Jones, Grace (1907-1988) |
Worcester County Library: Local History and Genealogy Collection, Snow Hill Branch, Snow Hill, MD
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Interviewee: |
Grace Jones (1907-1988) |
| Interviewer: |
Alvin West |
| Date of interview: |
1982 April 5 |
| Length of interview: |
45 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
Library
Snow Hill (Md.)—Library History
Worcester County (Md.)—Education
Worcester County (Md.)—History
Worcester County (Md.)—Social life and customs
Worcester County (Md.)—Women’s History
Location Terms:
Public Landing (Md.)
Snow Hill (Md.)
Interview Begin
INTERVIEWER: Today is April 5th, 1982, and your name is:
GRACE: Grace Jones.
INTERVIEWER: When were you born?
GRACE: October 2nd, 1907.
INTERVIEWER: Were you born at home or in a hospital?
GRACE: No, I was born in Snow Hill at what is now 112, 114 North Washington Street, in the home where I lived for the first 60 years of my life.
INTERVIEWER: Okay-could you tell me the name of your parents?
GRACE: My mother was Anne Barnes Jones, and my father was Willliam Henry Jones. A lot of people called him William Handy, Bill Handy Jones, but that was his father’s name. His own name was William Henry Jones.
INTERVIEWER: I see. Were you raised by your parents or.......
GRACE: Yes, my father died in 1931 and my mother died in 1951. After that I continued to live at my old home, where I was born in the second floor apartment and one of my sister’s and her family lived downstairs.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, did you have any brothers and sisters?
GRACE: I had 3 sisters, 3 own sisters, and I had a half-brother and a half-sister.
INTERVIEWER: Could you give me their names?
GRACE: Yes, my own sisters were: Wilma Jones Brimer, but she had since remarried and her name is Hancock now. Wilma Jones Hancock. My one younger sister was Anna Jones and she’s married now, and her name is Childs. My older sister was Lucille Jones and she married a Jones, so she was Lucille Jones Jones.
INTERVIEWER: I see. Do they still live around here or.........
GRACE: My older sister died in about 1967, my, Mrs. Wilma Hancock lives in Dover, Delaware, and Anna Childs lives in Linthium Heights, Maryland. Now I have a half-brother and a half-sister. My half-sister was named Bertie Jones Morgan. She formerly lived in Portsmith, Virginia, but she died several years ago, and my half-brother’s name was Charles Jones and he died several years ago in, near Cape Charles, Virginia.
INTERVIEWER: Did your grandparents live in Snow Hill?
GRACE: No, my mother’s father and mother lived near Klej Grange at one time. In Worcester County. And when my grandmother died she was living between Snow Hill and Girdletree and my grandfather who died many, many years before she did, I think lived there, too. Now my mother’s, my father’s mother and father were born in the Queponco area but they, when they died they were living over on a big farm near Newark.
INTERVIEWER: I see. What did your parents do for a living?
GRACE: My mother was just a housewife and my father owned a store in Snow Hill, a general store, and he also owned mills. He owned about three different mills at various times, one of which was about a mile from Snow Hill out on the Purnell Mill Pond, I think they called-out on the Berlin Road.
INTERVIEWER: What kind of stuff did your dad sell at his store?
GRACE: Well, he had a big, what they used to call a general store, he sold almost everything. He sold dry goods and groceries and smoke needs-all sorts of things of that sort. He also sold hay and he sold flour and things, most of which were manufactured out in his mill and the people would bring their grain to the store which, I think there’s some offices there now, and people would bring their wheat and corn and then we’d consult a chart and give them the amount, whatever amount of, of flour or corn meal they wanted or chicken feed maybe, hominy or something-whatever they wanted to exchange for that. And that was all manufactured out here at the mill.
INTERVIEWER: Did you help your dad in the store?
GRACE: When I was very young, yes. From when I was about, anywhere from 10 to 12 years old, I used to help him. We all did.
INTERVIEWER: Did you like helping?
GRACE: Very much, yes.
INTERVIEWER: Were you ever married?
GRACE: No.
INTERVIEWER: Never married. Okay. Could you explain the cost of living ratio from when you were younger to what it is now?
GRACE: Oh my. This is so different. Of course, when I was very young, just a child, you know, well I can remember going to the movies, (we went to the movies once a week) that was 5 cents and uh, I think not long ago I paid $3.75 over in Salisbury, so that’s one great difference and of course everything-foods and well, just about everything was so different.
INTERVIEWER: Would you consider your family to be like, well-to-do?
GRACE: They were until I was about a junior in high school. We did not live extravagantly. My mother always insisted we be economical so that when I grew up and went to college that, you know, I could bring friends home and that sort of thing. But when I was, I think a junior in high school, my father lost practically all his money through a disastrous fire of a mill that he owned in Harrington, Delaware, at that time, and so we, we, after that we were not very, we had to, very economical.
INTERVIEWER: Was your family very religious?
GRACE: Well I would say average, I mean, um, we went to the Presbyterian Church but, we weren’t, I would say, weren’t fanatically religious.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Could you explain some of the events that you did in church? Anything that sticks out in your mind?
