Bounds, Rodney (1892-1990) |
Worcester County Library: Local History and Genealogy Collection, Snow Hill Branch, Snow Hill, MD
|
Interviewee: |
Rodney Bounds (1892-1990) |
| Interviewer: |
Katherine Fisher |
| Date of interview: |
1979 February 16 |
| Length of interview: |
1 hour 15 min |
| Transcribed by: |
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| Preferred Citation: |
“Name, Oral History Collection, Date of Interview, Worcester County Library, Snow Hill Branch, Snow Hill, Maryland.” |
Topical Terms:
Domestic Life
Education
Transportation
Worcester County (Md.)—Education
Worcester County (Md.)—History
Worcester County (Md.)—Social life and customs
Location Terms:
Basketswitch (Md.)
Newark (Md.)
Queponco (Md.)
Snow Hill (Md.)
Interview Begin
RODNEY: Do you know where Dryden’s Hatchery is?
INTERVIEWER: Yes.
RODNEY: I was born there, of course the hatchery wasn’t there and the house wasn’t there. My grandfather owned that place and he wanted to come to town, come close by, close to town and father bought 20 acres there aside of it and built a home on it and the three houses, you know in a row, one on the back, and then takin’ in the one down there where, the 20 acres did. Then my father bought a farm up in Queponco, then we moved up there and he sold that place to Denmore Williams, and Denmore sold half of it to Irm Johnson and Irm built the house that sits down further there. They built 2 houses, I’m afraid I don’t know who, I think Nock’s owns it now.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, I think so. I’m not sure of that.
RODNEY: About that time we had dirt roads, you know, and sometimes we would ride out to Newark and get on the train and go to Snow Hill.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. It was probably quicker, wasn’t it?
RODNEY: Especially when the roads was bad. I did that once, there was snow on the ground, rode over there and hitched my horse…………
INTERVIEWER: And took the train to Snow Hill.
RODNEY: Got to Snow Hill around noon and came back again around 2:30, something like that.
INTERVIEWER: Well I had never thought about that.
RODNEY: They had two trains a day.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, did you have two trains a day.
RODNEY: Ya, one in the morning and one in the evening. Well they both come back from Philadelphia.
INTERVIEWER: Now were these regular passenger trains? Or was it a passenger train and the cars in the back?
RODNEY: Both. The track run right through the farm. Right down this side of the woods, right alongside the woods. A freight train goes there now.
INTERVIEWER: Right. Very seldom. How old are you? I need to ask so I’ll know in years when you’re talking.
RODNEY: I was 86 last November.
INTERVIEWER: Oh my heavens. Well I hope I’m up and around when I’m 86.
RODNEY: I was born the 16th of November, 1892.
INTERVIEWER: And you were born in Snow Hill?
RODNEY: At the edge of town. One Mile Lane. Moved up there when I was fourteen years old. My father bought that farm. I guess you don’t want all my records, you want your records.
INTERVIEWER: Right, but sometimes the timing will help. When you first moved up to Snow Hill, there wasn’t any Route 12, you know the road that we go now from Salisbury to Snow Hill, the road that is there now was it there?
RODNEY: Ya. That’s what they called the Mile Lane. When that was there and crossed one went to Pocomoke and the other towards Whiton. That part hasn’t been changed.
INTERVIEWER: Right. I see because you go to Whiton this way and to Pocomoke that way.
RODNEY: It went out that way a little ways towards Pocomoke and turned and went that away…………
INTERVIEWER: Just like it does now………..
RODNEY: Since then the road had been cut straight through. That wasn’t there when I was down there.
INTERVIEWER: There is a road now that isn’t used much but it’s called Millville Road or Stagecoach Road that runs in from where Millville used to be behind the Iron Furnace and then it comes on out and I think that was the main road at one point. And it maybe would have gone into that.
RODNEY: This other one went up there you know where Norman Mariner lives.
INTERVIEWER: Yes.
RODNEY: Well just before you get to Normans the road that runs to your right and then it comes around by Old Nassawango Church. And that’s the old Clayville farm, after you get through the woods, past the chicken houses. And that……..it went around Nassawango and that other one cut through there somewhere.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, and caught up from it.
RODNEY: Where Gerald Holloways.
INTERVIEWER: Yes it does. It cuts through right past his. On around behind him.
RODNEY: And I reckon there was somewhere about a half dozen different roads started out to go to Salisbury.
INTERVIEWER: But they were all dirt.
RODNEY: Ya, all dirt road, and I’ve heard people say that, people said they never started Salisbury what they didn’t get on the wrong road, or get lost or something, wind up a different way.
INTERVIEWER: Well I can do that today. Cutting through from Salisbury back to Snow Hill through the forest, I’ve gotten lost, at least twice and ended up in Princess Anne, which I didn’t want to be there at all, but I was.
RODNEY: Well I think I’ve been on them roads enough, I don’t think I’d get lost but, when they put hard roads why they changed them, straightened them out. Makes it a lot different than what it used to be.
INTERVIEWER: Were you in Snow Hill or near Snow Hill when the Steamboats were still coming in?
RODNEY: Ya.
INTERVIEWER: Can you remember anything about them. I was going to talk to you about Newark. I didn’t know you were from Snow Hill, so we’ll talk about that too.
RODNEY: You would hear that whistle blow on the old boat, going home from school across that way. You know where Bill Price lives?
INTERVIEWER: Yes.
RODNEY: Well that’s where the old school ground was at that time.
INTERVIEWER: I’m glad you said that. Because they always said the old school ground was on Federal Street but nobody would tell me where it was.
