Pilchard, Owen (1893-1988) |
Worcester County Library: Local History and Genealogy Collection, Snow Hill Branch, Snow Hill, MD
|
Interviewee: |
Owen Pilchard (1893-1988) |
| Interviewer: |
Ken Wright |
| Date of interview: |
1982 April |
| Length of interview: |
1 Hour and 7 Minutes |
| Transcribed by: |
C Cole |
| Preferred Citation: |
“Name, Oral History Collection, Date of Interview, Worcester County Library, Snow Hill Branch, Snow Hill, Maryland.” |
Topical Terms:
Farming
School
Transportation
Worcester County (Md.)—History
Worcester County (Md.)—Social life and customs
Worcester County (Md.)—Women’s History
Location Terms:
Klej Grange
Ocean City (Md.)
Stockton (Md.)
Interview Begins
INTERVIEWER: What were your parent’s names?
OWEN: Major Wilson Pilchard and my mother’s name was Anne Francis Pilchard.
INTERVIEWER: Do you know what your mother’s maiden name was?
OWEN: Collins.
INTERVIEWER: Did she have any brothers or sisters?
OWEN: Yes, she had one brother that didn’t live to be very old, and in those days, transportation was very limited. This was before the days of very much automobile use. (Unintelligible) And he didn’t live to be a very old man. He lived to be forty-four.
INTERVIEWER: When were you born?
OWEN: I was born in ’93. I’ll be eighty-nine this coming December.
INTERVIEWER: Where did you live?
OWEN: I was born on a farm about two and a half miles south of Stockton. We just had two or three cows just in order to have milk and butter for our use, and we did fruits. Now it’s all powdered milk. I operated a dairy farm about twenty years.
INTERVIEWER: Dairy farm? What did you use for refrigeration?
OWEN: When I first started, I started with ice. Then later on I ran into a man that was going out of the business and I bought his equipment. (Unintelligible) refrigeration in the war, see, and I used that until homogenization and pasteurization. That put me out of business. I couldn’t afford the equipment that it took to do that. My father in-law at that time was an old man and it took a young man with sufficient cash to operate that kind of a business. Another thing was my main milk place was in Virginia and I lived in Maryland. Except that I did ship quite a bit to Sheffield Dairies that I delivered to Snow Hill. And then I saw that it was time to discontinue that because I couldn’t afford the equipment to pasteurize and homogenize and all that stuff. I just couldn’t afford it. And I was getting to be old. Another thing, I never had but one son and he had the misfortune to lose his arm to a farm pickup accident. After that he went to the hospital and they took off his arm two and a half inches below the elbow. And he was handicapped for that quite a bit. He didn’t give up. We went right on farming together. He could drive a tractor with one hand. What bothered him (unintelligible) We were later equipped, you see. (Unintelligible) to your tractor and you could hitch one thing to another. One day he and I would work out together, he said,” Daddy, the mail carrier down through this area, has had that job for forty-three years, and he’s retiring and I’m going to see if I can’t get the job.” He filled out the application for it with just a little bit of political help. Anyway, he got the job as mail carrier and he’s still carrying mail. He carries every morning from Snow Hill, he goes up to Newark and he goes in that Post Office and picks up the mail, and then he goes on up to near the Ironshire. (Unintelligible). My father died when he was forty-four and my mother lived about ten or twelve more years after that. I went all in that way and my son he’s still carrying the mail. I want to say that my dairy business, I started selling bottled milk over in Virginia. I had to pass dairy inspection in order to bring milk to Snow Hill, Sheffield Dairy. But my trading and buying bottled milk was in Virginia. Homogenization and all this other, that threw me out of business in Virginia because I couldn’t meet the conditions. I just didn’t want to go in with that much money.
INTERVIEWER: Where did you go to school?
OWEN: Well, when I was first started school there was a little schoolhouse down about two and a half miles south of Stockton on Route 12 that takes you to Virginia. When I was going to school there was a little schoolhouse down there when you were going down that road from Stockton on the way to Virginia on the end of Route 12 that starts at Wattsville and goes to Salisbury by way of Snow Hill. This little school that I went to was on the left-hand side when you got down there two and a half miles out of Stockton. There was a sign up there that said (unintelligible) Hill Road. When you turned at (unintelligible) Hill Road down there about a distance of two hundred yards, I’ll say, was a one room schoolhouse. That’s where I got most of my education. My father, he had intentions, I’m sure, of sending me to school through the winter that we were just leading up to when he got pneumonia. It got the best of him, of course that was in November. In them days a lot of farmers they worked their boys until the cold weather come and then they put them in school, finish out that year and start the next one, which generally ended about June. I’m very sure that was his intention, but he contracted pneumonia doing some roof tile work that was on the farm and he just couldn’t stand pneumonia. I’ll tell you some more, that pneumonia is a killer. It killed my father and put a fella in a condition that he was never able to work anymore, and it fixed my mother just about the same way.
