McRoberts, John (1901-1990) & McRoberts, Evelyn (1906-1988) |
Worcester County Library: Local History and Genealogy Collection, Snow Hill Branch, Snow Hill, MD
|
Interviewee: |
John (1901-1990) and Evelyn (1906-1988) McRoberts |
| Interviewer: |
Katherine P. Fisher |
| Date of interview: |
1983 January 27 |
| 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
Transportation
Worcester County (Md.)—Education
Worcester County (Md.)—History
Worcester County (Md.)—Social life and customs
Worcester County (Md.)—Women’s History
Location Terms:
Cedartown (Md.)
Snow Hill (Md.)
Interview Begin
INTERVIEWER: Okay, today is January 27th, 1983. And this is an interview with Mr. and Mrs. John McRoberts. Okay, Mr. McRoberts, what is your full time?
JOHN: John S. McRoberts. John Steven.
INTERVIEWER: Good, and when were you born?
JOHN: December 20, 1901.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Do you remember your parent’s names? Full names, including mother’s maiden name.
JOHN: Her name was Efffie Waite.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Waite.
JOHN: Uhun. Same as these Waites out here.
INTERVIEWER: Same as those. Okay. And your father’s name?
JOHN: Philip L., Philip L. McRoberts.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Do you by any chance remember either of your grandparent’s names? On either side?
JOHN: I can remember my grandmother. Her name was Harriet.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
JOHN: My grandfather McRoberts, I know what his name was, but I can’t hardly remember him. He died when I was a little boy, and his name was Henry.
INTERVIEWER: Alright.
JOHN: And my mother’s father was a Civil War veteran.
INTERVIEWER: Was he?
JOHN: He, he went all through the whole war. His name was Steven.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
JOHN: And I get my middle name from him.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, yes you do.
JOHN: And his, her mother was Navina Stevens, her people was German. Her father and mother never learned to speak English. And she died in ’38.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Now, Mrs. Roberts, could I have your full name please?
EVELYN: Evelyn Ann McRoberts.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, what was your maiden name?
EVELYN: Evelyn Jackson.
INTERVIEWER: Jackson. Alright, now. Do you remember your parents full names?
EVELYN: I remember my mother but not my father. Don’t remember him at all. And her name was Katy Jackson.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. What was her maiden name, do you remember?
EVELYN: Her maiden name was Smith.
INTERVIEWER: Smith. Okay. Now where were you born Mrs………….
EVELYN: Newark.
INTERVIEWER: At Newark. Okay where abouts in Newark?
EVELYN: Well I don’t know, but I think it was down on the bay shore.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Down toward the bay.
EVELYN: Uhun.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, Mr. McRoberts where were you born?
JOHN: I was born Lorraine County, Ohio.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. And…………….
JOHN: You might know where Oberlin is, big college town.
INTERVIEWER: Yes.
JOHN: That’s where I was born, about 3 miles from there.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Okay. When did you come to Worcester County?
JOHN: 1908. October 1908.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. What brought you all here?
JOHN: Well my father, when he was a young man, he took up government land in Kansas, and he stilll owned that. Andn he was getting ready to move to Kansas, out there where his property was, but he seen this plalce advertised down here, and come down here, and of course this bay down there, and he loved oysters to death, and so that’s where he come.
INTERVIEWER: Oh for goodness sakes.
JOHN: In 1921, they moved back there, sold his place, the man was dissatisfied with it so they bought it back, and we moved right on back.
INTERVIEWER: For goodness sake.
JOHN: Their both buried here.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. That’s something, for oysters to win you over.
JOHN: That man sure loved oysters.
INTERVIEWER: Isn’t that something. Now when you came here in 1908, you were 7 years old. Right?
JOHN: I was 7 in December, after we come here.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Did you start school here?
JOHN: Yes. No, no, I went to school in Ohio.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. But you, okay you were already in school, so you came here..........
JOHN: I went to school a year, I must have started when I was 5 years old, because I went one year out there, and started the next before we moved back down here.
INTERVIEWER: Right. Okay. Where did you go to school, once you got here?
JOHN: Right down here.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. What was the name of that school? Do you know?
JOHN: Just Cedartown school, is all I..............
INTERVIEWER: Cedartown school.
JOHN: Minnie Robinson, taught kids through here. Lived down near the grove trees, she married a Trader, lived across the road here.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. And she taught here.
JOHN: Uhun.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, about how many children, were, were attending the school?
JOHN: I’ve seen 60 head in that little old schoolhouse, I would say was about maybe 24’ by 24’.
INTERVIEWER: 60 children?
JOHN: Where did they come from? Just the neighborhood?
JOHN: I don’t, I can’t figure out where all the people are now.
INTERVIEWER: Right.
JOHN: They was all that, come round, of course they walked for 4 or 5 miles to get there, you knnow.
INTERVIEWER: Right. Right.
JOHN: But there ain’t that many here now.
INTERVIEWER: No there’s not.
JOHN: I can’t figurue that out. Well that would load 2 or 3 buses, you know it.
INTERVIEWER: Yes it would. It would indeed. My that many children. Was the school, did you have any other buildings? Was there a store or church or anything down here?
JOHN: Oh a church right beside of it.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Was that a Methodist Church?
JOHN: Yes. The same church right out here by the, what we call the Mill Pond, cross from the State Road Barn. The same church.
EVELYN: It’s the Church of God, or something out there.
INTERVIEWER: Oh the.................Okay.
JOHN: On this side was the store. Of course the buildings still there.
INTERVIEWER: Who ran the store, do you remember?
