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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview H-0098-1, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
John Wesley Snipes was born near the town of Bynum in Chatham County, North Carolina, in 1901. His family is as old as the county and played a role in its history: his great-grandfather won a land grant from England, and one grandfather fought in the Civil War and owned a slave. In this interview, Snipes relates his family history, entwining it with the history of Chatham County. He remembers chasing geese on his grandparents' farm; Civil War veterans' tales of combat; rural recreations like corn shuckings, candy pulls, or rabbit hunts; home remedies administered by an African American woman; and more. Snipes provides a detailed portrait of an early twentieth-century farming community, self-reliant and religious, and shares his concerns that the values of his youth are fading.
John Wesley Snipes recalls his childhood in rural Chatham County, North Carolina, in the early twentieth century.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
I want to start by telling you that this tape will be made for your purposes and my purposes, and if you don't want anyone to listen to it it's fine with me.
There's not anything that I object to, as I know of.
OK, fine. Well, after we're finished I'll send you a copy of the tape or the transcript that we make from it, and you can look it over and see if there's anything that you want to add to it or subtract from it, OK?
That'd be all right.
Could we start, Mr. Snipes, by your giving me your full name?
John Wesley Snipes.
And where and when were you born?
I was born in Baldwin Township June 27, 1901.
So were you born in the town of Bynum?
Just a little ways up. It's the same township. That's my father's house right in front of the store yonder. But I was born on up on a piece of land my grandfather gave my father a few miles up the road. I went to school here. I was born June 27, 1901 and I was one of nine children; I was the fourth child. My father and mother were both born in 1872.
What was your father's name?
Charles A. Snipes.
And your mother's name?
Daisy Hackney.
You said your grandfather gave your father a piece of land. Did you know your grandfather?
Oh yes sir. He died in 1912; I was eleven years old. Fletcher, William Fletcher Snipes. He gave him a hundred acres up the road here. There was nine of us children, and Poppa and Momma was born in '72; they married in '95. Marvin was born in 1896. Betty was born in 1898. Jesse was born in 1899, and I was born in 1901. Brooks was born in 1904. Grady was born in 1906. Edna was born in 1909. Then Frank was born in 1913 and Thomas was born in 1916.
I almost stopped writing there.
Yes sir: four dead and five are living.
What can you tell me about your grandfather Snipes, William Fletcher Snipes? What was his occupation?
He was a big landowner. He inherited from my great-grandfather Wesley Snipes a 640 acre grant from England, one square mile.
Who was that grant from England given to?
My great-grandfather Wesley Snipes. He handed it down to my grandfather Fletcher, and my grandfather handed it down to my father. It's up here next to, adjoining Polk Landing and Fitch Creation and the Twin Lake Golf Course, up here off of Chapel Hill highway about a mile to the left of the Chapel Hill road. It runs all back in there. It's been added to; there's a thousand and four acres in there. And they've got it listed as University Land Company; it belongs to the University Land Company, a thousand and four acres.
And who is that University Land Company now?
Well, it was J. J. (Joe) and Cash Haggerty from Rocky Mount and Wilson.
They've got plants at both places. Old man Cash Haggerty
Well, let's start then with the grant to your great-grandfather Wesley Snipes. That was one mile square, 640 acres.
Yes sir.
Did he farm that land, do you know?
Yes sir. Well, he farmed it a little and just had a few hogs for his own use, and a cow or two and killed beef. And they raised honey, and they had the pumpkins and corn and wheat and stuff like that: raised all of that.
Did he own any slaves that you know of?
Not that I know of, not my grandfather on the Snipes side. Now on the Hackney side he did. My grandfather John Joe Hackney, my mother's father, he owned old Uncle Hanks Hackney.
Well, before we get on to your mother's side, your great-grandfather Wesley Snipes received this grant.
As far as I've always been told. We had a proported deed written by goose
quill of this grant. My grandfather died an old bachelor there by
himself, and he turned it over to my father. Then when my father died in
1954, when the lawyers settled up the estate I ain't never known what
went with that grant.
I see. Well, was he from England, your great-grandfather?
Yes sir. I got the history of when they left England. They went from
England to the Barbado Islands, and from the Barbado
Is that house still standing?
