help
of the Lord, I got better and I put out a pretty good little garden this year .
I think I raised enough potatoes to do me all winter. And I raised corn and
beans . I canned corn and I canned beans.. I canned tomatoes , and I canned
apples and I made apple jelly .
When your mother was
Interviewer: Sounds like you ' re pretty well stocked.
raising her garden, can you remember any methods that she used that you don ' t
have to use today?
Mrs . Horton: No, I don't . I was born and raised on a farm. My father farmed
and there ' s not much difference now . The only difference in it now and back
then, people would have to use a horse and a plow . But now they can take one
of these little tillers and go through and maybe dig a few weeds out and you've
got your stuff made. But then they would have to have a horse and a small plow,
a one horse plow and plow through the rows . But all of thats done away with now.
You just get you a tiller and go on through and plow up your garden without
horses . And we had cows, we had chickens, my daddy raised p.igs, raised hogs
and we got along pretty good . Money wasn't plentiful, but we did have plenty
to eat.
Interviewer: Would you think that your family got along better than some of the
other families durinE this time?
�3
Mrs . Horton: Well yes I do because now-a-days my grandchildren, they have
two and three pairs of shoes, which we didn ' t get but one pair of shoes a
year when we were growing up . Now my little grand- daughter, she ' s got two
or three pairs of shoes . Hy nieces little daughter ' s has two or three pair .
I say if you all had to survive what I came through, I say you'll be thankful
that you have just what you have . Ilut I don ' t know, they still aren't satisfied .
Interviewer:
I guess people had to make a lot of their clothes and things?
Mrs . Horton :
Yes, way
Interviewer :
Did you ever have to go to the grits mill?
back then they did .
Mrs . Horton: Yes, I went to the mill. We ' d take wheat to the ~ill and get it
ground into flour . And we ' d take corn and get it ground into meal . I couldn't
carry but a peck or about a half a bushel. It wasn't too far from where we
lived, where we took our meal to. But the mill we took our flour to was about
four miles from our home .
Interviewer:
Did you have to walk?
Mrs. Horton : Yes pretty much, and that ' s a long way. But generally, my
father would always get our neighbors. they had a team of ~ules and when they
would go to the mill, they would all go in and go together . That made it a
little easier.
Interviewer : Do you know any little funny acts or incidents that happened
on the way to the mill?
Mrs . Horton:
No, I don ' t know any.
Interviewer :
What about the educational situation?
Mrs. Horton : Among the children, there . weren ' t but two of us that went to
school. There weren't but three of us . We had to walk three miles going
and three miles coming. Six miles a day to school .
Interviewer:
Were the whites and blacks going to school together7
Mrs. Horton:
No.
Interviewer :
this time?
Was there a lot of tension between the whites and blacks during
No way .
~
.
Mrs . Horton: Not a bit . I ' ve been here in Boone . I ' ve been living in Boone .
I was born and raised in Tennessee, but ~y mother and father moved here about
forty or fifty years ago and I never heard anything about segregation till I
came to Boone, North Carolina , that's the truth . We didn't go to school together
nor to church together, but sometimes the whites would come and visit our church
and they would invite the Colored to come and visit their church . I didn ' t
�4
know anything about it until I came to North Carolina and seems like it got
worse and worse and worse so I hope it •·s better now. Some places it will
never be any better. That's right.
Interviewer: Do you think it was a good thing for the schools to intergrate
like they have?
Mrs. Horton: Yes I do. Especially in a little place like this. This is no
city, you know that, but the Colored weren't situated to teach some of the
children. Especially when they got to high school, at first they didn't
have any high school teachers here and they would have to send their children
off. My son and my daughter, when they finished elementary school here, I
had to send them to Kings Mountain, North Carolina. I sent them to Kings
Mountain, North Carolina to finish high school. And then, as I remember,
some of the children went to Tennessee and some went to Greensboro these that
wanted to. You know, so many will and so many won't. And so many can and so
many can't. But I am thankful to the Lord that everything has turned out like
it has. Everything seems to be a whole lot different from what it used to be
when I was ~ growing up. If they'd get a job, people would get more money than
they did back when I was a kid. I have worked for as little as three and four
dollars a week and you know that isn't anv money. Now just let somebody ask
you to work for them for three or four dollars a week. Some people would get
rather violent. You'd better believe it. Yes sir.
Interviewer: When you were going to school, how were the schools set up, did
they have everybody in one room?
Mrs. Horton: No, we had two rooms. I got as far as the sixth grade. I went
about two of three weeks in the sixth grade and I had to quit. My father and
my mother weren't too well and my brother, there weren't but four of us, and
three girls and my brother. He lives out on up above us. That little white
house that sits down there, he lives up above there in a yellow house. He
married and we had to be the girls and the boys too so we just quit going to
school. Stay at home and help with the house work.
Interviewer:
Did
peop ~ e
tend to marry younger back then they do now?
Mrs. Horton: No I don't think so. I don't think they did. It don't seem to
me like they did. They jump up and marry, I wouldn't be surprised if some
little ten, twelve year old children don't get married, it wouldn't surprise
me a bit. They didn't marry as young, as early as the young people do this
day and time.
Interviewer: Would you say there was a difference in the races getting married?
The whites tend to marry younf.er than the blacks?
Mrs. Horton: Well I don't know, I don't knm» how old they would be, but seems
that they'd be pretty old when they would get married, no older than eighteen
or nineteen. But now they marry younger than that don't they? Some of them
do.
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Well Mrs. Horton, I see that you have company coming and I won't hold you any
longer. Thank you very much for your cooperation.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region.
The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students.
Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU.
An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school.
This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1965-1989
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview.
Brooks, Mabel L.
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed.
Horton, Jenny
Interview Date
6/17/1974
Location
The location of the interview.
Boone, NC
Number of pages
5 pages
Date digitized
9/16/2014
File size
3.11MB
Checksum
alphanumeric code
acacad4985e3489eaecff5dca3a621e2
Scanned by
Tony Grady
Equipment
Epson Expression 10000 XL
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal; non-commercial; and educational use; provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records; 1965-1989; W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection; Special Collections; Appalachian State University; Boone; NC). Any commercial use of the materials; without the written permission of the Appalachian State University; is strictly prohibited.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
AC.111 Appalachian Oral History Project Records; 1965 - 1989
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
111_tape288_JennyHorton_transcript_M
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Jenny Horton [June 17, 1984]
Language
A language of the resource
English
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Brooks, Mabel L.
Horton, Jenny
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Watauga County (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century
Depression--1929--North Carolina--Watauga County
Mountain life--North Carolina--Watauga County
Horton, Jenny
Description
An account of the resource
Jenny Horton, a black woman living in Boone, talks about working as a cook most of her life. She worked in a hospital for a few years, but had to stop after she developed arthritis. She talks about the rationing of sugar, flour, meat, coffee, and other foods during the Depression and the different views on medicine people used to have. People were much more likely to use home remedies than go to the doctor. She also explains there was "a lot of tension between whites and blacks."
Boone
farming
gardem
garden
Great Depression
grits mill
home remedies
Jenny Horton
Michigan
Monroe
North Carolina
Pennyslvania
Poconos
segregation
Watauga Hospital