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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-0248, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
Alice Grogan Hardin grew up on a farm in Greenville County, SC, working there until financial trouble pushed her family into textile mill work. Grogan remembers farm work and mill work in this interview, offering insights on rural southern life in the first half of the 20th century. Her memories of Woodside Mill, the largest in the South, are largely positive: the mill fostered a strong community, and the only strike she remembers seemed to end without incident. This interview provides a colorful glimpse into the patterns of rural southern life.
Alice Grogan Hardin remembers her early years in the rural Greenville County, SC, on the farm and at the mill.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
. . . part of Greenville County, and my daddy was a farmer. He had eight
children, five boys and three girls. I was the oldest girl. I went to
work helping my mother around the house when I was five years old. Then
when I got old enough to pick cotton, I went to the field and picked
cotton. And we'd pick cotton all day, and we'd come in and have an hour
for dinner. And during blackberry time, we'd pick blackberries during
that hour. And if it wasn't blackberry time, we'd sing. I'd play the
organ, and we'd sing. And we sung the old-timey songs like
"When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder" and
"Bringing in the Sheaves" and "Down at the
Cross", just old-timey songs like that. My mother was a good
singer. My daddy played the violin, and this neighbor of ours played the
violin, and I played the organ. And we'd go around and have parties and
play for people. Then we'd play for square dances. Then as we grew up
and got older, the family would all work: the boys and the sisters, too,
as they got old enough to work. I had four brothers older than I am; one
was younger than me. We had a good time; it was a happy time. My daddy
thrashed his own wheat most of the time. The thrashers would come and
thrash wheat all day long. My mother and whoever she could get to help
her fix dinner would cook dinner for all the workers. Then when we got
older we moved closer in the country to Greenville, and we still farmed
while we was there. All of us children went to school. We canned
everything we ate. Daddy raised everything he ate. He raised his hogs;
he raised his cattle. And we canned vegetables, and we canned fruits,
dried apples, dried peaches, and just had everything at home. Times
would get hard sometimes, but we still had our food at home. We didn't
have water everywhere we lived close to the house. We'd carry it from a
spring. We'd bring several pails full of water, enough to do till the
next morning. That was the children's jobs, to go get water the next
morning before we went to
In the country, how we did to cool our things, we'd put our butter in a
gallon bucket and put a lid on it and let it down in the well, or
Kerosene.
Kerosene lamps. We didn't have any screen doors. We didn't have any screen windows or anything like that. It's just a lot of difference now to what it was back then.
What were your mother and father's names?
Charlie Grogan and Lydia Jane (Janie) Grogan.
How big a farm did you have at first?
I don't remember. It was pretty good size. We didn't buy our farms ourself; we rented them.
Do you remember what kind of arrangements you'd work out to rent . . .
Generally he had to pay a third of everything he made on the farm.
Did he have his own tools and mules?
Yes, he had his own mules and plows and hoes and everything he
And the cash crop was cotton?
Yes. Cotton and corn.
You also grew some wheat.
Oh, yes, we grew our bread. And we'd take our corn to the corn mill and have it ground for meal.
What would you do after you had threshed the wheat?
He'd have to take it to a mill to have it ground.
Was there one nearby?
Yes, there was one at Fountain Inn, I believe, then.
The place you ground corn and the place you ground the wheat were different.
Yes, it wasn't the same place.
You said your grandmother lived
Yes, she lived with us for years and years after my granddaddy died.
Which side of the family was that on?
That was on my mother's side; that was her mother.
What was her name?
Lou Barnett.
Had they been farmers?
She [and her husband] had been farmers before, yes.
What about on your father's side?
My grandfather stayed with us some. He was a furniture maker. He made chairs and swings and all kind of outdoor furniture. And indoor, too, if anybody wanted it.
How did he get started in that?
I don't remember, but I do know that uptown here, on the rich people's porches, you could see his work sitting on their porch. It was very pretty work.
Do you know where your grandparents said the family had originally come from or how they got into this part of the country?
We are partly Dutch. I don't know where they originally come from, but most of my daddy's people lived on down below Union and down in that part of the country, from my remembrance.
Would your mother do work out in the field?
Oh, yes.
Would she plow?
No, she would hoe and pick cotton. That's what the girls did, and the boys done the plowing.
What about when she had her children?
She had her children at home. They didn't go to the hospital to have children then; they had them at home.
Did she have someone help deliver?
