Documenting the American South Logo
Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Nell Putnam Sigmon, December 13, 1979. Interview H-0143. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

Home remedy and helping one's neighbor

When a neighboring child fell ill, Sigmon's mother went and nursed it back to health.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Nell Putnam Sigmon, December 13, 1979. Interview H-0143. 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

Mother was an awful good mother, and a real good woman.
JACQUELYN HALL:
What was it that made her such a good woman?
NELL PUTNAM SIGMON:
I don't know. She was just liked by everybody. She was just so good to everybody. I never will forget one time. We lived beside of some people, and their baby was just a little thing, and it had pneumonia. And Mother stayed out there at their house so much. And one night it was choking up, and they come for Mother. Said they wanted her to come back out there, that their baby had took another choking spell. But the doctor said it was so sick, they didn't think he'd make it. And they didn't put it in the hospital. People didn't used to go to the hospital, it seems like. And Mother went out there during the night. They come to get her, and she said, "I'm going to leave you all a while. They've come for me to go out there and sit with that baby a while." So Mother went out there and greased that baby real good that night and set up and held [helped?] him.
JACQUELYN HALL:
Greased the baby?
NELL PUTNAM SIGMON:
Yes. With Vicks. And set out there with that baby that night. They said every time Mother left, the baby would get worse.
JACQUELYN HALL:
Did she do that for other people, go when someone was sick?
NELL PUTNAM SIGMON:
No, she just did it for those people. She thought a whole lot of them.