JOHN: This Tommy Johnson’s grandmother, run it.
INTERVIEWER: Oh she did. Alright. Now were, did your, your father moved here, what did he do? What was his occupation?
JOHN: Well, he farmed, of course we farmed here, but he was a carpenter.
INTERVIEWER: Oh he was. Alright. What did, how many children were there in your family?
JOHN: Just us two. Just a boy and a girl.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, okay. What all did you grow on the farm?
JOHN: Well mostly corn and grain, you know.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Did you have any pigs or cows or anything?
JOHN: Oh yes, we had cows. That was the main livin’, cows and chickens.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Did you have just enough for your own use, or did you sell............
JOHN: Well my mother made butter and sold it.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, okay.
JOHN: She was a great butter maker.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Did you have pigs that you butchered?
JOHN: Oh yes.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. So, what did you have to buy from the store?
JOHN: Well, flour and sugar, that’s about thing, that I know of in them days. Course other little things I suppose.
INTERVIEWER: Right. That you might not have needed, but you bought.
EVELYN: She always done her own bread making.
INTERVIEWER: She did.
EVELYN: Yeast bread.
JOHN: We didn’t buy like we buy now days.
INTERVIEWER: Right. How often, okaky, you’d to here to the store for the few things that you did need.
JOHN: The little things.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Now, I guess, is Snow Hill the closest town?
JOHN: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. When you first came here they were still using horse and carriage?
JOHN: Oh ya. Ya. All we had when we first came here was a horses and wagons, he bought a big team of horses here with him, and for a while, well I’ll say for a couple of years, that’s all we had for travelin’.
INTERVIEWER: Alright.
JOHN: And of course, after later was bought buggy horses.
INTERVIEWER: Right. And do that. How did, how did you get here from Ohio?
JOHN: On train.
INTERVIEWER: On train. Alright.
JOHN: My father come in the boxcar, freight car, with the horses, dogs and all.
INTERVIEWER: Oh for goodness sakes.
EVELYN: And your furniture.
JOHN: After he got settled, mother brought us kids down.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, on passenger train. Now that took you to Newark, no, out here to Wesley Station.
JOHN: Wesley Station. Wesley Station, we got off there. I suppose, I ain’t sure where he unloaded his, but I suppose, I imagine he unloaded in Snow Hill, where they had a ramp, you know, to unload livestock.
INTERVIEWER: Right. To get the horses...........
JOHN: He’d unload his horses.
INTERVIEWER: Right. That was quite an undertaking wasn’t it?
JOHN: Ya. Ya. Of course there was several people moved in here the same way.
INTERVIEWER: Did they really?
JOHN: There was some people moved in up here to Basketswitch, come from Montana, brought their team and all with them.
INTERVIEWER: Oh my word. Isn’t that something?
JOHN: And when I first began to go to Snow Hill, there was all dirt road, all the way to Snow Hill.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Did it, did it.............
JOHN: Sandy hills, sandy ruts, knee deep pret-near........
INTERVIEWER: Oh my goodness. Well did the road from here to Snow Hill follow pretty much the same route that it is now?
JOHN: Ya. Just about the same, they changed it a little bit, further up.
INTERVIEWER: Right. But from here on, it curves in. Okay, about how long would it take you with your horse and wagon to get into Snow Hill?
JOHN: I would say about an hour, with that team of horses that he had then.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. What would you get in Snow Hill? Why would you have to go to Snow Hill, other than to thave fun or see other people?
JOHN: Well all the dry goods, most of that come from there, you know, and your meat and stuff like that, if you had to buy it. They didn’t have much of that down here.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Were there any, was there anything for children to do to enjoy in Snow Hill, if you went as a child?
JOHN: Nothing I know of. Maybe in the summer, boys get together and have a ball game or something like that.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. They could do that. Alright, now, what would you do for recreation down here, let’s say in the summer? For fun, when you had time and you weren’t working?
JOHN: We just run around from one another, one place to the other, go to the bay............
INTERVIEWER: Did you go swimming?
JOHN: Oh yes.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, now you went swimming, an awful lot of people that didn’t live this close to the bay never went swimming.
JOHN: I know.
INTERVIEWER: Even though they visit, they’d never get wet.
JOHN: We done a lot of swimming. The boys did, and we didn’t have no bathing suits either.
INTERVIEWER: Right. Oh goodness. Could you fish and crab off here?
JOHN: Oh yes, yes. At that time there was lots of fish in this bay.
INTERVIEWER: There were?
JOHN: Ya.
EVELYN: Oysters, too.
INTERVIEWER: Were the oysters down, up this far?
JOHN:-------Ocean trout, the bay was full of them.
EVELYN: Oysters?
JOHN: Oh oysters, oh sure there was oysters here too.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
JOHN: Oh ya. I’ve oystered out there before.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. I wasn’t thinking about oysters.
JOHN: Oh ya, there was a lot of oysters in this bay then. Oysters here till after the ’33 storm, and then next year after that they had a big catch of oysters in this bay, and somethin’ happened to them, killed them all off and then they never had a catch of oysters in this bay since.
INTERVIEWER: For goodness sakes.
JOHN: I can’t figure it out.
INTERVIEWER: Right, because salt usually doesn’t bother oysters.
JOHN: Ya. After that storm, the inlet come through.
INTERVIEWER: Right.
JOHN: Made the bay salty, oysters caught everywhere, on the grass and everywhere.
INTERVIEWER: For goodness sake………..and then that was it?
JOHN: And then they were alright for, well I’d say for about 4 or 5 years, maybe a little longer, then they begin to die and you don’t get to catch them there anymore.
