Small, Malissa (1912-2005) & Small, Robley (1905-1987) |
Worcester County Library: Local History and Genealogy Collection, Snow Hill Branch, Snow Hill, MD
|
Interviewee: |
Malissa Small (1912-2005) & Robley Small (1905-1987) |
| Interviewer: |
Kevin Tull |
| Date of interview: |
1982 April 29 |
| Length of interview: |
1 Hour 3 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:
Chicken Farming
Education
Pocomoke City (Md.)—Fire 1922
Pocomoke City (Md.)—History
Transportation
Worcester County (Md.)—History
Worcester County (Md.)—Social life and customs
Worcester County (Md.)—Women’s History
Location Terms:
Pocomoke City (Md.)
Interview Begins
ROBLEY: About 1926 we started hauling to the city with this Model T truck, and she’d only carry about two and a quarter tons, because she wouldn’t go up Pennyhill at Wilmington. It was cold up there in the wintertime and we hauled these greens in March and it was awful cold riding all night long, so we’d take the floorboard out of the Model T and the heat from the exhaust pipe would warm the cab up. But I never knew whether it did more good than it did harm or not because (unintelligible). That was before the tunnel was open in New York, the Holland Tunnel. We had to cross the river on the ferry. That was in 1926. So, we went on from that until we got larger trucks, in 1928, I believe. We had some GMCs, and they carried about three tons, three and a half. Then about ‘29 we bought Reos and we carried about six or seven tons. And we hauled produce around here. Turnip greens, string beans, potatoes, anything the farmer had. We jumped from that to the ‘30’s I guess when we bought out Sturgis?
MALISSA: Well you hauled blueberries from the Carolinas.
ROBLEY: Yea, in about 1929 and 30 we hauled these blueberries from North Carolina to New York. That would be in about July. We did that for two or three years.
INTERVIEWER: How about the cars you hauled?
ROBLEY: They were in 1928 and 29 and 30. We hauled automobiles from Tarrytown, New York and we had two or three dealers down here we hauled for, Duncan, Payne in Onancock, Baker at Bloxom, Savage at Painter.
INTERVIEWER: Did you haul for Nock?
ROBLEY: No. We hauled for them. This trailer we had, we had them all down flat. That’s different from today. We put four of them on. Four cars, one back of the other.
INTERVIEWER: Who was the first operator of the trailer?
ROBLEY: Well Bill Bunting was hauling here, and we bought a trailer from him. He was hauling Fords out of Chester, and then we went, seems like that only run a few years, three or four years. Then we bought Sturgis out in the chicken business.
INTERVIEWER: 1937?
ROBLEY: 1937. When we started buying chickens out in the country, this store down in back of where Montgomery Wards was, was where we’d buy flocks of chickens. They’d raise, oh, from ten to twenty, thirty thousand, we hauled them to Philadelphia mostly we hauled them. This hatchery we bought out from Sturgis we could only hatch about five thousand a week. That wasn’t big enough (unintelligible) so we built one out on the highway, on south Market Street, where Banks is now. We built on four times. We got so we could hatch a quarter of a million a week. We grew chickens from different farmers around. We kept in a third of a million to half a million.
INTERVIEWER: All the way from up in Delaware down to Exmore?
ROBLEY: Yea. Most of our growing was upper Maryland and all the way down to Exmore. We’d sell them at the auction, they had an auction over there to Selbyville. When they got ready you put them on the auction, and they’d send a man to look at them. Then they’d have this auction and people would go there and bid on them. Carol Long was the auctioneer. Some days I think they would have close to a million chickens to sell, but they’d be in flocks of ten, twenty, thirty thousand, and they counted up pretty fast. That went on ten or fifteen years. When we retired, we sold out in 1960, that was about the end of it.
INTERVIEWER: ’62. The hatchery burned.
ROBLEY: Yea. What happened, the people that was doing these chickens was paying for to have them sold when they belonged to them anyway, like Perdue. Perdue, he grows them, and he processes them, so that did away with the auctions. Today I don’t think it’s only eleven, ten, or twelve people that are running things on the Eastern Shore, hatcheries and feed stores and so forth.
INTERVIEWER: Tell about Carol going to be on What’s My Line.
ROBLEY: Yea, Carol Long, the auctioneer, he got on a program in New York one Sunday night, What’s My Line?, and he was an auctioneer and they couldn’t guess it. Roy Rogers was there, and they sang the Auctioneer’s Song together. Well, where do you go from there?