Oh, yes, doctors. Doctors and midwives, they call them. Back when I was little, they kept things a secret from you more so than they do now in that line. You didn't know as much what was going on till after it had done happened.
They wouldn't ever talk about . . .
They wouldn't talk about raising children. Now if they was planning on another one coming, they wouldn't tell it like they do now. It was just kept a secret, all that stuff. And if we had company, us children had to go out and play. We didn't get to stay where our parents was to hear what was said, like they do today. You know, children today hear everything that's said, and back then you didn't.
I've heard people say that when babies were being delivered, sometimes the children would be taken somewhere else.
I was the oldest girl, and when I was about thirteen, why, I'd take them out, maybe off to play or off to the barn somewhere and stay all day long. You know, if it took that long. But we didn't get to stick our head in that door while nothing was going on.
And it was never ever explained to you, any of these matters about birth control or anything like that.
No. They thought it was a crime to talk about that in front of a child then. But now it's different.
What would happen to women who had children and were not married who lived in those rural communities back then?
I had a girl that went to school with me that wasn't married, and I didn't even know anything about her baby or anything. But one morning I was getting ready to go to school, and her daddy come to Mother's house for her. Her baby had been born, and she had put it in a dresser drawer and killed it. Her mother was dead, and she was about fifteen years old. If she was as ignorant and as green as I was, she didn't know what to do with it, so that's what she did with it. And so he come for my mother, but it was a long time after then before I ever knew what had happened. She wouldn't tell it, see.
Did she stay in the community, or did she have to leave the community?
No, her daddy kept her.
And she just went right on like . . .
Yes. When I went to school, I had to walk about four miles there and four back.
What about the names of your brothers and sisters, in the order that
My oldest brother was Willie Grogan; the next one was Horace Grogan; the next one was Homer Grogan; the next one was Lawrence Grogan; the next one was Louis Grogan. I was after Homer Grogan, and then Lawrence, and then my sister Lily Mae that's dead. And I've got a sister that's living in Florida, Clara Nix; she was Clara Grogan then. I've got two brothers living, and one sister.
How old were you when you all moved into the Woodside Cotton Mill?
I was fifteen.
Was that when you started to work?
Yes.
You were the oldest.
Yes, I went to work, and my three oldest brothers went to work, and Daddy went to work. Then Mother went to work through dinner hours.
What would she do during the dinner hours?
She filled batteries in the weave shop.
And she would do that every day.
Yes, every day.
From twelve to one?
From eleven till one. They worked two hours. See, they'd start going out in the mill at different times, and she'd go on different sets of batteries to relieve the one that was going off for their lunch.
When you went into the mill, had you ever been in a mill before?
Hadn't ever been in it in my life.
Can you remember that first . . .
I remember the first day I went in that mill. Spinning was what I went to
work at, in the spinning room. And I put up an end on a spinning
Had your father ever done mill work before?
No, not before then. Didn't any of us had done any before then.
How was it that he got this job for you all, or how did he find out about it?
We lived right around, not too far from Greenville, all of our life. Things had got tough in the country the way they started doing, so he just went and asked for a job, and they give us a job and a house. Back then I think they charged two dollars a week for a house, as well as I remember.
Do you remember that it was any kind of harder work or different hours you had to get adjusted to, or anything different about working in the mill from working on the farm?
Us children liked the mill work then better, because when we [had] worked our hours, we was off. And we had our chores to do on the farm.
So it seemed a little easier to work in the mill?
Yes, we thought it was easier. We had more time to do what we wanted to.
Do you remember any other incidents from the very first times that you all went into the mill, anything that your brothers or your father might have said, or how they reacted to it at first?
I don't think my father liked it at all, because he had rather be on the farm. But I think my brothers might have liked it all right. They never did say too much about it.
So the reason that you all came in . . .
Farming, where you rented, was getting difficult to make a living. That's the reason we moved to the mill.
Do you ever remember people having this disease they call pellagra?
I had it when I was a child.
How do you know that that's what it was?
They told me it was, and I was in the St. Francis Hospital, and the General Hospital. When I took it, I was a child about eleven years old. I was fair-complected, and my mother thought I was sunburned, because I was red on my arms. She carried me to the doctor, and he told her that that's what it was.
What time of the year did you get it?
It was worse in the spring and the fall than any other time.
What did you come to believe was the cause of that?
The doctors claimed there wasn't enough iodine in the food that we was
getting. So they gave me
Did that do any good?