INTERVIEWER: Right. I’ll be darned. Did you have a boat?
JOHN: Oh ya, we had a boat.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
JOHN: Most of the time.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, it was self-propelled?
JOHN: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: You rowed it.
JOHN: Ya.
INTERVIEWER: Did you ever get across to Assateague from here?
JOHN: Oh yes, we went across there pret-near every summer.
INTERVIEWER: Did you really?
JOHN: Ya.
INTERVIEWER: Well there wasn’t anything over there.
JOHN: Nothin’ at-tall, no not anything but the ponies.
INTERVIEWER: The ponies were there?
JOHN: Well they find a few cattle too…………
INTERVIEWER: Yes. They grazed, they would graze their cattle over there. Okay, now would, when you were in school and you were getting up, okay how far did you go to school here, what grade?
JOHN: Oh I went to a…..to a……..well I went to 7th grade here and I failed, so the next year they sent me to Snow Hill school, and I went to Snow Hill in the 7th grade, and I went through 7th grade and part of the 8th.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. And that was enough.
JOHN: That was………..well in a way it was. It weren’t enough, I mean, I made out pretty good, but, my father had to go away a while I had to stay home here with my mother and, it was a job to get there, you know, I had to ride bicycle.
INTERVIEWER: Oh did you? Oh my…………
JOHN: Bad weather, get caught there, in a snow storm or something, if I knew it was going to be a snow storm, I’d drive a horse.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, But you don’t know.
JOHN: I didn’t know all the time. And them days they didn’t turn you out like they do nowadays.
INTERVIEWER: Yes.
JOHN: They let you go like, you do the best you could.
INTERVIEWER: Ahun. Well now you had a bicycle, you said, that was hard riding on these dirt roads, wasn’t it?
JOHN: Sure was. These boys now couldn’t ride a bicycle on those dirt roads like that.
INTERVIEWER: No.
JOHN: We had a path there. We knew right where it was and could pret-near ride it in the dark.
INTERVIEWER: Isn’t that something. Did you, alright when you were then coming back here, how did boys and girls get together and start dating or did you just do a lot of group activities?
JOHN: Well we had a lot of parties.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
JOHN: I got neighbors down here, I don’t see them but once or twice a year, right here, can you look right at their house everyday.
INTERVIEWER: Right. But that’s something, that children now, they don’t understand either. You know the idea of going to somebodies, a neighbor’s house each Friday, and having a party. Was there any, was there much, single boy-girl dating until you were grown?
JOHN: Oh yes, ya.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Alright, now, you were looking after your mother when you left school, so you were looking after the farm too, I’m sure. When did you start carpentering?
JOHN: Me?
INTERVIEWER: Yes.
JOHN: I started with my father and I was oh, about 18.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. And did you just carpenter around the neigborhood or did you go off to jobs?
JOHN: And you talk about Public Landing, him and I built a big bathhouse down there in ’24.
INTERVIEWER: Oh you did?
JOHN: Ya. And that was all for the county property, that was on the other property.
INTERVIEWER: Alright.
JOHN: And a, at that time.
EVELYN: But John wasn’t that somewhere where the county toilets were?
JOHN: Ya.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, right along in that area.
JOHN: After that they built another pier over there, where they had, did they have a bowling alley?
EVELYN: Ya. Merry-go-round.
JOHN: Merry-go-round, shootin’ galleries, and all that come up during the ‘20’s.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, I was wondering when that occurred? I’ve seen photographs of it.
EVELYN: Uhun. That’s when the storm washed it ashore.
JOHN: After that storm in ’33.
INTERVIEWER: Alright and that………..
JOHN: Oh, It’d be workin’ alive with people Saturday nights and Sundays.
INTERVIEWER: Isn’t that something. Were there food stands?
JOHN: Oh yes, food stands, where you could buy drinks, and, now the first part, when I first started going down there, there was nothing there, to be sold.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, that’s what I was going to ask, you just went.
JOHN: Only thing I can remember ever being sold there, when I first started going there when I was a kid, was a man back up here of Newark, used to make home-made ice cream and he’d peddle it every Saturday, through Snow Hill, you’d hear him ring his bell.
INTERVIEWER: Oh really?
JOHN: Down this main route, you’d go out and he’d fill a basin or bowl with ice cream, great big cone for a nickle.
INTERVIEWER: Oh my, that would be nice, wouldn’t it?
JOHN: Public Landing, there was no bulkhead then. There was just sandy beach.
INTERVIEWER: Oh that’s right.
JOHN: You could walk right off. They ruined it, in my estimation, when they put that bulkhead there. They had an idea that it was washing away, it been washing there for thousands of years and hadn’t gone nowhere.
INTERVIEWER: Right. Wasn’t going anywhere in the next two years either.
JOHN: That’s right.
INTERVIEWER: My goodness. You don’t by any chance remember the man’s name that peddled ice cream? Do you?
JOHN: Dilworth.
Evelynn: Mr. John Dilworth, from Newark.
JOHN: He lived down there by that mill pond, and he put up his own ice, out of the mill pond.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, was that Mitchell’s mill pond?
JOHN: Ya.
EVELYN: No it wasn’t, ya the ice came from Mitchell’s mill pond.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, alright, I’ll be darned.
EVELYN: He had a niece living in Newark now. Anda do you know George Wooten and Vi, in Snow Hill?
INTERVIEWER: Yes.
EVELYN: Well, he was, his wife Mrs. Dilworth, was Vi’s own aunt.
INTERVIEWER: Oh for goodness sakes. Well now he’s old too, then.
