1
50
5
-
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/6fea2764da0a51cffc6bbb54b3ddd5f3.pdf
e066c8695761f7b985d295249ebb8550
PDF Text
Text
Interview with Ruth South on October 15 ,".:. 1980, by Wade Hyder and Deloris Proffit.
It was preformed at her house.
Interviewer:
With Ruth South from Meat Camp.
Interviewer: I like find out something about the general history, you know,
about weaving in the mountians, or about how you learned how to weave?
Mrs. South: The way I started was-- I was working on the NYA now you know
that was the national youth adminisration under President Roosevelt. That's
back when there was no jobs, and not very many people went to school. It was
only the---mostly the rich people and the ones that could worked t heir way
through and the.re was not working places for everybody to go like there are
now. And a --- so I was sixteen you had to be sixteen to get a job so I started
working on the NYA and you worked two weeks and you stayed home two weeks.
And you worked nine hours a week. Nine hours that would be eighteen--Did
you turn the stove off? (directed toward her son) See we worked-Mike South:
That's on tape Mamrna.
Ruth South: And I think --anyway I made eighteen dollars that's the way it
was. It was nine dollars a week instead of nine hours. We made eighteen
dollars for two weeks. And then I stayed fiome so another girl could work.
And she did the same job that I did whicn was when I first out I was. a time
keeper and they had the--they had three, four different places. They had
the college cafeteria where they canned the food that the boys grew and the
girls canned it. And they had Green Heights they called it. That was the
house belongs to -- belongs to Mr. Hodges up on Green Heights there in Boon~.
That's where they made quilts. The girls went in and made quilts and they
let the poor people have them for just the material cost, which was very little.
And then out on the Bristol road a little ways, which we didn't go out there,
they had another set up there. They made mattresses for people, you know,
to go beds.
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
They made handmade mattress's?
They made hand made mattresses.
Would that have been like down or----
Mrs. South: Cotton, they used cotton in it. Now I was out there a time or
two and the girls would get up on that and just tromp, tromp~ tromp to get
it padded down because they were hard now.
Interviewer:
Where did you say that was at?
Mrs. South: That was out on the Bristol road about where Bue Hodge has his
body shop. Right about there somewhere. And then they had of course the
Watauga Handcraft center there where you did your weaving which was somehow
connected enough with the state until they allowed her to have two girls working there. And I don't remember one of the girls was Irene Coffey, and I
don't remember the other one.
�2
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Who was running Watauga Industries?
Elizabeth Lord, because she started it in 1938.
Intervie~er:
1938 she started it?
were 16 when you went to work?
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
So what would this have been when you
1940.
1940, oh well i'm not very
~ood
at math.
Mrs. South: Yeah, that was in 1940, because that was the year of the flood,
year of the flood was the first year I worked there. Was that 40 or 41?
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
You hear of the forty flood.
You haven't read about that?
Oh, I've heard about all my life, I don't think I've ever read.
Mrs. South: Yeah it was forty, 1940 I think. Well we worked that way awhile
I had to do mine in walking I didn'~ _ have a car to drive. So I would go from
Green Heights that's up above where Smitheys store is up on that hill. And
I would walk down and go down by the crafts shop first and I'd get the girls
time and take it down and it was very interesting to me and I'd look around.
And then I'd go by the college cafeteria where the girls were warki~ g and
I learned to meet a lot of people that way. And then I'd go back to Headquarters where I started. Well I learned that I had some time extra and if I went
the other way around I could spend more time in that craft shop. So I started
then down college street and came down by the cafeteria first and did that
real quick. And then I went up Hardin Street up to the craft shop and I'd
stay there till almost 4:30. And I liked the lady
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Getting there about when?
Beg your pardon.
Gettin~---getting
there about when?
Mrs. South: I'd stay there till about 4:30, just in time for me to get up
to headquarters at 4:30, and get the time in. So. I learned to like the lady
and she did me. And the place soon -- I mean it all soon fell through you know
the money gave out. And there was no more of it-- no more of it anywhere.
Interviewer:
The whole NYA?
Mrs. South: The whole NYA and the WPA now that was another thing that was
going on at the same time was for older men. Because my father worked some on
that and helped build some of the looms there in the craft shop.
Interviewer:
Oh really.
�• I
3
Mrs. South: Well when the money gave out, natually it fell through. But
times had picked up a little till people could get a few jobs. So I was going
then in the dime store to put in an application for a job . When I meet up
with this lady . And you know when it closed dovm I just didn't go back .
So she asked me what I was going to do and I told her . And she said would
you like to work for me at the same price that you ' re getting. And I said
yes I would . And so I worked but it was steady work--it was all the time
you know, not just two weeks . But they soon grew and they begin pating me
more money, never alot of money but I was making instead of 9 dollars a week
when I finally quit there I was making something like 75 dollars .
Interviewer: What kind of a place was it then?
a craft shop?
Was it a weaving school or
Mrs. South: Yes, yes it was a non-profit organization where she had a gift
shop there where she tried to sell things for the people that made them . And
you know,
Interviewer:
Like consignment work.
Mrs . South: Like consignment most of it was on consignment. And when she
sold something she was so tickled to write the person a check for that .
And it grew to be a good money making place . I mean a place for-- to a benefit
the community, you know, and not just for one person. That was the intention
of the plac~ was to help all the people to make a little more income .
Interviewer: Who bought most of the stuff? What was it people from the _
university or were there lots of people from outside the area?
Mrs . South : In later years it wa-. But at first they were people up north,
they called them the good Lutherans because they were the people that had given
Miss Jeffcoate the money to buy the lot there.
Interviewer:
Miss Jeffcoate.
She proceeded Elizabeth Lord?
Mrs . South : No-- --UH-huh Yeah she did . And she----- she had paralysis and she
never did weave much she was never married but she raised two daughters from
uh-- they were Townsends and they were ·from the Lutheran church over in-What was the name of the place daddy?
Austin South:
Mrs. South :
Interviewer :
Valle Gruis .
Yeah. Valle Gruis .
Oh .
Mrs. South: And she educated both those girls, Lois and Annie Alice and
they're both school teachers now .
Interviewer:
idea?
What was her interest in starting the place?
Do you have any
�4
Mrs . South : Just to help somebody . She just -- she wanted to do pomething
to help . She herself had been a school teacher and then she had a stroke
and it paralized let's see her left side . And then of course she got retirement
you see and had money coming in to live on . There was no social security
I ' m sure I doubt if she had enough to live on . She had a home, and then she
just wanted to help somebody else .
Interviewer: So it kinda started as a weaving school and then the whole
NYA thing helped to
~~~~-
Mrs . South: Yes it started first as just connnunity people coming in to weave
and they would buy the thread . Miss Lord would, and just let the peopl~ . pay
and that's the way it went on the NYA . There was never no charge for anybody
weaving there . I don't know how much you paid. I don ' t know how much they
charge now.
Interviewer:
Yeah, its still real good .
Mr . Carlson's a wonderful man I think.
Mrs . South : Yeah I think so . He doesn't need a great deal of money out of it
either and I think he's trying to keep it a whole lot like
~~~~~-
Interviewer : He still- --he lets--Our weaving teacher is Susan Sharp and he
lets her, you know, he just wants the looms being used so he lets her give
classes there. And try to have as many students as she can, to fill those
12 or 13 looms how ever many they are.
Mrs. South :
Interviewer:
Mrs . South:
Well that's good they should be in use .
Well they are they are all in use
ri~ht
now.
Well that's good.
Interviewer : He doesn't take any kind of cut for the fee she gets for the
classes. Re just lets her use the looms, So that traditon is still going .
Mrs . South: Well that's good. They are not his anyway, they are like all
other school equipment like these mobile buildings, you know, mobile units
that they took to the school house, and they don't belong to any one individual
you know, it's like the board of education or however they-- it's like any
of the public schools .
Interviewer:
Yeah I see .
Mrs . South: Those looms and that building now is the same thing because the
state paid so much of Miss Lords salary 1/4 of it and the 3/4 she made in the
shop. And they paid 1/4 of mine after I got up and could do more and could
help out more .
Interviewer: I see . So back in the forties and the state was helping to keep
that place going so that for the craft purpose so that weaving could be preserved or?
�..
5
Mrs. South: Yes, and still to help the people like there's a lot of people
now--now like Stella Barnes over here-- he (Austin South) was just at her
house and delivered her some saugasge. She used to work as a~--- in the
dormitory at the college. Then later her husband got sick, she needed to be
at home with him and she wanted to learn how to weave. So she could go there
and learn and just pay for her--- the material she made. And I don't know
she ah-- shes a real young lady now--- she's past 70 I'm sure, but its amazing
what she weaves.
Interviewer:
Un-Huh.
She does beautiful things.
Mrs. South: Yeah she does. And she goes to the fair. She goes to the Southern
Living Show. She belongs to the Southern Highland Guild, and she goes there
and now that her husband's gone she's still, you know, able to help herself.
Interviewer: So you started working with Miss LOrd then--- then you learned
how to weave or?
Mrs. South: Oh yes, yes. That was the first thing I did was learn how to
weave so I could help the other weavers. The new ones that came in. And
what they did we tried to keep all the looms busy all the time and ah-- the
policy was you must come enough consective days to finish the project that
you were working on. Like she would not let you start a covelet if you didn't
plan to come on and finish that cause that takes several days. But people
were very good to come and finish , but a lot of the times they wouldn't come
back to get their things.
Interviewer:
Just leave them for the shop to sell?
Mrs. South: Un-huh. And of course Miss Lord never did do that. We always
we had little scales and we weighted and some of the threads was only 3 cents
an ounce I remember and a guest towel might be 6 cent s. They would be a little
more charged for the pattern that went in it than the plain, you know ~ And
a guest towel would be 6 cents. Of course that's not today I'll tell yo u.
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Oh boy.
Linen in 17 dollars a pound now. Whew-----
Yeah Are you doing Linen?
No I haven't tried it yet.
I tried wool today for the _first time.
Mrs. South: You need to come back and finish that piece you worked on down
there. Cause I've never touched it.
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
came out.
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
I'd be glad to.
I uncovered it here sometime back to show to Dr. Mc Gallion that
Have you much time to do weaving lately?
I've made what 2 covelets since I got out of camp Daddy?
And right
�6
now this past week I've been working on some curtains like this for our daughter
that's moving into a new house, only they go all the way down, the lace goes
all the way down.
Interviewer:
That's real pretty.
Mrs. South: And I'm doing that of linen. But I had some and then mamma went
in and got me a pound from Mr. Carlson the other day. So there's (points to
bedspread) one bedspead I've been working on at night. And of course you saw
the ones that they had up at the college didn't you.
Interviewer:
You had lots of pretty things there.
Mrs. South: Well now my neice is going to have an exhibit. Its going up in
December. I don't think it'll be open to the public until Janurary. But it'll
run for a month I think.
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Where is this at?
In the same building.
Farthing.
Un-huh.
I see.
So your neice is a weaver too.
Mrs. South: Un- huh. Toni carlton you may know her. Do you know her? She
graduates what was it last spring. And she's going to have ~ a bed there that
she made. She made her own loom. And then of course she's does modern weaving.
Interviewer:
And you do the traditional?
Mrs. South: Un-huh. And she'll have some modern things there that's she has
made. So it'll probably be interesting for you to go there and see that.
Interviewer: Yeah, I'd like to see that. They--How many looms did they have
when you started down there with Watauga industries?
Mrs. South: Ithink about 12. I couldn't say that,you know, for an exact figure but I believe it was twelve.
Interviewer:
Well just general.
And what kind of fibers did you work with then?
Mrs. South: Linen. We used a lot of linen then. I don't think they use quite
as much linen now. And of course we used a lot of home spun wool. Now that
blue covelet that you saw up at the Farthering was home spun wool. And a lot
of the women in the community made covelets. The material was 2 dollars a
pound. It took 3 pounds of material to make one covelet and the fringe. Now
that didn't count the little extra tabby that goes through, you know, between
your pattern but now I don't know if you can get that home spun wool dyed like
we got it. Now you might be able to get it. No~ I think over at Mouth of Wilson
�7
they have it undyed tha t you can dye yours e lf.
Interviewer: Dorothy Townsend has some that, you know, she spuned as used
those natural dyes on them. But they are all--- I keep looking but the scanes
are, you know, so small that you could make somehting but you could go to a lot
of trouble.
Mrs. South: Yeah a lady brought me up some samples. I guess they must have
been 12 or 15 different colors beautiful colors that she had dyed.
Interviewer:
So you've worked with homespun wool7
Mrs. South: Yes I've worked with it, I've woven with it.
I spun some one time.
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
I've never dyed it.
Did you?
Un-huh.
Did you like doing that?
Did I like to?
Do you like spinning?
Mrs. South: I loved that. I was just about 16 through. And my grandmother
West and I spun enough--- Well actually a lady in that community where I lived
then helped me spin it and then my grandmother dyed it and knitted me a pair
of gloves and each finger was a different color.
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
that.
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Oh.
Cause you get a lot of di f ferent colors or we did when she dyed
Depending on how many times you dip it?
Dip in the dye, yeah.
Interviewer: You were saying that went from up above Smitheys around to your
job. Is that where you--- You grew up in Boone? In tgown~~~
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Well up on Deck Hill.
You know where that is?
No.
Mrs. South: You go out by where the Unemployment of fice is now.
are building the new shopping center.
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Where they
Yeah all right.
Yeah all right.
You go out that way and instead of going right up
�8
Winkler creek you go strignt up the hill .
Interviewer :
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
0 . K. I know where Deck Hill is.
And a lot of times I walked all the way from home .
Did you go to at-- --?
Mrs. South : I went to school at cool springs through the seventh grade and
then I went to the eight at Blowing Rock. We were nearer Blowing ,.Rock schoo~ than
we were Boone at that time .
Interviewer:
So you went to High School at Blowing Rock?