RODNEY: That was on Federal, and then down on the other end of Federal there was a schoolhouse too. But it wasn’t there when I was going to school in Snow Hill, I went to this other one. It taken in that block pretty well, and the school yard was out behind it. There is a little street that goes through, well one each side of where Bill lives, but the one on this side of it, it’s kinda the colored section there…..
INTERVIEWER: It’s Gunby Alley, I think isn’t it?
RODNEY: I think it is, I don’t know.
INTERVIEWER: Did you ever ride on the Steamboat?
RODNEY: Yes. But I never got any further than Pocomoke.
INTERVIEWER: Well that’s going somewhere.
RODNEY: Used to go down there on a little bale boat, from Snow Hill, go to the fair you know, the Pocomoke Fair.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. That was in August, or in the summer sometime.
RODNEY: I think it was in August.
INTERVIEWER: When you were going to the fair, did they still have the horse races?
RODNEY: Ya.
INTERVIEWER: I’ve seen some postcards of that showing the horse races.
RODNEY: They had a Model T race there one time, it kicked up a lot of dust and dirt. It kinda got me so I didn’t care much about automobile races. I don’t think I ever went out on a boat but once, my grandfather and I went. We were living up in Quenponco then, he was staying with us, we drove down to Snow Hill and put the horses up and went on down to Pocomoke, to the Fair. Well he knew a lot of people down there, and I was just a youngster, about 16, and so I wanted to get around the others and see what was going on, it didn’t take much in them days, but I fooled around there, they had the big gambling places, and pitching rings, or something or other in there, and this here fellow would come up every once and awhile and he would win you know, everytime. Come on you’ll win next time. I stand around there and spent everything I had, but when I come to my senses I had 7 cents.
INTERVIEWER: Oh my no, and did you win?
RODNEY: No, I didn’t win either time. But that broke me of it, I don’t fool with it anymore. But that night, my grandfather said now if I don’t see you time get ready time to go home, well you meet me down at the boat. Well I went down to the boat, all the way down there they had bananas hanging up, I think a cent a piece, so I bought me maybe 5 of them and I eat them and come on back and I didn’t anything else till I got home, and the next day I was sick.
INTERVIEWER: I bet you were. You remembered the trip.
RODNEY: It broke me from fooking with them chances.
INTERVIEWER: Pocomoke seems to have been a pretty wild town, sometimes, down around the boats and with the Fair too.
RODNEY: Ya, I reckon there was more racketeering going on down there, than there was up this way. During Moonshine days, liquor, I guess there is enough of it scattered around.
INTERVIEWER: Now when you moved up to Quenponco, you were how old then?
RODNEY: 14.
INTERVIEWER: 14. Okay. Where was or do you still have the farm, there?
RODNEY: No. I stayed with my father til I was 22 years old, and then I got married and he had another place across the branch, and he built a home on it for me. And I stayed there a couple of years, and my other brothers, one of them wasn’t big enough to do much farming, and the one to Ocean City, why he wanted the garage business and machine shop. He didn’t like farming so my father sold that farm, and after I’ve been to that farm a couple years, why it wasn’t a very big farm, my neighbor there wanted to sell his farm. He had 3 girls, that were getting too old to go to the country school, were getting too far advance, I mean, and he wanted to give them an education. He wanted to sell that farm, he didn’t have any boys, and his hired help was hard to get, so he wanted to sell that. I bought that off him, and moved there and then sold the other one a couple of years later to a man from Arkansas. I lived there until our youngest boy…………
INTERVIEWER: You bought the farm next to it…Now this was all out……
RODNEY: You know where the factory is out there, the cannin factory? Or where it used to be, it’s not there…..5 of us built the factory and……
INTERVIEWER: Alright. If I go out Newark and head toward Whiton, aren’t I going toward Queponcc?
RODNEY: Ya, you go out through Queponco.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. That’s what I thought, but it’s bee
RODNEY: And you took the road up here a mile and a half, turn and go thataway. The road forks, run together out there. You go right through my places if you go straight. Instead of comin back to the Newark road, but you go to the Newark road then you got that road that crooks around, you know, and it’s the, the home farm is the last place before you get to the woods, before you get to the Old Mill Branch. Up in the field. And my oldest boy lives in the farm right beside of it. That I bought off of Mr. Holloway, that lived in that neighborhood. He owned most of the land, right in that neighborhood. At that time. You know Will Holloway.
INTERVIEWER: Oh yes.
RODNEY: Well, Will could tell you as much about Newark, as anybody. He was born there and he is just about a year younger than I am.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, I love to talk to people, so I’ll talk to him too. Alright, good. At least I can picture where they are. Did Queponco have anything other than houses? Was there a store or anything like that?
RODNEY: There was a schoolhouse right down there in front of the factory. That’s where….I went there a couple of winters, but I passed, they only taught to the 7th grade, and so I was in the 7th grade when I left Snow Hill, and so they just let me go out there and review the same lessons, you might say, for a couple of winters and when the weather broke up and so you could go plowing, then I went plowing and such as that.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember anything special about school there? The school is not still there is it?
RODNEY: No, it burned down.
INTERVIEWER: It burned? And it was there where the new factory………..
RODNEY: Right there in front of the factory, that’s where that was. That was the farm that my father bought, there where the factory is. But a couple year, three years after I got married, I lived there on a place he give me, two years and then moved over there and I bought that place, he sold his farm and moved to Berlin. On the Ocean City road, just before you get to the English Grill on the right, big square house. I think a family of Eshams right across the front. Then he died when he was living up there, and that left the rest of that farm, 100 and some acres farm there on the farm that he give me. So I bought that off of my mother a year or 2 after that. I had 582 acres I believe there was in that block of land, and then I let the boys have that, after the youngest got married. After Roland did.