GRACE: Well, of course, in church when I was a child, one of the big things, two of the big things that I remembered-you see we did not have all the activities in church when I was growing up that they have now. One big event, well there were several big events, one for instance was Children’s Day, and the children brought flowers and decorated the church and performed just as they do now. I think they still have Children’s Day, maybe, but we recited and sang and all that sort of thing. Another big event was the lovely Christmas party they always had, and people brought the most delicious cake, I can remember, we always had ice cream and cake and you know that was, ice cream was not such a common thing for us, I mean we had ice cream cones once in a while, but not the way ice cream is eaten now, and we had homemade ice cream of course quite a bit. And then the Sunday School picnic was always a big event, generally held, I think, I can remember most of them were at Public Landing and that was a big event for us, for the Junior Church.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, could you explain some of the places that you remember when you were a child, that are not there today? Not here today?
GRACE: Well, of course, the primary school that I attended is no longer here. That was down on Federal Street across from where Miss Marian Brown lives now. There’s a big lot there, I’m not sure whether there’s anything on it now or not. And then the high school that I attended was also on Federal Street, and that was Federal near Martin Street and now, and that, of course, was torn down and now there are, there’re houses along there, completely, it’s the lot that was formerly the school grounds now has 5 or 6 houses on it, all the houses that are between Martin Street and Gunby Street. I’m, I must correct that, that’s now Martin Street, that’s Morris Street, I’m sorry, Morris Street. Let’s see, what else, of course when I came back here to teach I taught first in the old high school, which was the one I just said was between those two streets, between Morris and Gunby Street, and I taught there 2 years and then we moved into the new school, which is now the CETA Center on the corner of, that is Martin, on the corner of Martin Street and Church Street, extended. I’m sure there must be some other things around here that have been torn down, probably some houses and things, but, right this minute, I can’t think of any.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, um, when did you start school? How old were you?
GRACE: I was 7, I was 6 years old. I started in, that would have been 1913, wouldn’t it? 1913 I guess that was.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, and you went until the 11th grade?
GRACE: That’s all we had here-11 grades-then I went to Western Maryland College for 4 years and got a Bachelor’s Degree. Then I came back to Snow Hill and taught. I taught 40 years. I taught 10 years straight teaching and then starting with my 11th year, for the next 30 years I was a librarian in Snow Hill High School, either part-time or finally became full-time librarian. Then during the summer I got 2 degrees. During the summers I got a degree from Pennsylvania State College in 1936, a Master’s Degree. And then I got a Master of Library Science degree from Syracuse University in 1955. And then another summer I went to Western Maryland just to work on library courses.
INTERVIEWER: Were there any, are there any events that stick out in your mind that you did when you were a child?
GRACE: Well, I felt that when I was a child that we didn’t have to be entertained or have our, our various activities planned for us. If we went to the movies, when we went to the movies, sometimes we’d come back the next morning, or maybe it would be a Saturday ( we usually went to the movies on Friday night) then on Saturday morning, we’d, we’d act out or play the things that we had seen in the movies. And we had just simple games you might say, we had very good times I think, but we didn’t have to have people to tell us what to do. We played our own games and uh, life was rather simple here as I said, but I think people enjoyed it.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Did you visit many other towns when you were younger?
GRACE: Well, when I was, I remember I didn’t get to Salisbury until I was about 15 years old and I was a junior in high school then or maybe it was a senior in high school it would be when I was 16. We played a championship field ball game over there and to get there we had to go around Berlin because the road hadn’t been finished between Snow Hill and Salisbury. But I had been to Baltimore. I used to goo. One time I went to Baltimore on the steamboat that used to come down to Snow Hill. The steamboat came into the wharf here on Saturday afternoon from Baltimore and uh, oh, a lot of people went down to see the steamboat come in. We’d hear the whistle blow and people would come down and see the steamboat come in, and see the people get off the steamboat. And early Sunday morning the steamboat went back to Baltimore, and it was an all-day trip, beautiful trip up the Pocomoke River-down the Pocomoke River I should say, and it’s a beautiful river and it was a beautiful trip and we, it was almost, I think it was about 6 o’clock before we ever got to Crisfield, because I think they went down to some wharves in Virginia, like Saxis and uh, Tangier, some of those. And then we spent the night on the boat. We slept on the boat all night and early the next morning, by the time you had woke up, the boat had docked, and then my relatives would come and meet me and take me to their house. Then when I was a child, I went to Norfolk and I would go..........I enjoyed visiting her in Norfolk because she would take me sight-seeing and uh, I would, I met several other children my age, made many friends there. To get to Norfolk in those days of course, the, we went by train from Pocomoke to Cape Charles, Virginia, and then we went on a boat, a steamboat, from Cape Charles, Virginia to Norfolk.
INTERVIEWER: How old were you when you took this trip to Norfolk? Do you remember?
GRACE: Well I was about 13 or 14, something like that.
INTERVIEWER: Did you go alone or did your other brothers and sisters.............
GRACE: No, I went by myself.
INTERVIEWER: Really? Sounds fun.
GRACE: Yes. And when I went to Baltimore I went by myself. So all my life I’ve been traveling a great deal by myself.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Do you remember the first election you voted for, the first major election for president?