EVELYN: Oh ya, he’s been oh he’s been dead for years.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, I’ll be darned. Now, when, tell me about Forester’s Day.
JOHN: Well, the first time we went there was in 1909, that was the year after we, didn’t have no drivin’ horse, so we, he hitched up one of them big horses, up to the carriage he bought that here with him. So they had horses hitched everywhere down there, see the forest, all the Foresters went, first startin’ with, of course afterwards the Farmers got to goin’ and of course farmers, and foresters and people everywhere around, eatin’ friend chicken and that stuff…………………….
INTERVIEWER: O boy.
EVELYN: They all carried their own eats.
INTERVIEWER: Alright.
JOHN: I’ll never forget, I’ll never forget that day, I was comin’ home, somethin’ happened to the horse, and my father got out and fixed the horse, and the horse was excited anyway, cause he wasn’t workin’ by, used to workin’ by himself, he started running, got away from my father, he run through a man’s corn field, my mother and us 2 kids in there.
INTERVIEWER: Oh no.
JOHN: Just as hard as he could go, right down through that great big corn, and the lines laid down somehow and they were floppin’ away and my mother, after awhile, she got a hold of them and she said whoa to him and he stopped right away.
INTERVIEWER: Oh for goodness sakes.
JOHN: He was so excited, he was just a tremblin’. I never will forget that.
INTERVIEWER: No, I don’t think I would either. Goodness.
JOHN: After that, years when we got ready to go, why, an old colored man, lived down here, had a team of mules, and we’d hire him to take us down there. He was tickled to death to get to take us, you know.
INTERVIEWER: Right.
JOHN: Anda, of course we didn’t have to look after a team all day.
INTERVIEWER: Right. That made you have more fun, with out worrying. Would you go in swimmin’ when you were down there for Forester’s Day?
JOHN: Oh yes, everybody, pret-near went in swimmin’/ Even take their horses in.
INTERVIEWER: Oh really.
JOHN: Ya. And the Foresters would come over there with their horses and all and they would get on their backs and drive them way out there.
INTERVIEWER: Oh for goodness sakes.
JOHN: I was thinkin’ abouot that this morning. They probably wouldn’t let them do that nowadayys.
INTERVIEWER: No, they probably wouldn’t. But I’ll bet those horses loved that.
JOHN: Ya, they did.
INTERVIEWER: My, once a year they got clean.
EVELYN: And then too, John tell her about how the boats come in and took people for rides.
JOHN: Oh ya, the boats would come up here, mostly from Chincoteague and down that way. They had big motor boats, they didn’t do that, first started, by going down there, but later, they’d take people out for a boat ride.
EVELYN: Ms. Fisher, I think there’s some, a couple boats tied up in one of those pictures.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, there are.
EVELYN: Now that’s the kind of boat that they’d pull in there and take people for rides.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. They don’t look too sturdy by today’s standards. But they went.
JOHN: But you know, I never, I never knew of anybody get drowned out there in that bay.
INTERVIEWER: Isn’t that something.
JOHN: The only people that I knew of that ever got drown in this bay, was somebody in swimming. Up there aways. You probably remember that.
EVELYN: Ya, 4 of them.
JOHN: Stepped in a hole up there.
INTERVIEWER: Ya, wasn’t it on, was it a church picnic or something?
EVELYN: It was something like that. They had a big picnic, and they told, I heard my grandmother talk about that. They told them, at a certain spot, at a certain point not to go that way, there was supposed to have been a big hole. And this, 2 boys and 2 girls went over there and they got in and they all drowned and I heard my grandmother say that she lived down right close by there, that they put those 4 bodies in a, what they call a Durbin Wagon, and covered them with sheets, and things and covered them with sheets, and things and carried them up to Newark, and from then on, I don’t know what happened, they probably put them on a train or somewhere, because I don’t, I think they were people that had come in here.
INTERVIEWER: Come in. Okay. My.
JOHN: The only way we had to get out oysterin’, was to either row or pole the boat, you know, had no motor boat to start with.
INTERVIEWER: No there weren’t, were there?
JOHN: No. I never, I can’t remember of ever anybody that worked in the bay, getting’ drowned out there.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Maybe they were careful.
JOHN: Didn’t have no life preservers either.
INTERVIEWER: But you knew how to swim.
JOHN: Ya. But the same time you couldn’t swim clear across that bay.
INTERVIEWER: No. No, you couldn’t. Okay now, in the wintertime, did you have any place around to go ice skating?
JOHN: Oh yes, yes. There was this big ice pond, right down here where these chicken houses was.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, was there?
JOHN: Ya. I can’t understand that. We would skate there most of the winter, now hardly ever have ice to skate on.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. It must have been a lot colder then.
JOHN: Even up here at this mill pond, you know, right across from that church there, you know, that was where mill was there, there was all a big pond, that had the water dammed up, and skate there half the winter.
INTERVIEWER: My. Now what was the name of that mill pond, up there, what..............
JOHN: The name of the pond?
INTERVIEWER: Uhun.
JOHN: Jones’s
INTERVIEWER: Jones’s.
JOHN: A man by the name of Jones had a grist mill there, where he ground flour and corn.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, that’s good.
JOHN: We used to take wheat out there, and have it ground into flour.
INTERVIEWER: Oh alright. Was that closest flour mill to you?
JOHN: At that time, yes.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
JOHN: Later on they built one here to Newark.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Okay, was there, where would you get your corn ground? The same place?
JOHN: Yes, the same place.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, you do that. Mrs. McRoberts I want to ask you, also, you grew up around Newark.