INTERVIEWER: How did you get to school?
OWEN: When I went to Stockton High School there, I drove a horse. There was a place right nearby that had a stable that I could put my horse in. I carried my own feed and of course, paid for the stable. It was right across the road from the school, so I could keep the horse fed and watered at the noon hour. That’s the way I managed my transportation back and forth from home to the Stockton schoolhouse which was about two and a half miles.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember any of your teacher’s names?
OWEN: Oh yea, Miss Nellie Barnes, when she married, she married Forest (unintelligible). Forest (unintelligible) was a farm boy that was raised right here, not far from Little Mills, if you know where that is.
INTERVIEWER: What, Big Mill Pond? The pond, are you talking about?
OWEN: What we call Little Mill was the next mill setting up that same stream. At one time there was a grist mill in there in close range for cows, sheep, livestock, and chickens. And there was one setting at what we call Little Mill. And then there was another one further down the stream that, and that was Big Mill. And that was, well, that went through many hands. My father once operated it, operated a sawmill and sawed lumber for waterpower at these mills setting, you might say. That was over on the high land, near Reed’s Store. These are all familiar names to me. Even now I don’t know what Jim Reed is going by. He was George Reed that lived here in town, at one time he bought into the furniture business here and then for years he sold papers in between the bank and the drugstore. That was his last business that I know anything about that he has conducted. At one time at Big Mill, that was owned by, what was that man’s name? When they put the new bridge across Pocomoke River
INTERVIEWER: Is that the one that’s standing now?
OWEN: That’s the one that is standing there now. Just past where it is it didn’t (unintelligible) and they didn’t use it because they were still using the old wooden bridge that was just a little farther up the stream by Simon (unintelligible) place right along there to run across. I drove horse and wagons across that bridge.
INTERVIEWER: Did you go to church?
OWEN: Yes. I first started in the church at the Methodist Church in Franklin City. Do you know where that’s at?
INTERVIEWER: No, I can’t say that I do.
OWEN: That’s in Virginia. It was two miles and a half from where our house was built. If we went out the dirt road that went out to the farm and crossed into branch and then walking on to Greenback. I had a brother that didn’t any more mind walking that than anything, and I mentioned one time to take me with him to Sunday School. I didn’t (unintelligible) to walking. I’d say we were getting a little bigger then. My father didn’t go to church, in his young days he went to church, but he had poor hearing, just like I have, and they didn’t have hearing aids like they have today and when it got so he couldn’t hear he stopped going to church. We went. My mother never did go to church very much because there was, when I got big enough to go there was, I don’t know what was the trouble was but Ms. Martin was losing babies from the age from six months to a year old. I don’t know. Neighbors had their own burial grounds on the farm. A lot of people, especially poor people made that practice. It is no longer today. You get in your car. I never approved of it very much. For a number of years, I did go to Dover to the cow sales companies for their sales because I was raising cows and hogs. (Unintelligible). I noticed going up the road you look over in the field and you’ll see a cluster of bushes. Dig around and you might see, and you go in there and if you look enough, you’ll find the markings of people’s graves in there. That’s what those cluster of bushes that you see standing back in the field a ways, they were about twenty, fifty feet across.
INTERVIEWER: In a circle?
OWEN: In a circle. Quite a number of them on the road to Dover. I knew what they were for. Used to be quite a few of them standing back away from the road. (Unintelligible) back part of the field near the woods that they used for their own burying grounds. The children they all died before they were a year old. The father was a carpenter and he made his own caskets. (Unintelligible)
INTERVIEWER: Have you ever heard of Klej Grange?
OWEN: Have you ever been to Klej Grange?
INTERVIEWER: No, I haven’t.
OWEN: You can’t go to Snow Hill without going through Klej Grange. It is a little outside from the main highway going to Snow Hill.
INTERVIEWER: Do you know how it got its name?
OWEN: Uh-huh. The owner of the property there, he was getting old, and I didn’t get this from him but I got this from an old man that was well known, and he knew this man that owned the Klej Grange property and he had four daughters. This old man, I heard him tell it many a time. One was named Katherine, one Louise, and the other Elizabeth and Jane. Have you ever heard this?