Yes.
You were in the hospital in what city?
Up here, in St. Francis. Not this new one, but the old one, before they built the new one.
Was that before you all moved here?
No, we was already moved here. That's after me and Grover married. Mother carried me to old Dr. Jackson at Greer when I was a child. Somebody told her that he could cure it.
That's when you first noticed it.
Yes.
You were living out on the farm.
Yes. He just drove it on inside, a lot of other doctors told me.
It would come back just at certain times of the year?
Yes.
The first time you remember it, how old do you reckon you were?
I was about eleven when I was living in the country.
Did your brothers and sisters get it?
Didn't any of them have it but me.
Anybody else that you know of in the neighborhood?
Yes, I heard my mother talk about somebody that lived in the neighborhood that did, but I never did see them.
It seems to have been a pretty common thing back then.
Yes, back then it was common, but I didn't know it at that time. See, I never have been a big eater, and I never eat[en], I guess, like I should, different things. And the boys did; they was all good eaters, and so none of them had it but me. But I've been well of it now for years. I reckon I'm well; I've not had any trouble with it.
Could you remember any more about how it felt when you had that?
I just felt weak and rundown, like you maybe had spring fever, they call it. You just felt bad and weak. But see, I didn't think anything about it, because I thought I was sunburned, just like my mother thought. But it wasn't that; it was. . . .
How far did you all go in school?
I was promoted to the eleventh grade. And my mother wanted me to go. I'd have finished in the eleventh. Back then there wasn't only the eleventh grade. And I didn't; I quit.
That was when you were here in Greenville.
Yes.
Where did you go to school?
I went to Mauldin School, and I went to Pliney, and I went to. . . . I went to three schools, I reckon. I might have just went to two.
What about when you were here in Greenville?
I would have went to Parker if I'd . . .
But you never did actually go.
No.
You stopped when you all moved here?
Yes. I went to work. I'd been used to working, and I wanted to work.
What about your brothers and sisters?
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
At Woodside, were you able to have a garden?
Yes, if we lived where we could have a spot that didn't have anything on it, we'd have a garden.
Did your family have one when you were living there?
Yes.
Did any of your brothers and sisters keep on going to school after you all moved here to Greenville?
The younger ones did. They weren't old enough to go to work.
You said you were fifteen years old when you moved here, so that put it at about 1926.
Yes.
Talk a little bit about what sort of people were the bosses and the overseers. What were they like? What kind of personalities did they have, and how did the people that worked for them get along . . .
Some of them had real good personalities, and some of them were overbearing. Most of them were real nice to me when I worked. Of course, I didn't work but about four years.
Do you remember any cases where sometimes people who were working in the mill wouldn't like a particular overseer?
Oh, yes.
Could they do anything?
Some of them wasn't real good to people. There wasn't anything they could do about it. They could quit or work, because they didn't have any union to go to, so if they were mistreated they just had to work or quit.
You all got married in 1928.
Yes.
When did you have your first child?
In about six years.
1929 was when you had to stay in bed for seven or eight months over here.
I think it was later than that, because it was when my first baby was born. My first baby died, and I think it was after then.
So you had that real bad case of it.
Yes, when he was born.
And you quit working at the mill after about four years at Woodside?
Yes.
That would have been about 1930. You all had been married a year or two, and then you stopped.
Yes.
Why did you decide to do that?
There was something happened up there one day that I didn't like, and I
quit.
Can you tell me about it?
It was about my drawing. I don't remember exactly how it was. It was something the second hand said to me. I was running drawing in the card room then. I didn't like something he said, so I just walked out.
Was he trying to make you go faster?
He was trying to make me do something I wasn't supposed to do.
Another part of your job?
Yes.
Give you more work?
Yes. Only he didn't go at it right. He was kind of overbearing with it.
Was he someone you'd been working with for a good while, or he'd just come on?
I'd worked for him ever since I'd worked down there, but I didn't work in the card room long at all. I worked in the spinning room most of my time.
Did they ever try to speed up your work while you were working?
Yes, sometimes. We had a lot of cleaning up to do when I worked.
In the spinning room?
Oh, yes. We had to stop off our frames and clean the gears.
How many frames did they give you to work?
When I first started to work, I learned on two. And then it kept getting on up till I had eight and ten, sometimes twelve, just how many they needed me to run.
How many hours would you be working?
Ten hours.
