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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
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
2014-02-19
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 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
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Harmon, Lester
Carlton, Mr. & Mrs. E.E.
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
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