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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-0290, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
Orlin P. Shuping ran a mill in Rowan County, NC. Until roads allowed Rowan residents easy access to nearby towns, Shuping's mill was a major provider of goods and services. Not only did Shuping mill cotton and lumber, he also sold animal feed and ground corn and wheat, often keeping a portion of the goods as payment. In this interview, Shuping reflects briefly on the changes that have taken place in Rowan County since his birth in 1903 and the daily workings of the milling process. Shuping never shut the mill down—which was first run by his father—until shortly before this interview took place, but he describes it as a vestige of an older mode of life forever altered by the changes that have taken place, and continue to take place, in rural North Carolina.
Orlin P. Shuping describes running a mill in Rowan County, NC.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
The following is an interview with Mr. Orlin P. Shuping conducted by Brent Glass. The date is June 15, 1975. The place is Mr. Shuping's mill in Rowan County.
Mr. Shuping, I thought I would start out by asking you the date of your birth and where you were born.
I was born March 4, on a winday day, 1903, Township, Rowan County, North Carolina.
Latticer.
Latticer, right.
Your parents were Michael Shuping …
My parents were William Augustus Shuping and my mother, Lily Oriana Miller.
How long had your parents lived in Rowan County? Was your mother from Rowan County?
Yes, they were both from Rowan.
They had been born in Rowan?
Born and raised in Rowan County. In the present Rowan County that's near Salisbury, ten miles from Salisbury we'll say.
How far back does your family go in Rowan County?
We have about three generations back that
After about thirty years or so they came from Pennsylvania to North Carolina?
That was from Munich to Pennsylvania. They had a year or two getting across. There was no ships available. The Queen England happened to be a Lutheran and she was interested in these people from Germany. She provided a way, they said, for about three thousand to come to Pennsylvania. They stopped in Pennsylvania because they like the country. It resembled their home country in Bavaria and upper Rhine. They stayed two years on the Dutch border. My people, the Rheiners, were poor people and were not very well educated. They talked what we would consider flat language now and they switched it to Dutch. Actually it was nothing but low German. Once they got here and up to about 1840, some of the churches here preached in high German and the countryside talked mostly in low German.
You're saying then that the Shuping family was among those who came …
… among those. Although we've got no records that shows, the name's been changed so many times like lots of others. Our present governor, Jim Holshouser of Woodhauser, his people came of this very immediate area at the same time.
You told me what the name once was at one time …
Schupping--S-C-H-U-P-P-I-N-G- or you could get it S-C-H-U-P-P-I-N-G-S-K-I-D-T.
How did you pronounce that?
Schuppingskidt, if you can twist your tongue enough to get it. There's other ways. Since these people were not very well educated, they cut the letters down. Many other names too, like Kryder. Holshouser is Woodhauser in English. It's not been cut down but lots of the others have eliminated a lot of the letters. It makes them harder to pronounce instead of easier. When you take the ‘c’ out of a name where there's an ‘s’ in front of it, it makes it harder to pronounce; like, Sifford. If you put it Scifford it'll prounce easier. Scifford. Many others too.
You told me your father was a miller. What
Moses Shupping, he run a saw mill and a cotton gin.
That's your great grandfather.
My great grandfather. Michael Shupping served four years in the Civil War. Then he came back and he run the mill where we just came from. That was bought originally from his uncle, Henry Overcast, Heinrich in German. He married my grandmother and she was an Overcast, Obergosh if you want to get in this German. He run it until he died in 1895. He died at the age of fifty-five. My father was in Pennsylvania in school, in college at State Normal in western Pennsylvania, and he came back here. He and his brother bought the saw mill and boiler engine and other things that's mentioned in the early deed there. They run it. My father's brother died in 1905 …
What was his name?
Jim, James Munroe. And he died at the age of thirty-five of typhoid fever which was a very popular thing to die from in that time because these old mill ponds created a lot of typhoid fever and mosquitoes. The graveyards are filled with early deaths for that reason alone.