INTERVIEWER: That was a lot. Did you farm it all?
RODNEY: Well that was woodland too.
INTERVIEWER: Good. Because that is a lot of work.
RODNEY: Of course, at that time I had just about all I could till with teams, but they till about 12 hundred acres now.
INTERVIEWER: Now they have things that are huge. They’ve got the equipment for it.
RODNEY: Well when I left the farm I had 3 combines, and they were pull type, pull them with tractors, and I had more land than that. I had a place on the bay 300 and some acres in that. And then another place up there in Hungry Town.
INTERVIEWER: Where’s Hungry Town?
RODNEY: Do you know here Hungry Town is?
INTERVIEWER: No I don’t, and somebody asked me that the other day and I said I don’t know. It’s up near Ironshire.
RODNEY: You know where Ironshire is?
INTERVIEWER: Yes, I know where Ironshire is.
RODNEY: Well you just turn there at Ironshire and go right toward the river.
INTERVIEWER: And that’s Hungry Town.
RODNEY: And that’s Hungry Town, and you turn on the other road, from where I lived when I got married you go the dirt around that way, and you come in there, where the old race track used to be.
INTERVIEWER: No.
RODNEY: You know where……
INTERVIEWER: Yes I do too, I know where the race track was.
RODNEY: Well that road went right alongside the race track. Take that road and it would take you right by Hungry Town. Then you come down there between nearly to the Nine Pin Branch, the road would turn go over the river to Powellville. And the other one would turn left and come around to Queponco.
INTERVIEWER: Did Hungry Town have anything? Storewise or…..
RODNEY: Well it had 2 stores at the time and now then its got one store but its got a lot of chicken houses, and built up all around there. It’s got a church there. Newark, its got 2 churches, at that time it had Trinity Church. The church that I go to was down here at Basketswitch.
INTERVIEWER: Good, now they said that the church was near the tree at Basketswitch. Isn’t there a BiCentennial Tree?
RODNEY: Right there down by where the tree is at Basketswitch. There’s a cemetery there too. It’s got tombstones.
INTERVIEWER: I wanted to go by there, the other day, but there was too much snow and that’s a dirt road, and I didn’t get back there.
RODNEY: Well that was the old road that went by the front of the church, it went on around and come out yonder and cross the road. It come out at Bowen’s place, you know, that was sold the other day. That’s all new road. That’s all new road. The other went up into Newark. Then there’s another road that goes out from Newark, right out past the station, that would carry you out to…by Hickory Ridge, and that would carry you to Hungry Town road.
INTERVIEWER: Hickory Ridge, was that a town or just a place?
RODNEY: That’s just a farm.
INTERVIEWER: Just a farm. It’s between Newark and Hungry Town on that road that goes out there by the station.
RODNEY: Used to be a colored church there on the corner there. There’s a graveyard there now. But they moved that church out to near Ironshire and as you go from Ironshire across to Hungry Town, why you go by that.
INTERVIEWER: But it was moved.
RODNEY: When I moved up to Newark, why they had a building there they used as a Odd Fellows Building, I believe it was, and then they had about 4 stores there. One down there by the station, and then there was one where the post office is now, and then a store where the bank is….
INTERVIEWER: There was a store there?
RODNEY: There’s a store across in front of that.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Now was there an Inn, there? The building beside the bank or across from the bank?
RODNEY: The old building?
INTERVIEWER: Is that….
RODNEY: That was a store too, and a residence too. Dennis lived there and he raised his family and had a store building. I don’t know, he had 6 or 8 children, I don’t remember. More than that I guess, because he had I think about 6 girls and 2 boys and then turn to your right between the store and the bank, why old man Harry Bowen lived in the first big house that was along there.
INTERVIEWER: On the right or the left.
RODNEY: On the right. And the second one, old man Charlie Richardson, I believe his name was, he and his wife, and his wife’s brother, his name was Jones, I forget what it was. That’s been a long time ago. And it’s been a long time ago since these stores and such as that had been there. But that’s how it was when we moved to Queponco.
INTERVIEWER: They had the 4 stores. Was there a blacksmith shop?
RODNEY: Ya. Old man Jim Adkins, had a blacksmith shop over to the left as you turn to go on that road right across. Built wagons, carts, and do iron work and such as that. You know Sidney Northam?
INTERVIEWER: Yes.
RODNEY: Sidney’s mother was raised there, old man Adkins daughter. Dave and Sidney’s mother was an Adkins. All of them are dead now. Adkins, Mumfords, John Mumford, he was, you probably heard of him. I don’t know, he had a brother named Charlie, older brother, and John and then Harvey.
INTERVIEWER: It sounds familiar. Now he………
RODNEY: Well there was a Mumford, I believe a John Mumford to Ocean City, too wasn’t it…
INTERVIEWER: Yes, I think that’s what I’m confusing it with.
RODNEY: I don’t know whether they were related or not.
INTERVIEWER: No, because there are Mumfords in Berlin too that aren’t related. Was there a post office? At Newark?
RODNEY: Yes, it was Newark Post Office and Queponco Railroad. And they were as close together as from here as down there to the fence.
INTERVIEWER: Somebody that day said, that if you wanted to send a telegram, if you were away and wanted to send a telegram, if you sent it to Newark, it wouldn’t go. You had to say Queponco, even though it was the same place.