Mrs . South : Un- huh, Then I went to night school at Boone after I started
working for Miss Lord. You know, they had night school back during the war.
When people had to work during the day .
Interviewer :
Austin South:
Interviewer:
I see .
What about Berea?
What were you studying at night school?
Mrs. South : I took a business course . I never used it to much, I think
I've gotton a lot of good out of the math that I took and of the writing .
But the snorthand and typing I've never done much with that . And then each
year I would goto school either over at Pendelum or Berea one. I was in Berea
the year I got engaged to him. And lets see how long was I there, 3 weeks .
Austin South:
3 weeks .
Mrs . South: And I always enjoyed the places cause I always, you know, got to
make things .
Interviewer :
You studied weaving at both Pendelun and Berea?
Mrs . South: Yes un- huh. I did some wood work at Berea . I did a little chest.
and then at Pendelum I did some Pewter work. I made some pewter candle sticks .
Interviewer :
Mrs . South:
Oh .
But mostly it was weaving.
Interviewer : What was Pendulum like then in the sense of people who were
.going there to learn crafts . I said just because its so expensive now.
Mrs. South : It was a lot like it was at the craft shop over here. It was
a lot the same way because they were helping their community people too . I
think its very expensive now . And of course you stay there now and of course we
�9
stayed there. They had rooms like dormitories and it didn't cost very much
for us to stay for 2 or 3 weeks. We'd go f rom 2 or maybe 3 weeks when--like when it was a dull time at the craft shop over here.
Interviewer:
Yeah.
Mrs. South: And she would take me with her and I really enjoyed it.
it was about .the only place I really got to go.
Interviewer:
Caus e
How long did you work at the craft shop?
lfrs. South: I worked 18 · year with her and then she got sick. What year was
it daddy about 58 I believe. She got sick she had cancer and had an operation
but she still wanted to go back and work part time so I went .and tried to
pitch in for her until she got able to go back. But really she never did
get able to go back. So when she passed away in 61, then the place was up.
Miss Jef fcoate was still living and she wanted me to take it and run it. But
I was trying to, you know, help educate our children and help him out a little.
So I needed to ma~e more money--- I needed a way tnat I knew I could have
some money every month. Instead of, you know,
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
got it.
Interviewer:
The risk.
The risk of making it myself there.
How long has she been gone?
So that's when Mrs. Carlson
Did she pass away?
Mrs. South: I heard them talking up at the camp this summer when she passed
away. Do you remember daddy?
Austin South:
No I don't.
Mrs. South: It was about 65. It was not to long after Miss Lord passed away
I think around 65. I'm sure you wouldn't want to ask ~r. Carlson. But I think
it wa s around then.
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
And Mr. Carlson's had it ever since
Un- huh, He's kept it.
Interviewer: Tha t's great.
know if you know her?
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
t~en?
:.~o,
That's great.
Sandy his grand-daughter--I don't
but mamma does.
She's real interested, a real good weaver too.
She's real good.
Mrs. South: Mama likes her. She went over to teach her to tie fringe and
she likes her. She said she was nice. Mr. Carlson's been real nice to my
mother to take her weaving and sell it. And he sells a lot f or her.
�10
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Whats her name?
Her name is Nellie Carlton.
0. K.
I've meet her too.
Mrs. South: Now what about this movie that 's coming up this Friday night.
afi- What's---The American Herion-- How you say that I can't---- - Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
see that.
Interviewer:
Herion
Un-huh.
That's going to be shown this Friday night and you should
What's that about?
Mrs. South: It's about the
well not only mountain women but she a
---Stella Stevens made it and she made a lot of pictures of a
weaving
here.
Interviewer:
Oh really.
Mrs. South: And other things. And then also it has other people, you know,
from Hew York and California and all its a way of life of a lot of people from
a lot of places.
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Austin South:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Yeah, American Beroion.
So a--- And it will be shown in the Greer.
Did I say the Greer?
The Greer Autotorian.
Autototian on Friday night beginning at 9:00.
Uh--That would be nice to see.
Yeah
you should see that.
I hope she's a
----
Is your mother in it?
Mrs. South: Yes my mother's in it and Toni is in it. And I believe Stella
Barnes over here is in it and Kathren Smith the Art teacher that was at the
college for so long. She'll be in it. And I really don't know there's some
other people from up on Meat Camp in it too, but I'm sure. Do you know anything
about it Deloris?
Deloris:
No.
Interviewer:
When did you get your own loom?
Mrs. South: When I got my own loom was a
When did we go-- when did I go to
Bevard with you Austin? And we married in 45 in August and was it that spring?
�11
Austin South :
Yeah .
Mrs . South : Of
suprise for me.
Interviewer:
4~ .
That Miss Lord had my father make me a loom.
It was a
Oh how nice.
Mrs . South: But and but she - -- he was a person that he- - - he did real good
work didn't he daddy? But he was out a working all the time and he never
thought and I never thought really how important it would be for me to have
a loom of my own. Because certainly I could never go out and buy the looms
at the price they are . But she had him make me one . And that was the big
one that was right behind the one that you worked on. Now he helped make that
one that you worked on .
Interviewer : That was neat . And so did you start selling things in the shop?
Or did you first start marketing?
Mrs . South : Yeah , right along then . She had me put-- . I said what should
I put on my loom and of course she had me do it up, you know, she said I think
it would be nice to put on a 18 inch warp and do runners and towels . I could
do runners and towels and placemats and napkins all on that same width .
Interviewer:
Width .
Mrs . South: And so I moved that loom around . I had it up at his house in the
bedroom and he later moved it upstairs for me and then when we moved into
this house we had it back in that room over there . And then eventually we
moved it down in the garage and that ' s where it stayed. But I use to use-weave off and I ' d go up there to put my warps on . Now he made me a thing
here I have the whole apparatus to do my own warping here.
Interviewer :
Oh he did, and he made that, the warper?
Mrs. South : He made that for me, uh-huh, but I used to have to carry it up
there . And I ' d weave 3 110 yards warps every year.
Interviewer : Boy, that ' s a lot of weaving Three 110 yard warps .
were still working with the 18 inch?
And you
Mrs . South : No, no now after I did this one 18 inch warp, and then she said
You know, I think you could make the most money on a 36 inch warp on your
loom and make aprons . I could make skirts, and I could make runners to with
hemming the ends of fringing the ends and hemming the sides . And theres still
many things you can do on one loom . But she said the material for the aprons
would-- would be less expensive than the linen which I was using on the 18
inch loom.
Interviewer :
Right .
Mrs . South: And I don ' t know . Austin ' s mother she use to help me hem the
strings and help me watch the children . We had 3 little ones and he was away
working . And she said I know you must have everybody in the United States an
�12
apron now.
And I'm sure she felt like it cause I made a lot didn't I Austin?
Austin South:
Interviewer:
Yeah.
What did you use for the apron?
What kind of material?
Mrs. South: We used what they called a sea island mercerized which last almost
as long as linen but ah it was just a highly mercerized cotton.
Interviewer:
What does that mean?
What does Mercerized mean?
Mrs. South: Mercertized that means that it is spun and spun and spun more
times adn twisted tighter.
Interviewer:
I see into a tougher fiber.
Mrs. South: And some of it really has a shine ta it. Like its been polished
or dipped in dye or something, out its only by the spinning of it.
Interviewer :
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
I see.
That makes it.
What does worsted mean on wool?
Worsted, I think you 've got me there.
I'm not quite sure.
It might just be something about the lanolin or something.
Mrs. South: It is and its something about the twist of it I'm sure.
the homespun ah-- we know what that was.
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Explain that process.
Now
How would-- How would somebody get that?
Do homespun wool?
Yeah.
Mrs. South: 0. K. You took the wool, the raw wool which ah-- Mr. Hodgeson
up here above you all used to buy it they said from the people and ah--then he'd sell it to companies, you know, where they made it . You take the
raw wool, you wash it first . Then you card it, card it first . You get all
the twigs and anything, the spots anything that's in it out. And with the
cards you make it into a little role. And then you pack those roles up.
I've seen my grandmother West have a pack as high as this here. And they'll
lie right together you see but it won't mash together. But th~y would never
fall over. And then she'd get her spinning wheel up by it. And you take
one of those roles which was about 12 inches long and you start with your
spinning wheel and then as you spin you take another one and it catches right
into the end of this one as this is twisting around it'll catch into the one
that you have in your hand. And that's the way they do the homespun. Now
the worsted- they- I don't know what. They must do something with a machine
with that.
�13
Interviewer: It's not that important I'm sure I could look it up. I just
saw it on a packet of thread . I just started working on, and I wandered what
it meant.
Mrs . South : Yeah, I think that's something that they are doing with a machine
to it the worsted .
Interviewer:
Mrs . South:
I see.
Oh I love
END OF SIDE 1.
Uh- What fibers do you like to use most now?
�14
SIDE 11
Mrs. South:
I've never tried to dye any, its easier to buy it.
Interviewer: Yeah. Also since you're such a good weaver why spend your time
doing something like that. Ah---I'm just real vauge on this but I know you
had a real honor in this last year with one of your pieces, didn't you get
some kind of a recognition?
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer :
Yes.
What was that?
Let me show it to you.
What was the award?
I'll show you.
To modest to say?
Mrs. South~ A work of excellence; which I was really pleased with that as
much as the money that was in it.
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Carolina Designer Craftsman award for a work of Excellence.
Now they only gave one for the whole state.
Oh really, that's great.
Un-huh.
I was really tickled with it.
When did you get that?
In April of this year.
Well that's great.
Mrs. South: I look terrible there. ( She showed us a book with her picture
and the award winning covelet in it.) So look at the covelet and not me.
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Oh, that's pretty.
That's the picture they made of it that night.
Did you do the lace too?
No, my mother tied the lace, I can't take credit for that.
Do you know how to do lace?
I know how and I have a rack that my father made me before he
�15
died, and I've got some dark brown yarn that I 'm going to learn on. I think
if I, you know, do some soil of something or, you know, you can wear it out
trying to learn. I'm going to try to do it myself,because I do want to learn
to before, you Rnow, while she's still living. But she does tie pretty fringe.
Interviewer :
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
really nice.
What's this pu°blication?
That's the whole
show ~
42th annual North Carolina Art and Artists expedition.
That's
Mrs. South: Yes, I 'd had an invitation, I guess they got my name through the
guild probably. I have belonged to the guild since in a----I believe---in
probably the middle forties.
Interviewer:
The southern highland?
Mrs. South: Un-huh. I 've got an invitation every year.
did get around to getting anything in .
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer :
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
But I just never
Is this the first year you've ever submitted?
That's the first time.
That's the first time you submitted?
Yes it was.
Oh boy,
you must just
------
Mrs. South: And ah--- so when I went up to get the award this lady came up
to me and she------ of course you feel out a blank, you know, if you want the
gallery to sell it or if you don't want it sold. You put a not for sell on it.
So this lady ran up to me as I went down the steps and she said now I want
to buy that covelet, and of course I was ' all shook up anyway and I said I don't
know about that, it 's here at the gallery now and I said they're supposed to
sell it, you know, and they 've got there commission and she said well that's
all right I 'm with the gallery. So I want it and she did. The covelet was
sold already before I got over there. But then here is her letter even.
I saved it .
Interviewer :
Mrs. South:
Interviewer :
Miss Lord?
The Whigrose pattern?
Un-huh.
Is that the one
------~
Did you learn that
e~~ly
on with
Mrs . South: Yes, we did a whig rose. It was not exactly like mine. If you ~
notice the blue one that was hanging up there, was one that I did at the craft
shop in 19.40, or probably 41. And it was a little smaller design than the one
�16
I made here. Interviewer: Someone was telling me, I can't remember who it was~ how Ruth
South made her whig rose . You round out your whig rose a little bit more or
something you did yourself to the pattern .
Mrs . South: Yes. Mine's different from Mr. Godwins. Now they say the old
ones were like his. They were kindly long shaped. But the only covelets I've
ever seen, and we had one that was about a hundred year old there at the craft
shop, made in two colors. And it was fairly round.
Interviewer: They were really impressed with something you'd done . I don't
know if it was in the pattern ah--you know, the treadling ·
?
Mrs. South: Yeah, the treadling now that little loom that was setting there.
I made that pattern that was on that. Now it's just like this only its a smaller
I just took out threads now and then and made it smaller .
Interviewer: With a-----Did you learn most of the traditional patterns themselves, like the whig rose and honeysuckle like those at Watauga handcrafts?
Mrs . South: Yes, yes. ~ow I have books with all the patterns in it. Mary
Hardin down at Lily mills, I've bought so much thread, gave one by Margaret
Graham, I believe, one of the better books with all the patterns in it . But
you know I've never used one of them.
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Oh really.
I just stick to the old ones.
What are your favorite patterns?
}!rs. South: Oh my favorite one is the whig rose. And of course sweet brair
beauty is what I had on my apron loom so long. Now that's a pretty pattern too.
Interviewer:
What did you like for the towels?
Mrs . South: The towels I had sweet brair beauty. And ah--- one time I did put
two
no I had another loom that I put another towel warp on and single
snowball on it.
Interviewer: I saw some of your placemats with yarn that you did snowball
on it at Watauga handcrafts.
I was going to get you to go
Mrs . South: Yeah that's what I've got on
- - pick me up that loom tonight Mike, of all the looms I've got I still go up to
the camp and borrow one of their looms .
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
~
. _._., ., .
,.,
_, ' ,
What do you do at camp Yonahlossee?
I teach weaving to the girls?
-
..
,.
-
.;
~··
·- ..
~-
'
.....
·-1
(
:
1
I'
"
,-· ,
..
',. '
~
-
i..
':. ,7
.-
(
~ . J
l
�17
Interviewer :
Is that an all girls camp?
Mrs. South : Un-huh, it's an all girls camp .
214 girls . All the time .
Interviewer :
And this year they had around
All of them learn?
