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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Mareda Sigmon Cobb and Carrie Sigmon Yelton, June 16 and 18, 1979. Interview H-0115. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

The Cobbs decide not to have children

Though a surgery could have enabled Cobb and her husband to have children, they decided not to pursue that option. Cobb explains why.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Mareda Sigmon Cobb and Carrie Sigmon Yelton, June 16 and 18, 1979. Interview H-0115. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

I was married in 1925 and left that September.
JACQUELYN HALL:
How did you meet your husband?
MAREDA SIGMON COBB:
In Gastonia.
JACQUELYN HALL:
You had already gone to Gastonia?
MAREDA SIGMON COBB:
Yes. I went down there to work.
JACQUELYN HALL:
Why did you go to Gastonia?
MAREDA SIGMON COBB:
Me and two girlfriends of mine went down there. He was engaged to another girl, and he met me, and me and him got married. [Laughter]
JACQUELYN HALL:
How did that happen?
MAREDA SIGMON COBB:
I don't know.
ALVIN YELTON:
Think of the poor little girl. [Laughter]
MAREDA SIGMON COBB:
I don't know how it happened, but it did.
JACQUELYN HALL:
What happened to her, the poor fiancee?
MAREDA SIGMON COBB:
She was a friend of the family's , and his mother done picked her out. But it didn't work out that way, and me and him lived together forty-four and a half years.
JACQUELYN HALL:
Then he died?
MAREDA SIGMON COBB:
Yes. He died in 1970 on the ninth day of March.
JACQUELYN HALL:
You weren't able to have children?
MAREDA SIGMON COBB:
No. I could if I'd had an operation, but I didn't. I'd say something about it, and my husband would say, "Aw, what's the use? We're getting along all right." [Laughter] And I never did.
JACQUELYN HALL:
What kind of operation would you have had to have?
MAREDA SIGMON COBB:
I'd have to have my womb straightened. I had a friend that had that done, and that's what caused me not to. When we was living in Hickory, I went to Dr. Medsey(), and he told me this and I went home and told her. Her and her husband was living in an apartment at Highland, and me and my husband was living in another apartment beside of them. She said, "You reckon that's what's the matter with me?" I said, "I don't know." She said, "Will you go with me if I go up there?" I said, "Yes." She went up at Love's. She was married six years and two months and didn't have any children, and in the next six years and four months she had six. [Laughter]
CARRIE SIGMON YELTON:
They had the surgery. That's what was so funny; they had to give her surgery to quit.
JACQUELYN HALL:
So you didn't want to follow that example.
MAREDA SIGMON COBB:
No. But she loved... I mean she was more... Everybody ain't alike with kids, you know. Of course, I wouldn't have minded if I had one. I thought well, if I was supposed to I would have; if I ain't, I ain't, so I never did go to the hospital.