Yes, it's still standing, or was about a year ago. A fellow carried me in
there in a Jeep. Two logs have been sawed out; they just cut it off from
the notches, cut it off about a foot or two from each one and left that
building standing. The editor of the old Progressive
Farmer, Clarence Poe…. In the state fairground at Raleigh they've
got a section of old country of yesteryear, I mean old, old things.
Well, Clarence Poe, the editor of the Progressive
Farmer, came up here and asked for that building about seven or
eight years ago to be moved and put on the fairground at Raleigh. But
the family didn't want it tore down. It's an old log house; and it's
still standing there, or it was about a year ago. But it's real old.
So the Snipes, then, have been in Chatham County ever since just about the beginning of Chatham County?
Yes sir. Where our old house is sitting, up here, Chatham County has
given off a lot of land to Orange County and also Lee County.
Wow. I tell you, I didn't know that.
Rabbits run just like ants or grasshoppers. They shipped them by the carload to New York.
Can you tell me a little bit more about your father's family and this piece of land up here? Your great-grandfather might have been a farmer, you think?
Yes. Not a big farm, but just made a living. Weren't one-tenth of the land cultivated. It was in timber, forest.
And how about your grandfather?
Same way, yes sir: just a small farmer.
And then your father? How about him?
Same way. We'd have several acres of cotton, 12-15, maybe 25 acres of corn. And had a few tenants on the place.
How many tenants would this be? Do you have any idea?
Usually we had three tenant houses; there was somebody in them most every year.
Would these be black or white?
Both, some white and some black.
I meant to ask you, do you have any record of your great-grandfather's fighting in the Revolutionary War? Wesley Snipes?
No sir, neither one on my father's side. On my mother's side, now I have his old musket, sword and pistol that he carried through the Civil War.
Through the Civil War?
Yes.
But now you don't have any recollection of your great-grandparents fighting in the Revolutionary War?
No sir, I don't have no record of none of that.
All right. Now let's go on to your mother's side, the Hackney family. What can you tell me about them?
Well, my grandfather John Joe Hackney married Elizabeth Josephine Snipes. See, my father and mother were cousins.
Oh, I see.
That was on my mother's side that they were Hackneys. And Grandpa went
and fought in the Civil War. He hired a hand to fight with him. I forgot
what nationality he was but (I've got a record of it) his name was
Feroni. I believe it's in there in the Bible. He carried him all the way
through the Civil War. Then he had this old colored man, old Uncle Hanks
Hackney. He had belonged to grandfather John Joe Hackney's father Joshua
Hackney. And Joshua Hackney, the father of John Joe, they built this
church down here at Mount Gilead in 1824 at Hackney's Cross-roads;
there's a Hackney's post office there. And that's on my mother's
Is that in Chatham?
Yes sir. It's right across the way on the Mount Gilead road. Mount Gilead / Church is where the Hackneys settled there. Oh, there's hundreds of graves. The first person ever buried in that there cemetery was Geneverite Hackney. And that church was built in 1824, which has been 150 years.
Is that still standing?
Oh yes sir. It's a live, wide-awake church. And then right there they had
a post office; it was Hackney post office for years and years, just sort
of a country post office. And when they carried their mail back by horse
and buggy you probably got mail about twice a week or
Well that's about like it is now,
One cent postage then, then later on two, three, and now it's thirteen.
Yes, right. Was your mother's father a farmer also?
Yes sir.
About how big a farm did he have?
Just a small one. Had about two hundred acres of land, and they just were
average. Had a few hogs, a few sheep, a few geese. They'd kill a beef in
the fall, and they'd hang it up and dry it way back then. They made
their own homity. They'd burn the ashes and drip lye onto the
Would this be both your mother's family and your father's family that would do that?
My father's family never did. My father's family, as I have any record of it, never did have no sheep or geese, but my mother's side did.
How large a family did your mother come from? How many brothers and sisters did she have?
Oh, let's see: there was Kemp Hackney, Daisy Hackney, Clarence Hackney, Gita Hackney, Ben Hackney and Dixie Hackney.
That's six.