Mrs. South : Most of them most of them . I usually try to, well I get everyone
that wants to at all. Now there ' s a few that brin~ there on horses up and thats
about all they want to do. Well ther ' s a few that like to go sailing and
swimming. And of course they swim there and they go to Watauga Lake and sail
Well they don't do much weaving.
Interviewer:
Then there's some that get real interested in reading.
Mrs . South : Yeah some of them get real interested . Now this year I had a
helper that was a camper with me for about six or seven years . And she wove
a lot every year, she was very interested in it . And she wants a loom. And
by the way her mother taught weaving there as a couseler several years ago
and her father is a doctor . Let ' s see he's a
I forget if he's a neurosurgeon or a heart doctor . But she wants a loom sometime, when she gets through
school .
Interviewer :
Mrs . South:
Interviewer :
How many looms do you have up there to work with?
Twelve .
Twelve .
Mrs. South: Un-huh . Seems like twelve is a good number, because twelve is
what the Caldwell community college required me to have here .
Interviewer:
Mrs . South :
Interviewer :
You taught for Caldwell community college?
Un-huh .
Did you use the Watauga Handcrafts?
Mrs. South : No I didn't use any of there looms, because I have five down
here and I had my father had made mamma and me one together and then I borrowed
one of her others- was seven and then: ,I got the rest from the camp.
Interviewer:
How many looms does your mother have?
Mrs. South : She has one of her own. A big one like mine my father made for
her. Then she has one that Miss Lord gave me for her to use as long as she
wasnted it.
Interviewer:
Mrs . South:
Interviewer:
Did she get interested in weaving after you did?
Yes .
That's interesting.
�18
Mrs. South: Yes. My mother use to tie fringe for the knotted bedspreads.
And she would pull roots and herbs, she would pull galax and things like that
and she did some hooking like hooked rugs, hooked chair backs and hot mats
for the table. She did that for a long time. And Miss Lord asked her one
day, you know, there was a requirement for students there then, just like
with Susie with her weaving. If the state paid so much of her salary then they
had to be so many students being taught all the time and so that's why we tried
to keep all the looms busy. And a--- so Miss Lord said, you should get your
mother to weave. So I asked my mother about it she said well will you teach
me? I said no you got to get Miss Lord to teach you cause she'll teach you
the right way. She was a good teacher.
Interviewer:
Was she, I've heard that.
Mrs. South: So she did go a time or two, you know, then after she got her
own loom while I usually do. There's one thing she don't like to do is tie
up the looms if a string breaks or something like that. She don't like to
do that. And then eventually, Miss Lord of course, we were needing another
student and she said why don't you get your aunt to weave so my aunt Fatta,
my mother's sister weaves too. And they have taken
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Your sister weaves to doesn't she?
Yeah, My sister can weave.
She has dark hair doesn't she?
Mrs. South: Yeah. She worked there at the craft shop for a long time. Yeah
she can weave and my other baby sister can weave, out they didn't like to
as much as I did.
Interviewer:
Your aunt is a weaver too?
Mrs. South: Yeah my aunt is a good weaver. She's a very good weaver. She
came over just a couple of weeks ago and put a warp on her loom. Well now
she and my mother took over a lot of my orders. When I started working at
the camp I quit doing a lot of orders that I always did and so they took those
over for me. Especially the aprons.
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Did they make the aprons that we have at Watauga handcrafts?
Un-huh.
They sure did.
Are they linen?
Mrs. South: No now those ate the mercertized.
aprons. But Miss Lord thought
We still do the mercertized
0
Interviewer: What about the linen placemats and stuff, do they weave a lot
of that stuff?
Mrs. South:
Yes, my mother weaves a lot of linen and I'm doing linen in the
�19
curtains I'm doing for Teresa.
Pause in tape
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
And what have you been making?
I've got work with cotton.
Pause in tape
Mrs. South:
same thing.
And you've got to, you know, . be able to fill orders, and do the
They want the same thing.
Interviewer: Just people saw your stuff and started asking you could you make
me one? That kind of thing?
Mrs. South: Yeah that happens a lot of times especially while I was working
the re. They'd come in and see something in the selve maybe I had done. I
put weaving in there while I was working there.
Interviewer:
Un-huh.
Mrs. South: Or maybe that. someone else had done but they wanted a different
color or a different size or something like that, and I've done a lot of special
orders. I don't like to do special orders as well as I do just like if my
guild shop, see there's five of them and if I keep them supplied with aprons.
They say send me three dozen aprons they say a dozen and half o f the colonial
patterns and they say a dozen and a half of strips. We make them with four
different colored strips. You've. probably seen them there at the craft shop.
Well you know that's a lot easier to. You can make say four or five at a time
of one color which cuts down on your time if you're go i ng into it for production.
Interviewer:
Right.
Mrs. South:But it would be nice just to sit down and make something and just,
you know, not know what you're going to make, not know what's going to come
out. I'm going to do that sometime. Just, you know, make up a new pattern
and see what I can make.
Interviewer:
It's just real f un to do.
Mrs. South: I know its really, its a lot like a painting you don't know just
how its going to look, until you get it painted.
Interviewer:
What makes you like weaving so much?
Mrs. South: Well I guess its because its about all I've ever done, except
what little housekeeping, Mike knows thats not much of course I used to sew
I did sewing for the kids and always £or myself. I've always made all our
clothes until
, I don't know there's still as many hours in a day
as there ever was but somehow they get gone faster or I've got a lot slower
one.
�20
Interviewer:
The wood and the pewter didn't do that much for you?
Mrs. South: No, no that didn't. I enjoy just doing that and I made a silver
bracelet once. I enjoyed doing it and I also made a stencil dress. I liked
that a little.
Interviewer:
Stencil Dress?
Mrs. South: Un-huh. You cut out your own stencil you made your ovm design,
and they had paints and then you set it with white vinegar and I liked that
quite a lot but still not as much as weaving. And I guessed that I liked
it because, you know, I could make a little money at it, I've never made
a lot of money but it was a way I could make a little and be at home with
the family.
Interviewer: That's a nice situation. You say youstarted at the craft shop,
people would have seen your things, creating a demand for them, then was like
the next stage starting at the craft guild?
Mrs. South: Yes, that was a good thing, in helping me sell my things, because
once I got in the guild, you know, you submit your things and they know what
you make and they like it and then they order it and they have it in their
shops and I've never had anything that I didn't sell that I couldn't sell.
In fact I've ne~er made anything much to keep at home. Like I did make a
couple of these curtains about 25 years ago the -----. Ones suppose to te in
the other room but I've got it down right now. And maybe a bath mat in the
bathroom. And one time I did make some curtains for a bedroom which I got
a thread from, it was somewhere in Ohio. And it lt!aS very cheap; it was
fifty cents a pound. And it was beautiful it had a gold metallic through
it and a
those were real pretty. I used those for years and years
and now my sister!s using them in her room. But I've never made a lot of things
for myself.
Interviewer: Did the craft guild take---Did they take just a real big percentage or was it nothing?
Mrs. South: Fifty percent. Do you think that's big? That's big used to
most of the shops only took forty, they _gave you sixty and that was a lot
better. But I guess that's one reason that I don't break my neck to weave
a lot anymore. Now I've got demands for that lace that you liked, you were
doing. They are writing me from all those guild shops all the time when are
you going to do us some of that lace. Well I could be down there doing that
instead of doing those curtains for Tereasa. But it just don't mean that
much to me anymore. Its not that I've got that much money but I don't have
too, and I got more for it I'd probably be more inticed to do it and still
I know that they have to make something. But it seems like thats alot.
Interviewer: I guess that was what I was wandering about.
how you felt about the guild?
How, you know,
-·
�21
Mrs . South : Now Mr. Carlson is really good about mamma . He pays maITllna a
lot better percentage than' she gets when I send fier stuff to the guild . You
see I sell their stuff through me so I have to inspect it and see that
I have no fear ever that they don ' t come up with my standards. Cause I would
be kicked out of the guild, you know, if I sent something that didn ' t come up .
Interviewer: Do you think the guild ------------ Do you think people could
market their stuff without something like a guild?
Mrs . South: I think that a lot of them get to where they do now .
know of one.
Mike South:
years ago .
I think you could now.
I don ' t
I don ' t think you could ten, fifteen
~~rs.
South: No that's right. You ' re right Mike. You couldn ' t then people
had to I used to have to depend on it . I mean I just had to because I needed
to - - - - -
Mike South:
There was no other market .
Mrs. South: I didn't have time to get out and market my stuff . And , you
know, I was going to get the money out of it when I got it made. Cause when
I'd put the money into the thread I knew I had to get something out . So
that its just a little
it seems like its a litt~e t g much cause
that ' s a non-profit place too . They don't pay any government taxes and now
they ' ve built this new folk arts center , which is a beautiful place and they
have beautiful things in it and after us giving fifty percent of our stuff
we make, they asked for a donation for it. That's why I gave them the book
instead of weaving something for them . So somebody is making some money I ' m
sure.
Interviewer :
Mrs . South :
Interviewer :
Un-huh makes you wander?
Un-huh makes you wander where it goes .
I ' ve heard other people remark
---- -----
Mrs . South: I know one person that got out of the guild. Now down here Carlos
my neighbor, he's dying to get in it and I ' m wandering how long he ' s going
to stay in it, because he likes to market his stuff himself . They just came
from a show in Mt. Airy.
Interviewer:
He ' s the potter?
Mrs. South: Un-huh, he's the potter . Now Deloris you should make an appointment with him and talk with him now hes new here. He's not from this area.
And maybe you don ' t maybe its just this area that you're working on .
Interviewer:
How did you get in contact with him?
�22
Mrs. South : He was in school here . And my husband worked at New River Light
and Power. You know, well they always in the summertime hired some of the
school children for part-time work so he helped him. And he was married
· when he came here and they ¥ ere going to have a little baby and they lived
1
in a little trailor . And Austin was building that little house down there.
And Austin took a liking to him and '•Te had him out for Christmas. nis wife
after the baby came, his parents sent her the money to fly to Florida so they
could see the baby and he didn't go. We had him out for Christmas and ·he wanted
to help Austin finish that place so he could rent it and then it went on and
on and we finally sold him a little spot there. So he has his own shop .
Interviewer:
How long has he been here?
Mrs. South :
How long two years?
Mike South :
Two and a half .
Mrs. South :
But he's a real nice fellow, nice quite man.
Interviewer:
How did you get to know Janice Whitner?
Mrs . South: Well let ' s see, . how did I get to know ner. It seems like I ' ve
known her for a long, long time, and where did I first ~eet her . Probably
at the craft shop and then she begin coming out here. She ' s a lovely person
isn't sbe?
Interviewer:
Mrs . South:
Sne is, she's dynamite.
Sne really is, she ' s so smart.
I like her a lot .
Interviewer : So much of your weaving that you sell now, your orders are
where people call you and ask you for things?
Mrs . South: Yes. Now with my mats I sell, Betsy Morell out at, it used to
be Country House but now its Green Mansion out on 105 just above the potter
place the kilt room.
Interviewer:
Yeah.
Mrs. South: Country Villiage, and she ' s in the middle and she sells all of
my mats, that I make. And sometimes I make three and four hundred during the
winter.
Interviewer :
That's a bunch.
Mrs. South : But you see I don't do as much weaving now as I used to since I
teach up at camp three months during the summer and then I'm up there a couple
of weeks doing up the looms.
Interviewer:
Mrs . South:
Do you like teaching?
Yes, yes I like the children.
I love the children.
�23
Interviewer: What was the lady's name, the other weaver that used to live
out here years ago?
Mrs. South:
That I just mentioned a while ago, Lulu Ragan .
Interviewer:
Yeah Lulu Ragan .
And she lived on Upper Neat Camp?
Mrs. South:
I guess you call that Jefferson highway don't you Micheal?
Mike South :
Un-huh.
Mrs . South :
It's on out toward Todd.
Interviewer:
Route 194.
Mrs . South: Yeah 194 .
was not in her.e .
I hope I didn't get my books · - -- - -- now her picture
PAUSE IN TAPE.
(picked up talking about teaching for Caldwell)
Mrs. South: I did enjoy it. But the thing is, it kept
I couldn't weave . But I may do it again .
Interviewer:
~y
looms tied up and
How long did you teach over there .
Mrs. South:
A couple of winters wasn't it Mike?
Mike South:
Two winters .
Mrs . South:
I did it down here.
Interviewer :
nice.
Oh right here.
In your garage.
People came up here.
Oh that's
Mike South: They were tied up year round that way, you taught at camp in the
summer and Caldwell in the winter.
Mrs . South :
Interviewer:
Un-huh, you see that way I didn't ever get to weave any.
That ' s no fun.
Mrs . South : Cause here in the winter time and just as soon as my class was
over in the spring it was time for me to go up there. So it was six years that
I didn ' t weave on my covelet loom. Carol Deal, Dr. Will Deal at the University
now, he- --his wife made a beautiful one for a king size bed, I did a lot of
extra work for her to do that . But I was not doing anything else, I mean that
was just something I could be doing while I was teaching the class. What
we had to do was we made two strips with the border on this side then we had
to take the border off and make a middle strip, but that was really beautiful
it was prettier than where the seem goes down the middle, cause it came down the
sides and looked more like it was supposed to be.
�2.
Interviewer:
So you went ahead and clipped those warp threads or tied them up.
Mrs. South: I didn't clip them. I had to take them out of the heddles through
cause once you take threads out if you just leave them hanging in the heads they're
going to get tangled up and break. So what I did was I took out so many sections
and put tape on it just like I was putting on a new warp if you've seen that
done and then take it back to the back and let her go ahead and do her piece
and then latter brought it back in to the border.
Interviewer:
That's a lot of work through.
Mrs. South: That was extra work because I brought it
a mistake in it. I had taken out one thread more and
What I did was I thought I was marking the pattern on
I should start but I had one extra thread out. I had
cause it didn't look good.
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
~rs.