Of
No, I mean the community. The whole area suffered. In any old cemeteries
you'll find a lot of young people died, in particular
children from malaria and things like that. My father came back from
Pennsylvania and he run the flour mill here. They run the saw mill a few
years there before. At the turn of the century, people wanted to have
roll mills instead of rock corn mills to grind their
Why was that?
It was just the change of times. They put in roller mills so they decided to put in a roller mill in here. They moved the old saw mill from down in the old mill place here and run by steam.
The old mill place is the place just south of here?
Yes, where we just came from. Where the water runs.
That's the old Shupping homeplace?
Right.
You said that your grandfather lived on that place for how long, from what date about?
My grandfather lived there from 1865 till 1895 when he died but he only
lived a mile further
That's your great grandfather?
Yes.
In other words, there's four generations of millers in the Shupping family?
That's right.
You don't know what this generation did. Were they farmers?
I don't know. That I don't know.
But at least four that we know of Moses Shupping, Michael Shupping, William Shupping and yourself are all millers.
That's right, all millers. My mother was a miller on top of it.
Her name was Miller.
Yeah. She came in with that bunch of Germans that came over here, the Melchers. The Melchers and your Crests …
… and Fisher …
… all of those are German names. All of them were of that
original group that came here. There was another set of Lutherans,
Getting back to the mill here, in 1900 they decided to build a flour mill. They moved the corn mill here. We call it the Rock Mill.
Corn mill from down …
… the old place, a half mile down. Then they bring it up here and use it here. In fact, we used it till 1965.
The corn mill was operating?
Yes.
This one that's right here on the corner?
Yes. It could be operated today. It could be; it's not.
When they moved the corn mill here in 1900 there was already a saw mill operating?
The saw mill was ahead of that five years.
1895 the saw mill was built, began operating.
The deed was recorded then.
That was operated by the Talbot and …
Yes, that's right. There was also a cotton gin.
A cotton gin already here before the corn mill?
It was the same, before the corn mill. It was here with the saw mill and pla ner.
Just like in the deed.
Yes, that's right. The flour mill is actually five years younger than the engines and other things. They always said the engines were second-handed when brought here, and boiler. This is not the original boiler. The original boiler gave out in 1917, I think I looked it up. This one that's here has been here since 1917--that's almost sixty years.
We can get into machinery later on. You've taken care of the idea of the property ownership with those deeds. Who designed the mill?
They sent someone down to design it?
I'm sure that's right. I think I'm
correct on that. They sent a man out that sold mills and he
What kind of saw mill did you have?
We had Fricks part of the time and we had Ladell part of the time and lastly we had a Frick. I think there were five there but what the others were I just don't happen to know. There's a Fricks made out about eighty miles from Washington in Waynsville, Pennsylvania.
Ladell was made in …
… Charlotte. They built it there. It was sorry. It was sorry;
it was made in the South. The cotton gins were made in Atlanta.
You pointed that out to me.
They were made down there. That old cotton gin up there should be in a museum before it completely disintegrates.
Did they ever have a cotton bailer here do you know, or a cotton press?
Yeah. I think we've got one over there now. It's not there in its entirety but it's near enough.
In the deed I noticed there was a molasses factory. Did you ever have a sorghum mill here?
The man had it when he sold it the first time.
Did they ever operate it again?
I think they did for a year or two. That was back seven or eight years before I was born.
You never saw it.
No, I don't remember it.
No one brought their cane here.
They brought it down below this lumber stack here where the spring was where they had plenty of good water.
What did they do? When you were alive they brought cane here?
No. They probably used it five or six years but it was all before my time. I was born 1903; that was 1895 till that time. I don't know for sure about how long they made molasses there.
Did they ever have a cider press?
No, they didn't have any. They didn't have apples enough to eat hardly. Well, I wouldn't say that. We don't have any apples to talk about here.
Did your dad have any partner?
His brother.
And then his brother died.
Then he taken it over.
By himself.
He bought it out. He run it till 1935 when he died, almost '36, December 1.
When was the first time that you worked at the mill?
When I was big enough to carry buckets of water from the spring, half gallen buckets full of fresh water.
That was your first job?