Let's see: Kemp, Clarence, Jack, Ben, Daisy and Dixie. That's seven.
Oh yes, so you left out Jack. And your father, how big a family did he come from?
Just one sister: two.
Oh, two altogether. What was her name?
Berta Snipes; married J. B. Atwater in Durham.
OK. Now, what do you remember doing with your grandparents?
Oh.
Now which one would this be, the Snipes?
On my mother's side. If you go back you'll take when my father and mother was married in '95, see there was Marvin in '96, Betty '98, Jesse '99 and me 1901. That was four children in four years. And my mother was sickly, and they carried me down to my grandfather's. And they practically raised me. I went to school here in 1907, I reckon—when I was six years old, and I was born in 1901.
My grandparents practically raised me.
This is your grandparents Hackney?
On the Hackney side, yes sir.
And what kinds of things would you do there? Did you help them on the farm any?
Yes sir. I'd help them feed the pigs and the cows, and I'd hold the old
gander's head for them to pick down off of him, the feathers you know to
make feather beds and pillows. Nobody at that time didn't have
mattresses. I'd never seen a mattress 'til I was a great big boy. They
had straw ticks made out of wheat straw, and then they had the feather
beds. And they had to make them feather beds. They raised the geese to
pick the feathers. It took a whole lot of feathers to make a feather
bed.
I bet.
And every spring my grandfather and them would round up twenty or
twenty-five geese in this old log-boarded barn. We'd catch
Really, 'cause they're so soft.
And old fellow said it takes a thousand pounds of feathers to weigh a
hundred.
So you helped him do that too?
Yes, I'd hold the sheep
Do you remember any things that you particularly enjoyed doing with your grandparents? Did they like to tell you stories?
I fought the Civil War. My grandfather and old Mr. Isaac Morris—I. J.
Morris lived just across Polkberry Creek about a mile…. And in the
summertime when I was a little fellow my grandfather, about
Did you enjoy hearing it over and over again, or did you get a little tired of it?
Yes sir. Well, I just heard it so much I could tell it as good as they could, just about. But they enjoyed old buddies getting together.
How about any kind of times on the farm where a number of farm families would get together for corn shuckings or…?
That was an annual affair in the fall. About the time of the frost they'd
get up the corn in big piles and have a big dinner and have a
neighborhood corn shucking. That was a common custom back up until
fifteen or twenty years ago. They don't do it any more 'cause they've
got these combines and pickers and all to pick it in the field and shuck
it in the field. But that was a big occasion, those big old corn
shuckings and cutting frolics. Everybody used a wood stove, and in the
spring before the sap riz they'd go out and cut down maybe an acre of
pine and split it
How about sorghum? Did they raise sorghum?
They raised their sorghum. And they'd take a forked stick. The stalk standed up like this, and you had to get that old fodder off of there. We'd take a forked stick and just beat right straight down, and it'd knock off the fodder on each side, you see. We just beat the fodder down on the ground so that you'd get to the cane stalk. Then you cut the top of that cane out, and then you carried it to this mill. And they had an old-fashioned grinder with a long pole and these cogs in here. You stuck that cane in there, and the mule went around about a thirty or forty foot circle, and that turned that. And that squeezed the juice out. Most of them cooked it in the neighborhood, sometimes on the same place, sometimes they'd cook it one place or another. They cooked their own cane sorghum. You stood there continuously and skimmed off that green. The stalk would cause a green scum on it. And then they'd put it up for wintertime.
Did you ever make candy out of sorghum?
Oh yes, the old-fashioned pulled candy.
Now what was this: you'd make the candy and have a candy pull?
Yes sir, you'd have to pull it. And you'd just keep pulling it and just
lap it back and pull it out, and lap it back and pull it out. One'd have
a hold of one end and one a hold of the other. You'd have about a two
foot rope when you stretched it out. Then one'd take both ends and you'd
pull again; the other one'd take both ends and you'd pull again. And
they made the candy that way. They made about everything they eat. They
knit their own stockings, and the men did their own shoes and
everything. Weren't no money. Long about 1905 cotton was five cents a
pound. My grandfather on my father's side run an old post office up
there at old Kilgo. He used to run a blacksmith's shop that pulled
teeth; let me bring you the box.