GRACE: Well, that’s terrible, I probably can’t remember for whom I voted, but I do remember one thing. I registered as an independent, and because I registered as an independent I couldn’t vote in the Primary elections. So, I was influenced by someone to change my affiliation to Demo.......to being a Democrat so that I could vote in the Primary elections, but I really, I can’t remember. I’m not very political minded, that didn’t make very much, the one I voted for president didn’t make very much impression on me I guess.
INTERVIEWER: Have your political views changed much since you’ve gotten..........
GRACE: Well, I’m still very independent-minded and although I’m a registered Democrat I vote, try to vote, for the person I think would best represent us, but, well one doesn’t know about that all the time.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Could you talk, or explain some of the political figures in Snow Hill when you were younger, like, were there any really did you believe, corrupt officials like that?
GRACE: I wasn’t aware of it if there were. We had a very quiet community then, there didn’t seem to be much agitation. I think Mr. Will Cordrey was mayor, if I remember correctly. And then after I came back here to teach, Mayor J.O. Byrd, I remember, was the mayor of the town. And they’re about the only two mayors I remembered until I came back later and Jim Sturgis became mayor, I mean that was after I was teaching here.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Do you remember your family’s first car?
GRACE: Oh, very well. We were one of the first people in Snow Hill to have a car and it was an Oakland, and it had, uh, it was a touring car, you know, it didn’t have, it had uh, a cloth top on it and uh, oh, when my father drove 35 miles an hour I got down on the floor of the car and cried because he was going so fast and I was so frightened.
INTERVIEWER: Could you tell me about the transportation your parents used before you got your first car?
GRACE: Well we had a horse and a carriage.
INTERVIEWER: Was it big enough for your whole family to ride in?
GRACE: You know I don’t see, we got this car in 1911, at that time I was 4 years old, so what happened before then I don’t remember. Well, my other sisters weren’t born, one was born in 1911 and one in 1913, so probably the mother, probably my mother and father and my older sister and I went in the carriage as far as I can remember, I don’t remember too much about that part of it.
INTERVIEWER: When did you get your first car?
GRACE: Well I, I didn’t get my first car till I was over 50, because I, when I was about 16 my father would let me drive. When he went somewhere, I would go with him, and I did several things: I ran into a garage door, I ran into a parked truck and almost ran, went over into a ditch once and everybody concluded that I couldn’t judge distance so they thought I better not try to learn to drive and I didn’t learn to drive. So when I was, I was over 50, I used to hear the boys in the library talk about the compact cars. I used to say I was never gonna get a car until they were small enough that I could drive it on the sidewalk, but used to hear the boys in Snow Hill High School library reading Hot Rod and Motor Trend and all talkin’ about the cars and they said they thought a Falcon had the fewest bugs of any car so I decided I would get a Falcon, so I went down to Perdue’s garage and Herman Perdue was the owner at that time and I had taught Herman in school. And I came in, I went in, and I said, “Herman sit down, you’re in for a shock”. And I said I’ve come to buy a car, and he said that is a shock, so I told him I wanted a white Falcon, 4 door with automatic transmission, well, he didn’t have one in stock, but we took another that was standard gear shift and we went out and, for me to try it out, of course, you know, and I didn’t know anything about driving really, we went way out in the country somewhere, so after we got back I told him to order it, order the car, and when I got back in town I was walking down the street and I met a friend and I said I’ve just ordered a car and she said, “ Can you drive?” And I said, “No.” So she said, “Aren’t you putting the cart before, the cart before the horse?” And I said, “ If I get it I’ll learn to drive.” And I did, and I’ve enjoyed it very much.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember the first paved road around here?
GRACE: Well, I can’t remember when they weren’t paved. I mean, they weren’t as nice as they are now, but most of the streets that I can remember, I can’t remember when they weren’t paved. And, of course, as I told, though I could remember that you couldn’t go to here from here to Salisbury until, I think it must have been the early 1930’s, because when I came home from college in 1928, somebody met us in Salisbury and brought us, ya know, through the what we called the forest then, it wasn’t, is now the Salisbury road and a part of that was still dirt road. That was in 1928, so it must have been finished 3 or 4 years after that.
INTERVIEWER: Could you tell me about the kinds of foods you ate when you were younger, your family and...........
GRACE: Oh, we had very good food, my mother was an excellent cook and my father was a very good provider. In those days, the man went through the streets in a little wagon selling fish, and he always went out and got nice fresh. And, of course, he had all sorts of groceries in his store, like, and he also, as I said had smoked meats, like ham. We always had plenty of ham. He bought lots of chickens, you know, they, from the farmers, and uh, peaches, we bought, oh, he bought all sorts of fresh fruit and that sort of thing, and I can remember, I’ve heard people say that the only time, when they were children that ever had any oranges was at Christmas time. And I remember we did have oranges and nuts and that sort of thing at Christmas time, but I can’t remember whether we had them other times as much. But we, you know, we didn’t have everything that people have now, but we did have a lot of good food, plenty of it. As I look back on it now, I think we were a bit wasteful and threw out a good bit.
INTERVIEWER: Did you have a favorite food that you liked?