EVELYN: Uhun.
INTERVIEWER: Where did you go to school?
EVELYN: I went to schoool in Ironshire. Because we moved back up there.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, alright. Now that was a one room school?
EVELYN: Ya, uhum.
INTERVIEWER: Right. Okay, do you remember any of your teachers?
EVELYN: Mamie Coffin, was my teacher most all of time, cause I didn’t go too long.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Okay. Was there a church in Ironshire?
EVELYN: Oh yes. There was a church and two stores, and lots of houses. And there was a little bitty store there, a lady had, was a widow woman had it, in one room of her house.
INTERVIEWER: Oh for goodness sakes.
EVELYN: And that’s where all the girls and the women and the boys would flock of a night, and just sit there and tell jokes and have fun, visit with this old............
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember her name?
EVELYN: Miss Rose Gray, Mrs. Rose Gray.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Okay, that’s neat. What would you all do in the summer for entertainment? You were a little further away from the bay.
EVELYN: Ya, well, I don’t know, we just go to church and things like that.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Anda did you have a mill pond anywhere near you?
EVELYN: There was Bassetts, Bassetts mill pond there. But I never learned to skate, I spect you know, where that , where the..........
INTERVIEWER: No.
EVELYN: Where the Bassett, Evelyn Bassett lived and she died there, since she died the house burnt.
INTERVIEWER: Yes. Alright.
EVELYN: Just past the hills.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Just past the hills. Okay. And that a mill pond then?
EVELYN: Uhun. It was called Bassetts Mill Pond.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Alright.
EVELYN: And that’s where they carried their corn, now, the flour, had to be carried to Berlin, the wheat, to Berlin.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, for flour. He just ground corn?
EVELYN: Uhun.
INTERVIEWER: You’d do that. Did you, Ironshire then of course was a lot bigger than Ironshire is now.
EVELYN: Ya, uhun.
INTERVIEWER: You stilll had a lot of neighborly stuff though, everybody knew everybody.
EVELYN: Ya, we would get together.
INTERVIEWER: Get together and do that. Okay. Did either, did you get to go to Ocean City?
EVELYN: About once a year.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Would youo take the train?
EVELYN: Yes. Go to Berlin, and get on the train and go to Ocean City from there.
INTERVIEWER: What would you do once you got there?
EVELYN: Oh well, just walk up and down the boardwalk and ride the merry-go-round, and stuff like that.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Would you go in bathing?
EVELYN: No. No.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, and would you take your lunch and take your food?
EVELYN: No, buy it there. We always bought it there.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, now did you Mr. McRoberts, get to Ocean City?
JOHN: The first time I ever remember doing, I went on a train. They had an excursion there, 4th of July. They run an excursion from Frankin City, that train would be loaded, from that far to Ocean City. Where all them people come from I’d like to know.
EVELYN: You had train, change trains when you go to Berlin, get on the Ocean City train.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Right.
JOHN: Didn’t when you went on Excursions.
EVELYN: Oh you didn’t?
JOHN: The same train went right out to Ocean City.
INTERVIEWER: Oh did it really. Okay. They just switched on their tracjs,
EVELYN: Uhun.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Well when, I know you swam, when you would go to Ocean City would you swim in the ocean?
JOHN: No, I never went in swimming in there.
INTERVIEWER: Didn’t you? I’ll be darned, even though you were comfortable with the water.
JOHN: I went later years, but not them years.
INTERVIEWER: Right. Not there. Okay. What, do you remember any really bad storms, including the 1933 storm, which I would like for you to tell me what you remember about it.
JOHN: Not nothing more than big snow storms.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, ya.
JOHN: I can’t remember what years they were. But that was before that though. I remember one year the snow was up top of the fence here, and the snow was over, and my father got a little sled and some kind of rig he fixed with some spikes in some sticks, push himself along, went clear to Spence, taht way to get some groceries from a store down there.
EVELYN: Ralph’s father had the store down there.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Okay. Ralph was my neighbor.
EVELYN: Ya, I know of Ralph, Ralph and Miriam and John and I have been friends for years.
INTERVIEWER: Oh for goodness sakes. Ya, they must have lots of snow.
JOHN: I can’t remember who kept the store then, but Ralph’s father kept it later on, can’t remember who kept that store at that time.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, but the snows were alot, you had more heavvy snows then.
JOHN: Yes you did. Ya.
INTERVIEWER: Than now. I’ll be darned. Now tell me what you remember about the ’33 storm.
JOHN: Well, it just blew here, if I rember right, it lasted about 18 hours, and it took pret-near every tree and everything there was around the house.
INTERVIEWER: Here too.
JOHN: We had a big orchard right here, near where that little house is over there, was all orchard.
INTERVIEWER: Oh.
JOHN: Big trees beside the house here, had apples on, you can’t buy apples like them now adays. Took them trees all out, and this town here, the nanme Cedartown, it was rows of cedars on both sides of the road, each way here, where I suppose where they got the town Cedartown’s name. It took most all of them out. We don’t have hardly a cedar left here now.
INTERVIEWER: My. Well now, how far are you from the water, right here?
JOHN: Two miles.
INTERVIEWER: Two miles, okay. So you didn’t have any water damage at all.
JOHN: Oh no.
INTERVIEWER: The water didn’t come up. But the wind must have been horrible.
JOHN: Ya, it was.
INTERVIEWER: My dear.
JOHN: That was, that was about the worst storm of them all, I think.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
JOHN: We have them to blow just as hard, since then, but then never lasted..............
INTERVIEWER: That long.