Well, you know, I'd sweep and things like that. Then I got up bran. We'd run flour mill and we'd have farmers and other people come to the mill every work day. But two day a year we didn't work, Fourth of July and Christmas.
Sundays you worked?
No, no Sundays but work Saturdays.
What time would the mill open in the morning?
That kind of depended on how smart you was. If the weather was good, we'd open pretty early. Snowing or sleeting we probably wouldn't open till eight or eight-thirty.
How late did you operate?
Back then we'd usually close before dark. After we got electric lights in 1925, we made our electric lights in 1925, we had what you'd call a farm plant--still got the generator yet.
You ran that off the steam engine?
We had a gas engine if we didn't have steam up. Maybe it'd snow a couple of days and we wouldn't have steam up every day. People couldn't get here. You'd run it with a gasoline engine. We furnished the miller's house with the same power.
You said farmers came every day. How big an area did this mill serve?
Quite a few of them came six and eight miles.
That would be the furthest distance?
I few scattered ones might have been farther than that but that was just
the territory. Whenever we got more than six miles, we'd run
into Rockville. They had a mill. China Grove, the other; Salisbury nine
miles and they had two mills. Mount Pleasant, thirteen, fourteen miles,
they had a mill. We got them more than half way to Mount Pleasant which
is approximately fourteen miles but we'd get them six or
seven. The farmers, most
They brought these things in on wagons?
Most of them wagons and a few buggies; some on horseback. I have seen people carry fifty, and I know one woman that a number of times carried a hundred pounds of flour. I don't see why she done it. She wasn't no larger a man than you are and she carried it a mile and a half down to her home. She done it more than one time. By the way, I have some old record books that we'll get into later on. It gives dates and things.
How did the farmers pay you?
We're told most of it; told it.
What does that mean?
‘Told’ is a sharecropper. In other words, a man brang a bushel of wheat. Let's break it down. He got twelve pounds of bran and thirty-eight pounds of flour. The miller kept the rest. That's thirty-eight and forty-nine, fifty. The miller kept the other ten for dirt and his share.
And then you'd se ll it?
Then we'd each sell it. At that time, whenever you wanted
flour you didn't go to the store. They didn't have
it. Now you can go to the store and buy
Where did these people come from?
Mostly in the neighborhood. You always had someone who wasn't
farming. He was an industrial worker or he didn't like to
work too well and he
Did the farmers ever come here for any other reason? They brought cord wood here.
Yeah, we bought cord wood to run the boiler with. Also we cleaned seed grain. They also came here and listed their taxes. This was the place to list their taxes. The list taker was here.
What about polling? Where did they go to vote?
They went to the next crossroads up here. We had a post office until the rural routes came but I don't remember. That was a little too far back for me. It must have been 1903 or '04 when I was a baby, when the rural routes came. We've been on two rural routes ever since then. They just happened to cross here. All these years.
What about this telephone booth?
I would say we put that in in 1908 or 1909. We had three telephones on the line--one at our home, that's where we was down where the high is, and one to the man that worked with us and one here at the mill.
That was the only three in the whole area?
The only three. Nobody else had any; not very few in the cities. Maybe a
city the size about Salisbury would have fifty phones maybe, something
like that. Not many. Very rich people had nobody to call except
themselves. Everything went by telegram or by letter then. I
don't think that the mail was delivered here but two or three
days a week. I think it was three days a week, by horseback. Later on
they put in buggies. They had special buggies built for mail carriers.
Then they came by motorcycle. Then by T-models and other things
Where did you get your lumber from?
There was plenty of it growed here.
You'd use your own lumber for the saw mill?
No, we usually bought it.
From where?
From anybody who wants to sell it.
From farmers?
Everybody had lumber. Here was the thing too. The farmer didn't have any money and probably would help saw logs and give you some lumber to pay you yet. Then you could use the lumber and sell it if you could. One time we sold a lot of lumber here. Later on, use to buy it by the car load lots and wood shingles from the West Goast. That was long before you boys were little fellows. We trucked in later and they're still hauling logs out of the area now. Seen some pass us.
They also brought cotton here, right? There'd be ginnedand baled.
Yes, and then hauled to the cotton mill, the ones were bought in this area.