GRACE: Well, I always liked, I’m afraid I liked sweet things a little bit too much, cake and that sort of thing. And when I was in high school, my mother used to get me to make a cake every, she wouldn’t let me cook very much, but she would get me to make a cake every Saturday. In those days people sort of kept cake on hand, you know people came in to give them, to offer them some cake or something. But I like almost everything to eat, I mean, I’m not fussy about food.
INTERVIEWER: Did you have, like, a small vegetable garden of your very own? Your family?
GRACE: Well, we had such poor ground up there. We tried a few vegetables, but they didn’t work, it didn’t work too well. I remember when I was teaching, in the early days of my teaching I had what they call a “victory garden” and uh, I tried to raise some vegetables and boys who delivered my groceries said the best thing they could say for my garden was that it was neat. And uh, I remember somebody said I had the prettiest tomato plants in town and not a tomato on them. The plants were beautiful, but no tomatoes, so we didn’t have a very good place for a garden.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. How did you store foods when you were younger-or preserve them?
GRACE: We had a refrigerator, ice box, I think you’d call it, and the ice man came around you know. He’d put a big block of ice, every day or every other day or something. That’s one way of course. My mother did quite a bit of canning and, uh, well that’s about it I suppose.
INTERVIEWER: Did your mother make your clothes or did you go out and…….
GRACE: She made a great many. Yes, she did. She was very clever at sewing and sometimes she would bring home a dress from uh, get a bought dress maybe sent from someplace, New York or Baltimore or something and she’d copy it, and she was very good about that. She would put little hand touches on it.
INTERVIEWER: Was your family for or against prohibition?
GRACE: Well, we never had very much liquor in the house. We had wine. My mother made wine. My father one time made blackberry wine, and that was served mainly at Christmas time and of course people, almost everybody kept a little bit of whiskey on hand. If you had a sore throat or to make a hot toddy or something like that, but as far as, but drinking a lot you know, I mean people just didn’t do it.
INTERVIEWER: Did the Depression hurt your family very bad?
GRACE: Well, I was teaching at that time and it did, because I remember my mother, when the bank was closed and, of course, what money she had in there, you know we couldn’t get, and when they re-opened, I think we had to take some of it out in bank stock, you know. But it was pretty rough. I have to say, because at that time, as a teacher I wasn’t making as much in a year as beginning teachers now get in a month. I think I’m accurate in saying that. I was getting just about, in a year, but, of course, you see the money bought so much more in those days than now. I think beginning teachers get just about as much a month as I was getting in a year.
INTERVIEWER: With family remedies, did your parents believe in them?
GRACE: Well, now we were always, we had uh, my father’s cousin, Dr. Paul Jones was our family doctor. We had a great deal of faith in him and uh, but my mother was very good at remedy, you know, with remedies. I said she would make a good doctor, because she was really very good at taking care of us. We had the usual childhood diseases like, small….like chicken pox, mumps, measles, and whooping cough and other than that we were very well. I mean I can’t remember anybody in the family having pneumonia or anything like that. But I did have, my youngest sister had lockjaw and that was the result of a vaccination that got infected, and my mother didn’t want her to be vaccinated in the first place and she was vaccinated and she came very nearly dying with it, with the lockjaw.
INTERVIEWER: Were the family remedies, were there any you didn’t like?
GRACE: Well, I don’t suppose anybody like castor oil. I’m sure we had a little castor oil, but I can’t remember too much about having any kind of remedy other than castor oil that we didn’t like, you know.
INTERVIEWER: Were there special class differences in Snow Hill when you were young?
GRACE: Well, there were people in Snow Hill who thought they were a little better than anybody else, but I don’t think they were, I mean they just sort of held themselves up as being a little better than other people.
INTERVIEWER: Were there differences in people that lived in the town limits and people who lived out of town-like the farmers and such?
GRACE: Well, there was one very interesting thing. There was in August what they called “Farmer’s Day” at Public Landing, maybe you’ve heard of that.
INTERVIEWER: Yes.
GRACE: And at that time the people came from way over the river, out what we call the forest. And they were called Foresters, they didn’t call it Farmer’s Day, I take that back, they call it Forester’s Day, and these people came to Public Landing in great droves. They came in their wagons and carts and things, and people in town went down there to look at them as if they were somebody from a foreign country. I can remember that very well, but I was a child, but I don’t remember too much about, of course you know the, in those days……………..
GRACE: There weren’t many school buses, and the children who lived in the country mainly went to one-room schools. That is, until they got like through the seventh grade and then they came to Snow Hill to school. Now there was a school bus, I remember from Newark for the high school, they came down from Newark.
INTERVIEWER: How were the people feelings in town for foreigners, people from other countries or just out-of-town people?
GRACE: Well, you know, when I was growing up here, we had almost no foreigners in Snow Hill. I mean almost none. I can hardly remember, maybe I do remember there was a girl in my class, a German girl. Her mother and father, I think they were Austrian, and they were among the very few foreigners. And well, we liked her, but, but I don’t think, we didn’t have very much knowledge of foreigners in those days.
INTERVIEWER: Could you explain some of your trips maybe, did you ever go to Ocean City?