RODNEY: And if you were in Philadelphia or somewhere in a strange place, that they didn’t know the place they asked for a ticket to Newark, well they wouldn’t know if it was Newark, Delaware or Newark, New Jersey. No, Newark, Maryland, well we got no place like that. So you had to tell them Queponco, before you could buy it. Of course, if they had been an agent for a long while, well they knew it, and they’d tell you you would have to have it for Queponco. They had enough stores, and they had a good Blacksmith, and all that in them days. Of course after the automobiles come around that changed things a little.
INTERVIEWER: Well you really didn’t have to go to Snow Hill for anything? Or did you?
RODNEY: Well for any county business, you would go to the courthouse. Such as that.
INTERVIEWER: But for food and supplies and things like that…..
RODNEY: No, no. And right across the river there was Whiton. That kept a big store, you know, and they kept anything and everything that was needed. Same way at Piney Grove.
INTERVIEWER: Is Piney Grove and….I think there are 2 places that are the same, I’m going to say Mt. Olive.
RODNEY: Now Mt. Olive and Piney Grove are right close together. Mt. Olive Church and Piney Grove, I don’t think Piney Grove Store was over a mile from there and the church is still there, but the store is gone. They’ve got two houses there now, right close by, there’s an old house across the road in the woods, now there at Piney Grove and you can go up in it. You can start out and go pretty near Snow Hill without getting out of the woods. I think on one side of the road, I mean.
INTERVIEWER: Did you ever go to Forester’s Day of Farmer’s Day, down at Public Landing?
RODNEY: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: I was talking to somebody in Salisbury and they said that they used to spend the night at Piney Grove and start the next morning, to make it a shorter trip.
RODNEY: Mt. Olive Church, why they would have 4 mule wagon load and stay there and go from there right on over. But I never went that way, but I lived on the road, they had to go right by the next morning. Several wagons would come. They’d get in Snow Hill, they didn’t want to get there too early, they wanted to wait till the bar open……That’s what they told me. I don’t know I wasn’t old enough to see any of that. But I used to go down there to Public Landing at Forester’s Day and we went, Sunday school would go down in a 4 mule wagon load, from church, Bates Church, it is now……………..
RODNEY: We left Snow Hill, I went to Sunday School there and when we moved up there we went to here, where the church is tore down.
INTERVIEWER: Was that church torn down here? They couldn’t remember the other day if it burned or whether it was moved, the one here at Basketswitch. Is that the one you are talking about?
RODNEY: Well, I can’t tell you for sure, but I think it was torn down. Some people that lived around there, that opposed to moving it, they wanted to build a new church right there. But they had more backing for putting it in Newark, instead of building it right there. I don’t know just the year, but somewhere about 66 years ago. And that church has gone down and the house that set beside it there, and all of it is gone down. Tore up. A man named by the name of Richardson, old man, Mark Richardson, lived in the house beside of it. And the that went right on around in front of the Bowen Farm, that was sold the other week.
INTERVIEWER: What was there at Basketswitch or Basket Town or whatever one wants to call it when……….you say you moved from Queponco, you didn’t move to Basketswitch, you stayed at Queponco till you moved here. Do you remember any buildings or stores or anything at Basketswitch?
RODNEY: After the church burned down, was destroyed, I don’t know, tore down, I think it was, why this gum factory was put there. But that’s been recently you know. Maybe 20 years, something like that. No there wasn’t any buildings down there, but the house and church, at that time, besides farm buildings.
INTERVIEWER: I read an article, and I was talking about that to the ladies, that there was a brick kiln in the area of Basketswitch. Have you ever heard of that? They said that was the reason that the railroad siding was put in there at Basketswitch, to handle the bricks that were being produced by the brick kiln at Basketswitch, and it was an article that came out in the Sunday Sun Magazine, a number of years ago. And I’d never heard of a brick kiln there.
RODNEY: I never did either. There was a, after the church was done away with. Walt Bowen had a steam mill there. And he got killed. He got wound up in the one of the pulleys had, the way I understood it, I didn’t see it, but you know there’s a key that fits in there and the key fit in there and it was loose and I think he drove some kind of wedge into it, but it stuck out a little bit pass the axel or whatever, shaft, he walked by and it caught into his clothes. It was winter time, and had on a lot of loose clothes, right smart clothes wound him around down and it beat him to death, right there. For several years after that, before this factory was put there. I can’t think of their names, now they did it, I know them. But they were from around Ocean City, I think.
INTERVIEWER: I know their name but I can’t remember it. Was there a lot of woods here in this area and the Basketswitch area? Let say if you went up to Queponco, if you went out this way, has this been lumbered? That’s what I’m trying to say.
RODNEY: Well we had a station right down here. Wesley Station. And a calf pen where you would bring calves and put them in. They would stop there and ship them. That’s been a long time ago. I never brought none out there but I carried them to Newark, and the freight would come along before that morning and at Basketswitch, and down here they had a place where they would load cars, a switch. Load three cars or something like it. There was three mine prop outfits to load them with, as windlass you might say. The poles settled and braced and then a wench or a shaft went from it, with a block and pull, and you hook on your load, start your mules out and pull them around and load your car with. I never loaded any down here, but I did at Basketswitch.
INTERVIEWER: And they had that at Basketswitch and another one at Wesley Station?
RODNEY: Yes. And at Ironshire it was the same way. I loaded props at Ironshire. Had a little piece of woods up there, between Ironshire and Berlin, and that was the closest place to load it. Mine props used to be good business. And piling and they got so that they were cutting them props in 9 foot lengths, hauling them right to the mines, Trader wouldn’t buy any more, load his own car then, so that kinda knocked that in the head. That was back there in the 30s. Gradually the poling business got out too. Anybody that wanted a load of piling they had trucks to haul them and so it done away with all their railroad stuff.