What are we looking at here?
Tooth pluckers.
Oh boy!
Boy! That's quite a thing to save. I would save that if I were you. That's really something. What about a doctor? Was there a doctor when you got sick?
There was nine of us young'uns, and I believe about six of
Would you know if that's C-o-t-t-e-n or o-n?
That's right, C-o-t-t-e-n, Cotten.
Now who was she?
She was a neighbor. They had a little piece of land. I believe my grandfather give them about twenty-five acres, and they had a house there right adjoining the place up there at my father's.
On the Snipes'…?
She brought, I believe, the first six all into this world. Then we had an
old dokey doctor, old Dr. Mann. There was two of them brought into this
world by old Dr. Mann in a horse and buggy. And he drank. He'd come down
and he'd come about half shot. Then the other was later on in 1916; they
was getting a little bit more civilized then.
What can you tell me about Emeline Cotten? What do you remember about her?
Old Emeline Cotten, she had one son Tom Cotten, and he married… his wife was named Effie. They done a lot of helping in hog killing time about drying up the lard and cutting out the meat just right and fixing the sausage and fixing the lard just right. They cooked that fat and made the lard, and strained it and all such of that. And that was all left up to Emeline, Tom and Effie.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
We were talking about Emeline Cotten.
Old Auntie Emeline, she done all of the grannywomen jobs
So she would deliver the babies?
She delivered all the babies.
Would she do anything else as far as health care was concerned?
No, nothing else so far as health was concerned. If you had the measles
and couldn't break out she'd get some sheep balls and make a tea and
she'd make you break out. That was the old remedy: sheep balls, then
boil it and drink that sheep ball tea
When you say sheep balls you mean the… ?
Manure, the manure.
Oh really?
Yes. You'd go to the barnlot. It was principally grass, you know, sort of
like a rabbit's, balls about like rabbit balls. And
Yes, I would think. And that was one of her remedies?
That was one of her remedies. And they'd kill a mole and cut off its foot
and tied a string around it, and tie it around your neck when your
baby's cutting the teeth, you know. And them old superstitions…. Of
course now we I reckon are more enlightened now than we were then. But
those old home remedies, we all lived anyway.
Well, did people pretty much go by them and believe in them?
Oh, absolutely believed in them. A baby couldn't cut teeth
What's that?
Sulphur and lard for the seven year itch. Everybody had the itch and
lice, you know, long about then. Old Auntie Emeline would take some
hog's lard and some sulphur and make a sulphur and lard for the itching.
We all went to school in a long old one-room schoolhouse with a big
pot-bellied stove in the middle. Well, didn't nobody ever get no higher
than the eighth grade or ninth grade, nohow; they were through then
anyway. And they just had one teacher, and all in the same room. And in
cold weather when we all got hot you could get around that old stove.
You could tell whoever had the itch 'cause you could smell that lard,
What did they do, rub it on their chest?
Well, they'd get it between the fingers, you know; the seven year itch would get between the fingers. And they'd be a'scratching. They'd get close to that stove and you could smell that sulphur and lard; you could point out the ones that had the itch. They was ashamed of it. They wouldn't let you know they had it, but you knew who had it by smelling them. It was right amusing.
Well, you lived a good time with your grandmother and grandfather Hackney. Did they discipline you? How many of the other children, I should ask, lived with them?
None. See, I was what they called a kneebaby. See, there was four
young'uns in four years, and my mother was sickly. I was the fourth
young'un, and weren't nare a one of them big enough to wait on
Why did they call you a kneebaby?
Well, there was another litte'un just a month or two old, and there I was
about eighteen months just a'walking, you see. I weren't big enough to
wait on myself. And they took me when I was about eighteen months old
and kept me. The babies come so fast
Right. Well, how would your grandmother discipline you then?
I don't know if she ever whipped me in my life. I done just as I pleased down there; that's the reason I liked to stay down there. And I stayed down there off and on 'til I married. I stayed down there two winters in 1915 and '16 and went to school. But I stayed there to get in their wood. I'd cut their fireplace and stove wood. When I got home in the evening after school I'd cut up enough wood for that night and the next day, and get up wash water (maybe fill up four or five tubs so Grandma could wash). She was getting old. I'd sort of help them that much, because they were both getting old.