GRACE: Oh yes, we went to Ocean City. Well, when I was very small we used to go over and spend a week at the old Atlantic Hotel, I guess it was, the old Atlantic Hotel. And then, as I got older, we got out, we had our own car, of course, and we drove, we drove to Ocean City and one thing I can remember vividly is how frightened we were because the train, there was a train that went to Ocean City and it went over a bridge and the automobiles had to go over that same bridge, and I was always so afraid that we were going over when the train, of course, I’m sure that they wouldn’t let any cars go over when the train was on the bridge, but when we were children we didn’t realize that. But one thing I do remember about Ocean City-that the boardwalk, well, I believe it was maybe no farther north than where the Commander Hotel is. That was the end of it, along up in there. And then I can remember that the beach was so much deeper than it is now, I mean the ocean was far away from the boardwalk, where now it’s almost up there. That shows you how the…….
INTERVIEWER: Did you yourself go swimming?
GRACE: I was afraid of the water. My mother was afraid of the water and I was timid. I went wading over there more than went swimming.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Did you dad go swimming?
GRACE: No, and my mother didn’t cause she was very much afraid of the water.
INTERVIEWER: Did the amusements, the amusement parks, that they had there, did you like going on them?
GRACE: Oh yes, we went on the merry-go-round. We never did go on the ferris wheel. I don’t think, in fact, I don’t think I went on the ferris wheel until I was grown and that was, I believe that was in Westminster, Maryland, but we did go on the merry-go-round, was the big attraction.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Did you go to Public Landing often?
GRACE: Yes, we’d take a picnic lunch and go down there and crab. We went down there and crabbed a lot, too.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Do you remember when they had the big slide at Public Landing?
GRACE: The big slide?
INTERVIEWER: Yes. There used to be a big slide there, a sliding board that goes into the water.
GRACE: Maybe, I can’t. right now I can’t remember it, where it was.
INTERVIEWER: How about visiting other towns in Worcester County, such as Berlin or Pocomoke?
GRACE: Yes. I’ll tell you, I used to go to Berlin and Pocomoke with, like these youth groups, connected with the church. I forgot to mention that, I mean we’d go to conferences, you know, church conferences or something like that. And then, another thing we used to have in those days that they don’t have anymore, of course, were the field days, and we went to those. Sometimes they’d have them in Pocomoke, sometime they’d be in Snow Hill and sometimes they’d be in Berlin. And that was a big event in our lives-to participate in the field meet. And that went on even after I taught.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember the race course they used to have?
GRACE: Out here? Snow Hill? Yes, but I don’t think I ever saw any horses race out there. But when I was in high school, sometimes we used to go out there like on a Sunday afternoon and somebody in our group would have a horse and a little wagon or something, we’d drive around the race course.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Did many fairs come to Snow Hill? Fairs and circuses? Did they have many fairs?
GRACE: Oh, the circuses were really wonderful. That was the big event in our lives. And the parades as I remember them were really fantastic and the circuses were big circuses and they were very good. That was a thrilling thing for this, children when the circus came to town. As far as fairs, the fairs were usually held in Pocomoke. They had the Pocomoke Fair and, of course, we went over there for that.
INTERVIEWER: Were there many stories in your, like war heroes in your family, from, like maybe the civil war or something like that?
GRACE: Not, not really war heroes. My grandfather was in the Civil War, my grandfather Barnes. And he survived. And then my father’s youngest brother was in the Civil War, but he came home. He wasn’t very well I think and he didn’t live very long after that.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, how about World War I? Did anyone in your family participate in that one?
GRACE: No, I don’t think it was anybody in our family in WWI. And then, in World War II, I had two nephews who were in WWII.
INTERVIEWER: How about Korea and Vietnam?
GRACE: Nobody that I know went to Korea or Vietnam that I can think of.
INTERVIEWER: How long were you a teacher?
GRACE: Well, I was a teacher, I was employed by the school board altogether for 40 years. First 10 years I taught French, Latin, and English. Then I became interested in being a librarian and I took some courses and eventually I got my degree in Library Science. But over the years I gave up many of my classes and finally became a full-time librarian. So I was either part-time or full-time librarian for 30 years altogether and I decided that, sometime along the line, I would retire in 1968. That made my 40th year. Surprised everybody, because nobody knew what I was planning. I did this, this was my own idea. And I happened to read in a magazine that overseas librarians were wanted and I was very much interested in travel at that time. And so, I applied and I ended up by being a Head Librarian at Teheran American School in Teheran, Iran for 3 years. They wanted me to stay another year but I wanted to try public library work. So I came home and I stayed 10 months in Snow Hill and I got a job in Southern Pines, North Carolina, as Head Librarian at their public library and I went with the intention of staying 2 years and that’s what I did, and while I was there I got another overseas job and it happened to be back in Iran. And I went back to Iran for 2 more years and I was Head Librarian at Danovan College, which was a college for Iran girls. While I was there that time I was invited to attend the Shah’s salon, which is a big event. People are invited and you’re presented to the Shah. And well, I was, I really did love my five years in Iran. I loved the country and of course I’m very sad now about what’s happened to it, but while I was was there, too, I had a great deal, I had many opportunities to travel. I traveled all over the country, all over Iran. I also was able to travel in several foreign countries during my vacation, like Egypt, some places in Europe, India, Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Soviet Union, Greece, East Africa and each time on my way home from Iran, it took me 3 months to get home, because I stopped and traveled places. That first time I came home from Iran, in ’71, after I’d been there 3 years, I came home through the Orient and I traveled in Southeast Asia. I spent 2 months in Japan, went to summer school there at the University in Tokyo and I stopped in Hawaii on the way back. The next time I came home, which was in 1974, ’76, 1976, I came, I went through the South Pacific. I went to New Zealand and Australia, and Indonesia, Malaysia and, oh, again to Hawaii, to visit a friend. I’ve been to South America twice, including Easter Island, the Galapagos Islands, I’ve been to China, and I’ve been to India twice, Nepal twice, and Bhutan, and well can’t think of other places that’s about it, maybe and I’m going to Europe this summer for 2 months.