INTERVIEWER: No, I haven’t.
OWEN: I can’t think of any of his relatives that are living today, but his granddaughter kept the store in Greenbackville for a number of years. He decided he would use their names. And my cousin’s son lives at Klej Grange right now. There’s a politician, Mark Pilchard. Do you hear that name?
INTERVIEWER: No. Do you have relatives here in Pocomoke with the last name of Pilchard?
OWEN: No, I don’t believe I have. Mark Pilchard, he’s one of our county commissioners, and was a member of the House of Representatives or something like that, and he is my own cousin’s son.
INTERVIEWER: When you were growing up, did they have, like, class distinctions? You know like upper class and middleclass?
OWEN: Not so much of it. Everyone has kept away from classing themselves. Anyone who thinks that they can make a bigger, better show than somebody else can join that group. I have relatives in Salisbury. One of the brothers that was in Salisbury, he was a gas truck driver for quite a few years, he’s retired now. He still does some odd jobs. He came by one day this past week and took his wife’s brothers over to New Church, so he invited us to dinner. And they asked me. When they told me, they were going and asked me if I wanted to go, I told them I want all I can get.
INTERVIEWER: Do you have any idea how many people there was in Pocomoke, what the population was?
OWEN: No, I never had any cause to be so much interested in that. This is Hartley Hall. I know where the Hartley came from. His last name was Stevens. Hartley Stevens. He was an ice cream man.
INTERVIEWER: He was an ice cream man?
OWEN: Ice cream manufacturer. He made the ice cream and sold it in five gallons. In any form that he could put on the market. I sold him milk, and I knew him very well. And John Stevens, his brother John, he got to be County Treasurer, I believe. He was a real estate man. (Unintelligible) I can’t think of that name now. But, anyway, when you go on the road toward Milburn Landing, if you’ve ever been there, over on the right there’s a big farm there. I believe the automobile sales place here in town for years.
INTERVIEWER: How big was the police department there? How did they maintain law and order?
OWEN: The first thing we knew about it, there’s was an old man that lived across the road from my son’s home, and his name was Straughton, we called it. And he used to call him (unintelligible) Straughton. Anybody to this day knows Mr. Straughton, he was sitting on this track and then it went on that way until (unintelligible). I don’t remember too much about that. (Unintelligible). We had a nice big police service all over the country like we have today. (Unintelligible) too many years. I’ll tell you about the Little Mill and the Big Mill separation, you might say. They were grist mills. They ground grain. (Unintelligible). Today they can crush up ears of corn, as fine as you want it. With the cob right into it. But there’s not much corn harvested that way now. The equipment that shells the corn in the operation, you know, harvesting it from the stock. I started to tell you, these streams start way up here, leads around from Stockton to what we call Little Mill, goes around and then right on back, almost (unintelligible) where it comes out, over in that section. You know where that is near the circle and later a road there (unintelligible), roughly ten miles it covered. I know the grist mills, they called them then, would shell any kind of shelled grain. They would grind it in tubs like they did later. When they put this new bridge, concrete bridge across the river (unintelligible). And as I started to say, just up past where the bridge crosses the river now, here in town, over on the right there was a mill over there that made flour. He ground all sorts of grain. Inside of the (unintelligible), he produced the flour. His name was Dixon, Jim Dixon. When they put the road up there, his mill was in the way. The state advised him to do away with it. And he and his son took that money and opened the Big Mill and bought the Big Mill water mill property. And he got the idea that he could deliver a trough way of this water coming through the dam and going over and underneath of a mill that he had built and all tying together. And then they built that mill there and built a trough under the dam, right under the old bridge and all, and boxed it up and carried that water around and it made two bends into it. When he got it all finished and ready to hook up, and they hooked it up. It wouldn’t turn the mill. He needed to put (unintelligible). None of them were equipped to make flour. But this man, Dixon, I am talking about and his son, Raymond Dixon, they built this Big Mill house there, they took out the flour and moved that to Pocomoke. They boxed the water up and carried around there. Over on the other side of it, the trough that carried the water was ten or twelve feet high. I would say about eight feet wide. And he carried the water over to that big building he put his grinding equipment into, when he got that trough completed and ready to turn the water through it to start his mill, the two bends took the power.
INTERVIEWER: So, the mill wouldn’t turn. When did you get your first car?