INTERVIEWER: Now Wesley Station is right down this road? Yes this is Cedartown Road. It’s just right down here beside the railroad track. Right/
RODNEY: Where the bushes had growed up and so forth. The fellow bought the lot and built a home on it, just last year. That’s where the mine props was. If I remember right the pens that loaded the calves was on the other side of the railroad. They used to have an extra wheel like that, you know, and all day long all the little stations, if the farmers wanted to ship calves that’s the only way he had to get rid of them, was to carry them out, put them on the train.
INTERVIEWER: I was reading about Stockton, and they said that before the railroad, Stockton was the place that all the farmers in that end of the county drove their cattle to be driven up to Wilmington or Philadelphia, before the railroad came. And that’s one of the reasons it got its name.
RODNEY: Oyster, they would load oyster cars there to and from Girdletree and Stockton, too. I think they had loading outfits at both places, Stockton and Girdletree. I never did load anything down there and I never did load anything down here. Because Newark was the closest place for me to haul cattle. You had calves or anything you wanted to ship, why you carried them out and ship them, you know. And the express cars were pulled by the passenger engines, you could send anything by express, it would cost more, but it would be quicker. It went up to Berlin and then had to change cars there, there was crossroads there and if you were going up to Philadelphia you didn’t have to change, but if you were going to Salisbury, you had to change.
INTERVIEWER: Do you happen to know when the railroad came through? Was built in Newark?
RODNEY: No.
INTERVIEWER: I think it was in the 1870s, sometime like that, which was even before you. I was just thinking of that. With the railroad being right here, did they do much shipping by boat, off the landing down here, off Newark, and I don’t even know what these Landings are called right now, I forget.
RODNEY: I had a place along the bay down here, and a landing there, what they call, I forget it. But anyway they told me they loaded corn down there and slab wood and tomatoes, and shipped the tomatoes around to Greenback, I believe they said. But man not older than I was, told me he’d shipped and loaded cord wood, down there, but I didn’t know it until, I didn’t know the place at all, until I guess it was 1933.
INTERVIEWER: That was a bad year to know about if you were on the bay.
RODNEY: I delivered some lumber. I had a sawmill work in the wintertime and farmed. I had to keep right smart help, for the farming I was doing and they…work in the wintertime, so there was some lumber sown there to a place across the road, from the place that I bought later. And he was telling me about how much nice timber there was on the place and the woman that owned the place lived in Philadelphia, and he was going to write to her that they were stealing her holly and trapping in her marsh, you know, and she was going to sell it if she to lose money on it. So it had been put up and sold once, she just loaned the money to some people from Virginia, is the way I understood it, they come up here and bought it, for potatoes, they were going to have potatoes, and then potatoes went bad and they lost money on it, and then that slump, you know, in the 20’s and early 30’s, why they just lost all they had, as you might say, so she had it sold and didn’t bring what they thought it ought to, she taked it in and ……then the house got burned down on it, so she decided to sell it, so this old man told me about what timber there was on it. He says you come on down and I’ll show it to you. Man lived across the road that I was delivering the timber to. Thanksgiving is next Thursday, and you are not going to work then, so he said come on down and I’ll show you the lines, so I went down. I got a neighbor to ride down with me, I was living up there in Queponco at that time, so we went and found the boundary lines, and then I take the old man that run the mill for me, to look at it, and he says, you’ll do alright on it, but it’s too far away, I can’t help you on there, he says. He lived up there pasts Hungry Town. So this old man went with me, to see the man that was down there, and see her father, and he says I don’t know whether she want to sell it or hot. She and her husband lived in the city, but she had some money, she loaned it, you know, and taked a mortgage on it, but he says her mother is sick and she’s coming home this weekend, says I’ll ask her and if she does I’ll have her call you. Well she didn’t call me, so I thought to myself, well either she doesn’t want to sell it, or she didn’t come down, one. So on Monday, she and her brother-in-law drive up. They wanted to talk to me face to face. So she told me what she wanted, I said, well I don’t believe I can stand that much into it, you couldn’t get much from farm produce at that time, everything was just as cheap could be and I just cut a track of timber and sold it for 13 dollars a thousand, just because time was running out on it, didn’t own the land you know, hauled it to Hebron, for 13 dollars a thousand. Of course labor didn’t cost nothing then, a dollar, or a dollar and a quarter a day.
INTERVIEWER: And they were grateful to get it, I’m sure.
RODNEY: So we cut it and cleaned it up…..When she left, well we were 500 dollars poorer. And she says if you decide you want it, well give me a ring, I’ll be home until tomorrow night. Well I said I didn’t think I could stand anymore than that, but if you take a notion you want my price, then you call me. That day she called me, she says 2 years taxes on the place, will you take care of that/ I said I’ll split the difference with you.
INTERVIEWER: Boy, you are something.
RODNEY: So I bought it right there.
INTERVIEWER: That was quick, but you got what you wanted.
RODNEY: And I cut timber off it, right away. I put tracks down and mill in on it, I had that mill on a stand that had about another year. Well next spring we went ahead and finished that up or the next fall and moved it down there and started it up in the Spring and left it till the next Spring and I settled that, I finished cleaning that up there for 15 dollars, Adkins Company at Berlin. But the Adkins Company in Berlin couldn’t handle it. The year before, Cordrey Company, in Snow Hill, the Adkins Company to Salisbury couldn’t, so it went out to Hebron, out there to Boss Bounds. Well I don’t need it, he said ain’t holding a thing, but if it is good stuff I’ll give you 13 dollars a thousand, so it was either leave it or get it. So I left it. So the next we went down and cut that other and moved it down there, but as things picked up a little better that summer and Adkins Company, to Berlin, had some orders to Ocean City and they wanted some so I finished all that up, and started cutting there, and that was 15 dollars, they went up to 15 dollars. And then they went to 19 dollars, the next year and I finished all that up down there. I lost 3 men one year, one of them got killed in the woods, and another got killed on the road, he was drinking and he got run over. The other man had a stroke and they were the best mill help I had.