INTERVIEWER: Where at in Europe will you be going?
GRACE: I’m going to be 3 weeks in the British Isles and I’m going two weeks in England, one week in Wales and two weeks in Yugoslavia, a week in Switzerland visiting friends and about 10 days in France visiting friends. I did forget to say when I talked about my years of teaching that I was very active in extra-curricular activities. I coached athletics for a number of years. Won field ball championship for 10 years, my girls did, and I was Student Council Sponsor for about 15 years. I coached plays, I was a sponsor for the yearbook and for the school news and the newspaper and I founded the American Field Service Club there and helped to found the American Field Service Chapter here in Snow Hill. So I was very much engaged in a lot of activities there and enjoyed my years teaching very much and enjoy now seeing the many pupils that I taught and their children and their grandchildren and all, some of whom I taught have grandchildren.
INTERVIEWER: Is there anything else, any other experiences?
GRACE: Well, I live in Salisbury, Maryland now, and I’ve been there since the fall of 1976 and one thing I have done since I’ve been there that proved to be very interesting; for one year I conducted tours for the American Association of Retired People (Persons). I took them on 16 tours altogether. 10 one-day tours and 6 longer tours, like anywhere from 3 to 8 days. All in this country of course.
GRACE: I would like to make one correction and a few additions to the tape that I made earlier when I was interviewed by Alvin West. I made a statement that I had 2 nephews in WWII. Well, that wasn’t really quite correct. I should have said I had 2 nephews served, who served in the Armed Forces. My older nephew, Charles E. Jones Jr., who now lives in our old home in Snow Hill, did serve in WWII with the Air Force in the European theater of war. In fact, he was in the D-Day invasion of Normandy and has many interesting things to tell about that. My other nephew, Tom Brimer, was in the Army for 2 years. He graduated from the John Hopkins University Engineering School in 1957. The first year he was out, he worked with Leeds and Northrup, but the next two years he served two years in the Army as a Second Lieutenant. He had gotten a commission upon graduation from John Hopkins. He did not go overseas. We weren’t engaged in war, I don’t think at that time, but he had a very interesting experience just before his two years were up. He was chosen to conduct a group of Indonesian army generals around the United States, and that proved to be very interesting.
GRACE: I suppose I’m very much conscious of the history of libraries more or less in Snow Hill. And my earliest memory was of a “Reading Room”, which was conducted, or gotten together, and sponsored by the Reverend Archibald Mitchell, who was the rector of the All Hallows Episcopal Church here, and he organized or set up this reading room in one of the rooms of the rectory. And it was a great treat for us to go there and get books and also, of course, we borrowed and exchanged books among ourselves, because some of us had small libraries at home. The next place that I can remember going to the library was in the courthouse. There’s a little room right under the tower of the courthouse, not sure what it’s used for now, but anyway there was. The library was moved from the rectory up to the courthouse and it stayed there for a number of years until it was moved over to an office on, across the street, really, to an office on Market Street. Understand it’s now the Office of Gerry Mason. And it stayed there until people complained that it was so small and anyway we had to pay rent there. I think, so it was moved to, what we used to call the Municipal Building, but is now called the City Hall. And over, during those years, Miss Margie Godfrey and Mrs. Rhoda Kenney were the librarians. And that was, the library was on the 2nd floor of the Municipal Building and it was better than having it on the street and, on Market Street. Now we had a library board, I know, at the time we had the library in the Municipal Building. I became a member of that board and we succeeded in raising money for shelving and furniture, but we didn’t have any place to put shelving and furniture, but we raised money and eventually we rented a building that was a store building, on the corner of Washington and Market streets, where the stop light is today. And so, that’s where we started, we bought the, by that time the county library had been organized and so we bought the shelving and the furniture and so forth and we were so proud to be able to put those in that building and get a county library started. We had worked for many years, several of us, had worked for many years to try to get the county commissioners to appropriate two cents of the tax dollar for a library. That was the prerequisite for getting state aid. And finally, the County Commissioners did it and I give a great deal of credit of that, for their decision to Dr. Reginald V. Truitt, who spoke to the Rotary Club in Pocomoke and said that there were three things that we should have in this county-one was a county library, one was a historical society and right at this moment I forget what the third was, but anyway he thought that we did certainly need a library. And I would like to give credit to Walter Onley Jr., who was on the, was a member of the County Commissioners at that time. He took the trouble to go over to Salisbury and talk with Mrs. Lucy Horsley, who had been most successful as the County Librarian over there. And finally, the library, the County Commissioners did decide to appropriate the 2 cents per, on the hundred dollars, and a Board of Trustees was appointed by Governor Millard Tawes, and I was privileged to be on that Board of Trustees and served as its secretary for quite some time. Now school libraries were practically non-existent for years and years. In the old school, well I’ll call it old school, which was the school on the corner of, up there on