Well, did your grandmother have any rules about how to behave around the house, or any kind of sayings?
I respected them, and I'd mind. I didn't do anything mean in their sight,
Get behind the barn and smoke—wonder I hadn't have burned the barn up.
And of course now I know they could smell it on me when I
And where would you get your plugs from?
I'd get it out of his box, and I'd carry it to the barn and hide it. And
Oh boy! And you think your grandparents wouldn't have approved of that?
Well, they wouldn't when I was that little. Later on they all used tobacco many years in some form.
Did your grandmother dip snuff?
Yes sir, dipped snuff; my grandfather chewed tobacco. The stronger it was, the better he liked it. And I never smelled anything on my grandfather. He was a big, round man; wasn't very high, maybe 5 feet 6 or 8 inches, not as tall as I am. But he weighed about 230 or 40. And he lived to be eighty-four. But he had an old little brown jug under the stairsteps. Where we went up the stairs there was a little closet under there, a little dark closet. And he had a little brown jug under there, and I'd catch him every once in a while in the morning slipping out off in the hall there to this little closet. He'd keep that little brown jug full of homemade whiskey, old stumper or white lightning. He'd take a swallow or two every morning, I imagine. But I wasn't big enough for a long time to know what he was doing; I realized later what it was. Never smelled him, never heard tell of him being drunk in my life.
Just got himself started in the morning, I guess, huh?
Just sort of a little tonic to shoot him off
Well, he must have worked pretty hard on the farm.
He did, up until he died. Grandmother died in 1921, and my grandfather died in 1924. He lived three years more. Grandpa was eighty-four, and my grandmother was about eighty.
Well, tell me about your father's parents. Did you have much to do with them? Did you spend some time with them?
No. My great-grandmother, Grandpa Fletcher's wife, she died a good many years before Grandpa was dead. And he come in a separate house out there and lived with us. He begin to get feeble, and he died in 1912.
You didn't know him too well?
Oh yes, I knew him. I lived near them. I waited on him a long time in his old age there. But my father and my father's family, we tended to him. He died at home in 1912.
Well, did your parents discipline you very much?
Poppa was strict. Didn't have nothing to do much but just turn around and look at you, and you minded, absolutely minded.
Did he ever put a switch to you?
Oh yes sir.
How about the other children in the family? Were they mischievous?
Not as bad as I was. There were so many of us, I just accepted the job of
being the black sheep of the family.
Before we get into school, maybe we could talk a little bit about games you liked to play with some of your childhood friends. Did you have many friends growing up?
Oh yes sir. The little old country schoolhouse was right there pretty close, and my father was schoolteacher.
Oh, he was a schoolteacher as well as a farmer?
What were his qualifications to teach in school?
He finished high school, that was all.
So you played with the children over at school. What kind of games would you play?
See, my mother knit all of us stockings. She'd knit it out of white
cotton thread. And she knit well-wore stockings, not socks. When I was
eight or nine years old I wore knee stockings that come up to my knee.
But my mother would sit by the fire at night and knit all of those,
different lengths of them for different ones in the family. And then
we'd get red oak bark, and get that inner bark next to the wood, the
thin bark, and boil it and make a dye. And she dyed all of our socks.
Then when we wore the feet completely out we'd take and unravel them and
make a thread ball. Then we'd take the top of an old shoe and cut the
shape of a cover
What did you use for a bat?
We'd take us an ash and straighten it out, dry it, and cut it out, and
take a drawing knife and scrape it down sort of in the shape of a bat.
It didn't make no difference whether it was forty inches long or two
foot or three foot or what, just so it was in the shape of a ball bat.
There weren't no
Where might you play?
We had a little place over in the straw field. I don't even know whether
the bases were regulation bases or not; I doubt it very much, though. We
had a rock at every base, and if you slid into it you were liable to
bust your head open
Who would play, just boys from around?
One school. There were five or six little old country schools about two or three miles apart. We'd play each other along about school closing or Easter or something like that. School usually closed about Easter.