Why didn't they take it straight over to the mill? Wouldn't they do it over there?
No, they didn't do that. One or two of the mills did, but
nmost of them didn't. We used to have
Have you seen the farmers go through some pretty hard times?
I have, yes. Especially in 1913 right before World War I. They couldn't sell their cotton. Woodrow Wilson was president. They had a theme up for going around, "Buy a bale of cotton," that would help the cotton farmer. You couldn't ever sell the cotton; there was no market. As soon as France and Germany and England got into World War I, it made a market for it. Then 1917, April 6 or something like that, the United States declared war on Germany. Then everything moved along to 1921. We had another depression like we had a few months ago, or maybe worse. It lasted about a year. It was really bad.
How did your's or your father's business go? Did it fluctuate?
Oh, yes.
With how successful the farmers were doing?
Yes, and generally the nation. People buy more when they've got money. That was before the automobile ages. I used to make wagon belts. I run a little shop
Where was that?
When I was a young fellow. That was just some of the things you did. I was just a young fellow and have us a little time and build a wagon bed for a farmer or quilt frames for the ladies. Anything to make money. Like these fellows in the city. They'll set a lot of didfferent things in order to make money.
Would you say that this was a pretty successful business, the milling business?
It was until the good roads came. My father was awful strong for good roads. When we got good roads and automobiles the business quit.
Why was that?
They was going into town to get some work done on a tooth and had to go to the bank or they had to go to the drugstore. There'd set a bag of wheat in the car and do it all in one trip and there was nothing here except the lumber and flour and corn meal.
You weren't selling drugs or other things.
A man going into Rockville or China Grove
Goodwin's?
No, I don't think it's Goodwin's.
We can talk about that later.
We lost one by fire years ago.
The good roads did in the cross-roads mill.
They ruined it. The first place is that the decision was wrong. Their
decision was to build the mill where the farmers was and the wheat. They
should have built it near at a railroad siding and a little town. At
that time, people went to the railroad to get on the train to go to the
county seat or wherenot. They had something to go for besides wheat. It
was the wrong place here and every other place. Of course, anybody
realized it
Did you ever think of moving it?
It wouldn't be practical. No, it would be very expensive then. We tried to get electric power here in 1926 or '27 and they wanted three thousand dol-dallars to hook us up. Well, three thousand dollars then was a lot of money. It's fifteen or twenty thousand now. We didn't have that kind of money. We were still run on steam. But we bought wood. In other words, a man who owned a bag of flour, a bag of feed, would bring a little wood. We'd swap him flour or feed. Then we could burn the wood and ground some more flour and maybe sell it to someone.
How late was this?
We did that almost up till 1932 or '33, maybe later than that.
You did operate the saw mill until a few years ago.
Yes, but you see in 1934 we went into the sawmill which was much heavier than lumber and then we got fuel. We quit running the flour mill in1942. That way, the saw mill and planing mill furnished its own …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
… critical of the press. Them buggers, they just won't use facts. Do you know the press, a lot of times, are more responsible for creating fusses causing wars than any other bunch of people. You got that thing going?
I just turned it on. Do you have any outstanding memories on your days as a miller? Have you always been a miller? Did you go to college away from here?
No, I never did. My father went.
Yes, you mentioned that your father went to college.
I didn't. I don't have no book learning.
Did you go to high school?
No, didn't have no high school. I didn't have time to go so busy ginning cotton in the fall of the year.
Why did your father go to college?
He was born in the latter part of 1866. When he growed up to be a boy he
didn't have hardly any reading but a preacher from
Pennsylvania came serving a church nearby here. This preacher was
probably thirty,
Were any of your family politically involved?
No. German people don't get involved much, except your
Holshouser.
He got pretty involved.
I just use that for a joke but really they're not. (I see some person stoping. Look through the window. I think it's someone else. Oh, you were looking for someone weren't you.
Yes, he's probably here now.) Do you have any outstanding memories or favorite stories about anything unusual that happened out here?
I have a book of those. Take a catalogue of it. I would say this. In
1910, we had a neighbor in the neighborhood of the mill here. (Go to the
farther door out there. You can open it for him if you'd
like. Go
That was one of the memories.