INTERVIEWER: They were telling me, some woman in Newark was trying to hand things out of her house, in the fire, and firemen were putting them back in the house at the same time, because of the danger of it spreading. But I don’t know anything about that. But tell me what you remember about the fire.
RODNEY: Well not too much, I guess. I didn’t see any of it. But this Masonic Building, that they always, in the olden times, the churches or a young group or something would put on a show, you know, every once in awhile. Have it there and then the lodge would have certain nights to meet there. That was right between….Well there was a feed house, right there, pretty near to where it was, only it was close to the road, and then the store, I believe the store was burned down there, that’s where the Barbleys keep it now, Robert Barbley, and the station was over in front of that, you know, along the road.
INTERVIEWER: He’s got the station now doesn’t he?
RODNEY: I expect he has. He used it for fertilizers for awhile there, but I’m not sure whether he did buy it or not. And then there where the cemetery is, of the Trinity Church, why there’s an old big house on that lot right there by, maybe not exactly where Bill Smith lives now. But it’s taking in where Bill lives and the land over where the church is too.
INTERVIEWER: My, that must have been a big house.
RODNEY: No, I don’t mean the house covered that ground, without taking in the land…………
INTERVIEWER: The land there.
RODNEY: The old man, I believe his name was Frank Davis, owned that. And Dr. Schott bought the big house. And he put up a gib two story chicken house, right up behind the house, between him and the railroad. That’s the part where the cemetery is now. And there’s a little store, John Minor’s kept. It was put there, it wasn’t near as old as the others. He married a girl from Newark, and come down there and keep a store. He was from some city, I just don’t know where. So that’s been done away with. And the old house where John Hunkers and Cecil lived, is one of the oldest is there. Then I guess where Dorothy Bakers lives right in front of the post office, is another old house. Then sown on the other line is 2 or 3……..
INTERVIEWER: What was where the bank is now? I think you told me, but I’ve forgotten it. There was a store.
RODNEY: A store, and another one behind it.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Where the parking lot is, or where the house is.
RODNEY: I think the next place is the blacksmith place, over the road and the next place…..there’s a new house there now, Sid Cropper lives there, but there was an old house there when he bought it, and he tore it out and put that there. And I think the houses along there………
INTERVIEWER: Fairly new, I think.
RODNEY: Well there’s one down on the corner where Ralph Mason lives, I think John Mumford, built that. He was raised in Newark, but he went to the city to work, and he made a right good pile of money in the stock market. He was one of the brokers up there, and he come down there and ended his days at Newark. He built that there and the one aside of him, up town going up town, belongs to Harold Riley, and I think the next one had been there as long as I knowed any of it. The little house, where old man Powell, lived there and his boy still owns it, and he comes down here and stays awhile.
INTERVIEWER: Now is that the one that has brown shingles? Sort of like old-fashioned shingles that they painted. I think so.
RODNEY: It’s just a small house on the edge of the hill there. And then I think there’s a drain, I think, and another house there, but I don’t know……..And one across the road, old man… I don’t know, the next one up from that was old man George Mitchell’s house, that’s where Frank Mitchell was raised. And the Drydens own that house, just where Carl lived lately, and last when he died. Across the road from him was Marion Johnson’s and that house has not been there too long, maybe 60 years, something or the other like that. After you get over the road, why there’s 2 or 3 houses along there, that’s been there a right good while. And then Fred Parker, lives down there where it goes off to go to Mason’s Landing, a fellow that works at the telephone office, Patey, I believe lives down there. There new houses. And across the road, Dave Wheaton and one of the Henman boys. They got new houses along there.
INTERVIEWER: Somebody, Mrs. Barbley, at the group was telling about a mill or a mill pond around Newark. We I told her I didn’t know anything about that. So tell me something…..
RODNEY: The in front of Fred’s, so that road that turns around that way, go around that way…..
INTERVIEWER: Like you’re going to Mason’s Landing…….
RODNEY: As you’re going to Mason’s Landing, where the chicken houses is, there’s a house right back behind that house was an old mill pond and a mill. And old man Mitchell, do you remember Charlie Mitchell that kept a garage in Snow Hill?
INTERVIEWER: No I don’t.
RODNEY: Well that’s where old man Joe lived, that was his children, was Charlie Mitchell, he kept a filling station, first place you come to as you come out of Federal Street and turn towards Pocomoke, and then Ella, his sister, lived right this side of the church. Right side a church. She married, she’s Will Smith…..you know Will? Well his father’s name was Will too. She married Will Smith and she’s still a widow. We’ve got plenty of widows in Newark.
INTERVIEWER: Now the mill that was there, was it a mill to grind corn and things? Was there a saw mill attached to it?
RODNEY: No. There was a saw mill though in back of Barbleys. And we had a canning factory there, that canning factory had been there a good many years. And then the stave mill, right behind the store, right side of Bowen Church, in between there and Ruth Townsends, there’s a street, that goes down there. AT the end of that street on the right.
INTERVIEWER: What’s a stave mill…That’s what they make barrels from, right?
RODNEY: There was a stave mill that and a saw mill too. At one time, but they changed it to a grist mill and they made flour there for a while.
INTERVIEWER: Did they really? Right at the same place.