Well now, where was your school located?
Are you familiar with any of the land up at Chapel Hill Road? Are you familiar with where Fitch Creation is?
Yes.
Well, Fitch Creation is sitting on our little old ball ground. We had a big boys' ball ground and a little boys'. As you turn there close to Manns Chapel Church, as you turn down towards the golf course, that was our schoolhouse right on the left there. Where you hit Fitch Creation's houses, that's sitting on our old schoolhouse lot, that old ball ground and schoolhouse lot. And that's where my wife was raised, right there. The Connie Smith land, R. B. Fitch and them built houses all over it. The Haithcock and Smith land there was where my wife was raised.
How about hunting or fishing? Did you do much of that when you were a boy?
Well, we didn't have nothing to fish. I mean, there's nothing but little old branches and creeks, and not much water up in that area. And we didn't get to go nowhere. I'd never seen the river 'til I was a great big boy. We rabbit hunted. Now, that was a big occasion: go out and kill thirty or forty rabbits a day.
What would you kill them with, guns?
Sticks and guns, and the dogs'd run them down and catch them. We'd just take the entrails out in real cold weather and hang them up in the smokehouse with the hide on them, and dry them out. Then we made rabbit hash, and cooked them. And they replaced a whole lot of meat, hog meat. There was a lot of quail way back there, a lot of turkeys. Chatham County has been blessed with rabbits: just thousands and hundreds of thousands of them way back seventy-five years ago.
And you were telling me that Chatham County supplied… ?
It's the only county in the United States that ever shipped
Let me ask you about these corn shuckings and cutting frolicks and so forth. Would there be music at these?
Sometimes they'd wind up with an old-fashioned square dance, and move out
everything after supper. See, they wouldn't shuck corn but well around
Thanksgiving, and chances are it'd be cold by that late in November
probably. And they had the big fireplaces. And they'd move out
everything and put on a log fire. Now I was little, but them bigger
ones, I expect they'd go out to the woodshed once in a while. The longer
the dance the redder the eyes got, and they'd have the old-fashioned
square dance with all figures, you know. Maybe some old neighbor would
have an old banjo with about half the strings on it. It didn't make no
difference, just so it was making a fuss sort of.
Well, did you enjoy living on the farm?
Oh yes sir.
What did you like about it?
The freedom, I reckon. When you'd caught up, when you'd done your day's
work you'd go out and sit on the porch. Weren't nobody
So you'd get off from work on Saturday afternoon and come home?
Just play around the yard, just stay around the house.
But it's hard work, isn't it, around the farm?
Yes sir. We farmed four mules one time; we had about four or five mules. We raised corn, potatoes, garden peas, cotton—never no tobacco. That land up there was not to amount to anything. Very little tobacco. But we raised a lot of corn, cotton. The boll weevil come, you see. First the red spider come, and it hit the cotton. And that slowed people up. And then later on the boll weevil.
When would this be?
That red spider must have hit along about 1911 or '12, 'cause it was about four or five years before the boll weevil. The boll weevil was in the late 20's. It was about World War Number One when the boll weevil hit the worst, and it got so we couldn't make no cotton. We didn't have the stuff to spray it with, and the boll weevil'd eat it up.
What kind of jobs would you do on the farm when you were getting up a little bit older? Say would you do plowing?
Oh yes, plowing, cutting wheat, pulling fodder, shucking corn, sowing wheat, cutting firewood. See, you'd cut fifteen or twenty cords of wood a winter for fireplace wood. Two or three great big old fireplaces, and three or four foot long. We'd cut down trees as big as them out there, and just cut them down with an axe. Didn't have no saws; weren't no such a thing as a chainsaw.
Did your father grow food just for home consumption?
Yes.
Or did he try to market his… ?
We never did have nothing to sell in the food line, for it took every bit
to eat.
And how about the corn?
We kept enough corn to fatten up the hogs. And then about every three or four weeks we'd take three or four bushels of corn and carry it to the old grist mill up there and have it ground into corn meal.
Which mill would this be?
Pritchard's old mill, Lessie's grandfather's.
Where was that?