Then through the years we had too … I'm not too sure, but my father undoubtedly bought a lot of this machinery on credit. Then when his brother died soon afterward a few years, his brother had a large family it just naturally. Cut your tape off for this.
Let's turn the tape off for a second.
We were talking about some of your favorite memories from your days as a miller.
There was two things I always was very fond about, that was Christmas Day
and Fourth of July. I always put a sign up when I was a youngster five
or six
When you didn't have to work?
Yes. New Year's Day was the day we cleaned out the office
here, if it wasn't too bad to
Did you ever have any heavy damage due to storms?
No, but we did have an engine that run away once. Didn't anybody get hurt but we did a lot of damage to the buildings. A few of us could of got killed.
What do you mean an engine run away?
The governors got stuck or got a cloth in them and stopped 'em
and it flew to pieces, burst it's steam line. When you have a
hundred and twenty pound pressure, people heard it for miles around here
and came. Noone got hurt. The only thing that got hurt was the
How many people worked here beside you and your dad? Did any of your brothers work here?
I didn't have any brothers. We had to hire others.
About how many people worked here?
We did have as high as nine at one time but most of the time about three and four. It depended. When we run the flour, when I was too little, we only run the sawmill part time. Therefore, we'd use the same help. In the flour business, when the fellows got busy cutting wheat, they didn't come to the mill and you had a couple of days you could run the sawmill and the planer. The same way in the fall of the year when they're sowing the grain you could maybe gin a little cotton for them while they was planting the grain. Normally our peak was nine men at one time. That was a long time ago. Most of them three or four.
What were the wages in those days? Do you remember what you payed them?
Anywahere from 12 ½ ¢ an hour to 15¢. During the depression we only paid $1.00 a day, 10¢ an hour. You could get more than you could work then. They'd just beg you to work. Then come and want flour and stuff. They'd do anything to get something. I was cutting a tree down once and a man come by, got an ax and chopped it up. He got through; he said he'd like to have a little money. He didn't have no salt for his flour. People were poor, you know. Didn't have any money.
Did this place operate during the depression?
Yeah, it run all the time, except this last one here a couple of weeks ago.
I been busy talking to people in that time but I enjoyed it.
Most of the people who worked here were from farms around here?
Locally. Some of them worked here twelve, fifteen years at a time.
They weren't really experienced people.
No. They were just people you picked up and trained.
You trained them yourself?
Trained them yourself. I went to school, graduated the seventh grade. Fell down on spelling then. I don't have no book learning, you see. Then I took over the he work here. One man couldn't hardly look after it all. At one time, one man run the sawmill I had one man running the sawmill, one the cotton gin, one the planer. My father run the flour mill. It was a lot of book work and a lot of talking to people. In 1936, '37, '38 I got into selling a lot of lumber and sometimes I'd have five or six people waiting to talk to me at one time. I had them lined up. That way I didn't work much at all I talked a lot. Then we put in steam heat here.
I was looking at this. Was this sort of a gathering place? Did people sit around and talk?
They say it was. You see, we had steam up most of the time and it was comfortable. They swapped their yarns about farming. Right after a heavy rain for a day or two we'd have an extra business. All the farmers would come 'till they could get back in the field to work. That was very busy. That's why I never got to go fishing; like Mr. George asked me if I ever went fishing? I didn't have time to go when I was even little. When other boys was going fishing …
You never took a vacation all those years?
No. I did later on. I went to New York, Philadelphia a couple of times, then later on to Washington a number of times. I worked in the mail service part of the time during World War II and I worked out of Washington part of the time and the mail trains there too part of the time.
This wasn't working then?
No, it was closed down in that short period of time--a couple of years.
Sometimes I'd be home for a week or two and saw some logs, do
other things, grind corn. This place was never closed down completely,
you might say, 'till two years ago. Two or three years ago.
Were there any kinds of festivities out here at Fourth of July?
Not at the mill here but they did at Faith three miles away and at Rockville.
Never had any gatherings here?