When you had to stop to clean the gears, would that be during your ten hours?
Yes, that was during work time.
Would you get paid for doing that at all?
You got paid so much a frame. You just got paid for so much a spinning frame that you run.
So it's kind of like being paid by the hour, or being paid by a certain amount of . . .
Well, I guess. Now when I first started to work, they paid, I believe it was twenty cents a frame, or forty. And the more frames you run, the more money you made.
That's a daily wage.
Yes.
When you first started out, did they give you your own individual pay, or did it all go to your father and he divided it up, or how did that work?
When we first started to work, we give it to him.
They would pay you, and then you'd turn it over.
Yes.
How long were you all there before your father died?
No, it was after we got married that he died. I think he died in 1930.
How old was he then?
He was sixty-three.
Did he ever get used to working in the mill or ever come to like that kind of work?
Yes, I think he finally liked it pretty good.
Was he a weaver, or did he do something else in the weave room?
I think he done most anything in there except weave.
And then your mother died after . . .
Three years after he did.
And you say you raised, really, three families.
His [Grover's] sister and brother and my two brothers and sister.
Going back to when you were brought up, you have already said something about the way they talked about different kind of questions about morality and things like that. Were they strict parents?
Oh, yes.
Could you talk a little bit about it?
We didn't get to do like children do now. If there was any church services going on, revivals or anything, we had to go to that.
What church did your parents belong to?
My mother was a Baptist. My daddy was a Methodist.
Did they go pretty regularly?
Yes. They carried us.
About every week, or once or twice a week?
No. We lived close to churches nearly everywhere we lived, and we had to be in them.
So it might be two or three times a week?
Yes, we had to go every time they had anything to do.
Would you all sit together in the church?
Yes.
Did they tell you how to behave while you were there?
Oh, yes. We had to set still as a mouse.
And not talk or . . .
Yes.
Did they ever whip you all?
I can't remember ever getting a whipping. I do one time from my mother, yes, but my daddy never hit any of us children a lick in his life, I don't reckon. If there was any whipping done, Mother did it.
But they were still pretty strict.
Oh, yes.
Did they teach you all to respect older people and people older than you were?
Yes, we had to respect the elderly people. Sure did.
Did they ever say anything about whether you should say "Yes" or "No" or "Yes, ma'am" or "No, ma'am"?
"Yes, ma'am" and "No, sir".
Can you remember anything else like that that they ever told you about how to behave?
They taught us to be honest, to never tell a lie about anything.
Did they have any attitude about work?
You mean how we got along working? We got along good a-working. They didn't push us or anything, because all of us knew to do our part.
When you all were living on this farm and you had the tornado coming
Yes.
Can you remember all that?
Yes, I can remember it. It just come so quick. You don't know they're happening till it's all over with. It turned dark as night, and it poured rain just hard as it could pour. And it blowed trees down on our house, and part of our house away. It blowed all of our outbuildings away. It didn't hurt our horses; they were standing. It just took it off of them. It blowed away everything else we had. And after then I was scared every time a cloud come up, afraid it was coming a tornado.
When you worked at Woodside Mill, is that when they were claiming that it was the biggest cotton mill under one roof in . . .
Textile mill in the South. Largest.
Did that make any difference in people working there, the fact that it was the biggest one? Did that have any effect on whether or not you got to know everybody that was working there or. . . .
Oh, you got to know them, everybody that worked around in the same room you did.
Did they ever have any kind of strikes while you were at the Woodside Mill?
They had one, but not when I was a-working.
Was it later?
It was later. It was in the thirties, but I don't remember what year. They had a union then. They had organized, but something happened; the union fell apart.
Do you remember them ever trying to organize while you were working?
No.
Did you hear about it at all anywhere else while you were working?
No.
What do you remember about the strike that they did have later on at Woodside?
Grover went out on strike. They went out for the battery fillers, I think, in the weave shop. They all went out for them, but they went back to work before any of the rest did. They didn't stay out till they could win what they went out for.
It was illegal. If they put something else on you, you were supposed to
try it out and then do your kicking. But when they put
it on them, they quit then.
They were trying to make them fill more batteries?
Yes, they was trying to give them more batteries there to fill, and they
thought they had their hands full, and so they just pulled a strike.
They didn't shut the mill down, but they closed it down some, because
some of the hands would go in and out.
You stopped working there at the Woodside Mill. You [Grover Hardin] stayed on and worked at Woodside a long time. Did you ever think about going back to work in the mill at all?