INTERVIEWER: Anything you want to talk about, like your childhood. What was that like?
ROBLEY: Well, I was raised on a farm. Out here, just this side of the High School, on Market Street. I went to school at Fourth and Cedar Street. They had three old buildings there in those days. In the hatchery building, it caught on fire. They were burning some rubbish over at the next place and a spark flew over on the roof and set the building on fire. That happened July the 12th, 1961. We had sixteen incubators, two of them were empty, we didn’t have any eggs in them. We had eight hundred and fifty thousand eggs burn up in the fire. We didn’t lose any chickens that I know of. We had a few sitting on the floor and they carried them outside. In thirty minutes, the whole building was gone because the fans in the roof were drawing the fire. It just spread all over the place. We had chicken boxes in there, had eggs and paper and stuff in them. That’s what happened to the hatchery. We got out of the business.
INTERVIEWER: Didn’t rebuild?
ROBLEY: Didn’t rebuild. My wife said she’d rather have me than have money, so we quit.
INTERVIEWER: What were the schools like out here.
ROBLEY: You can tell him.
MALISSA: We studied a pretty general sort of thing. I had some physical geography in the seventh grade. The stories in our readers all sort of had, they were good stories, they sort had a moral told to them, when you read them, sort of felt like good won out. It was sort of that kind of thing that our stories were like in our readers, the early readers. We just got math and reading and some writing. We had to do those old writing exercises. I never will forget that. I never could do that. Some people could those rounds so pretty, and they’d come together. I never could do it. I never knew how. Never did master that I think. But it was interesting. And then in high school we studied a foreign language. We were required to have a foreign language in those days. I went to school at Temperanceville. I had two years of Latin and algebra. I was never a math student. We had history and four years of English. We got English Literature. We had a good background, I believe, in English. And of course, we studied grammar. We defined the words and we sort of knew what tense a word was supposed to be used in when we got through with these exercises. They were dull and boring, but you learned something from them, and it stays with me to this day. We only had eleven grades then. Of course, this was a long while ago. It’s fifty-five years that I graduated this June, so that’s quite a long while ago. Robey only went to the seventh grade. He didn’t finish high school or go into high school.
ROBLEY: And my partner he went to the fourth grade. That’s as far as he went. But we were both willing to work, and we kept busy all the time. We’d go from one thing to another. And finally, we got into the chicken business, and that was so big that we couldn’t expand anymore. We bought a farm out here in front of Chrysler garage that we developed. Had eight blocks of land there and ninety-six building lots.
MALISSA: That’s the Lynnhaven section.
ROBLEY: The central part of it was about Fifteenth Street, and the state ran the highway through two whole blocks of it.
MALISSA: We were going to have that for our old age and sell a lot off now and then, but it they went so fast it didn’t last that long.
ROBLEY: And we built about eleven homes to get it started and sold them. It started springing up fast from there.
INTERVIEWER: Did you go to church back then?
ROBLEY: Yes, I went when I was a boy.
MALISSA: He sang in the choir in Bethany Church.
ROBLEY: Once. That was enough. I wasn’t asked back anymore.
MALISSA: Oh, that’s not right. I went to church at Downing’s, down at Oak Hall, and then when we were married, we went to church, of course, here in town. We go to Bethany still.
INTERVIEWER: What was church like when you were a little girl?
MALISSA: I don’t think it’s changed a lot that I can recall. We had the Children’s Days, and things like that, but they still do. It may have changed a little in character, but not a great deal, that I can recall. We had some new hymns, but we still use a lot of the old ones that we love and are accustomed to. I don’t think the format of the worship service has changed a great deal. There were more people that went to church. Downings used to be full of people Sunday morning and Sunday night. Two services a day and they had a rather large crowd.
ROBLEY: Well, then a country church it seems like they did a lot for entertainment, I think.
MALISSA: Yes, it was our social center as well as our spiritual center. Because we didn’t have any teen towns or anything like that. It was here that we had an Effort League it was from that that we had our social activities. We had some parties, but we also had some little parties associated with our church work with the Effort League. And it was real nice. We had a very fine director who was Mr. Harry McCann. I’d like to give his name some credit because really, he and his wife, Jessie Savage McCann, really did do a lot for the youth in Oak Hall.
INTERVIEWER: What kind of activities did you all do, like ice skating?
ROBLEY: No, I never did skate.
MALISSA: He rode a bicycle a lot.
