Matthews, Emily (1899-2005) |
Worcester County Library: Local History and Genealogy Collection, Snow Hill Branch, Snow Hill, MD
|
Interviewee: |
Emily Dickerson Matthews (1899-2005) |
| Interviewer: |
Katherine P. Fisher |
| Date of interview: |
1977 March 2 |
| Length of interview: |
30 min |
| Transcribed by: |
|
| Preferred Citation: |
“Name, Oral History Collection, Date of Interview, Worcester County Library, Snow Hill Branch, Snow Hill, Maryland.” |
Topical Terms:
Worcester County (Md.)—History
Worcester County (Md.)—Social life and customs
Location Terms:
Furnace Town (Md.)
Interview Begin
INTERVIEWER: …Conversation
EMILY: Where the Old Furnace stack is, it would probably be about a half mile on down past that, over to the right of the church.
INTERVIEWER: Ok, over – this is Millville Road, which is the old road that runs behind it, was it on – which side of Millville Road would it have been on?
EMILY: Now, what do you mean, Millville Road? We never called that the Millville Road.
INTERVIEWER: Did you call it the Old Stage Coach Road?
EMILY: Uh huh.
INTERVIEWER: Ok, that is the same name, the same thing. So here’s Old Stage Coach Road, and here’s the Furnace stack here, so that puts the church over in this direction?
EMILY: Uh huh, yeah. And the old hotel – as I remember it, it was just about opposite the Old Furnace stack.
INTERVIEWER: Ok.
EMILY: And then the church was down a little further.
INTERVIEWER: Right on the opposite side of the road from the Furnace.
EMILY: Uh huh.
INTERVIEWER: Ok.
EMILY: It was all on the other side of the road, as I remember it.
INTERVIEWER: The hotel, too.
EMILY: The church – there was a store there and all the homes, but I don’t remember seeing any homes. It was all gone away. All I remember was the old hotel, you know, and all the youngsters used to go every Sunday and go up those old steps. I remember they was so rickety, we was scared to death for fear we’d fall. You know, they were rotten then.
INTERVIEWER: But you had to go anyway.
EMILY: Had to go anyhow.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, indeed.
EMILY: Then everybody would write their name, you know, on the walls. Oh, there were thousands and thousands of names on the walls, you know, and it was supposed to be a haunted place, you know, and of course the youngsters in those days didn’t have anything to do anyway, and they just congregated there and had a big time, you know.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, that would be good.
EMILY: And the church itself, I just barely remember that, but the ground stayed open a long time after the church was done away with and then they used to have festivals there – ice cream festivals.
INTERVIEWER: All right.
EMILY: And all the neighbors would get together and make ice cream, you know. They’d go from house to house and get the milk, you know; everybody had cows then, you know, and we’d get the milk and meet to different people’s houses and make the ice cream, you know, and then go out there and have a festival. We’d call it a picnic in later years, but it was a festival then.
INTERVIEWER: Did you remember going inside the church at all?
EMILY: No, I can’t remember inside the church at all. I just remember seeing the church there, you know.
INTERVIEWER: Ok. What would you compare it in size to with something around - ?
EMILY: Compare the church itself?
INTERVIEWER: Uh huh.
EMILY: Oh, well, I would say just about the size of that schoolhouse – Mount Zion schoolhouse – maybe something like that, you know.
INTERVIEWER: Ok, that’s a good size for comparison. That’s something we can picture at least in our minds. They said it was called the Shingled Meeting House. They said it had shingles on the sides and roof, instead of boards going this way.
EMILY: Well, there probably was, but I don’t –
INTERVIEWER: By the time you saw it, they probably had all gone off. Now, your father, didn’t he have something to do with the Furnace?
EMILY: Yes, that Old Furnace. There is a story about that, too. We heard this – you know, it was in World War 1, when everybody was buying up iron and just selling it for an enormous price, you know, and shipping it, you know, and they were building planes. In fact, I guess maybe the Germans were buying it from us, you see; we were selling it to them to beat us with, but anyway, we kept hearing this bang, bang at night, you know, and one night – we just thought, maybe it was – maybe the wind or something, you know, but the second or third night, maybe, my father says, “I’m getting tired of hearing that. There’s something going on down that road and I’m going to find out”, and of course that upset us children to death, you know. This was our home place up there.
INTERVIEWER: You know, that’s what I was getting ready – back here?
EMILY: And we lived there then and we children were just excited to death, you know, because he thought there was a noise going on down there. So he went down there. I imagine he walked, because we didn’t have a car then; you see, nobody had cars then. I imagine he walked. I think he got Mr. Jim Dryden to go with him – they lived in the farm back of us then – and they went down there and these two boys – I don’t remember if they were colored or white – seems to me they were white, though – they were up on top of that Iron Furnace, picking out – banging out the iron, you know –
INTERVIEWER: Oh, my goodness!
EMILY: Out of that Furnace – out of the stack.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, for goodness sake.