Nothing except a church gathering. Some years ago, the Church of God in
Cannapolis had a number of picnics here in the summer time for a few
hours. We've had a lot of people come here, bring children
and look around here through the years, especially when we run. People
from your age up, thirty years up, they had little boys that would like
to come and see. Sometimes the ladyfolks would come. They just like to
look. They wondered where the flour and the cornmeal came. They knew it
come from the mill
Let's talk a little about the machinery in the mill. Were all the machines always operating at one time?
We could; we didn't exactly. We had what you'd call
a feed mill. That's where you ground feed
Where was that located?
It was here in the building. Sometimes we run it when we didn't run thre flour mill. Sometimes we run the flour mill and didn't run it. We ground corn anytime we needed to. Sometimes you'd ground the whole day; sometimes you'd ground only about an hour or two a day. It depends on the farmers coming in that particular day.
You could cut off the engine when you wanted to?
If we didn't have anything to do we'd cut it off. We was burning wood that we had to buy.
What if you only wanted to run one engine?
We had one engine for a number of years. I put these others in, 1928, and maybe the other one right shorty afterwards.
The two Frick engines?
They was put in last.
They weren't put in until the late 1920's.
Late 1920's.
Did you get those second hand?
Yeah I got them second hand. I don't know how many second hand's that was.
Who did you get those from?
I got one of them from a fellow Abernanthy. He had a cotton gin and he discontinued it. The other one came from Lee Miller. He run a sawmill and his boiler went to the bad and I bought the engine. I put the engine in, I thin, 1945. He had run it for years before.
That's the last engine you put in, in 1945?
Yes and I had one ahead of that. It gives us some trouble and I taken it out and replaced it.
Is that that fourth one that's here?
I got one out here behind you in the weeds
Was that made at Concord?
It's made down there. They been out of business for many years.
Who was that?
Concord Foundry people. It was made here especially. Like I told to
George, this is the one we really out to have because it's
made in the county.
When you bought this last one, who installed it?
I put it in.
You attached it to the boiler?
I do everything.
And you set up the shaft?
Everything.
Who designed it when your father had just the Talbort? Did he do it himself?
No. You see, the engine was here with the sawmill. Then they put the mill building up to it. It was already set up there by I don't know who. I presume the Frick man put it there because he was a fellow like me who did everything.
How did you learn how to do this? Not just anybody could hook up these things. How did you learn, just by your own experience?
You just learn it in long enough time. It's very easy to learn. I got a boy that could do the same thing now. He's a little older than you. He can do most anything in that way. I don't know whether he's got the patience I have. See, I dideverything on it. Instead of going to college I …
… went into the mill.
I went to the mill. I spend more time in the mill yet, if I'm well, than I do at the house. I'm very contented down here although it's a little dangerous for me up and down the steps. I spent my whole life here. They brought me as a baby here. We had a schoolhouse right near by. My mother'd bring my lunch here and I'm come up here to eat whenever I could. She brought it for my dad and I'd come up and eat my lunch here. We had an hour for dinner. I'd lose part of my playing time.
You'd rather be here. When the father brought his wheat here, which machine would it go to first? Let's say the corn first.
Corn we'd run through the sheller if he didn't
already have it shelled. Sometimes he had a sheller of his own. If he
didn't, he'd have a bunch of children and
they'd shell it by hand. They'd take it out and
let the wind blow through it and blow the chaff out of it. Then
they'd bring it to the mill and have it ground. And
we'd toll it. Right up there is the toll
You'd take a certain amount out of a bushel. You'd grind the bushel and take a certain amount for yourself?
No, we'd take the corn out before it was ground. Then we ground it. He probably would want some flour or some gran or some hog feed, something else. That would be the corn. The other angle on the corn--we'd buy some corn. If somebody wanted to sell it we'd say, oh we'll see it. We'd shell the corn and run it through the cleaner and then we ground up …
Which is the cleaner? Is that the one upstairs?
No. The corn cleaner is back here behind you. We'd clean the
corn. (Around the corner there, Mr. George. You can't quite
see it.) We'd get all the dust and everything out. Then
we'd grind up a couple hundred poundsand then we'd
bag it up in small bags for distribution. If we had an ear of corn that
had a little rotten on it, we'd throw it over for the feed.