OWEN: The first car I had was a 490 Chevrolet. And where the 490 come in at was that Ford was selling cars for four hundred dollars, Chevrolet decided that they’d meet the price, and they named the Chevrolet 490. It was an automobile car that wasn’t closed in like they are now. It had a canvas top and curtains that come down and the passenger seat wasn’t the best. Anyway, you could shut yourself off so you wouldn’t freeze like you did the 445. Anyway, they called it the 490 Chevrolet.
INTERVIEWER: How did you learn to drive it?
OWEN: We had had a few farm tractors out by that time and any boy that was any size at all, that was the first thing he wanted to learn to do was to drive a farm tractor. He drove it before he drove a car. He drove a farm tractor and then after he could drive a farm tractor, then he could drive a car. The first car I had, I drove to Cape Charles and there wasn’t a speck of stone road out there nowhere, from my home to Cape Charles. A few of the towns had covered the worst part of it, they had covered some of it with shells or crushed stone. The first trip I made to Cape Charles there was hardly any stone road that we spoke of then at all.
INTERVIEWER: Did you go to Ocean City a lot?
OWEN: A lot? No. We tried to go to Ocean City once or twice a year.
INTERVIEWER: We were learning in the oral history program about the big storm that they had at Ocean City that ruined a lot of Ocean City and Public Landing.
OWEN: The ’33 storm that cut through the beach and made the inlet, you might say. I remember when the railroad track used to run down that, and the railroad station was out on the beach. That ’33 storm cut through there and washed that railroad station, it washed it so far away they never tried to put it back. That was a terrible storm.
INTERVIEWER: When you did go to Ocean City, did you go swimming?
OWEN: I never put my feet in the salt water in that ocean but once in my life. And that day they had a little bathhouse and all, where you could go in and change your clothes, you know. That was fifteen cents. I went in and I got ready and started wading in the ocean. I had been warned about the under current, that sometimes it comes up pretty high on the beach. When I put my feet in the water, I heard somebody say, Mama, the water is nice today, I know. I remember them saying that. I got my feet washed up and get my dry clothes on. That’s the last time I’ll be in this ocean. Cold, that water was cold. I don’t know what they were talking about. Never had the urge to go again, even when we went to Ocean City. That cured me right there.
INTERVIEWER: Did you do any dancing on the pier?
OWEN: No, never got into none of that.
INTERVIEWER: If you were sick would you go to the doctor?
OWEN: If you were able to get up to get up inside of Stockton you could go to Doctor Dickerson’s. He (unintelligible). Dr. Bennum in Girdletree. It was three more miles from Stockton to Girdletree and the only way you could make it was to drive a horse and carriage. We’d go to Dr. Dickerson and he’d give us a bag of pills and we’d go home and stay in and take care of ourselves. That was it. And he served that community from, I’ll say, halfway from to Girdletree to Snow Hill, circled out I would say, out as far as Remson Church, coming down to Greeneback. The doctor came and took over Horntown, his name was Dr. Langley. (Unintelligible). And his wife was a little girl, I think her weight was somewhere about three hundred pounds, and she had some relatives on Chincoteague Island that she went over there to visit in wintertime. The bay froze over. She stayed there about a week to ten days and she got it in her head that she wanted to come back home. Her home was in Greenbackville. She walked that ice from Chincoteague to Franklin. That’s what you call being homesick.
INTERVIEWER: She walked across. That’s a long way to be walking on ice.
OWEN: They didn’t know anything about freezing ice, like they do now. They used to build ice houses. They go in the ground and line them with straw insulation. They’d build two of those houses, and between the standard frame they would fill that full of sawdust. They’d fill them houses like that. They’d have ice to make ice cream in the summer, as long as it would last. A little farm there, not far from where I lived. That’s over in Virginia when you go from Stockton to Horntown. I’ve seen them saw and cut ice and haul to Greenback. The man from Greenback, his name was John Davis, and he would hire farmers with their mules and wagons and horses, and anybody he could get and load it on to the trucks. I see them cut and saw ice out of that little mill pond just over, used to be quite a mill, they even had a mill where they ground corn and wheat and stuff like that. And anyway, as I started to say, the place where you cross over, called Swansgut Bridge. And just as you’re going up the hill you come to a place and they could drive down there with their wagons and they would go in there and saw that ice in that mill pond and I’ve seen them saw ice in there that thick. Almost as thick as, if you’ve ever seen the ice as it comes out of a, the way they used to make it, (unintelligible). I saw them saw ice and haul it from that mill pond and to Greenbackville and store it in the icehouse. He had a little store there. He had a, they called them ice cream parlors then. Anybody that had any money and wanted to spend it, knew that he had a place that sold candy and ice cream. I don’t know where all the milk came from, but I imagine he had to use quite a bit. Canned milk because there wasn’t no whole produced milk. Not the quantity that he would need to sell that much ice cream.