RODNEY: Now Marvin Tyndall has corn dryers there. And then across from the railroad there was a mill there, at one time. I believe that was Ralph Mason’s. I am not sure. They don’t use it a whole lot, I don’t think. Then Ralph’s father owned the other mill and then turned it over to Ralph, then and now Ralph and Thomas I guess owns it together. I think the old man’s estate has been settled, I think, divided up, and I think Molly and Mae and Kenneth is still living I think…….
INTERVIEWER: I’m going to have to go down, not today, but once the roads get clear, I want to go down to see where that mill pond was. She said you could tell by the shape of the land. Where it would be.
RODNEY: Well I guess the road would still be there that goes. They till the land now, I don’t think it’s any further from the house, though, from here down to the Cedartown Road, I don’t think. Just a stream comes up the bayside of Mason’s Landing, up that far that run that mill and later, I mean years before that it was a bridge there at that old crossing right beside the mill. And then you went right over Cropper’s Neck, and there’s a grist mill over there.
INTERVIEWER: Where’s Cropper Neck?
RODNEY: You know where the road comes out from Newark on the yon side, the old road, to the main road, and this road that cuts right across the road, that’s Cropper Neck Farm…..
RODNEY: I rode with old man Holloway, that’s Bill Holloway’s father. We went around here. He knew all them places, and some of them was related to him and I don’t think I’ve ever been in there but once since. But it comes right on across to where Bob Disharoon lives. Bob lives on what they call the Cropper Neck Farm, you know……….
INTERVIEWER: And there is supposed to be another mill, back of Sid Northam’s property. There was a mill pond back in there. Where Wisie and Sid live.
RODNEY: Between here and Snow Hill?
INTERVIEWER: Yes.
RODNEY: Old man Bill Timmons drowned himself there. Tied a stone to his neck and jumped overboard. It was right along there, about where the Dickerson’s is, right in there. Ya that hasn’t been away from there too long. Before I knew it a mill, right round here on Porter’s Crossing Road, I bought the place, I guess about just a piece of woodland, I guess it was back there in the ‘20s, and the old mill dam, in there, you know where the house is, between here and Old Porters Crossing, where that house is built and the trailer. Well right back from it is a mill dam that runs right to that stream that goes over there. And a dam, I guess 150 yards long, and right there you can see some of the framework, by looking good from the old bridge or mill one, I don’t know which. When I first knew it, the people was dribbling across it, used to be a road come around behind the poorhouse farm, over here and people coming from over the river, they’d go around that sooner than they’d come out here. You know, no hard roads, you know, all woods roads there. I don’t know where it come out, but I think right here by the church.
INTERVIEWER: I was thinking that. It looks like it was between the church and that woods, it looks like a possible……Now you remember the poorhouse farm being built? When was it built?
RODNEY: Well it was built before I knew, but my father was a carpenter, when we lived here to Snow Hill. I come out here one day. He was shingling the old building, him and 3 or 4 more.
INTERVIEWER: Well I had no idea that it was that old. I’ve got some pictures of it, just right before it finally fell down. I ‘ve got something that described it as having brick end walls and some of the floors were brick, in the big main building of it.
RODNEY: I haven’t been up there for a right good while, but I am not certain whether that old building floor or foundation is there or not.
INTERVIEWER: They took bulldozers when they did that orchard, and they bulldozed so much and a lot of it went up into a big pile, back in there. Well then that was built before, 1900.
RODNEY: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, because if your father was re-shingling the buildings, they had been there for a while.
RODNEY: I went out there with him that morning, and it was a real windy day. And he cautioned me 2 or 3 times, stay away from that building, the shingles will fly off in the air and strike you. The man that lived there had a boy about my size, that’s why I went out there. He kept after him to bring me in with him. We were playing out there around the yard and a man lived there, his father, this boy’s grandfather, stayed with them. And one of them shingles flew off and struck him on his head. He had a bald head, he had blood. I remember such as that, you know. I saw two negroes hanged down here in the woods.
INTERVIEWER: Well tell me about that too. I hear these and read about it and nobody seems to have seen or remember.
RODNEY: I saw them. I rode a pony out there to see one. I was livin’ here in Snow Hill, I guess I was about 12 years old.
INTERVIEWER: So that would have been just about around 1900. A little over about 1902 or 1903.
RODNEY: Somewhere in 1904, 5,3, or in there somewhere. And another one……..I saw two……
INTERVIEWER: Now they did have……
RODNEY: Asbury Dickson and John Henry.
INTERVIEWER: John Henry.
RODNEY: I forget which was hanged first. Old man Will Whaley was sheriff, and he stepped down on top a step and cut that rope with a hatchet, cut it quick. And it didn’t cut in two. Stepped down on that step and did it again. And I thought to myself I never would want to be sheriff.
INTERVIEWER: That would have been horrible. Who was the family you visited at the poorhouse, the boy and you said his grandfather lived there.
RODNEY: Jarman.
INTERVIEWER: They were caretakers like?
RODNEY: Yes. I don’t know but I think they tilled the land, that’s what most of the farmers, went there did do. Till the land and takin’ care of the inmates. Sewell Jarman and I think his father’s name was George, I think. But Sewell Jarman, he had 2 children, I knew them, but I can’t think of their names. The last time I saw the girl, she was in Florida. One of the fellows that went down with me, knew her and visited them. We went to their house. I forget what her name was and who she married.
INTERVIEWER: It was a poor farm and it was used for older people who had no income and no family.
RODNEY: There was two roads, one went in from down here about Cedartown Road and cut up across there and the other one went in from down here by the house down yonder, farther, the old Sam Johnson house. When Harrison’s bought it they closed them road up, and put orchards over here, you see, and one went up the center.