ROBLEY: Yes, I used to ride bicycles.
INTERVIEWER: Did you ever go swimming?
ROBLEY: Oh yes. I learned swimming in the Pocomoke River. Down here by Campbell Soup.
MALISSA: Kevin was smiling when you said that.
ROBLEY: I tried swimming for probably three or four years and couldn’t get it and then one day a fellow named Tony and I was out there fooling around in the water and he said, “ I believe I’m swimming” and it wasn’t two minutes after before I did. I had swum across the river several times after that. Sunday afternoons we’d go down there and go swimming.
INTERVIEWER: Must be nice.
MALISSA: I can’t swim.
ROBLEY: Well it’s dangerous I guess, but I was young.
MALISSA: And Foolish. (laughs) And his mother probably didn’t know where he was.
ROBLEY: I don’t know whether she did or not.
MALISSA: I didn’t swim. I don’t to this day. I’m sorry I don’t. I didn’t want to swim. I am a little leery of water.
ROBLEY: I think about four or five of us swam across the river one day. My brother was along, and we got over on the other side and Joe Watson says, “I don’t believe I can swim back.” He was laughing about it, so we didn’t take it very serious. My brother and I raced coming back across the river and when we got to this side we were both out of wind, and one of the fellas said, “Hey, come help us, he’s got a cramp, he can’t swim.” So, they kept him up until we got there, and we took over and brought him ashore. I have an asthma condition and I suppose it affected me those days and I was thirty minutes before I could get my breath.
MALISSA: I was born on the Pocomoke River. Down past Beverly, Worcester Beverly, and I can remember the old steamboats that used to come up the water. The Pocomoke, and the Maryland, and there may have been others whose names I have forgotten. And I especially remember the old three masted rams.
ROBLEY: The sailboats.
MALISSA: Yes. I don’t think they used them any place but in the Chesapeake Bay. I believe there were only five of them. I can remember the Jenny D Belle. She was the last of them to go, I believe. She hauled freight until she went out of existence. And then there was the Edwin and Moore that was refurbished and used to haul passengers, I think. And I think that was lost at sea. I can’t remember any of the others, but they were interesting old boats in that they were unique to this section.
INTERVIEWER: Speaking of your mom, how were your parents back then. Were they strict?
ROBLEY: Well maybe sometimes I thought so. But I don’t guess they were too bad.
MALISSA: They had a small farm, and everybody worked, they grew sweet potatoes and Irish potatoes. And then you planted the corn in the middle of the Irish potato rows, you see. So you double cropped it. And all the work was done in teams, no mechanics.
INTERVIEWER: What were your grandparents like?
ROBLEY: My grandfather on my mother’s side died when I was eight years old. He was seventy- five years old and carried the mail at Hallwood. He couldn’t hear very good and he crossed the railroad, he lived on one side and his station was on the other and he crossed the railroad one day and a train hit him and killed him. His hair was black and most of my people are bald headed.
MALISSA: My grandparents were each born in 1849, and my grandmother she died of (unintelligible). She was very proud of the fact that she never took an oath to the union. She lived at the time at Bullbegger Creek and the Yankee soldiers landed at Pitt’s Wharf. Everybody said oh the soldiers are here. But they didn’t hurt anybody or anything. They didn’t want to hurt the civilians or anything, but everyone who was fifteen or over, took the oath. She was only thirteen. She didn’t tell you that. She didn’t have to because she wasn’t old enough to be required to take the oath for the union. That passed. When my grandparents were married, they each were twenty-four years old. They had a large family, they had eleven children. I’ve heard my grandfather say that his happiest years were the years when his children were all at home. They were working real hard to make a living but it was happy times for them. They moved up here in Worcester County in 1903, bought a farm on the Pocomoke River.
INTERVIEWER: Do you know much about Public Landing?
ROBLEY: Well, I used to go there swimming when I was, you talking about past Snow Hill?
INTERVIEWER: Yes.
ROBLEY: I used to go there swimming every Sunday later on when I was about oh, about seventeen maybe, I used to go down there Sundays and swim. It was shallow around the pier and one of the boys I used to swim with, he dived off there one day and hit the bottom and he never was right after that. I don’t know what it did to him, broke his neck I suppose.
MALISSA: It didn’t paralyze him or kill him, but he never really did well.
INTERVIEWER: Did you ever go to Oysters Day out there?
ROBLEY: Oysters Day? No.