JOHN: 5 or 6 hours, is about as long as it last, but that was..............
INTERVIEWER: Okay, now tell me about your first car.
JOHN: Well I’d, from the time I was a kid, I was raised to care for somethin’ and save my money anda, see I was about 18, I guess it was 1920, anyway, I thought I wanted a car, so I went to Perdue, Herman Perdue, kept a place up there, used to sell buggies and horse, you know, then he got sellin’ Model “T”’s, I asked him about buying a Model “T: and he said 735 dollars. So I raked up all that money, I lacked a hundred dollars, no I lacked 200 dollars. My mother give me a hundred dollars and I gave him a note for a hundred dollars, on that car.
INTERVIEWER: Oh boy. Well, had you ever driven before?
JOHN: No, never driven a car before, and the roads were so bad, we couldn’t even get it home. My father run this cannin’ factory out here and of course he had the keys for that.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
JOHN: So we run it in the warehouse out there, till the roads got good, so we could get it home.
INTERVIEWER: My goodness. Did, well did you just get in, at the car dealers and drive?
JOHN: Ya, I just got in and drove it.
INTERVIEWER: For goodness sakes. And now you have to be trainied, and be educated to do it.
JOHN: And another thing, during the winter, even when I was going with her, the roads would be so bad, I couldn’t get over ‘em in the winter, and I left it out there at the cannin’ factory, sometime leave it out there a month at a time. I’d walk out there, get in it, get it going, see her, and come back.
INTERVIEWER: And walk back in.
JOHN: Wallk back in home.
INTERVIEWER: My goodness.
JOHN: That’s another thing, you wouldn’t dare leave a car out there, nobody around there at all, nobody never bothered not a thing in that car.
INTERVIEWER: Isn’t that something. Now that’s something. Well were you one of the first people in the area to have a car, down here in Cedartown or did others..................
JOHN: I was the first young one, young person, to have one. The Johnson people down here, they had one, of course they were older people.
INTERVIEWER: Right, okay.
JOHN: But I was the first of the young people to have one.
EVELYN: That was Kathy’s grandfather.
INTERVIEWER: Alright.
EVELYN: Tom had his first one, didn’t he?
JOHN: Tom, ya.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, okay.
JOHN: I think the first one they had was a 1914, had the old brass radiators. First came out they had a, top part of it was brass.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. I bet that was beautiful. Wasn’t it?
JOHN: Ya. You could shine that up, and shine.......
INTERVIEWER: Ya. Ah that was nice. Were there, were there any black people that lived in the neigborhood?
JOHN: Oh ya. Black people lived all arouund here.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Did they mostly work on the farms?
JOHN: Yes. And in other woods, with timber.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. What did either of your parents do, okay, I’ll take Mr. McRoberts first, if you were sick, where was the closest doctor?
JOHN: Snow Hill.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. I know you couldn’t run to Snow Hill everytime you coughed, what did your mother do? Did she have some home remedies?
JOHN: Ya, they had a lot of home remedies.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember what any of them were?
JOHN: One thing she had, if you had a sore throat, mentholatum, I remembered that mighty well.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Now was mentholatum a rub or did you............
JOHN: Yes, she rubbed it on there and wrapped the throat all up in it.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
JOHN: I tried to do that with her now, but she won’t let me.
INTERVIEWER: Did you have any syrup or anything you took for a cough?
JOHN: Ya, we used, well yes, we had the cough syrup, but I don’t remember how she made that. In the spring, we’d drink sassafrass tea.
INTERVIEWER: You would?
JOHN: Always remember making that.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, what was that supposed to do?
JOHN: Purify the blood, they said.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. And she would dig her own roots? Or would she...................
JOHN: Oh ya, we’d dig your own roots, here.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Did she use any sort of, a plasters, or mustard plasters or anything like that?
JOHN: Oh yes. They believed, they believed a lot in old mustard plasters.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. They were hot, weren’t they?
JOHN: Ya, they were hot, ya.
EVELYN: They’d blister ya too.
JOHN: About like this heat linament ya have now.
INTERVIEWER: Yes, they would do that.
EVELYN: If they got too sick, if people got too sick, then they’d get some of these old colored women here and they’d come and they’d rub ‘em and different things, and, anda……….
JOHN: Use a lot of goose oil.
INTERVIEWER: What’s goose oil? Oil from a goose?
EVELYN: Uhum.
JOHN: Ya, fat from a goose.
INTERVIEWER: Fat. Okay fat that you would render.
EVELYN: Unhun.
JOHN: Yes, ahun.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, okay.
EVELYN: And this, thisa, this one family down here, we always called them Uncle Al and Aunt Mag, they were Johnston’s. And boys if you got sick and somebody’d say go get Aunt Mag, and she’d fix you right up. She was just wonderful.
INTERVIEWER: I’ll be darned. Ahhhh.
JOHN: If you needed a doctor, why he’d drive out here, in horse and buggy.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. So he would come to you.
JOHN: Every year he’d come around school and vaccinate kids.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, okay.
JOHN: I guess I ought not tell that. When they vaccinated me, I fainted away.
INTERVIEWER: Did you really? You’d never had a needle before, had you?
JOHN: No, no I couldn’t stand the sight of blood, if I’d get a scrap on my arms…………a piece of woods over there, and begun to get a little closer, one hit me right in the face, and he’d come back, it never took, he come back the next year, it was old Dr. Riley.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, I’ve heard of him.
JOHN: Ya. He said, oh this is that McRoberts boy, he said I won’t bother him, cause he never vaccinated me no more, I’ve never been vaccinated.