South:
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
Mrs. South:
Interviewer:
in one time and I had
I'd mismarked my pattern.
my draft right where
to go back and fix it
You have to read those right to left to don't you?
Un-huh, f ight from left.
Did you teach your neice?
Toni?
Yeah.
No.
Where did she learn at?
She did that at the college.
Now she's going to have her own show.
Mrs. South: Yeah, she's goinr to have her own show and she's doing~~~~~
She did a piece for P. B. Scotts. I don't know if you've been out there.
Interviewer:
Yeah.
Mrs. South: Well she did that wall hanging there. And now she's
yeah up there the other day I don't know if you was there
Interviewer:
doing~~~
There's a wall hanging in Pepper's I remember.
Mrs. South:
Well she might have one up there too.
Mike South:
Yeah she does.
Mrs. South: And right now she's doing somethinE for a lady that's--- the price --~~~
is $18QO for two panels and its somehow, she's an art teacher too, the lady is.
�She wants it to keep the cold out and its a room divider and its all different
colors and of course sne lays these colors in, like, you know. I have done
a little of that weaving .
Interviewer:
Off loow weaving?
Mrs . South: No she's doing this on the loom in 36 inch strips
And I believe
it was ninety inches ea ch strip was . Something like you see y~u pull in probably
from 36 to 30 so she'll be doing 3 strips for each side of it.
Interviewer:
Mrs.
side
that
have
I see.
South: And one side somehow matches the one room over here and this
matches th~ room over here in color . So there ' s going to be a piece of
hanging in the gallery so you must go and see that. See what all we
there.
PAUSE IN TAPE
(picked up talking about chair bottoms)
Interviewer:
Mrs . South:
interviewer :
That's neddlepoint?
· Yerah, , rrow th'is is -wool.
Oh that's pretty .
Mrs. South : What I got was like in a k.it, it was laid off like in numbers, and
numbered for the colors.
Interviewer: With this linen warp and linen, weave thing.
up that way with linen warp?
Mrs . South:
Interviewer:
Were many looms set
No not very many.
But a few towel looms and stuff?
Mrs . South: Un-huh. Now Dare Strother, have you heard of her, over at Cove
Creek, she always put linen on her warps, always.
( showed us some of her work and other works . )
Now this is a piece that Dr. Marge Ferris did, and I've got to let her come back
and do some napkins to go with it . Now this was made on the same loom that I'm
making Teresa's .
Interviewer :
That's a nice weave .
Mrs. South : Now linen, they say never show linen to yo ur best friends till its
laundried. And this hasn't been laundried . It will feel a lot softer like that
( Showed us another piece . ) I just washed that the other day I didn't---I dryed
it in the dryer it had gotten so soiled. I just kept it for a sample, but I didn't
iron it . Now that will be much prettier and softer when its ironed . But linen
is one thing you can't get away with like this here-- that's why people like this
�2'
thread better-- because you can wash it, throw it in the dryer a few minutes and
its go--ready to go. But this you 've got to iron .
Interviewer : Yeah . That 's true . How--What--How do you think--What about the
history of weaving in the mountains? Did people make looms do you think?
Mrs . South: Yes, they do. Weaving at one time was just about, you know, unheard
of here. Maybe a few people like Miss Ragan had one of the old looms, like Mr.
Carlson gave to the college over there. Have you seen that big one ?
Interviewer :
Yeah .
Mrs . South: I used to weave on that. As a matter of fact I 'm not sure that that
towel was not made on that loom. Cause I made a lot of towels on that. What
Miss Lord would let me do was put on a warp and when I had free time
I
waited for my father a lot he worked in town and when I would ride home and go
home which was most of the time unless it was real bad. And I 'd be waiting on him
and I wanted something to do . So she would let me have a warp on a loom and
I'd weave on it. This is some napkins that I think I made up at camp one time
with the lace center . Now these need washing to before anybody should see them.
Interviewer:
Mrs . South :
with it.
Interviewer :
Those are pretty .
Natural .
What's that color called?
This is the natural linen .
Now do you see anything wrong
No .
Mrs . South: This was one year when
it was about the first year that
thread got so high and I was trying to save money for camp so I used half cotton
and half mercerized
END OF SIDE 11.
�
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.
Hyder, Wade
Deloris Proffit
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed.
South, Ruth
Interview Date
10/15/1980
Number of pages
26 pages
Date digitized
9/24/2014
File size
15.6MB
Checksum
alphanumeric code
b28169ac9b6f7646ad5fbdd8b21b8121
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_tape492_RuthSouth_transcript_M
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ruth South [January 10, 1976]
Language
A language of the resource
English
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
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>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Hyder, Wade
Proffit, Deloris
South, Ruth
Subject
The topic of the resource
Watauga County (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century
Floods--North Carolina--Watauga County
Mountain life--North Carolina--Watauga County--History--20th century
Appalachians (People)--North Carolina--Watauga County
Community life--North Carolina--Watauga County--History--20th century
South, Ruth
Description
An account of the resource
Ruth South talks about working with the NYA (National Youth Administration) under Roosevelt's New Deal policy and the classes she took on weaving. She has been weaving with homespun wool her whole life and sees homemade crafts as a very important part of life. It is certainly an integral part of the mountain community life during the early twentieth century. South also took classes in wood-working at Pendelum and Berea.
1940 flood
Berea
Blowing Rock
Boone
camp Yonahlossee
Carolina Designer Craftsman
crafts
Deck Hill
Green Heights
homespun wool
Meat Camp
North Carolina art and artist expedition
NYA
Pendelum
potter
Ruth South
Southern Highland Guild
stencil dress
The American Heroin
Theodore Roosevelt
traditional crafts
traditional weaving
Valle Crucis
Watauga Handicrafts
Watauga industries
weaving
wool
WPA
-
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/2e109166b51ca3a355ab1722712bc90d.pdf
fef526d36099634e28ce11fa81579a98
PDF Text
Text
#336
Dewey E. Helms
This is an Appalachian Oral History Project interview with
Marion, North Carolina who is retired textile mill worker.
Dew~y
Helms of
He was inter-
viewed of January 10 , 1976 by Sam Howie .
Q:
First of all , where were you born?
A:
I was born in Mc Dowell County.
Q:
Do you remember the township?
A:
I was born in Marion.
Q:
Marion?
A:
Yep .
Q:
Was it outside the town or within the town limits?
A:
It was about a mile out of town .
Q:
What year were you born?
A:
1903.
Q:
What did your parents do for a living?
A:
They farmed part of the time and my father was a carpenter.
the carpenter trade for a while .
He worked at ..
�2
Q:
Was it a fairly large family that you were born into?
A:
There were eight of us:
Q:
When you and your brothers turned eighteen or twenty, what did most of
you do?
four byys and four girls.
Were most of you staying on your fattl.er's place or did you go out
to work-to what they called public work?
A:
We stayed at home most of the time until we finished school and worked
kind of part-time.
I worked between school terms in a furniture factory and
my older brother sold insurance.
I believe he was in Greenwood, South Carolina
and the girls stayed home until they were married.
Q:
Which furniture factory?
Was it · one in Marion?
A:
Yes, Drexel Furniture Factory.
Q:
Do you remember when it opened?
A:
No. I don't re.member.
Q:
I remember you told me that you first went to work in the mills in 1923.
A:
Yes, right, July l, 1923.
Q:
Was that for Clinchfield?
A:
Yes, it was.
Q:
You were saying earlier that one of the Clinchfield mills opened in 1916.
A:
There were two mills, the north and south plant.
.
The south plant I''m
absolutely certain opened in 1916 and I believe the other one opened in 1911.
�3
I'm not sure.
Q:
Which one did you go to work in?
A:
I went to work in, ' I reckon, what they call the north plant.
The older
mill.
Q:
Do you remember when East Marion might have been opened:?
A:
1905, I think.
Q:
You don't recall when Cross mills first opened do you?
A:
No, but it was later, probably around 1917 or 18.
Q:
Did you do any other kind of work besides furniture before you went into
It started in 1905.
the mills in 192 3.?
A:
No . Nothing but farm and cut wood.
Q:
So you knew how to farm.
A:
Yes, pretty much
Q:
What kind of farming did your father do?
A:
No, mostly corn.
vegetables.
Q:
Did he raise beef or what?
Well, that was our biggest crop ... corn and just
We pl!actically lived on what we made.
Was it possible to have some income from farming in those years?
�4
A:
No, very little income.
Q:
Can you
~ay
why it was you decided to go to work in the mill?
Wli:y you
were first attracted to the mill, to working in the mill?
A:
Well, like I told you, I worked between school terms and I tried the
furniture factories.
I only made ll¢ an hour at the furniture factories.
were paying more at the mills and I decided to try the mills.
work
. 11re one summer, but I wound up staying.
and we were running five days and a half.
til eleven o'clock on Saturday.
eleven hours a day.
I intended to
I went in the weave room
At least we run, the mill run un-
About sixty hours a week.
We worked about
We went to work at six o'clock in the morning and worked
until six o'clock in the evening.
clock in the morning.
They
We were supposed to go to work at seven o'
We were supposed to have a ten hour work day in North
Carolina, but it was never enforced.
Q:
You mean there was a ten hour work law?
A:
Supposedly, yes, supposed to be.
It was enforced in South Carolina, but
it was never enforced in North Carolina.
We went to work at six o'clock in the
morning and worked until six in the evening.
Saturday morning and worked until eleven.
We went towork at six o'clock on
I went to work for thirteen dollars
and eighty five cents a week.
Q:
What was that an hour?
A:
(Laugh) I don't know.
Q:
Okay.
A:
Supposed to have been fifty five hours, but we were working sixty hours.
�5
Q:
Did you get paid for the extra five hours?
A:
No.
Q:
The company said, "You want the job, you've got to work.
A:
That's right.
11
If you didn't want it., there were a lot of people waiting
for it .
Q:
There were a lot of people that wanted to work in the mills?
A:
Yes .
Q:
But then generally you went to the mills because it was possible to make
a little bit more money than in the furniture factory.
A:
Yes , that's right.
Q:
Other than the cotton mills and the furniture industry, was there any other
kind of work available in the Marion or Mc Dowel 1 County area?
A:
No, the only thing was the railr oad.
They had section crews on the rail-
road, but you couldn't ever get a job on the railroad.
Q:
There just weren't any jobs there?
A:
None.
Q:
Did they pay well, the railroads?
A:
No , not too well.
I've forgotten that.
I knew my father worked for South-
ern Railroad Company for a while for a dollar and tea cents a day, but I guess
that was before I was old enough to go to work.
Q:
Were you still going to school then when you started working at Clinch-
field the first time ?
Ai
Yes.
Q:
And you just stayed on?
�6
A:
Yes, I just stayed on.
Q:
You said when you went to work for them, you went to .work in weaving.
A:
Yes.
Q:
Clirichfield, as I understand it from Mr. Hicks, was just turning out woven
cloth.
A:
It wasn't doing any printing or dying.
Just what they call "printll cloth.
64, 64--64, 60 and 80
64, 50 a filling.
Q:
Is that coarse cloth?
A:
No, it's pretty fine.
Q:
What did you do in weaving?
A:
I started in the loom plant, just cleaning looms with a brush and that was
It's thin cloth.
What was your job?
before they used air jets, or compressors.
I cleaned looms with a brush un-
til I learned a little bit about weaving and I started weaving on sixteen looms.
We had to learn on our own.
Tpey didn 't pay for no learning.
Q:
You mean they wouldn't t r ain you?
A:
No.
There was no training program at all.
And if you tried hard you could,
after a year or so, you could start weaving on the looms.
more and a good weaver made right much more.
They even paid a little
I started work in 1923.
started fixing looms in 1925 for nineteen dollars and sixty cents a week.
friends easy and the fellows helped me out a whole lot.
1925, and I fixed looms until about 1945, I guess.
Q:
Fixing what does that involve?
A:
Just keeping a loom running making good cloth.
I
I made
I started fixing in
�7
Q:
Just repairing it and keeping it going?
A:
Yes.
Q:
Is it as good a job as weaving or better?
When you were weaving were
you on piece work or was it possible to be on piece work in weaving?
A:
They figured by cut. what they called a cut.
hundred and ten yards.
TB.ere was a cut mark on every
They put a blue mark on it with a slash around it .
Q:
Yes.
A:
A blue mark at the cut for a cut mark and the weaver had to keep the
looms running, fill the batteries. and take off the cloth.
on 'til 1936.
That probably went
Then they went on what we called a "stretch-out system" and
they give the weaver more looms. where we were running twenty-four looms.
They gave them fortyeight.
doff the cloth.
They had battery fillers on them and somebody to
They took the battery filling and cloth doffing off the weaver and
gave them more looms.
It was called the "stretch-out system. "
Q:
More production ... in the same period of time.
A:
Finally they went on and kept adding help and they got up to seventy two
looms in the weaving.
Q:
You had to really work fast on that didn't you?
fixer . . . and you stayed a fixer until sometime in the
A:
But by 1925, you were a
1
40' s?
Around sometime in the !40's. I went over in supervision.
I stayed a
supervisor until I retired.
Q:
All the time with Clinchfield?
A:
No. I worked at Clinchfield until 1940.
Q:
And you were a supervisor at East Marion?
A:
Yes.
April of 1942 I went to East Marion.
East Marion was installing new machinery and I was interested in
�8
learning more about it.
I went over there for that purpose, to learn something about
the machinery.
A: Yeah.
I was married Ln 1924 and I went to house keeping in the mill village .
Q: Was it a company policy that you had to live in the village to work for Clinch-
field?
A: No . there was no living requirement .
If you wanted to live in a three room house
that was forty fi ve cents a week and if you rented four rooms, about as much a s they
had, they had a few six room houses.
then that included your lights.
Four room house was sixty cents a week and
Sometimes I guess back in the '20's they wired the
village .
Q: Would that have been cheaper rent than renting somewhere else in the town?