EMILY: Yeah, and they had a truck there, loadin’ it up, and they’d been doing that, I guess, a night or two, you see. They’d go down there at nighttime, you know. And that’s what they were doing. So, my father – they come home and call the – I don’t know why they didn’t call the Sheriff, but they called the County Commissioner – that was Mr. Sam Shockley, at that time. You know who I mean? Well, he’s dead now. Do you know Margaret Shockley?
INTERVIEWER: Yes, yes.
EMILY: Well, everybody knows her. Well, it was her father.
INTERVIEWER: All right.
EMILY: Well, he was County Commissioner, then, and he was a good friend of my father’s, too, and he called him and Mr. Shockley says, “Well, we got to do something about that”, so evidently, he sent the Sheriff out there and they got them. And they had picked, oh, they had picked a lot of it - just ruined it, you know, and all underneath there, I guess it still shows. I haven’t seen the Old Furnace lately, but Mr. Shockley got my father and my husband to go and cement – redo it over, you know, and this front of it now –
INTERVIEWER: You can see where the cement it.
EMILY: Well, my father and my husband is the ones did that.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, for goodness sake.
EMILY: They did that over, you know, with cement.
INTERVIEWER: To try to keep people from getting iron out of it.
EMILY: Well, just so the Furnace would not fall down; just to preserve it, you know.
INTERVIEWER: All right.
EMILY: That’s what they really did it for - just to preserve it, but evidently, they sent these two boys away. I don’t remember who they were now, it’s been so long. I think they were white boys, but I’m not sure.
INTERVIEWER: They were just out to make some money.
EMILY: Oh, yes, they were thinking of making a fortune off of that.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, goodness. Now, the Old Furnace, when you look at it today, has all those pipes up on top. As far as you know, had they always been there?
EMILY: Oh, yes.
INTERVIEWER: Well, there’s a man – I have got a letter in here – from Chicago, who wrote several years ago, and he said that if those pipes were there when this Furnace was built, that it was one of the most unusual furnaces in the United States at that time, because this process had just been developed in Europe and, you know, he said this would really make it unique history-wise, so I wrote him a letter today and told him that they had been there and I am anxious to hear what he says, because the more unique we can have it, the better chance of getting something done with it.
EMILY: Well, I am sure they were put there when the Furnace was built. It had to be.
INTERVIEWER: I presume so. He asked about it and I thought, well, I will ask, too. Now, when you went – or when your father, because he would remember things about it, was there – were the streams, you know how narrow they are now, under those bridges – were they a lot wider?
EMILY: The bridges –
INTERVIEWER: Yeah. The bridges were the same, I imagine, but what about the amount of water in that area?
EMILY: No, it’s just the same so far as I know.
INTERVIEWER: Ok. We were trying to establish where they would have gotten enough water power to run the mill.
EMILY: Well, the water itself, it is supposed to be awfully deep there.
INTERVIEWER: Well, that would provide some of it.
EMILY: If there has been any changes in the depth or width of length, I don’t know anything about that.
INTERVIEWER: Ok.
EMILY: The bridges are just the same.
INTERVIEWER: Now, somebody told me that the bridges that are there now were not built until the 1930’s or ‘40’s, or something like that. The bridges were there –
EMILY: There’s been new bridges built. I mean, from time to time. You know, they had to be kept up.
INTERVIEWER: Right. They do that. Now, this was dirt until fairly recently, wasn’t it?
EMILY: All this was dirt, and all this was woods. Oh, yes, all this field, from here, was woods until up about – let me see – I guess it’s been about fifty years ago. My father and my husband began clearing it off themselves and they didn’t have bulldozers, then, either. They worked, I mean, and they had to blow up stumps by dynamite, then, you know. That was hard work.
INTERVIEWER: That really was. Do you remember your father ever saying any of the people that used to live back in there – any families that came from the Old Furnace? There’s supposed to have been, at one time, about a hundred houses and about eight hundred people who lived there, and there’s only one family that we’ve been able to come across any name of and that’s the McAllen family. And they lived there and then they moved into town and some of their descendants had a bakery there, where the old library was, in town, and Mable Hudson’s father was the baker for them, the Dunlap man, and her grandfather, I guess, Hill, lived out at the village, out at Furnaceville, too, but they are the only two name we have been able to come up with. And I keep thinking maybe somebody might remember a family that used to live there who have some people around.
EMILY: I know – I remember my father mentioned a name or two, I know, but right now, I just don’t remember any particular name.
INTERVIEWER: I imagine – did just people from the area – have you ever heard him say – they didn’t bring labor in to run it when the Furnace, you know, was going. I don’t know whether they – a lot of times they’d bring, like, migrant labor, or something, in, but this was just local people that went there to work.
EMILY: I am sure of that because the migrant labor wasn’t even known until, oh, twenty-five, thirty, or forty years ago, you see.
INTERVIEWER: Ok. So, the people just sort of sank into the forest, or something.
EMILY: They just lived back there, you know, and that’s –
INTERVIEWER: And that’s what they did. You don’t know of any old graveyard back in that area? I know there is one down on Pennewell Road, but that’s further down.
EMILY: Oh, that’s Nassawango.
INTERVIEWER: Right.