INTERVIEWER: When did they put the orchard in? In the ‘30s or the early ‘40s or before that?
RODNEY: I imagine it was in the ‘30s or the early ‘40s. I don’t know exactly. I never kept any account of anything like that.
INTERVIEWER: You have told me so much, I just can’t even……….It’s a good thing I have a tape recorder, because I could never remember it all.
RODNEY: Well I don’t know if I told you anything that amounted to anything…….
INTERVIEWER: You would be surprised…..Sid Northam, Elsie was confused as to whether there was a Wesley Station and a Wesley.
RODNEY: Well I think the station was so close to Wesley, I think that was why it was called, is maybe it. Or else the settlement was close to it…..You go down here to Bill Grey’s and turn and before you get to Bill’s you go through the woods, there’s a dirt road goes around and comes out there and I think that’s called Wesley, in there.
INTERVIEWER: Because it showed a whole little group of houses, back in there. A store and a little church or something back there. Even back then.
RODNEY: You go by a lot of it going down Public Landing. There in the crook of the road, you know. There is a road right there by the store, that turns to the left, and that takes in Wesley. The church and school, colored school, and church in there. And one of the roads that comes out here to Spence, not Spence, Buzzard Hill, we called it. And the other one turned to go down there by Bill Greys.
INTERVIEWER: Somebody was telling me Buzzard Hill was on that road. It wasn’t a town, it is just a place.
RODNEY: Buzzard Hill is on the road from Cedartown to Public Landing. That’s what they call Buzzard Hill. Somewhere around where Randolf Taylor lives. Do you know where Frank Jones lives, where the old road comes out when the new road comes out around there. He lives up on the right, well there used to be a road that cuts in there on the left and come right in front of the mill. I’ve been there with my father, to exchange corn from meal, have it ground. When we lived in Snow Hill.
INTERVIEWER: When you lived in Snow Hill. You know that could be, because I lined up all the towns from Ironshire and Libertytown, and then I got over to Snow Hill, and they were the only possible places could be. But I didn’t realize there was a road there.
RODNEY: There was a road come in from the other way right there this side of Jim Jones, in the woods, on that side. You go up there a little ways, and cut a sharp left and go in around and mill pond was on that side of mill and there was gates there at the mill and water run toward the river under the road. I’ve been over there even after I move up in Queponco. We used to go skatin’ of a night. Over there on Mill Pond.
INTERVIEWER: There’s nothing now that I know of to show it.
RODNEY: No, I don’t suppose there is. I haven’t been on that road in years. Last time I was in there I was skatin’ and that’s been 35 or 40 years ago or maybe longer than that.
INTERVIEWER: You don’t remember anything or your parents remember anything about the Iron Furnace, or that area.
RODNEY: My grandfather worked there. I heard him tell a lot. No, I don’t remember. Ya, I remember the buildings. I have had my name in 2 or 3 of them.
INTERVIEWER: Tell me what you remember about the Iron Furnace.
RODNEY: Well the old mansion house, I’ve been in it many-a-time, and it would have had my name if it was standing, in several rooms. And then there was one more little house, that’s all I remember about houses. But the church, I’ve been there several times too.
INTERVIEWER: In relation to the mansion house, where would you locate the church?
RODNEY: Well further in. A quarter of a mile, I expect from the mansion house. The reason I went there, I never went to any services, I don’t remember them ever having any. But the Christian Church used to have a festival there every summer. And they’d go out there and they would have the festival. I’ve been to several of them. That’s about all of the places you had to go to in them days. Festivals or something like that you know. Go out there and buy a saucer of ice cream for a nickel, 2 glasses of lemonade for a nickel. And bananas a cent a piece, I think.
INTERVIEWER: Now when you were out there at that time, there used to be a big pond, if you’re going toward the Furnace, it’s on the right hand side, there used to be a big pond about a mile and a half across on the right hand side of Old Furnace Road. You know there are two little bridges.
RODNEY: Which way were you going in from?
INTERVIEWER: Going in from Route 12, from Salisbury Road let’s say.
RODNEY: Up there by Albert Ardis’s?
INTERVIEWER: Yes, going in…..
RODNEY: Well we always went in the other way. The dirt road, you know, came in there.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, you went in that way. If you came in that way, the pond would have been on your right.
RODNEY: But we never saw any from that road.
INTERVIEWER: I really don’t think it was there at the turn of the century. I think it had just grown up, into what it is now. Because it was…..
RODNEY: You wouldn’t seen it, we traveled high land, you know, and after we crossed over there and through Nassawango Church and that bridge there, why it went through the woods, and comin’ in from the other way, why you cross bridges and, but I’ve never been either way on the water from there.
INTERVIEWER: You said your grandfather worked there?
RODNEY: My Grandfather Bounds worked there?
INTERVIEWER: What did he do?
RODNEY: I don’t know, I can’t tell you about that. One thing I remember him tellin’ about oxen, blinded oxen. And an old mule that they called Jack. You go to the stable and call him, why whoever, there wasn’t but one or two that could handle him, I reckon. And go there and call him and he would come around to the stable, but if you didn’t give him a chew of tobacco, he’d turn around and kick at you.
INTERVIEWER: That’s a good one, I hadn’t heard that one.
RODNEY: You go up there on that bridge, you would have to blindfold them or use blinders and you’d go up and turn around and come back. But that’s about as much as I know. It’s just about like the first time I ever saw it, as it is now, I guess. Maybe they repaired it a good bit.
INTERVIEWER: They’ve repaired it right much.
RODNEY: I’ve known it for 75 years anyway, if not more.