That was just about a mile or so. It was right there at them Mitchum boys, above Manns Chapel Church up there; it's where the Wilsons live now. Between the Mitchums and the Wilsons there, between Manns Chapel and Damascus.
Was that on a creek?
Yes.
What creek would that be? Do you know?
Barnes.
Barnes Creek.
I think that's right.
You'd carry it up there with your dad?
Yes, we'd carry it in the wagon, maybe two or three sacks of corn, and go up there. And they'd grind it. They'd take out their toll. Maybe if you carried a bushel of shelled corn they'd take out a gallon of corn for toll. Then that way we kept corn bread all the time. Of course you could eat it for mush and muffins or most anything you wanted.
Where would you carry your cotton?
The old Alliance cotton gin was right there close to home. My grandfather run an old cotton gin and a post office and a blacksmith's shop over there. I don't believe you're familiar with it. It's on that creek right below Leon Mann and Romy Mann. Romy Mann lives right there. I believe my great-grandfather was the old post office. Part of that old lumber is out there in that field now in an old shed or something. It was Kilgo.
I'll bet if I brought a map of Chatham County you could show me where some of these places are, right?
I've got a map. I can show you anything you want. I've got a map of every county in North Carolina.
Do you?
In North Carolina.
On this old Snipes place here where my great-grandfather Wesley and Grandfather Fletcher, where this old log—we used it for a granery—it's in a big oak grove. And there was a big rock, I reckon four or five foot high and as big around as… I'd say twenty-five or thirty feet around. And right on the top of that there was a pinnacle, and the Indians had pestled out a thing shaped just like a top. It was big at the top, but they pestled out in this rock. Then it went down to a peak sort of. And it was supposed to have held exactly a peck of corn. They ground their meal, legend has it, at this old Indian rock. Well, there's two: there's one over there at the Nelly Blake place. And they'd take something like a mallet or something to beat that corn up, maybe and sift it. They claimed the Indians used that. Now that was handed down from my greatgrandfather; whether that's right or not I don't know.
Is that rock still there?
I think that in cleaning up down there, I think with the blasting one
time, I think that one's gone. Then there was one about as big as a bale
of cotton over there across the creek. And it set up like an egg, and
right in the top of that…. Now somebody bought that rock, somebody from
Chapel Hill, and got a front-end loader or something out there and
loaded that thing up and carried it away from there. They bought that
rock there in the old Dollar yard. Earl Dollar is in there close to the
old Blake place. But it helped to claim at that time just a peck of
corn.
After you ginned your cotton where would you bring the cotton? Would you leave it there at the gin?
No, we'd bring it back home and put it on the shelf, or either bring it on down to Carrboro, to the cotton mill there at Venable: the old Venable Cotton Mill there at Carrboro, way back yonder before it was ever named. It was Venable for years and years, Venable post office; it was Venable, North Carolina. And then Mr. Jule Carr (he's related to my people just a little bit), he started them Carr Mills, the Julian S. Carr in Durham. He started that other cotton mill there, and then they named the place instead of Venable it was Carrboro.
Right. Well, you would carry your cotton that far rather than carrying it over here?
Well, yes. We got a little better market there at Carrboro. We'd sell it there, and carry the cotton seed there. They shipped cotton seed there to the oil mills. They bought cotton seed there later on, long in the teens, '12 and '13, long in there and on up 'til…. I carried cotton there 'til 1925 or '6, I reckon. But the boll weevil just about broke me from trying to raise it; it'd eat it up. We'd carry the cotton and seed to Carrboro. And Mr. Dave Neville run a store there, and they bought….
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
We were talking about Carrboro, about bringing your cotton down to
Carrboro. And you said you would bring it there rather than bring it
over here to Bynum because you could get a better price. About how much
Well, right in the World War Number One it got up to forty cents. But it didn't stay there. Before that it was five, six cents in the early nineteen hundreds. But on up into the World War Number One it got to forty cents.
What were they paying here for the same?
There would probably be a cent or two under the market, maybe thirty-eight. They had a little better market, we always thought, at Carrboro.
But it would be worth it to you to take your wagon all the way down? Did you have a car by then?
No. First car I ever bought was in 1926.