EMILY: That was my home church. That was the church there, then, and that’s where I always went to church – Nassawango Church – and that’s my family burying lot. It was there, but in later years, we had my mother moved to Bates Cemetery and my father was buried there, but there’s a cemetery – where was it Dad carried all of us one time, back there? Mulburn’s Landing – you know, you went by Milburn’s – didn’t we go by Milburn’s Landing where that graveyard – you remember?
3rd Person: Across Richard ---? (unintelligible)
EMILY: Uh huh.
3rd Person: Where you go to Old Furnace, that’s way back there.
EMILY: I don’t believe that would have any connection with the Old Furnace.
INTERVIEWER: We were trying to figure out the other day – you know, people had to die, and I wondered where they buried them.
EMILY: Well, there must have been a burying lot right there to the Old Furnace, where the church was, but I never heard of it, and I don’t know where it is.
INTERVIEWER: Right, and we haven’t been able to find any trace of any markers.
EMILY: No, I am sure there were no markers because they didn’t have any, then. They didn’t even know what it was to put a marker to a grave then, I don’t think.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, really.
EMILY: It’s the truth.
INTERVIEWER: I didn’t know that. I figured that you’d always put something down so you wouldn’t dig it up again.
EMILY: Well, why I say that is because I have been trying a long time to trace where my grandfather – my father’s father and mother – are buried and there’s nobody livin’ that knows any more. My brothers are younger than I am and they were always under the impression that they were buried at – out here to the old place, we called it – it’s a buryin’ lot back here to the old place where my father used to live, you know, and we thought they were buried there. But my aunt – I only had one – well, I have two aunts lived, but one of them is 98 years old; she lives in Florida, and she said they were buried out in Nassawango, but there’s no markers anywhere.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, for goodness sake.
EMILY: Isn’t that a shame?
INTERVIEWER: It is, because I figured they always put something –
EMILY: I know; you would think so.
INTERVIEWER: Did your father say anything about the sailing ships that would come up to pick it up – up Nassawango creek?
EMILY: The salesmanship?
INTERVIEWER: Sailing, sail boats.
EMILY: Oh, let me see. No, I don’t – I’d be afraid to commit myself on that. I just don’t know.
INTERVIEWER: Right. A couple of people have said that there weren’t any bridges at Red House Road.
EMILY: Milton would know that.
INTERVIEWER: He said that there weren’t any bridges at Nassawango or Red House Road and that three-masted schooners went right straight up to the Furnace. He said you would never know it now, by going back in there. He said, but they did, and he can remember that.
EMILY: Well, I do know that this mule, you know, that pulled the iron ore from the stack, and that I will say I never saw, it would take him right straight over, you see, and whatever it was, they dumped the iron ore into a truck, or something, but there wasn’t any boat.
INTERVIEWER: Right.
EMILY: I don’t know what they dumped it in.
INTERVIEWER: So far as I can determine, they loaded it into carts as it came out and then took it on sort of a rail-like thing; it wasn’t a railroad, but they used rails to run it down to the schooners and load them up there.
EMILY: Down the creek and out to the river.
INTERVIEWER: Right out to the river; right down Nassawango Creek.
EMILY: You’re probably right.
INTERVIEWER: Because they said, you know, it was deep enough and you’re saying about the depth of the water there to take the schooners, and all the trees in there. Well, it’s 140 years ago we’re talking about, and there aren’t any trees in there that are that old, you know. They are fairly new, new growth, meaning 75 years old, or so.
EMILY: It’s a long time ago, isn’t it.
INTERVIEWER: It is, indeed. Goodness. Well, let’s see if there is anything else. Now, when your father was working on the Furnace, do you remember his saying anything about seeing any remains of the mill wheel? The water wheel that ran it?
EMILY: The water wheel?
INTERVIEWER: Which –
EMILY: No.
INTERVIEWER: It was the bellows that made the Furnace run and was powered by water and they had a water wheel attached to the Furnace.
EMILY: Yes, but I don’t know whatever happened to the wheel.
INTERVIEWER: I don’t, either. They found the base underneath, you know, where it was boarded over so that the dirt would not erode, but the water wheel itself, they can’t find any trace of that at all.
EMILY: It’s probably in the bottom of the creek, or maybe somebody – I don’t know, it’s hard to tell – maybe it was stolen, you know.
INTERVIEWER: Right, and people – when it’s deserted like that, they just go ahead and take things without thinking about it.
EMILY: So, I don’t know.
INTERVIEWER: All right, good. Well, can you think of anything else that your father might have remembered about it, or –
EMILY: No, I don’t believe so.
INTERVIEWER: Well, you have done a good deal, already. Was the hotel the place that was supposed to have the blood stains on the floor?
EMILY: Oh, yes.
INTERVIEWER: Did you see them?
EMILY: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: Did you, really?
EMILY: Of course, it was black. I mean, you know, it was black, but they were there. Oh, yes. And, of course, everybody said, oh, they were scared to death, you know. Yeah, I remember that.
INTERVIEWER: All right. Well. This concludes and interview with Emily Dickerson Matthews, March 2, 1977.