A: Yes, it would.
Q: During that early period did the mills operate a company store for the workers?
A: Yes.
Q:
Was it just a general store? Did it have grocer ces in it and clothing and just
about anything you need?
A: General store, yes, hardware, clothing. groceries.
Q:
Were the prices cheaper in the company store than anywhere else in town?
A : No, they were not.
�9
Q: They were the s : me or higher?
A: They were about the same.
What you could do was if you bought from the com-
pany store, they had a checking list system .
You could go to the office and get a
check on your tlme and pay for your groceries or whatever you bought.
It came out
on a ticket on Saturday at the end.
Q: They gave you credit in other words.
A: Yes , they just wrote you what we c a lled a (speaking to someone else) a ticket
wasn't it?
(othe r person answering) : Some kind of ticket you got and you go down to the office
window and you tell them how much you w a nted and they wrote it.
You gave it to
the store manager for what you bought and then at the end of the week it would come
out of your check.
Lots of people ne ver did draw a dime in pay.
They never did draw
any money.
(other person-NOTE: other person was Mr. Helms' wiie)
They had some kind of old books too, that people would ...
A: Yeah, they had coupon books from a dollar to five dollars and you could get a
dollar coupon book if you wanted to buy a small amount at a time sometimes ten or
fifteen cents worth of something.
dollars.
They'd tear out a coupon and that went up to five
Five dollars would just about pay for a week's groceries.
Mrs. Helms: Some of the men made money with books.
You could get them for a
dollar cheaper than you could go to the office and get them yourself too, couldn't
you?
�10
A: Yeah.
A lot of people sold their books.
They'd get a five dolar coupon book
and sell it for three dollars and se venty-five cents.
You could, if you had the money
to buy the books, you were lucky and you could get flve dollars worth of groceries
for three seventy.five.
Q: Well, waht about the ones that were selling them?
A: They were losing , yeah.
They were losing.
Thet were really cutting their wages.
Q: Wonder why they wanted to do that?
A: Well, money was scarce and if you had to go the the doctor you had to pay them
a dollar.
So they sold their two dollar book to get a dollar and a half for it .
Then
they could pay their doctor bill and hospital or drug store bill with a dollar and a half.
Q: So, they did it just to get. some ready cash.
A: Yeah, just in an occassional emergency.
Q: During
~he
'20's , you said there were a bt of people trying to get work in the
mills and there weren't enough jobs for everybody.
the mills during the '20's?
Was it possible to move up in
That is, you became a fixer ...
A: Yes •.. depending altogether on how hard you tried.
Q: But could it be done.?
A: Yes .
Q:
You could improve your situation.
During the '2 0 ' s, did wages increase or sta y
�11
the same or for the same job?
A: They ne ver increased.
We might have gotten a few small raised. but they would
decrease too, in the '20's and on up into the '30's.
In the summertive usually from
probably June until September they ran three or four days a week, curtailed, and
that happened for several years in succession.
The market was bad.
They couldn 't
sell the cloth so they curtailed and it was awfully hard to make a living.
Q: That was during the Depressian?
A: Yeah.
Q: Wa ges might have stayed the same, but there just wasn't enough work during the
week, enough hours.
A: Wages didn't vary much from 1920 'til I guess it was 1936 when we went on eight hour :
Q: Yes.
Mrs. Helms: That's when Social Security started wasn't it?
A: Yeah
when President Roosevelt came in.
Q: Compared to other jobs a man might have had
~n
the area during the '20' s and
say '30 's too, was the work in the mills generally hard? Was it say as hard as farming or working in furniture or something liRe that?
A: Well, it was steady work.
did.
You had to keep busy and especially in the weave room YOl
The lunch period, I belie ve, and that's the only time you ever got and slack.
�12
Of course, the weavers did all they could to keep their production up and make as much
money as they could and the supervisors saw that our hands st,5lyed busy.
The first
two years that I worked, I worked for them by the hour.
Q: That's when you were cleaning?
A: Yeah, cleaning, taking our quills , and sweeping and I had enough spare time to
learn a little bit about weaving.
They had two 16 loom sets in the mill and the rest
of them were 20-24 and 26 . and I got to where I could run a sixteen mill set.
didn't pay much more than cleaning, about the same.
I felt like I was getting somewhere.
during that time.
It
Anyway, I was progressing.
Then I went on the smash job, I learned smash
Do you know anything about the mills? What the smash job is?
Q: I know what weaving and fixing, but I don't know what a smash job is.
A: Well, sometimes a loom would make a break, break all the warp our for a space
maybe six or eight inches wide and that was the smash hand's job to draw all of the
threads in and get the looms ready for the fixer to start up
Q: Yes.
A: I learned to do that and then I learned to fix a '.little.
Then finally I became a reg-
ul2.r fixer sometime in 1925 probably in the later part of 1925.
Q: How did that work?
You were working in a smash job or cleaaing or something
and you watched a fixer do his job and you figured out what it was he did .
Could
you go to the supervisor when a fixer job came open and say, "Well, · I know how
to do that, could you consider me for that?" Is that how you got that job?
�13
A: Yeah.
Q:
You just had to teach yourself and then ...
A: Yes, what they'd do, some of the fixers would help you out for a while,
explain things to you and tell you how .it worked.
job, you went and asked for it, applied for it.
When you felt like you could run a
Sometimes they'd laugh at you
(laughter) 2.nd sometimes they'd consider you.
Q: Yeah.
Who were the supervisors?
Were they people from around here or ...
A: My first supervisor was originally from Madison County, but he l ived in the
village at that time.
Q:
Yes.
A: George Reynolds.
Now he's been a minister of the Gospel for several years.
He's eighty-two or three years old and he's still preaching.
Q: Yes.
A: And lives in Black Mountain.
Q: Were the majority of the supervisors, when you first went to work, from
outside the county?
You said he was from Madison County.
A: He was raised in Madison County.
Most of the people that worked in the mill
that I knew came from Madison, Heywood, Yancey, and Mitchell Counties.
Q: Yeah, that's what Mr. Hicks said.
That was in the early and middle '20's.
�14
In the
1
30 1 s. were the people still coming from Madison and Yancey and Mitchell
Counties?
A: They certainly we r e , yes s ir.
Q: But were there some from McDowell County that were working in the mills?
A: Yes, a lot of people from McDowell County were working.
whole families.
They would hire
Suppose a man came along and had flve ar six or seven childres
were old enough to work .
They would hire the whole family and give him a house
to live in and I think that they figured they would keep that family.
I mean, they'd
be satisfied if they hired that family and stayed there, make permanent bands .
Q : They wouldn't be moving on.
They woul dn ' t be as ready to move on as say a
single man?
A: Yeah, right.
But there wasn 't much place to go.
and people were continually changing.
There just wasn't any work
I don't know why, but the p eople were
continually coming from Spartanburg, Gaffney, and e ven Greenville, a nd Rutherford County coming here for jobs , loom fixing and all that and it didn't pay any more .
I don't know if they were discharged or why they moved ..•
END OF SIDE 1
TAPE #1 SIDE #2
Q : Was it your impression that the mills in Mari on pa ..d as much and had as good
working hou r s and conditions as say in Greenville or Spartanburg .. .
A: Yeah, about the same .
About the same .
Q: So people we r en't coming here for any real reason then .
They were just sort
�15
of drifting .
A : Yeah.
Q: Perry Hicks said that a lot of the supervisors and he went to work in 1919 .
He
said a laot of his supervisors in the early '2 's were from South Carolina, because
the y had more mills down there and peopl
could pick up skills and know more ab':out
it than they could up here.
A: Those men weat on to make overseers.
visors out of them.
If a man qualified they'd make supe r -
I think it depended a whole lot on whether the overseer liked
you or not more than it d i d on your ability.
Nov. that was always the way it looked
to me .
Q: That was in the '20's.
A: Yeah.
Q: Did it seem to you that there were a lot of people who would switch from one
mill to the other? Start at East Marion and come to tone of the Clinchfield mills
then go to Cross mills .
A: Yes, they di d 'Switch alot.
I never did understand why, whether or not they were
discharged from their jobs or whether they decided to move , just got mad about
something and decided t o move.
I don't know what .
Q : Was there that much difference between wbrking at one and working at the othe r ?
A: C r oss mill was a spinning mill , they didn 't do any weaving.
Clinchfield and
�16
East Ma r ion both were weaving mills.
C r oss mill.
For some reason people liked to wor k at
They we r e treated a little better, I think.
Q: Yes.
A: It was indi vidually owned and they just treated t heir help a little better and they
paid a little, a few cents more at that time.
Howe ver, the other mills finally got
to paying more than Cross Mill.
Q: Yes.
D id C r os s have a village, a mill village?
A: Yes, they had one.
They st ill own thei r village.
Cross mill still owns and
rents its houses.
Q: But East Marion and Clinchfield sold their houses to the
workers~
A: Yes.
Q: Who owns C r oss now?
A: Eugene Cross, the Cross family.
Q: Yeah.
A: I imagine they have a lot of stock holders, but ..•...
Q: Other than those three, Cross, Clinchfield, and E a st M a rion, there wasn't
any othe r mill in McDowell County in say 1925, or later that you recall?
A: No, the r e were no other mills in McDowell County.
Thread was the next one.
I believe, American
�11 ..
Mrs~
Helms: No , it came years later.
A: I imagine it was 1950 when American Thread came.
Q: Do you recall who the owners of Clinchfield and East Marion were in the '20 's?
Do you recall their names, who they were or ... mainly where they were from?
Were they from around here?
A: Now , I think that the same people built both mills.
and later on it was mostly locally owned.
East Marion started up
They buily Clinchfield up and I did
know the history pretty well, but I'm pretty sure ....
Mrs . Helms:
A: "Baldwins, Carol Baldwin from Baltimore.
He owned the controlling interest
in East Marion and ...
Q: Does the
name Ha.rt ring a bell with Clinchfield?
A: Sir?
Q: Hart.
Do you recall a man named Hart in connection with Clinchfield?
A: Yeah.
Anyway, there was some disagreement somehow and one faction tooK.
over East Marion and the other one, Clinchfield.
Q: Yes .
A:
But, I've forgotten just how it was.
�18
Q: But the same people were invoLred when both mills first started up.
You don't
recall what it is they had a dispute o ver do you? I don't know of ....
A: No, sir, I don't.
I, it hasn't been too long.
Not too many years since I read the
history of that , but I've forgotten.
Q: Where did you read that?
Was it printed up somewhere?
A: It was printed material, but I've forgotten what it .....
Q: Wasn't in the newspaper was it?
O r was it?
A: I don't remember, I'm not sure.
It might not have been any special edition of
the newspaper.
I don't know.
Q: Was it your feeling that Clinchfield and East Mari n were fairly profltable for
the owners?
A: Yes.
I think they were fairly profitable.
They made some money, because when
they finally decided to remodel, install the new machinery they had the money t o do
it with.
I know that, because I was more or less on the inside when thet started to
remodel and install new machinery.
it.
Why, I know t hat they had the money to pay for
The mills in the early '20's and 1 30's were dirty and hot.
The weaver's room
was awful hot and they didn't have any ventilation, except what they called a skylight.
They had a little window over the window that they pulled in and
le~
a little air in,
but they didn't allow you much ventilation and your work wouldn't run good.
running around a hundred degrees, ninety five.
unbearable.
It was
In the summertive it was almost
�19
I think that the weave r ooms were the hottest place there was.
In the latter years
I found out that it was more just an idea than anything else, because we finally went
to running the we ave room down t o seventy degrees during summer.
Q:
You mean there wasn't any point in keeping them hot?
A: No.
We got air con ditioning to keep it down I believe that was the supervisor
or the plant m a nager, I don't know.
humidifying system.
But they were dirty
The floors stayed wet in places.
a rm or leg, th t wa s your experience at work .
ensation, workman ' s compensation.
Q:
If
Wfl.
nd we had a old model
If you fell and broke your
They didn't have any kind of comp-
got hurt, we just got hurt.
Lost your pay?
A: Lost pay, yes .
Paid our doctor bills.
Q: Was th ere a c ompany doctor or company nurse?
A: No, there wasn't any company doctor.
Q: Any kind of first aid on hand?
A: No, none.
I fixed looms for years and had a little bottle of iodine in my tool box
and we didn't have first - aid.
W.e.' d u s e something to tie our finger up with, if we
got cut or hurt or something.
Q:
Just go on and work?
A: But we did it ourselves.
There wasn't any use to go to nobody and say anything
�20
about it.
Q: Why did they feel they needed to keep it wet or humi§l?
A: It takes a certain amount of humidity to keep that yarn running.
through the slicers and the side.
It's run
Start to put on the yarn and it's brittle.
of course ,
You have
to have a certain amount of humidity to make the work run, but the humidifiers were
bad to get out of order and when they did , they just wet the floor, you know.
Some
of the warps got too wet to run, but all that was changed ofter the remodeling and
got air conditiaming and a diffe r ent: }
1umdiifying system.
Q : You were saying earlier it was your impres s ion that most of the people who c ame
to work in the mills during the early '20 1 s , middle '20' s . were not from this c ounty.
They were from farther west like Yancey, Mitchell, or Madison County.
A : You see, I lived in the village and I was acquainted with almost everybody.
Most
of them came from Madison and Heywood.
Q: They were farm families?
A : Yes.
Q: Were they giPen, because they were fam ilies, were they given hiring preference
over individuals, single people .
You said the mills would more readily hire a family
than they would an indiv idual or they felt that he would make a better employee or
worker.
Or were the people that came in from s a y Madison, were they goven prefer-
ence over local people?
A : No, they were not .
�21
Q: Not really?
A: Sometimes a whole family m.ight have been giving a little preference to the
houses , I cb n 't know .
Q : Because they wouldn't have any house at all?
A: But, all you got, all anybody g(j)j; then, they worked fo r it .
promoted to a better job, p u had to work for it.