MALISSA: I remember Mr. Bradford from Snow Hill who was for many years a farm implement dealer, used to have a trailer. That was the first trailer that I ever saw, I believe, that you lived in, you know. And he kept this trailer at Public Landing, all the time and they lived down there in the summer.
INTERVIEWER: What was Assateague like at the time?
ROBLEY: We never heard of it I don’t think.
MALISSA: Well, we heard of it I guess because folks lived over there.
ROBLEY: That’s Assateague in Virginia.
MALISSA: Yea. The sheep and the horses lived over there. We knew that. You couldn’t get there. You couldn’t get to Chincoteague except by boat. I remember the day that the Chincoteague Road opened. It first opened. That was the first governor I ever saw. Governor E. Lee Trinkle. I can’t remember the year. But I think I was probably in the seventh grade, I’m not sure. Anyway, it was a long time ago, and the governor came by train, and all the school children went down to the station to see the governor, and he shook hands with all of us very graciously. They took him over to Chincoteague for the opening of that road. It was in early spring because, when they all got over there the rains came, and the road was not paved. It was a clay road, and my goodness people got stuck coming off and some of them had to stay all night on the road. They couldn’t get their cars out. It was kind of a disaster really.
INTERVIEWER: Did you ever here of an alligator up in Berlin called Jake?
ROBLEY: No.
MALISSA: No. That was a little too far away. You know, we didn’t get around too far in those days.
INTERVIEWER: What were the main kinds of transportation you used?
ROBLEY: Well, we got our first car, my dad did, in 1919. But before that he had a very dear friend that lived in Snow Hill. We drove a horse up there one day and we didn’t have any top on this buggy, we called them those days. And the road was a dirt road, it wasn’t hard surface.
MALISSA: Sandy. Very sandy.
ROBLEY: Sandy. And we went one day and come back the next.
MALISSA: Yes, a trip to Snow Hill was an overnight trip just about, with a horse and buggy.
INTERVIEWER: What were some bad storms that you can recall?
ROBLEY: Well, I guess the first one was in ’33, the one that hit Ocean City. That’s the one that cut the inlet through. There wasn’t any way to get from the ocean over to the bay before that inlet was there. The authorities thought about cutting an inlet through and it came through the same place that they had planned. The water rushed through there and cut the inlet through. And that’s the one to the south end of Ocean City.
INTERVIEWER: What was Ocean City like at this time?
ROBLEY: Well in 1925, I carried a neighbor down there. I drove their car for them, and any day now there’s a lot more people there during the week, than there was on that Fourth of July.
MALISSA: There were very few hotels then. Just a short distance of the beach had hotels. Isn’t that right, honey?
ROBLEY: I suppose. I was young and didn’t have any money to go do those delicacies.
MALISSA: Did they have the amusement place then, do you remember?
ROBLEY: I don’t remember.
MALISSA: I don’t remember either.
ROBLEY: That’s been sixty or seventy years ago. I’m thirty-nine now. (laughs).
INTERVIEWER: What was the law like? How were the police?
ROBLEY: Well, there wasn’t many of them. We had a town police named Mr. Stowe. They say he never locked up anybody, but he kind of kept the peace, pretty good I suppose. It didn’t seem like there was much to do those days for a policeman like there is now.
MALISSA: Well, there were fewer people so there were fewer problems. But there must have been a little bit of rowdiness because on election day, you know, they didn’t allow you to sell liquor. I guess there was a reason for that.
ROBLEY: That’s before Prohibition.
MALISSA: Yes, before Prohibition. Oh yes, those days.
INTERVIEWER: What were the days of Prohibition like?
ROBLEY: Well, I don’t know when that went into effect.
MALISSA: 1918, wasn’t it?
ROBLEY: I suppose so. And you couldn’t buy whiskey. All they had then mostly was bootleg whiskey. People made their own whiskey. And sometimes some would come in by boat and it would get circulated around a little bit, but there wasn’t too much of that.
MALISSA: Well, Contraband landed then in Virginia so, this was good liquor, but it was brought in by boat from Europe.
ROBLEY: Then about 1933, when Mr. Roosevelt was President, they did away with that.
MALISSA: They repealed the Prohibition Act. But it did, that was the days when Al Capone and his gang became so notorious, and it was to sell liquor. That was how they made their money. And I guess there was plenty of it if you had the money to buy it. It seems to me that it made people disrespect the law, really.
INTERVIEWER: How were some of the Presidents back then?