Federal Street, between Morris Street and Gunby Street, I think they call that, there really, there was, in the back of the assembly there were 2 bookcases with glass doors. And once a week, in the bookcases, I remembered was a set of Encyclopedia Britannica, and some old books, classics I believe, like the Waverly novels and Thackeray’s novels and things of that sort, and very little else. But once a week, each English class was conducted to this so-called library by Miss Julia Bratten, and she with a great flourish got out her keys and unlocked the door and we were privileged to borrow one of those books. Then we moved to, what we called then the new school, which was on the corner of Ironshire and Church Street, extended. Well, there, there was a room and on the door, up over the door was the word “library”, was a sign there, and the word “library”, and in the room there were shelves and tables and chairs and a little card catalogue, but on the shelves were about 12 or 15 hundred books, largely old textbooks, mostly junk from people’s attics and finally in 1939, I asked Mr. Arthur Sanfords, then superintendent, if I went to library school or if I got some credits in Library Science at Western Maryland, that summer, 6 credits, could I give up one of my classes, English class, and organize a library, and he was delighted, so I came back that fall and started a library. Well we didn’t have very much, it seems to me that we got about a 100 dollars a year, and the student council, of which I was sponsor eventually, well anyway they raised about 50 dollars a year, so you see we didn’t really have very much of a library. And, of course, finally we, we moved to the new school, the new, new school maybe I should call it, which is at the present time Snow Hill High School and at last we had something that resembled a modern library, more than anything that we’d ever had before, and of course Worcester County now has many fine school libraries.
GRACE: One very small, but poignant, maybe, memory of my childhood in Snow Hill, was Miss Susie Birch’s shop. Miss Susie’s shop was located on Market Street, I would say in the back of what eventually became Brimer’s Restaurant and then Outten’s Restaurant, I believe, and, was it not, and then Silco. But anyway, it was a tiny dark little shop and she had the most entrancing things in there for children. If we could just scrape the money together to get some of the little goodies that she had, not only candy, but she always had Valentines, and I can remember vividly the comic Valentines. I went down and I selected one that had a picture on it of a wooden, of a person in the shape of a wooden, of a person in the shape of a wooden block, it was a blockhead, and of course that’s a derogatory term, but I must have been very small and I thought that was lovely and I signed my name to it and sent it to one of my young friends. And the wrath of her father and mother soon descended on my family and me. But Miss Susie did have interesting little thing in there, and she was a little witchy-looking woman. But one night we looked out, I could see the shop from my house, and one night we heard the pealing of the fire whistle, I’ll call it pealing, you never think of pealing of bels, but I don’t know how else to describe the awful sound that the old fire alarm used to have in this town. And we heard it and it just went all through you, and I looked out and Miss Susie Birch’s shop was on fire and she was yelling, “Fire! Fire!” So poor Miss Susie never did get her shop back, but that was a vivid memory. Another vivid memory that I have is of, of marching in a parade in Berlin at one of the field meets, track and field meets. We always had a parade, and at that time I was in the elementary school. And, at that time women were fighting hard for the right to vote, so we were dressed up as suffragettes, I suppose, we must have been, oh, way down in the elementary school somewhere, we wore white skirts, black jackets, derby hats and across the chest of each of us was a piece of yellow cotton material and printed on it in purple was “Votes For Women”, and we were so proud. I’m sure the teachers, of course, put us up to it, because, of course, they wanted to get the vote so that was really quite something. Now, entertainment, I did mention, I think earlier in the tape that we had very simple forms of entertainment, but we did have a good time and I did want to mention 2 or 3 other things we did. When I was a very small child, this must have been before I started to school, children made streetcars, we called them. We got shoe boxes, and the larger we could get the better, for instance, a man’s shoe box, oh we even got maybe a shirt box. We cut out windows in the, on the sides of these boxes and on the interior, over each window we pasted a piece of colored tissue paper, and we put a candle in the box, and of course we had a little hole in the top to let the smoke out, and we had string attached to each box and we would parade up and down the street, several of us at a time, pulling our streetcars while our parents watched from the front porches. People sat on the front porches in those days and they watched us, mainly I suppose to see that we didn’t burn ourselves up, but that was a lot of fun. When I was in high school, we used to have straw rides, or hay rides to Public Landing. Mr. Bradley Adkins, who was the father of Eloise, Miss Eloise Coffin, always furnished his truck with a lot of straw, hay in it and we paid him the magnificent sum of 25 cents to go to Public Landing and we spent the evening, of course we walked on the boardwalk down there and much of the entertainment though, took place in a building down there they called the Paddle Club. We danced, and oh, people sat around and talked, and they had a Victrola for the music I think, and that Paddle Club was quite the place for entertainment. A lot of things went down there and that was eventually moved up to Snow Hill and is now, forms the basis of the Lion’s Club building. Another thing that went on in Snow