Of course, you got
You had to convince the man
that you were capable of doing it .
Q: Do you have any idea why f>eople came in such numbers from farther west to
work in the mills? We r e they just tired of farming or couldn't make a living on
farming or what was it?
A: I just have an idea that it was harder to make a living.
Q: Yeah .
Did any of them tell you that, say that , was why they came to the mills?
A: Not tha t I recall.
But you take a man , say he had six children.
He and six children
went to work and if they m ake twelve dollars a week that made eighty fou r dollars a
week .
Well, he'd have probably kept ten dollars out of each child's pay.
There was
a lot that went back and bought farms depending on how large the family was.
Q : You mean they would work a couple of years and save up and go back to say
Heywood County and buy a farm?
A: Yeah .
They'd work several years like that .
took most of the money that the children made.
I'm pretty sure that the parents
�22
As long as they stayed at home, the parents just about got all t hat they made.
(cough) So, a man with a large family pretty well mopped up.
Q: Yeah.
How old did a child have to be before they would let it work in the mill
then?
A: I believe fourteen.
Q:
Yes.
A: TQ.ey did work just small children, but I believe they made the General Assembly
pass a bill.
They had to be fourteen years old .
Q: Yes.
A: They had to go get a work card then (c ough) from the
ing before the company would hire them.
~hool
that they were attend-
I think it was fourteen.
Q : That would mean tmt couldn't go to school if they were hired?
There was no
night work, was there?
A: No.
Q: So, that meant if they went to work at fourteen , they weren't in school?
A: They didn't go to school.
But they had to get a permit of some kind before they
could work .
Q: Were there about as many women working at Clinchfield as men?
A: Yeah , I think there were .
�23
A: See, most of the spinning rooms, most of the spinners or all the spinners were
women.
A lot of the women worked in the card room .
Probably more men worked
in the card room than women but in the weave room, I'd say it was pretty well divid ed About as many women as there were men.
Q: Did they pay them different?
A: No .
Q : There was no difference in pay?
A: A woman can actually be as good a weaver as a amn can.
I've worked with
women that was awfully good weavers .
Q: What did they have the children doing, say those fourteen to eighteen?
A: Learning, mostly to weave .
My wife said she went to work at Clinchfield for
twenty five cents a week for a size and she, I think, got to where she could run
two sizes and made fifty cents a week .
I'm no , I'm not certain .
Q : Who did just general clean-up work azround the mill?
A : Do you mean inside?
Q : Yes .
A : \Vell,, they had room cleaners and sweepers and they l=lad probably two c olored
people that did the mopping
that mopped the floors once a week .
They didn't get
around to it often, because it was a big plac e and I know there was some colored women
�24
that used to mop at Clinchfield.
Later on, it was only men that did the mopping .
After they got an air compressor and what we called blow pipes, they blew all this
lint and cotton off the looms and the sweeper swept it up and it was sold for somekind of waste.
I don't know what they did ...
Q: The lint was?
A: Yes .
Q: Perry Hicks said when he first came to the mills around 1920, that there was a
lot of feeling in this county among people that they d idn't want to go to the mills to
work.
They'd rather farm or do something else.
A: Yes , I was.
Were you aware of any of that?
People that worked in the mill were actually looked down on.
(laugh) were called cotton mill trash.
They
Now that's a fact , I'm just telling you t he facts.
They were actually looked down on by people.
Q: In the town?
A: Yeah , father was offered a job at Clinchfield and it was a good job , if he'd move
into the village.
He wouldn't do it.
That was before any of us ever went to work.
They felt like the people that lived in the village was nothing.
Now that's a fact.
Q: Why did people feel that way? Was it because they were from outside, they'd
come in from other counties or ...
A: I really don't know, I must admit.
I' ve had friends down through life that was
the best people you could ever come by.
the mills.
They lived in mill villages and worked in
�25
Q: When a mill worker went into the town to the store to buy something, they wouldn't
refuse to take his mmey?
A : No, they wouldn't.
(laugh)
But you had to have some kind of somebody to recommend
you before you got any c redit and if nobody didn 't know you, nobody would give you
credit.
So, I think it was one reason that so many people c r edited at the company
store, because the few grocery stores that were around refused them credit from
one week to the next .
Q: Yes.
What else did the companies do for the workers?
with a village, housing, and the company store .
at all?
They provided them
Did they do anything else for them
Like . were there mill schools for the children?
A: Yeah , they built a school house over there in the village and the company did
that on their own I'm su r e .
Now, when this building come through the mill I was
going to school in a little two-room school house about two mlles over there and it
was a ctually closer to Clinchfield mill than it was to our home .
These kids that
came from the mill village just over-crowded the school for a year or three years
until they got a school of their own funds .
Q: Did they also hire the teachers or were they...
A: No, I guess, they were hired by the state .
was put up by the c ompany and they owned it.
I'm almost c ertain that the building
After they built modern schools at
both villages, the company made rooming houses, apartment houses, out of the old
ones.
Q: Did the company e er build churches ?
�26
A: No.
Q: Did the mill workers tend to go to one chuch?
A: The first church that was built was Clinchfield Methodist Church.
Marion Methodist Church was the first one built.
Church.
Probably East
Then they built Clinchfield Methodist
Of course , these people did it, and then later on they built the Baptist
Church over there and one at East Marion and then several years later they had a
Presbyterian Church.
owned.
N o w it's in the village over there, but it was ne ver company
They probably donated the lot to build it on and they would donate the lot or
the property for the church to build on.
Not that was both places because those
churches are on company owned property or what was company owned property.
Now
I'm sure they donated it.
Q: Do you recall any other services, or whate ver, that the company did for the
workers?
You said there weren't doctors to provide midical ser vice.
A: No , we didn't have any doctors or nu r ses.
a house and we did't pay any powe r bills.
The only thing that they provided was
They didn't ha ve anything, but lights and
they didn't allow hot plates or no kind of electric appliances, but the power didn't
cost you anything.
You paid fifteen cents a room for a house a week.
Q: F or a week?
A: Yeah.
They dept the streets up to where you could drive a wagon over them.
There were very few cars back then, you know
furnaces down at the mill to put on the roads .
and they used the cinders from the
T hey had a well with a pump for about
every four houses, I belie"e, something like that.
Probably two on each side of the
�27
street used the same pump.
Q: Yes .
A: Hand pump.
Q: So there wasn't running water in the house?
A: No.
,
Q: You pumped it and brought it in .
Would they allow you to set you a garden out?
A: Yes.
Q: In the village?
A: Uh. There was a garden spot for about every house.
Q: How big were the lost for each house?
Was it maybe about a half acre, as much as
they ...
A: No , they were not.
In some of the houses, you know, on the back streets where the
houses were built, they were built in a line down and on that ground you could go back
as far as you wanted to normally.
They owned the land, but people that l ived say fac-
ing you on the other side of the street, between two streets had a very small lot .
Q: Most people did try to garden though didn't they?
A: Yes
they did.
END OF TAPE #1
SIDE #2
�
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.
Howie, Sam
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed.
Helms, Dewey E.
Interview Date
1/10/1976
Location
The location of the interview.
Marion, NC
Number of pages
27 pages
Date digitized
9/18/2014
File size
12.6MB
Checksum
alphanumeric code
a27303eca732de128997d62c1ba80121
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_tape336_DeweyEHelms_transcript_M
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Dewey E. Helms [January 10, 1976]
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
Howie, Sam
Helms, Dewey 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>
Subject
The topic of the resource
McDowell County (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century
Farm life--North Carolina--McDowell County--20th century
Mountain life--North Carolina--McDowell County--History--20th century--Anecdotes
Helms, Dewey
Description
An account of the resource
Dewey Helms, born in 1903, talks about working in McDowell County, North Carolina, in the early twentieth century. He came from a family of farmers and carpenters, and when he was old enough he began working in the furniture factory for eleven cents an hour between school terms. In 1923 he began working at the mill because the pay was better. He said the only other job you could get besides furniture and mill was the railroad, which didn't pay very well either. He eventually began weaving and repairing looms as a career.
American Thread
Clinchfield
Clinchfield Methodist Church
Clinchfield mills
Cross mills
Dewey E Helms
Dewey Helms
Drexel Furniture Factory
East Marion Methodist Church
East Marion Mill
general stores
Greenwod
loom plant
Marion
McDowell County N.C.
mill community
mill village
North Carolina
railroad
South Carolina
Southern Railroad Company
weaving
weaving mills
-
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/918b1ffafa4a2a9fe248bbb995492337.pdf
de1b7557918f512ebb32acd029a18650
PDF Text
Text
AUH f Y-L
This is an interview for the Appalachian Oral History
Program with Mr. C. K. Morris of Meat Camp, North .Carolina.
The interview is by Mike McNeely and today's date is
June 11, 1973.
Q. Alright, Mr. Norris, Let's start out with talking about
your, the farm you were born on. When and where were you
born?
A. Right up at that old house.
Q. What was the year you were born?
A. Eighteen and ninety-one.
Q. Okay.
Uh, ya...ya daddy was a farmer, right?
A. Yeah.
Q. How many brothers and sisters did you have?
A. I had three sisters and three brothers.
Q. Sounds like your daddy had a lot of help on that farm.
A. Well, right much.
Q. Let me get something here.
Uh, how big was the farm?
A. Uh...
Q. Acre wise...
A. Uh, you might say it's only about, about forty acres now,
till we added more to it.
Q. And how much of that forty acres was used for farming?
A. Well, I'll say about half of it.
�AOH # 71
Q.
What all did you grow?
A.
Crowed potatoes, corn,, cabbage, wheat, rye, buckwheat.
And we had our own fruit, had ? orchard with plenty of
apples. We kept cows, made our milk, made butter and
cheese. Kept chickens for eggs and for the market. That's
about all the farming.
Q.
How much of the vegetables and stuff that you grew, how much
of that was used for the market and how much for your own,
home grown use ?
A.
Well, it took right much to feed all them people. I'd say
about half, about half a that amount. And that, the surplus
was hauled to town. It was hauled to Lenoir, Hickory, and
Morganton. We bought our salt and flour and what groceries
we used then out of the store, we bought with surplus, and
paid on taxes. We h?d to have enough to pay the taxes. And
on this farm one time, the tax was only about $4, 00,
Q.
Was that with all the buildings and everything on it?
A.
Yeah, and now I pay a hundred or more. A lot of difference.
Q.
Did you have hogs on your farm?
A.
Yes, We raised our own meat, raised our hogs, raised a few calves
for the market. And there wasn't so many cattle in the county then,.
like there is now. Most every family had, oh, from three to six
cows. And they milked 'em-a big family used a lot of milk.
And they'd sell off the calf. A plump, good calf would bring
ten dollars,, ten dollars to twenty dollars, A cow would bring about
twenty-five. Mow ed, mowed the meadow with a mowing
siythe. You know what th$t is. Cradle it, cut the grain with a
cradle- you ever seen a grain cradle?
Q. I'm not sure. You got one up in your barn?
A".
There's one a hanging right out there in the back of that shed.
Q.
You shew it to me pfterwhile, and I'll get a picture of it.
I saw your cniltivstor, pnd you had & plow ?nd what else?
�A.
We had a lay-off plow and a cultivator. Where they cleared
the land - where they cleared , now they'd go in the woods and
clear , like that over there. 'That mountain, one time, was
in timber all over this bottom. Go in there, and cut that
timber and pile it and cut it, and saw it up, so they could roll
it in big piles and burn it. Burn the logs and the brush. And
if it was too bad, the first year they'd dig holes sndijilant their
corn and beans. Dig holes with a hoe. And by next year, thye'd
take - they used 9 lot of them, ole shovel plows. Just one plow like sort a like a. cultivator, you know, a lay - off plow. They used
them a lot in gauching up the land. They used mainly the hoe
in the steep land. A lot of land was used , farmed and never cultivated.
I mean they just dug it with a hoe. Stacked their hay, mowed with a scythe,
and stacked their hay out in the meadow. You've seen hay stacks, plenty
of them.
Q. There's not as m^ny now, though as there were.
A. No, no body stacks their hay anymore. Very few really. Back on Cove
Creek way, they.stack right much hay, back toward Mountain City.
Q. Did you let your hogs - I was reading somewhere that a lot of people let
their hogs run free back then.
A. Run their hogs, and their sheep and some cattle - run 'em out in the range. Turn
'em out in the spring and go and, go and get what was left in the fall. And
everybody had fences and some cattle just run out on the outside. They had
stocklaw then and everybody had a fence back when I was growing up. All
the fences were made out of rails. Made out a split rails, yonder lies
a pile right now.
Q. How was that meat from the cows and hogs that ran free around
wag -fotfesin the woods? Was it any good?
'
•w
^
A. Oh yeah. Well, they'd bring 'em in now, they drove - bring
•em in and put 'em in pens and feed 'em corn a while before
they killed 'env And they's a lot - now some of them,
they's sjpme run out and was killed just off of the mash.
Had lots of chestnuts and acorns, and them hogs would get
just as fat , and that was the best meat you ever tasted.
A lot of -'em noe, they'd bring their hogs in, they had 'em
marked, every man, you know, they'd get together. And every
man had a certain mark that he knowed his hogs. And then
when they brought 'em in, they'd sort 'em out. Get "em in
a pen, a lot somewhere, and every fella pick 'em out.
A lot of 'em'd go wild. Once in a while, they'd never get
'em. They'd be wild hogs out in the mountains.
�Q. When did ya'll have your - did you have an annual kill, or
you ju$t kill 'em at different times during the year of what?
A. Anytime, anytime, there wasn't no slaughter pens at that time
My neighbors'd go in and help each other kill hogs. Sometimes
they'd kill fifteen or twenty a day. A whole lot of hands go
in, keep water in big ole pots and barrels and fill a barrel.