MALISSA: I don’t think we thought much about the Presidents back then. I didn’t.
ROBLEY: Well, again with Roosevelt it seemed like he wanted to kill the pigs, so he cut production down so they could get more money for them, and they paid people not to work. And in my opinion, ruined the Country. There has been so much give-a-way since then. But he stayed in so long, and I guess if he’d been living now, he’d still been there. He was elected four times and they finally passed the law that they could only be elected twice.
MALISSA: Of course, elections were different, now we have television. I’m sure now, nobody like Calvin Coolidge would ever get in because Mr. Coolidge didn’t ever say two words if one word would do, you know, and this would not work now, he couldn’t do it. People just wouldn’t buy that.
INTERVIEWER: How were elections back then?
ROBLEY: How were they?
MALISSA: What year did women’s suffrage come in?
ROBLEY: I don’t know.
MALISSA: Was it eighteen? Round about that time. And it was just the men that voted in the earlier elections.
ROBLEY: We weren’t old enough to vote back in those days.
MALISSA: I think they sort of had a party, the men did. I think that was a big deal for the men. The women were not around. I think it helped. I think the women have really cleaned up the elections somewhat because it’s just a different sort of atmosphere. Not that they did anything about it. But it just changed. It wasn’t so much of a party for the men.
INTERVIEWER: How were the medical procedures and things?
ROBLEY: Well, we had four doctors in town and the last one died this morning. Dr Sartorius. He was one hundred and three.
MALISSA: Oh, he didn’t. He would have been one hundred and four the second day of September, this year.
MALISSA: There was Dr. Wilson, Dr. Parker, Dr. Hall, and Dr. Sartorius.
ROBLEY: Dr. Sartorius Sr. had the practice for years. Then they had some doctors down in Virginia that used to come up here.
MALISSA: Dr. Critcher. He was our dear, good friend.
MALISSA: Tell him about the hospital when you were twelve.
ROBLEY: Oh. When I was twelve years old, I had appendicitis and we didn’t have an automobile. I had appendicitis in February in 1917, and this neighbor carried us down to the train, we took the train to Salisbury, to the hospital. As far as I know they only had one doctor there, one surgeon, Dr. Dix. I was put into a ward, that was on Sunday. I had the operation the same day I got there. I woke up the next morning and looked all around, saw these beds in there and people. I thought to myself, “I’ve never seen a place like this before.” But I soon found out I was in the hospital. That was when I was twelve years old.
A young neighbor joins them. Some chatter.
MALISSA: Did you tell him Dr. Dix was the only doctor in the Salisbury Hospital at that time?
ROBLEY: Yea.
MALISSA: And they kept you in bed for
ROBLEY: For about thirteen days.
MALISSA: Just for appendicitis.
ROBLEY: Now you get out the second day. And then about when the end of ten days was up, they told me I could go over to the window and sit down in the chair. And when I started over there, I was so week that I staggered like a drunk man. And the nurse she said if the doctor asks how you got there you tell him I brought you over. She was afraid she’d get into trouble.
INTERVIEWER: What were some of the special occasions you had? Like major events?
ROBLEY: Major events? I don’t think we had any to tell you the truth, did we?
MALISSA: July the Fourth, I think, and Christmas. Oh, that was great.
ROBLEY: Yea, but we didn’t have parades and things like that.
MALISSA: No, but it was a big holiday. And we looked forward to Santa Claus at home. We would start out at my house and then we would go from one place to another. Each time we stopped, you know, another kid would come along, until we ended up, we had been everywhere, all over the whole little old town, to see who got what.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember when Pocomoke burned down?
ROBLEY: I sure do.
INTERVIEWER: How many times has it burned?
ROBLEY: Well, that was the only big fire.
MALISSA: I think back in the 1800’s. They had one, that I don’t know anything about.
ROBLEY: Yea. But it was in Easter Monday in 1922, that I had started painting my dad’s house. It was over on Cedar and Seventh Street. They had a porch there and I could stand on the porch and (unintelligible). I laid my paint down and I took off. And of course, the town burned down. Oh, my brother saw the man that struck the match that set it on fire. He didn’t intend to do it, but he lit some garbage out there in a container, a large container, and the wind was blowing, and that’s what happened to it. It spread. We had two blocks on Market Street burn down, and part of the block on the west side of Market Street. And both banks were burned. The concrete block and the brick buildings burned just the same as if they had been wood. And one spark flew across the river, to Chester Young’s farm, and set his barn on fire. That was at least a mile away, but the wind was blowing hard.