INTERVIEWER: Never fainted, you fainted anymore either have you?
JOHN: Ya, ya, I even cut my finger or anything like that, till I was grown pret-near, I’d faint away.
INTERVIEWER: Still bothered you.
EVELYN: In ’43 he went to the hospital, and I guess he got used to needles, and…………
JOHN: Ya, up til then, I couldn’t stand the site of blood or nothing.
INTERVIEWER: I’ll be darned.
JOHN: I couldn’t even go in the hospital, and smell ether, you know, like you used to.
INTERVIEWER: Goodness.
JOHN: They took me in there I guess they cured me then.
INTERVIEWER: Could be. Do you remember any of the, of the remedies that your mother or the colored lady…………
EVELYN: Well it was always mustard plasters, and mentholatum, and such as that.
INTERVIEWER: Now, I have never had a mustard plaster, and I don’t know how one would make it, do you know how a mustard plaster was made?
EVELYN: Well I think they mixed it, wet it somehow and put flour with it.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, to make a paste.
EVELYN: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: And you’d put that on your skin?
EVELYN: No, you’d put that on a cloth, maybe a cloth about that big.
EVELYN: Like a piece of old torn-up sheet, and then you’d spread that all on there and then you’d put another piece over that, and then they lay it on your chest or on your back or something like that.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. And the heat from the mustard............
EVELYN: The heat from that...........But boy they, they would really watch it.
INTERVIEWER: Alright.
EVELYN: Because if they didn’t it would blister ya.
INTERVIEWER: Oh my goodness.
EVELYN: It seemed to me, that they put something else with it, but I don’t.............
JOHN: I think kinda heated it too, before they put it on, didn’t they?
EVELYN: Yes, they always heated it, before they put it on you.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, okay.
EVELYN: And another thing, too, my grandmother always believed if you were, if you had a temperature, to slice an onion and put it, lay it on your wrist, and put a cloth around it and on your ankles.
INTERVIEWER: For goodness sakes.
EVELYN: And it would, it was supposed to help break your fever. I guess it did.
INTERVIEWER: Ya. Okay. That’s a good one, I hadn’t heard that one before. But a, oh that’s neat. Did you get on the steamboats, at all? That came to Snow Hill.
JOHN: I never was on it. Not to go anywhere with it. My father went on it once. He went to Baltimore and bought a horse and came back on it.
INTERVIEWER: Oh. Okay.
JOHN: I don’t think, I know I was never on it.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Did you....................
JOHN: Not anyway to take a trip, I might of got on it, and walked around it.
INTERVIEWER: Right and just to see it. You didn’t do much connected with the river then, because you had the bay here.
JOHN: No. But I can remember the old steamboat, you could hear the whistle, of it, clear out here, when it was comin’ in.
INTERVIEWER: Could you? My.
EVELYN: We hear the fire whistle out here, if it’s a real calm.............you know Monday nights when they practice.
INTERVIEWER: Right.
EVELYN: We can hear it alot of times.
INTERVIEWER: Well for goodness sakes, I didn’t know it would carry that far.
EVELYN: Well you see Snow Hill is right back off here from us.
INTERVIEWER: That’s true.
JOHN: I can remember the old steamboat whistle, cause during Prohibition, you know, it was the only way they got any whiskey or anything like that, come from Baltimore and it’d come on that boat. We’d hear the whistle, come in here and say the old jug comin’ in.
INTERVIEWER: Well now if it came in on the boat, it wasn’t supposed to be coming in on the boat, right?
JOHN: Ya, it was legal to get a gallon a month.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, that’s right.
JOHN: You could, you could order a gallon a month.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, but that was supposed to be all.
JOHN: Unless you could order in somebody else’s name. They done that a lot.
INTERVIEWER: Right. Oh, okay.
JOHN: Of course, my folks, my folks never, he never drank. Might have had some in the house or something like that.
INTERVIEWER: Right. Sometimes for medicine.
JOHN: For medicine.
INTERVIEWER: Right. Right. You’d do that.
JOHN: But my father never drank.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Right.
JOHN: So we never had none of it.
INTERVIEWER: Right. Waht year did you get married? I forgot to ask. You said you’d been married 60 years.
EVELYN: 60 years.
JOHN: ’23.
EVELYN: Ya, ’23.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Well then you were married when the Depression came.
EVELYN: Oh yes.
INTERVIEWER: Do you, I always like to ask about the Depression. What do you remember about it? You had enough food to supply yourselves?
EVELYN: Yes, we were very well fixed. We had, we were, we had lots of chickens and we were shippin’ eggs then.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
JOHN: And a lot of cows, and you had your own meat and raised you own potatoes and beans, all them things.
EVELYN: And cabbage, we, we raised the cabbage in the fall, and bring it up and lay it on the ground and the he would go down plow a farrow over it on each side, and all would be stickin’ up would be just a little of that cabbage stalk, and so we didn’t suffer at all. We had plenty. We didn’t have any money.
JOHN: Didn’t have much money, but we had...............
INTERVIEWER: But you didn’t go hungry, at all.
EVELYN: No, we had plenty of meat, and lots of times we wouldn’t have but a nickle to give the kids to go to school with........
JOHN: We had money, because you had shippin’ eggs.
INTERVIEWER: You were lucky you were still doing that, I guess.
JOHN: Yes. We had a lot of layin’ hens. We didn’t get much for ‘em, you’d get about 12 cents a dozen for ‘em.
INTERVIEWER: My.
JOHN: But we had alot.
EVELYN: Sometimes we’d have an awful time to get the checks cashed at the bank.