So it would be worth it for you to take your wagon all the way down to Carrboro and sell your cotton there?
Yes sir. Well, see, weren't but one company store here, and most of the time when we carried our cotton then we bought our fall shoes. And maybe we'd buy then a little coffee and sugar and all for wintertime, you see. We didn't have that excess. There were several factors in it. We'd just rather go to Carrboro. It was about the same distance, a little farther to Carrboro maybe. But we had all those stores and drugstores and things there at Carrboro that we didn't have here. But that Depression was rough, I'm telling you.
Well, before we get to that, let's back up a little bit. You said you carried cross-ties down there also. How would you prepare those back on the farm?
Every morning (me and my wife lived up there in the woods)
So we were in the middle of preparing crossties.
Well, when it would come a rain maybe I had two or three days I couldn't plow. Well, I'd hew all my crossties that day. I'd have to take a drawing knife and skin them and saw them off. I had to get them out to the road. Then the next day I'd take those eight crossties with a two horse wagon and carry them to Carrboro. And at that time they'd bring about a dollar.
You would get a dollar for how many crossties?
A dollar apiece for about eight crossties. Well, then I could buy maybe a twenty-four pound sack of flour, five pounds of meat, five pounds of sugar and, oh, maybe salt and pepper and stuff that usually a family have. I'd buy my stuff with that, and then maybe I'd even catch up for it to rain no more in two or three months. If I didn't get a chance to cut no more I lived on that 'til we cut some more.
Well, why would you wait 'til it rained?
I couldn't plow. See, I'd have a leisure day. I couldn't plow the field; it'd be too wet to plow.
I see. So you'd cut some wood then.
I'd go out there and get me enough.
Now by the Depression do you mean after 1929, or before then?
Well, it was during '29. That was the reason we left from up there; that was about the year we left. We left them up there on Thanksgiving Day in 1929.
Well, let me just go back. There are a few things I forgot to ask you. I wanted to ask you: with nine children in the house, how big a house did you have? And what was the sleeping arrangement there?
Let's see: now if this was the entrance to your house, did you have a front porch?
No sir, wasn't a porch at the period.
So you'd come in and there's be what, one room?
There'd be a room on each side.
Was there a hall in the middle?
No sir. When you'd come in the door then there was a door
Was the kitchen connected?
It was connected to this one. That was just two rooms.
So where would you all sleep?
There were two beds in this little old shed room here for the boys, and the bunch of us slept in here. Poppa and Momma slept in this one. And Grandpa slept over here sort of in this corner. He died in 1912. I was standing there looking at him when he died. And then the girls—well, the girls stayed in there. We stayed in here with Grandpa, most of the times until after Grandpa died. And then we stayed in here and the girls stayed in here.
I see.
And my father and mother stayed in that one.
So how many boys would sleep in the bed?
Three. We'd just pile it up. That's anyway to keep warm. Two or three of us were piled up.
Now what about mealtime?
We had a long table.
Would you eat in the kitchen?
Yes sir. And also we had a little old dining…. At that time we did all
eat in the kitchen. There was a big fireplace, and
And that would be 1912?
I believed they moved in there in 1913.
And how big a house was that? Was that bigger?
It was a good deal bigger. It had a basement, a big basement. It was about five or six rooms. But it burned.
Did you have any particular seating arrangement when the whole family would sit down?
Oh, didn't have no chairs in the kitchen at all, except my Daddy was at one end and my mother at the other. We had a long bench on each side, wooden bench. My father'd sit at the head of the table and my mother at the foot. And they'd stack us young'uns in the two benches, four or five on each side there. A few times, well most of the time later, there was eleven of us eating at one time: nine young'uns, my father and mother. Then the older ones begin to get out of school, you know, later on.
What might be a typical dinner or supper for you?
Oh, it'd take a peck of snap beans and two pones of corn bread. It'd take a gallon of ice potatoes, and maybe a pot of cabbage or turnips or turnip greens.
How many times a week would you have meat?
We didn't have much. We didn't have none except what we raised. Now sometimes we'd have ham for breakfast, as long as there was ham. We'd kill about four hogs or three hogs, and maybe we'd have