Hill, for a number of years, when I was in school, was the appearance every summer of the Chautauqua program. They were held in a tent on the old school grounds, up on Federal Street, and I think it was part of a national organization where they provided lecturers and performers of various sorts, mainly musicians, and I think, I know it had a relationship with the Chautauqua that still exists, still goes on in the summer up at Lake Chautauqua, New York, and it was……..Another form of entertainment in Snow Hill when I was a child, but less cultural maybe that the Chautauqua programs was the appearance of the floating theater, was a boat that resembled, very much the showboat that you see in the movie Showboat, only of course it was much smaller and, the boat came down the river, came up the river, I should say, up the Pocomoke and tied up on the bank, just before you get to the river bridge, along there where James Adkins used to be and now the big Central Implement Company has a building there. Two plays that I can remember were performed, were, of course, they were very melodramatic, and two of them that I can remember, titles of two, “Ten Nights in a Barroom”, and “Lena Rivers”. Well, so much for entertainment, I’m sure, of course we had many birthday parties and that sort of thing when we were children, in different people’s homes and I’m sure there must have been a lot of other things, but I think I’ve mentioned some of those earlier in the tape, so I am going to just mention briefly a few memories I have of World War I. I was in the, about the 4th grade, I think when the United States entered the war in 1917, and one thing I remember, we had, there were days of the week when we weren’t, we were supposed to deprive ourselves of certain things for the war effort and one thing was, we were supposed to conserve hear, so we had heatless Monday. We were supposed to conserve meat, for instance, and so we had meatless Tuesday. As a small child in the 5th grade, I think I remember going up to the old school and rolling bandages for the Red Cross. And I know some of us got together and put on little plays in our backyards and raised money for the Red Cross. I remember, I think we raised about 50 cents and bought some soap with the money that we raised. Then we had something called, I think we called it the “Victory Corps”, I’m not sure, but I think the word “victory” appeared in it anyway, and we were supposed to pledge ourselves to raise, to work and raise and earn a certain amount of money to give to the Red Cross or give to the war effort, and I know my father gave me 5 dollars before I did any work at all, which was a sort of fortune for a child in 1918, along in 1917, 1918 to have 5 dollars, well, that was really something. And I suppose I worked it out, I can’t remember exactly what I did, but after all I was only 9 or 10 years old, so I’m sure I didn’t, didn’t earn the 5 dollars really, but anyway I pledged it and handed it in. I do remember the Armistice, 1918, when November 1918, when everybody in town could get there, I suppose, assembled in front of the courthouse to hear someone to speak about the good news that the war was finally over. Of course, the bells were ringing and the sirens were blowing and that sort of thing, and it was really quite a thrilling experience. And I also remember something else that happened in front of the courthouse that had nothing to do with the war. In fact, it had an entirely different purpose in existing, and that was that we must have a chapter, or whatever you call it of the Ku Klux Klan in Snow Hill, because, I’m sure we did, because they burned a cross on the primary school grounds I think, and then they appeared in all their regalia in front of the courthouse, and I remember going down there and looking at them and being rather frightened to look at them. There are just, in closing I, before I close I would like to mention the American Field Service which was organized, the Snow Hill Chapter of the American Field Service, which was organized in 1959, with Ben T. Truitt as first President. In addition to Mr. Truitt, other charter members included Edith Chandler Perdue, Theo Hauck, Dr. James Cabler, Virginia Timmons and the Reverend Howard Evans of the Whatcoat Church and I also was a charter member. Our first foreign student came in the fall of 1960. She was Britt Hanson Stomyer of Kamume (?) Norway, and her American family was the Cleveland Bounds family of Queponco. If we had personally looked the world over for a student to start us off on the right foot with the AFS program, we couldn’t have picked anyone more appropriate and more wonderful than Britt. She soon won the hearts of everybody and was, has been back, by the way, several times to visit the Bounds family and they’ve visited Norway to visit her and they regard her as one of their own children. We have had at least one student, some years more than one, a year ever since 1960, except for the ’65-’66 school year. In the summer of 1961 our first student from Snow Hill High School went to a foreign country and he was Johnny Perdue-son of Edith and John Quinton Perdue-he spent the summer in Japan. Over the years this wonderful program has enriched the lives of the people of the school community, which of course includes Newark, Girldletree, Stockton, Box Iron, Spence and all outlying areas served by Snow Hill High School. And it has, we feel, contributed much to our understanding of the world and its peoples. I’m proud to be a life member of the Snow Hill Chapter of this wonderful organization.
GRACE: To my travels that I enumerated earlier in the tape, I would like to add that I did visit outer Mongolia in 1973, Bhutan and other parts of the Himalayan area in 1981 and in April 1983 I flew to Savannah, Georgia and took a 2 week cruise up the inland waterway to Baltimore on a ship called the America which was built in Salisbury, Maryland. As I end this tape on May 19th, 1983, I’m looking forward to a trip in November of this year to New Guinea and several Malaysian Polynesian Islands.