INTERVIEWER: Right. Well now, did you, when the banks closed, did you have money in the bank then?
EVELYN: Not any to amount to anything.
INTERVIEWER: Well you were lucky.
EVELYN: Yes we were lucky.
JOHN: Very little went in the bank, but we were still shippin’ eggs and couldn’t get the bank to get the check cashed so the commission houses send us money orders. Lots of times take a money order to the post office, and they wouldn’t have the money to cash the.............
INTERVIEWER: Cash it then.
EVELYN: We would ship, most of the time 10 and 12 dozen, 12 crates a week, and thhen there were 30 dozen in a crate.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. You did have alot of layin’ hens.
EVELYN: And then we had private customers in Baltimore, that would take some of the crates we had, would be 5 and 6 dozen, they were little tin crates anda, you’ve seen them I’m sure.
INTERVIEWER: Yes. Yes, I have one.
EVELYN: You have one.
INTERVIEWER: Yes.
EVELYN: Well you better hang on to it, because she’s gettin’ to be an antique.
INTERVIEWER: I am.
EVELYN: And sometimes they would put the money in there, they’d take the eggs out and send them back, and sometimes they would put cash in there.
INTERVIEWER: Cash in there. I’ll be darned.
EVELYN: So we really, we really didn’t suffer at all.
INTERVIEWER: Well that’s.........alright. Today if.........Okay, did youo have a police or sheriff’s department that came down into the Cedartown area?
JOHN: Not very often.
INTERVIEWER: Did you need them?
JOHN: No. Not unless you needed somebody to sell somethin’ or somethin’ like that.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. There, the, kinds of things, that you have, robberies, and things like that didn’t occur?
JOHN: No, no, the only thing I ever knew the sheriff come in here for, was to summons somebody for jury or somethin’ like that.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
JOHN: And very few people got arrested or anything like that.
INTERVIEWER: Alright. Okay. Now did you ever go to a circus?
JOHN: Circus? Ya, lots of them.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, would you go up to Snow Hill?
JOHN: Yes. They used to have a circus come here, Cedartown. 2 or 3 times had a circus come right down here in that lot down there.
INTERVIEWER: For goodness sakes.
JOHN: Weren’t a big circus like they had in Snow Hill, but it was a circus.
INTERVIEWER: Alright, and everybody in the neighborhood would go. What would they have?
JOHN: Well, they’d have a mess of dogs performin’, they’d, more animals and things like that. I can’t remember them having any elephants I don’t believe.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. You said your dad brought the dog with him, from Ohio, when you came..............
JOHN: Yep.
INTERVIEWER: That must have been a real favorite pet, wasn’t it?
JOHN: Ya, it was.
INTERVIEWER: I’ll be darned.
JOHN: It was, an English Shepard.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, was it really? Oh.
JOHN: Black. English Shepard.
INTERVIEWER: Oh how pretty. Oh goodness.
JOHN: I’ll never forget him. Cause the colored people lived down the road here, and they had a boy the same age I was. And that was the next, I say the next summer after we come here. The old dog set out here aside the house and I was out there and the boy come by. He was afraid of the dog anyway, you know, and the dog wanted to get after him so bad, he didn’t know what to do, just tremblin’, you know. Well that dog took after that boy...............
INTERVIEWER: Oh no.
JOHN: And boy, that old man, he tanned my jacket good. I never set the dog on nobody else.
INTERVIEWER: Sometimes you have to learn from experience, don’t you?
JOHN: He was the same age I am, I used to talk with him about it, he’s dead now. After we got grown, I’d, Bob, remember me settin’ that dog on you, boy he went down that road.
EVELYN: And he’d get so he’d cut way cross the field and go, after that. I heard you say one time.
JOHN: He might have.
EVELYN: Cut cross the field.
INTERVIEWER: I’ll be darned.
JOHN: This old dog, man lived over here, had 3 dogs. 2 of them was just alike, and they were mean. Come by here one day and jumped on this old dog and beat him. So he watched ‘em, he caught ‘em one at at time, crossed the field there. He went over there and gave ‘em all a lickin’. He was waitin’. He waited to get ‘em one at a time.
INTERVIEWER: And he took care of it didn’t he?
JOHN: Yep.
INTERVIEWER: Isn’t that something. Have you had pets.........
ERASED
JOHN: Used to have taffy pullin’s.
INTERVIEWER: Oh.
JOHN: And make popcorn balls. I was thinkin’ about it sometime ago, you never hear tell of anybody havin’ a taffy pullin’. I doubt if whether the young people know how to pull taffy now.
INTERVIEWER: No. They really don’t. Now tell me how you would make taffy.
JOHN: The way I remember makin’ it, took sugar and water and you kept boilin’ it up into a syrup, of course you put a flavorin’ in it. Whatever flaver you want. And git it so it would begin to harden, you know, and you’d try, it would make kinda, you know how sugar, make kinda syrup, of course you know about how you wanted, and this start pullin’.
EVELYN: You poured it on a buttered platter, I think.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Grease your hands good.
JOHN: Grease your hands and just keep pullin’ it.
INTERVIEWER: It gets harder as you pull it, as it cools.
EVELYN: And I have seen them put walnuts in it. It was good that way.
INTERVIEWER: It would indeed. Did, when it snowed, did your mother make snow cream?
JOHN: Ya, ya.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, that’s good. Would she make a custard? Would she cook a custard first, or just use milk and cream and flavoring?
JOHN: Milk, cream and stuff.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. You’d do that.
EVELYN: Dale’s mother does it now, if there is enough snow..................