And they'd kill their hogs and drag 'em in. I've helped kill
as high as twelve of fourteen in a day. Kill, maybe one man'
have two or three of half a dozen. Go in and dress his'n out
whatever he wanted to kill. A lot of times, they's killed
one or two at, a time. They didn't go in and butcher 'em all
day long lik;rthey do now. •-/• And I never treated 'em or never
really took care of 'em, just kill 'em and salt the meat in
big ole barrels. And where they'd stay, well I've seen old
buildings was good then like that one there and they's
just hanging a;; over up stairs.
Did they smoke a lot of it?
A. Yeah.
Q. Did they smoke it instead of salt it?
A. They had to salt it, It'd take salt - they had to let
it take the salt and then they'd hang it up and smoke it.
They salted it in them barrels and lets see, there's about
a month and a half to two months and then they'd hang it
up, and then they'd put that smoke under it.
Q. Did the smoke give it any flavor?
A. Oh yeah, that smoke flavor's real, well, you can get this
breakfast bacon that's got that smokeed flavor. It was
more of a smoked flavor then, when we smoked it in the ole
smoke houses than they did in this bacon you buy.
Q. That's sorta like getting charcoal broiled hamburgers now,
get the taste of it like that?
A. Yeah.
Q. Well, you didn't have refrigerators or freezers back then...
A. No, we didn't have no freezers, and we kept the milk and butter
in the , had the spring house. Built a house right up the
spring. The water run in, and they have a big ole
trough as long as that car that run that the water right from
the spring in there and they kept their milk and their, all of
their stuff that, they like to use a freezer now. All their
pickled beans and kraut and everything that stayed in that
water. And it was like that, it kept it cold. And they
kept their butter and they salted and canned a lot of their
meat. They canned that and salted as we do yet. And they
salted and tender loined and all that stuff"now, they put
in cans and it'll keep right on.
Q. How about your vegetables? You didn't keep them in your
spring house did ya?
�A. No, nothing much. We buried the cabbage, the potatoes
and rutabaga and all the root crops eventually we
.
And we buried the cabbage and they're burying a lot of times,
burying a lot of them cabbage and use 'em all winter and the
dig 'em up, and sometimes there'd be a whole big field of
'em. And in the winter, they'd haul 'em to market they didn't
need to use and make barrels of kraut. I've seen them ole
wooden barrels - the fifty gallon barrels of kraut. And they'd
haul it to market a lot of it to sell it, oh, in a pint or a
quart. Just measure it out. Used to haul it to Lenior,
and them niggers, you couldn't fight 'em off: of the wagon.
Q. How did you make kraut?
A. Well, ya have that - hack that cabbage up real fine, pack it
in a barrel, put salt on it. Put so much salt. And then they
weight it down, put a plank on the barrel, put a rock and then
they'd put weight on it. And it'd pickle that cabbage in
only a little while. It didn't take it long to pickle it.
And then you'd have kraut right on.
Q. Was that kraut better than what you get over at Watauga?
A. Two to one better! Way better. That old chopped
really good. Take a dish of that kraut on a cold
and put a little sugar and black pepper on it and
it raw. It's good cooked too. I love it raw and
It was really good.
kraut was
winter day
just eat
do yet.
Q. Do you remember any days like Christmas or Easter or your
birthday or anything? What was Christmas like back when you
were a child?
A. Well, we didn't have much Christmas. I gotta stick or two
of candy and an apple or two, and a orange once in a while.
We didn't have but way little Christmas. Most kids got a
few sticks of candy. Didn't have no toys. Very few toys
at that time.
Q. Did you have a Christmas tree?
A. Sometimes we'd have a little Christmas tree. Sometimes at
the closing of school, they'd have a big Christmas tree and
the kids would all getta, all getta a little package, a few
sticks of candy, orange, apple or two, and that's about it.
Baked ole molasses sweet bread for a cake. I love it now
better than anything you can buy.
Q. You ever make molasses yourself?
�A. Oh yeah, we made our own molasses.
Q. How do you do that?
A. Well you grow the cane and pull the fodder off of it. Go
in and top and pull the fodder off and run it through them
rollers and catch the juice. Run it through a cane mill.
You ever see a cane mill?
Q. I think so, yeah.
A. Two; big ole rollers, and you ground with a horse. Horse
pulled it. Big ole pole round and it just went round and
rounf. Stick that cane in and it squeezes juice out. And
they had a furnace and a big ole boiler sitting on it. And
they boiled that sown and made molasses. I've ground cane
a many a time till I'd just about freeze. And then the
kids'd come on and play on the cane stalks and have a good
time. Boiling molasses, ah, nearly every family back then
made their own molasses. Some of 'em made a hundred gallon
or two. But the average family didn't make but twenty or
forty gallon. And then they didn't have to have much sugar.
Sweetened a lot - and they made tree syrup.
Q. Maple syrup?
A. Maple syrup - maple sugar. I can remember my mother sweetening
her berries and fruits with the maple sugar. They'd have big
ole dishpans full of it and just go and shave off whatever
they wanted and put it in their fruit.
Q. Mr. Walter was telling about a guy that still does that,
when he makes pis molasses, he just boils it on down to sugar,
cakes it up, and goes and sells it to the stores.
A. Oh yeah, there's a few that still makes that tree sugar and
tree syrup.
Q. Did your mother use that much in her jellies when she was
making it?
A. Well,,1 don't know whether they used it much. They didn't
make much jelly at that time. I don't know whether they
used any in jelly or not. They could have, I guess. I
guess it would really be better flavor than the white sugar
now. I can remember when you could buy brown sugar. They got
it in big barrels. I've got some barrels now. Four hundred
pounds of brown sugar and you could buy it for $20.00, five
cents a pound. And the white sugar was a little bit higher.
And they weighed it out in, from a pound on up to whatever
you wanted. Dipped it out with' a scoop and put it in bags.
Q. Yeah, its already bagged up.
A. Yeah, it's up to four hundred pounds usually in a bag. And
a, and the first fertilizer that ever come to this county
come in barrels. Two hundred pounds in a barrel.
�Q. What did you use before fertilizer, before it came in the
barrels?
A. We didn't use it. We didn't have it. We just planted
without it.
Q. Did you use any, like cow manure or anything?
A. Yeah, we used what manure we had. We used manure, and the
earth growed the rest of it.
Q. How about the feed for the animals? Did you just feed them
some corn that you grew or did you go buy some of that or
grind it up...
A. Well, we ground into, I had it ground, some of 'em fed the
biggest part of it just whole. Feed your cattle whole. They
had some ground. They'd have the buckwheat and rye, they had
the small grains ground, but most the corn was just fed whole.
Wasn't no hammer mills. Just a flour mill and a corn mill
was all the mills there was then. There wasn't no thing as
a hammer mill. All water power. Back yonder all the mills
in this country was run by water. Big whole water wheels,
you've seen 'em.
Q. Like down at Mr. Winebarger's mill?
A. We take wagon loads of grain up there, of buckwheat, raised
buckwheat, and go and have it ground and then use a lot of
it for flour. And ole buckwheat cakes are good. And then
they haul it. They'd have that flour ground and put in ten,
twenty-five pound bags and haul it to Lenior and all down
south, Lenior, Morganton, Hickory, Statesville. And sell to
the stores. Swap it for wheat flour and we bought our salt.
We'd buy a hundred pounds of salt for sixty cents ($.60) then.
Q. Wow!
A. In Lenior, that's what it cost.
Q. Did you truck it down the mountain in wagons?
A. Oh yeah, there wasn't no trucks.
Done it all in wagons.
Q. How were the roads?
A. Muddy a lot of the time. Real muddy. Sometimes there'd be
a row of wagons as far as from here to the creek, right along
together. And they'd all camp out of the night, tie our
horses and cattle up and feed 'em. Lot of time we got to
make our bed on the ground under the wagon. After we'd get
a load off - after we'd get a load off the wagon, then we'd
have hay and stuff we'd fetch on our load for our produce,
you know, and then we'd sleep in the wagon. And it was fun
when the weather was good. I'd enjoy it now. But it was
rough going, when it was pouring rain or snowing.
Q. You had to go in the winter?
�A. Oh yeah. We'd go when it was cold weather. Oh, we had a lot
of apples then. Haul apples, potatoes, chestnuts, beans, shale
wheat, buckwheat flour, meat, butter, and stuffed hams - people
then sold a lot of hams. The farmers have more meat than they
could use, and they'd haul them and sell them to the stores.
And you didn't see much loaf, well, in this part of the country
they didn't. Very seldom did you see a loaf of bread in the
store. They didn't - well down in the bigger towns you could
get loaves of it some places. And you go in and you could buy
sausage and beef and
. We done our own cooking.
It was fun. Build a fire outside and cook potatoes and cabbage;
we didn't take time to cook beans. Fried taters and onions.
Tie our team up and feed 'em and while they were eating, we'd
get supper or breakfast. Fry eggs and meat. And hit was they was a lot of fun in it. Whole lot of hard work and
hardships too.
Q. Do you remember any incidences where a wagon didn't make it
all the way down? Where there any that ran off the road?
A. Well, not much. There's a woman or two got killed, run off the
road on a wagon, way down at Blowing Rock Mountain. And once
in awhile they'd be a team run away and tear up everything.
But not hardly ever hear tell of any. Once in awhile you
hear tell of a train running over a team and killing them.
And it took about four days to go, four or five days to go
to Lenior and back, sell your load out. Took about two days
to go and get your load off and get back home - and two more
to get back. And if it was slow selling, it took another day
Sometimes you'd see twenty-five or thirty wagons in town selling
produce. They peddled a lot; they'd go from house to house,
done a lot of peddlin'. And sometimes they'd buy half a
bushel of potatoes, apples, bushel - bushel of potatoes, maybe,
and a bushel of apples. Oh, the next house, maybe they didn't
want nothing, maybe the next one you'd go to would buy something. That's the way we got rid of a loy of it.
Q. What was the price of farm products back then?
A. Well, potatoes was a dollar or less a bushel. And apples sixty cents to a dollar a bushel. And cabbage was seventyfive cents to a dollar a hundred. Now we didn't get eight or
ten cents a pound back then like they do now.
Q. Did your mother, here at the house, did she bake a lot?
A. Yeah, they baked corn bread and biscuits, fried buckwheat
cakes , made light - homemade, light bread, baked pies,
cookies, sweet bread, that ole molassey bread. And that was
all done in an ole skillet by the fire.
Q. When did ya'll - ya'll get a wood stove?
�A. Finally, I can remember. I helped work out money to buy the
first wood stove my mother ever had to cook on.
Q. Which did she like better, working on the fireplace or the
cookstove?
A. Oh, it was much better to have a cookstove. Easier to do the
cooking, than it was by the fireplace. But that ole cornbread
and light bread baked in them ole skillets, it would melt in
your mouth. It was the best cornbread I ever eat. She had a
great big ole oven she baked light bread in. Loaf bread, they
call it now. A great big thing. And she'd mix her - make
up her yeast and get her dough ready, put it in that big ole
oven and she just heated it real slow, barely warm, you know.
And it'd rise a way up - just puff a way up there. Be that
thick. And then she'd put coals under it and she had a lid
to fit it, a cast iron lid. And it'd rise up there, and she
put the coals on that thing, heat it slow and after a while
it'd just finally turn - when it got done, there'd be a good
brown crust on it. And it was really good. A lot better than
this bread you buy now.
Q. How often did she bake?
A. Oh, only once in a while. Maybe every two or three weeks, to
make that light bread. They didn't bake it every day. They
made biscuits and I can remember when most people, they eat
cornbread for breakfast and biscuits every Sunday morning.
You wouldn't believe that.
Q. I believe it. I love cornbread.
A. I do too. I eat it, most the time, twice a day. They didn't
have wheat flour to make biscuits every day. And you used
eggs and shortening on the old cornbread, and it like you do
biscuits and it was pretty good.
Q. Did you ever have corn fritters?
A. Yeah, I've seen my mother bake corn sweet bread. Bake
it like they did the ole molassey bread, put molasses in it
and it was good. But I'd rather have that old molassey sweet
bread now than to have any you could go to the store and buy.
They baked what they called gingerbread. Great big, thick.
They baked it in cake, make them cakes to fit the skillet.
It was really good. Put ginger in it and that ole gingerbread was hard to turn down, when you're hungry.
Q. Your mother had to buy a lot of spices at the store didn't
she?
A. Yeah, they bought the grain spice and ground it.
�10
Q. Really? Did you have one of those things like a pepper thing
that you ground?
A. Ground the coffee - ground the coffee in the bean. They bought
that coffee green and they parched it, parched that coffee and
they - seen my mother a many a time parch that coffee in a one, them ole skillets. And they had a coffee mill. I've
ground coffee - you seen them, hadn't ya?
Q. Yeah.
A. Hold it between your knees, grind that coffee. The coffee
then, now you got real coffee then. There wasn't no dope in
it.
Q. Did they do the spices the same way?
A. leah, done the spices the same way. Pepper. Gosh, that
ole pepper. You get it in the grain and grind it, you
didn't have to make anything black to taste it. Ah, it's
a gettin' now, you can make your egg black now, and hardly
taste it.
Q. How about, did they dry a lot of stuff?
A. Dried berries, fruit, dried berries, apples, cherries of all
kind. Beans, dried beans, dried pumpkins, they dried a lot
of stuff. I can remember when my mother didn't have more than
two or three dozen cans. Dry that stuff and cook it. And
them ole dried beans, they was worth it.
Q. I've heard of drying apples - I've seen people drying apples
and beans and all. But I've never seen 'em dry cherries or
blackberries. How did they do it?
A. They used to dry lots of blackberries and cherries. And they
didn't do too much canning and they didn't have no way of
freezing it.
Q. How did they do it? Do you remember?
V
A. Well, they had grates, and they had good, big crates they'd
put 'em on. And when the sun shined good, they put 'em out
on....