We sold feed too. We didn't put nothing but choice meal, corn
for the meal that was sold. You grind corn granular I can't
say that word) instead of fine. You don't grind cornmeal too
fine. If you do you haven't got anything. It got too
flour-like. That's why it's better ground on
Sometimes they'd want a dollar or two, they'd bring a bushel or two along. Sell a little on that trip. They'd need a little change for some reason. That's happened many times. Another thing too, they'd come with wheat. Sometimes they'd bring corn, sometimes they didn't. At one time, we ground buckwheat here for many years.
Where?
In that corn mill. Not much buckwheat raised here. We got a number of people who started it and they raised it here. It's just hotcake. You know what buckwheat is. It's eat a lot in Pennsylvania and in the North, not too much in the South. They eat grits. Anyway, they'd bring the wheat here. We'd weigh wheat and then we'd give them in proportion. We'd always see whether the wheat was good or bad or medium. If it was bad and trashy, we'd have to dock them a little for dirt. Then we'd give them flour for that wheat and bran for the cows and hogs. We kept pushing up for our expense.
What did you use the gyrator for?
To give it to you in your language, the gyrator has got in it. The ground
wheat would go in there and it would sift it. We'd call it a
sifter, like you'd take a piece of screen wire and sift sand.
That's just full of sifters, that whole
Using your language, how would you describe it? What would you say?
We just call it a gyrator. Sifter is really …
What it's called.
… is really correct. They call it gyrator. It's both; I reckon either one would be right.
Was the dust collector going around and around?
There's a dust collector too. You see, the bran would always have a little bit of flour in it. We'd run the bran through the dust collector … no, we'd run the bran through the bran duster. It would get some of the flour out of it then. The bran duster would go to the dust collector and there you'd get some more flour. Then we had to black shorts and red shorts.
What do you mean by that?
That's part of the wheat grain. Then you had to rerun it through some other mills. There was a lot of different rollers that you run it through.
You actually put it right in the dust collector?
It went through. It was in the bran duster but just the dust came over there.
That was all run by steam?
Everything was run by steam. Didn't have nothing else. Didn't even have electric lights 'till 1925 and then we made it.
What would be the process with lumber? Where would you take that first?
The first thing is we usually bought the logs. I had someone to cut them
and bring them here. We'd roll them in and saw them into
lumber. If it was finished lumber, what you might say you wanted it dry,
you'd stuck it for several months but it was for chicken
house lumber. If you had a grainery maybe you'd take it to
the planer and fix it there. They'd take it home on their
wagons and nail it up. That's general procedure. Depending on
what they wanted to use it for, it varied. Cme man might have a tree
that lightning struck. Another one was clearing a corner of land and
He had a water-powered mill.
They run it like this. There was a water one like you might say, a
handsaw that went up and down like this. You take a stick and push the
carriage along to get your plank off. You've probably seen
some of them old planks that was sawed. I used to see a lot of them but
I haven't seen any around lately.
The corn mill that's here.
It's possible but I don't know. There was a Henry
Starell, that was an uncle of my granddaddy,
The Civil War.
The Civil War. Some of these people here lived during the Revolutionary War.
What was the resaw used for?
The resaw was to take a plank twice as thick and make two out of it.
You'd put it in the planer after that.
That's right. See, here's a little
that's been resawed but that's
Did any of the farmers ever complain about the way that any of the work came out of here?
Oh yeah, they always complain. You always have complaints whatever you do.
They didn't like how smooth it was.
Didn't have much trouble about that. It
Here's another thing. This is a homemade door here.
It's things like that. You always use a little bit of lumber
all along. We spent a whole lot of time here and
You kept some of them on for a while and they just never showed up again?
They might die, you know. A man my age
You said you were born in 1903. You're not so old.
I'll be seventy-two in March, the fourth of March. I want to show you those record books out here.
Thank you very much for talking with us.
I'm glad to give you any information I can. I talk all the time and don't say anything.
END OF INTERVIEW