No.
You had your hands full.
Yes, I had my hands full at the house.
What did you say to your children about working in the textile mill?
I told them I wanted them to get their schooling to where they wouldn't never have to work there. This one finished at Parker, and then she took several courses at different colleges.
What about your other daughter?
My other daughter didn't finish. She got married in the eleventh grade.
Did she go to Parker?
Yes.
Were you all involved in the Parker, all the activities they had going on over in that . . .
No. Nothing only the PTA's, I'd go. But I was in the grammar schools. I helped out in them all the time. I was grade mother, and if I could help the teachers any way I did, and I went with them on parties with the children and helped with them, and the PTA's and everything. I was always there.
Were the people that were elected the officers and all of the PTA folks that were working there in the communities and in the mills?
Yes.
It seems like it was a real active district.
Yes. I don't think there's as much going on in Parker as there used to be. We all used to look forward to the Parker-Greenville High Thanksgiving game. Well, it's not like it used to be.
I was reading in the newspaper about a suggestion someone had made even that the Parker School might be closed eventually.
Yes.
I guess so many of the mills over there have closed that there aren't as many young people coming along.
There's, I think, more colored people going up there now than white people.
. . . ask you one or two more questions about this musical side of
No. See, when we made our music was when we was in the country.
When you came into Greenville, did you ever hear any songs like that on
the phonograph, or anybody ever singing
I don't remember if I did.
Did you keep playing music at all after you left the country?
Some I did, yes.
Did you all bring your organ into town?
Yes, we had it after we moved here. But it wasn't too long after Mother died till we let this church have it. They was a-wanting it so bad, and we let them have it.
Did you keep playing the organ or the piano or anything?
Well, I play the piano a little bit. Not much. I used to play at school when we had our prayer every morning. Maybe sing a song, and I used to play for them.
So you would be playing gospel religious songs?
At school not every time. It'd be something that the children could sing.
What would be some other songs? Can you think of any that you played? Would you read the notes in a book, or you just played?
No, I played by ear.
What were some of the favorite ones that you played for the children? Would they sing or dance?
Yes, we used to have plays, and we'd sing and dance. We had
Did you keep on canning vegetables and things like that?
Oh, yes. I can every year.
Did the women in the community ever get together and sew things together?
Yes, to quilt and . . .
You did do some quilts.
Yes. And we'd get together and have cotton picking. You know, we'd pull the bolls off when it'd get so cold in the wintertime. Several families would get together, whoever had it to do, and help them pick it out. And we've had what they call corn-shuckings and . . .
Wheat-threshings. You told about that. What about when you came to Greenville? Did you ever go to any quilting bees?
No, after I moved to Greenville I didn't. At Greenville about the only
recreation that young people had then was fruit suppers, they called it.
Each one that come would bring a little bag of fruit. We'd put it all
together on the table, and we'd play games and things like that.
When we first come to the mill, everybody was alike. Everybody you would
meet was friendly, and they wasn't too good to speak to you or too good
to stop with you. And they always was eager to help in any way that
Which one did you go to?
Woodside Baptist.
Who was the minister there?
Preacher Harbin and Preacher Sparks and Preacher Fisk. There have been a lot of preachers there since then. Preacher Harbin stayed about fifteen years at that church.
Did you think things changed since then, that people later became more . . .
People nowadays is not as sociable as they used to be. They may be still, deep down, as good a people as they ever were, but they're just not sociable. They don't visit like they used to. Some of them don't have time, I guess. And some of them's like me; they just don't visit much.
Did this Preacher Harbin have kind of a strong influence on the community there?
Yes, he visited a lot from house to house on the Woodside village.
Do you know if the mill company itself helped to support the church then?
Yes.
Helped to pay for the salaries?
I don't know about the salary, but they helped build the church and give them the land it's built on.
The mill had baseball teams, I think you said.
Yes, we've been to the baseball teams.
Different mills had their teams.
Yes.
Did they ever sponsor a brass band?
Yes, they used to, and we used to have barbecue dinners down in the ballpark, and everybody'd get together.
When would that be?
That would be mostly in the summer.
The Fourth of July?
Yes.
So you do remember that the mill sponsored what they would call a brass band, horn instruments?
There was some kind. Now I don't know whether the mill paid for it or not. I never did know of the mill paying for the band or anything.
END OF INTERVIEW