INTERVIEWER: Did you come into Pocomoke a lot when you went shopping or something like that?
OWEN: I would say no to that question. I didn’t come to Pocomoke ever since I was big enough to drive a horse, you might say. My older brothers did something like that, go to Pocomoke. The roads were a few shells and a little bit of crushed stone. The first lights they had were,
INTERVIEWER: Traffic light?
OWEN: Car light. Drove by gas.
INTERVIEWER: Gas? They lighted the cars with gas?
OWEN: Car light, yea. My brother had, I think the two first cars he had used those. You had a tank sitting on the running board with this, it looked like crushed stone, but exposed to air it seemed almost (unintelligible). The first automobiles used that. The first automobile I ever saw coming up the road (unintelligible). And then they electrified the automobile and they really did put lights on them.
INTERVIEWER: Do you have any superstitions about the forest or river, or anything like that?
OWEN: No. I think that God put mankind here to make the best of it that he can. And he has provided many ways and means and if we people here living now are not inclined to make the best use of it that we possibly can, then that’s just too bad.
INTERVIEWER: When you were growing up did you have a bicycle?
OWEN: Well, yea. My brothers had them first. And back in my first days, you might say, of going to town with either, we would drive a horse or carriage or buggies, as we called them. A buggy was a vehicle with one seat into it. (Unintelligible). And then they’d put a top on them. Some of them had curtains to them. And even some of them, the last one I had, driven by the horse, I had curtains made that come all the way around. (Unintelligible). The curtain would stop air and light. Anyway, that was the first thing we had for closing in even the automobile and the horse carriage.
INTERVIEWER: When your wife was pregnant, did she go to the hospital to have her kids?
OWEN: I only have one son living. We lost our first baby boy. And anyway, when Richard was born, there was an old lady lived down the road a couple of miles. When she saw it was time for help, I went and got this old lady and she assisted. All of this going to the hospital is nice, safer and all that, but it don’t have to be. It don’t have to be but that’s the way they use it. The method they use now. A friend of his, he was a, well we spoke of him. He was back years ago, he was a, well, we spoke of him, as being the sea captain of some tall ship captain. Anyway, a friend of his, his name was Bill Collins. I heard my father tell it. They got together and got to talking and the farm where I lived on had a lot of woodland where somebody had cut the timber off and it had come back in young fine trees. That ship man, you know how they down ships at sea. They decided they would cut a ship load of this young trees that were growing in the woods on the farm where I lived. And we spoke of the sea captains, they got together and were talking. They decided that they would cut a ship load of these small trees, pine trees, and cut it up into four-foot lengths and send it to New York. Because back in those days they weren’t electrified then like it is now. So, they got some help together and they cut enough to load this ship. And they hauled it off the farm down (unintelligible). The nearest place for them to get to a ship was way down by the river. They went down to Franklin City and caught it. And so, they cut what they thought would load this ship. And they loaded her up and got her already to go. And just about a week that they were gone, or ten days, nothing but a northeaster, the wind coming from the northeast and blew a gale sometimes, and sometimes it was just mild. But this time the wind did an awful lot of blowing. Ship was chasing the storm. So, they made that ship go in. The ship stayed there all night. She either was in Tom’s Cove or just inside the Chincoteague Inlet where she could be protected. Stayed there a whole week. Sunday morning, they were all ready to go. On Sunday morning, they got up, the northeaster had buried everything on the ship they couldn’t put inside. About the time they started the ship up the coast. And that man, the captain, was named Bill Collins, and he had at least one man with him. Most of them carry two or three. He went out to sea with that load of wood and that’s the last anybody ever heard tell of that man or that ship.
INTERVIEWER: He never made it up the coast?
OWEN: No sir, never made it. That was the last, I don’t know how far he got. Ain’t no way of telling because they had no means of communication like they have today. Nowadays they have this way of one boat to another. And there was a man from Stockton he went to sea with a ship loaded. I don’t know whether he was moving wood or lumber, but I rather think it was lumber. And, let’s see, he was a fisherman. She was a Disharoon married into the family. He loaded a ship and went out to sea. And it wasn’t a week spaced apart from them he went out to sea and we never heard from him. They just didn’t have the means of communication. They get lost and not know where you’re at. Can’t see nothing around you but water. (Unintelligible).