Q. The apples they'd slice up and cook....
A. Slice up and dry it out. They dried the bigger part of their
fruit at that time. Dried sweet potatoes. My daddy used to
grow a lot of sweet potatoes. He didn't grow 'em for the
market. He'd just grow 'em to have plenty to use. They cooked
them and sliced 'em up and put 'em on crates. And when it
rained, they'd take 'em in and set them around the fireplace,
so that if they ever stayed out in the weather, they's spoil.
You had to keep them dry.
Q. Back then you had the spring houses, right? So that's where
you got your water. When did you build your well out here?
�XX
A. Oh, it's been about forty-two years or longer.
Q. Where was your spring house located?
A. We didn't even have a spring house here. There's a spring
down under the bank there that we used - we just had a box
down there. And we kept pur milk and stuff to keep it cold
in there 'til we dug the well. I was aiming to pump the
water from over yonder, but the spring went dry. And the
people built way up on the hill somewhere and they carried
their water up the hill. Why, they'd carry, some families
would carry as far as from here to the hog house over yonder.
Didn't think about a well or a pump. No, carried their
water from the spring/
Q. How often did you take baths back then?
A. Well, once a week, and you're lucky to do that.
Q. If you had to carry water that far, you wouldn't take it very
often.
A. Didn't have no bathroom in the houses. Outside toilets.
They wouldn't such a thing as a bathroom in the house. No
where in this county and its not been many years so there
wouldn't a bathroom in none of the houses that are here, in
this part of the county.
Q. How big was the house you were born in?
A. Oh, it had about four, four to five, five rooms, I guess.
And some places, they just had one or two big rooms, old log
houses. Three or four beds in one room and the kids slept
in
little beds you pushed under the big ones.
Q. Yeah, tumble beds. I've seen those.
A. And they didn't have a whold lot of room, like they build
houses now. Wasn't a bedroom in every little corner.
Q. Did your mother have to make all your clothing?
A. Bigger part of it. Weave, she had a loom and she'd weave the
cloth, weave clothing - made our clothing. And they made shoes.
There were men had shoe shops round and made most of them, wore
homemade shoes - men and the women. They had a few shoes in the
store, but the bigger part of the farmers wore homemade shoes.
A lot of the women - the women's dresses drug the ground. And
they wore button shoes up about that high. You never seen
them, did ya?
�JL/C
Q. I've seen pictures of them.
A. And the dresses drug the ground.
Q. Did they go to the store and buy the cloth to make their own
dresses?
A. Well, they went to the store and bought some, but the most part
was homemade. Wove at home. My mother had - she'd card the
wool and spin it. She had them spinning wheels and then she
had a tig ole.Toom that she wove that cloth. I've wore homemade clothes many a time, many a day. And they'd make their
underwear. They didn't wear much underwear, like they do now.
They'd make their pants and coats and vests and all like that
out of homemade - outa wool. That old wool'd get next to the
hide, it'd just scratch ya. It'd rip you to death. Wool and they knit your mittens and knit our scoks, outa that homemade wool.
Q. She didn't have a sewing machine, did she?
A. No, my mother never had a sewing machine in her life.
Q. She did all of it by hand?
A. Did it by hand. My aunt done a lot of sewing for people.
She had a sewing machine. Lived up the road here. But my mother
done all her sewing by hand. And the bigger half of the women
did it. Made their own dresses and their men's clothes and
everything by hand - sewed by hand.
Q. They made their quilts too, didn't they?
A. They made their own quilts. Wove their own blankets. Old
yarn blankets. Now that old wool blanket, it'll keep you
warm.
Q. Scratch you to death, but keep you warm.
A. They was really good and they'd last for years and years.
Had feather beds. They kept geece, and picked your feathers
out of them and made bedx. I sleep on a feather bed all year
round now. We've got two or three feather beds. My mother made
it in her life time. And I still sleep on it.
Q. Was the church really important in this community?
A. Well, more than it is today. About everybody walked to church
And ole timey preacher. And they got up there and preached,
we sat on ole benches. Had four legs on 'em shaved out of a
round piece like a chair post. No back. Hardly a few of 'em
had benchs of this - seats made out of plank. But back as Ion
as I can remember they sat on them old split logs. And they
all went and they enjoyed the meeting, they enjoyed the sermon.
And sometimes the preachers had to walk four or five miles.
And he's get maybe fifty cents or a dollar for two sermons.
And they all - and the preaching was over and they all walked
out and ever - out this road they all walked together. Where
�13
one or two would drop out, and they'd stand and talk and they
enjoyed themselves, much more than they do now.
Q. How often did you have meetings?
A. Well, they had it once a month, a lot of churches. Just have
it once a month, two services. Then they'd run a week or two
of revival, sometime during the year, usually in the fall of
the year. And they'd have a - have a real, live one. One
of 'em get happy and they'd really have a time.
Q. Was the preacher a hell-fire, brimstone preacher?
a mild one?
Or was he
A. Well, they - sometimes there'd be one preacher for eight or ten
years before they change. And then maybe they'd set a new one
amd maybe he'd serve a good many years. Now they have to have
a new one about every twelve months, don't they? A lot of
churches. They change right often.
Q. Did the preacher - what type of sermons did he preach? Did
he tell the people what they were doing wrong or did he tell
'em something they wanted to hear, like...
A. Ah, he went to the Bible for it. Told 'em their wrong doing.
Q. What church did you attend?
A. Meat Camp. Right over here. I went ot differnet churches.
Went to Howard's Creek. You know where Howard's Creek is?
Went there part of the time and went to the Rich Mountain
to that church. Sometimes we'd go way down yonder to Fairview
way down toward the river. People wasn't too selfish where
they went to then. Now they have to - there wasn't so many
churches as there is now. Built a lot more as time passed by.
Q. Were there a lot of community activities centered around the
church?
A. Well, not too much.
Not like it is now.
Q. Did ya'll have any square dances then?
A. No, they wasn't no - wasn't nothing of that kind a going on
in this part of the country.
Q. What did ya'll do for recreation, when you weren't farming?
A. Well, we'd go a fishing or squirrel huntin1 or something of
that kind.
Q. What did you do when you were courtin'?
A. Well, we walked out there to our girlfriend, whereever she
might be. Sometimes we'd go to church, sometimes we'd walk
out and pick cherries in the summertime. Sometimes they'd have
a candy pullin'. Gatherin' in all and have music. Not too
much dancing. There wasn't many people could dance.
�Q. Did they "flatfoot" a lot around here?
A. Well, not too much.
Q. What type of music did you have?
A. Had a fiddle and a banjo. Once in a while a guitar, French
harp. My daddy and a neighbor, they went lots of places and
made music. My daddy was a fiddler and my neighber was a
banjo-picker. They'd go to the closing of the school, sometimes to a neighbeor's house, make music - a few of the neighbors
would come in. They'd just set and enjoy it. Close of the
school, they usually had 'em come in. They'd give 'em a
dollar or two at the close of the school.
Q. Tell me something about the school around here, like the
size of it, and the people in it?
A. Well, these old school houses where they walked, I've known
teachers to walk five or six miles to teach school. And there
wasn't too many One teacher was all they had, and they teached
up to about the seventh grade. And then they had to go - they
went to Boone then to finish up. The eighth or tenth grade,
something like that. Go to Boone - go to town for the rest
of it.
Q. Tell me about life during the Depression.
A. Well, we got enough to get by with, but it was hard going, we
just had to work a day or two to get a little chew meal to help.
And we're lucky to get by with it. People didn't have enough
to eat. They got by, but Their clothes were pretty bad, hard
to get a day's work. Dug roots and drained the wood and dug
roots and gathered herbs to help keep clothing and something
to eat.
Q. How about - were there a lot of moonshiners?
A. No, not much. There's never been - oh there's a few around.
Right many in Wilkes County. And if they had to get something
to drink, they went to Wilkes and got the most ot it. I can
remember when you could buy corn whiskey for sixty cents a
gallon, and it was pure corn. And they was - there was one
man that made it, I'll never - my mother got some for my
grandmother once, take it back here between here and Todd,
on the Big Hill. He had a bonded outfit and they come around
and check 'em once in a while. Gaugers would come around they wasn't allowed to have so many barrels, you know. He'd
come around and they always knowed when he was coming, then they
would get it down to where they wasn't in no trouble. And
theycould sell - I don't know how much they's allowed to sell.
I was too little to know much about it.
�15
Q. Do you remember any government programs?
the CCC?
Such as the WPA and
A. No, no, well, I remember when the WPA worked here. They bought
'em a lot of mules to farm with. They were army mules that
was brought here when the war was over with Germany. And they
had people take 'em and work 'em. Farm 'em too, try to raise
'em something to eat. And they worked 'em on the road. They
worked a whole lot - the WPA worked at a building that highway ,
They let 'em work ehm mules, to farm with and, I don't know,
they all just gor old. Last one I ever knowed of, well it had
a picture of him. An old white mule and man a following the
plow. And they said the best they could estimate his age, he
was fifty-five years old. He was a relief mule.
Q. Oh, the mule was fifty-five years old.
A. He was fifty-five years old, the best they could estimate
his age. H<=: was still a pulling the plow. I never did get
one, I didn't use 'em. Had my own work horse. We plowed it
off a lot, plow, harrow with 'em, seen'a few worked a mowing
machine. But they was too slow to do much more with a machine
Most of it was with things like that out there. Pitch fork,
I've seen 'em use. I've seen 'em use old hoemmade pitchforks,
three-prong, I've got one. I'll show it to you. I've got one
that I guess is two hundred years old.
Q. You've given us a lot of information. I've just got one more
question. What's your philosophy of life? Do you have one?
A. No, I don't think I have one.
Q. Why do you think you've lived as long as you have?
getting along pretty good here.
A. Well I just worked hard all my life.
day, eat cornbread.
You're
Drink lots of water every
Q. Molasses bread too.
A. Molasses bread and I get along pretty good.
Q. Have you got anything you'd like to add to what we've already
talked about?
A. No, I couldn't think of anything more that would be of any
interest to you.
Q. Well, thank you very much.
�
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 Scnajet 8200
Scan date
2014-02-24
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 C.K. Norris, June 11, 1973
Description
An account of the resource
C.K. Norris was born in 1891 in Meat Camp, North Carolina where he grew up on a farm.
Mr. Norris talks mostly about growing up on the farm, such as raising crops and livestock. His family would haul their produce to Lenior, Hickory, and Morganton to be sold. Mr. Norris talks a lot about food throughout the interview including how to dry fruits and vegetables, make sauerkraut, use spices properly, grind coffee, salt meat, and make maple syrup. He also describes other aspects of his childhood including church, school, and the Great Depression. Mr. Norris also talks about WPA's affect in the Meat Camp area.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
McNeely, Mike
Norris, CK
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.
15 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_tape71_CKNorris_undatedM001
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Meat Camp, NC
Subject
The topic of the resource
Norris, C. K.--Interviews
Farm life--North Carolina--Watauga County--20th century
Depressions--1929--North Carolina--Watauga County
Watauga County (N.C.)--Social life and customs--20th century
United States--Work Projects Administration
C.K. Norris
cane mill
church
dried beans
dried fruit
farming
Great Depression
Hickory
hogs
Lenior
livestock
Meat Camp
Meat Camp Church
molasses
Morganton
North Carolina
sauerkraut
spices
spring house
wagon
weaving
WPA
-
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/0deb31a19846a42c66b70b640f408c2d.pdf
3eb1e8441ee163467f0b24043b337470
PDF Text
Text
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
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
2014-02-19
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
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.
29 pagse
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_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/41141159f56968b58dcf63bbcf3e13cc.pdf
bf4ca7993fd21843526de3ebb58fb6df
PDF Text
Text
��
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
Kirby and Eller Family Letters
Description
An account of the resource
The Kirby and Eller Family Letters contain correspondence between the Kirby and Eller families of Ashe County, North Carolina. The letters focus mainly on day-to-day events such as planting and harvesting crops, health and illness, and household tasks, but also include references to the Civil War. The original letters of Collection 495 Kirby and Eller Family Letters, 1826-1938 are in the W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection.
<div class="subnote ">
<p><span class="less">Elizabeth “Bettie” Kirby (1851-1925) was born on February 15th, 1851 in Meadow Creek, Virginia, to parents Joel Kirby and Frances Roberts. Millard F. Kirby, Samuel J. Kirby, Emory T. Kirby, and Ada B. Kirby were her siblings. She married Joseph Lafayette Eller on September 22, 1875 in Ashe County, NC, where she lived until her death on December 9, 1925.<br /><br />Luke Eller (1806-1883) was born on June 8, 1806 in Ashe Co., NC. He was married to Sarah King<span class="elipses"></span></span><span class="more"> on March 27, 1829 in Ashe Co. He is the father of Joseph Lafayette Eller (Elizabeth’s husband), Hansford Eller, and Aswell Eller. Luke Eller lived in Ashe Co. until his death on December 6, 1883.</span></p>
<span class="note-content readmore expanded"><a href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/165#" class="expander">See less</a></span></div>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<p><a href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/165">AC.495 Kirby and Eller Family Letters</a></p>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a title="In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted" href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en 8" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted </a>
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
Letter from Barbara Kirby to Bettie Kirby, August 5
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
2 pages
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Letter_nd_023.pdf
Description
An account of the resource
In this letter to Bettie, Barbara talks about various aspects of domestic life. There is mention of some illness, cloth Bettie has been expecting, fruit growing and other crops, and children.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<p><a href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/165">AC.495 Kirby and Eller Family Letters</a></p>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a title="In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted" href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/?language=en 8" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted </a>
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
||||osm
Ashe County (N.C.)
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a title=" Kirby and Eller Family Letters" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/17" target="_blank"> Kirby and Eller Family Letters </a>
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
https://www.geonames.org/4453028/ashe-county.html
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
PDF
Letters (Correspondence)
"Female Trouble"
apples
Barbara Frances Kirby
Bettie Kirby
Blackberries
consumption
Elizabeth Eller
family letters
letter
Lillian Young
peaches
weaving