INTERVIEWER: How long did it take them to recover after it burned down?
ROBLEY: Oh, I don’t know. It come back slow. How long would you say until?
MALISSA: I don’t know.
ROBLEY: I would suppose twelve to fifteen years before most of it.
INTERVIEWER: What were some of the businesses in Pocomoke before the fire?
ROBLEY: Well, do you mean the ones that burned down?
INTERVIEWER: Yea.
ROBLEY: You probably know most of them.
MALISSA: Well, the hardware store, the department store, they had lots of things like ladies and menswear, and household furniture, most anything, I guess.
ROBLEY: The electric office was on Market Street and the two banks. And oh, we had a shoe store and drugstore. Clark’s drug store, I guess. Clark moved around in the livery stable in the barn and I worked there for them.
MALISSA: We had a newspaper. What was it called then, do you know?
ROBLEY: Ledger Enterprise, was that it?
MALISSA: I believe so, Ledger Enterprise. And then later it became the Worcester Democrat.
INTERVIEWER: What were the newspapers like back then?
MALISSA: Weekly newspapers was almost, well, there were daily papers but most of us didn’t have money enough to buy a daily paper.
ROBLEY: We didn’t have any on the shore, as I know of.
MALISSA: The Philadelphia paper and the Baltimore paper came, but we didn’t get it every day. You depended for your news, there was no radio and no television. You depended for your news on the weekly newspaper. And the telephone.
ROBLEY: Sounds strange to you doesn’t it?
INTERVIEWER: Mm-mm. Did you always live here in Pocomoke since you’ve been married?
MALISSA: Oh, since we’ve been married, yes. We’ve lived in this house 48 years this August, twenty-eighth day of this August. We built it in 1935. We were married in 1930, right in the middle of the Depression, and we built the house in 1935, and we have been living here ever since.
INTERVIEWER: What was the Depression like? The years of the Depression?
MALISSA: Well, it was hard to get money because, and when the banks closed, that was pandemonium, not really, you’d think it would be. My husband was in Philadelphia when the banks closed. He started to buy a tire up in Harrington on his way home. When he got there, he told the man, I can’t buy the tire, because I don’t have any money, the banks are closed. And he said, well nobody else has any either. Take the tire when you get some money you can pay me for it. And the merchants in town that we were dealing with for groceries, he was very nice. He didn’t have any money and we didn’t have any money so we helped each other along as best we could. It’s surprising how it went along. It wasn’t so terrible after all.
ROBLEY: That was about 1932 or 3. You know when Roosevelt was (unintelligible). He closed the banks. All of them.
MALISSA: He reorganized them. Put them on a better footing. After World War I years, they had seen things kind of move up, you know, become inflated. This was kind of to even things up. Put them on a solid footing.
ROBLEY: Until the stock market crashed in ’29.
MALISSA: It was after that.
INTERVIEWER: Communications. How did you communicate?
MALISSA: Well if you were far away from them, if something drastic happened you sent a telegram. If you were close by, there was maybe there’d be one or two telephones in a little village, and you’d use their neighbor’s telephone. And you wrote letters. Even a few miles apart you wrote letters.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember any of the trains that used to come through?
ROBLEY: Yea. After I got up, oh around fifteen or sixteen, we used to go down to the passenger station on Sundays and see the passenger trains come in. We had a neighbor, Mrs. Hall, one time, I remember when they were laying the tracks for the trains. If she had been living, she’d been over a hundred now. She was one of those people working on the railroad.
INTERVIEWER: Did you all work near the tracks?
ROBLEY: No. I never worked, only by myself most of the time. I worked at the drugstore about eight months. I started out pretty early in the trucking business. I never worked for people much. I worked for my brother one time. Hauling timber. It didn’t last long.
INTERVIEWER: You said you worked with timber?
ROBLEY: Yea.
INTERVIEWER: How did you bring it out of the woods?
ROBLEY: Well they had horses that would drag it up to a dirk, we called it, and we’d pull the truck up there, and with a block and fall, they raised the load up and put it on the truck.
MALISSA: Didn’t they fasten the team to the block and fall?
ROBLEY: Well, there was a rope that come down.
MALISSA: Yea, and they moved off and this raised it.
ROBLEY: We hauled it from Horntown to Beaver Dam. The reason we brought it to Beaver Dam, the freight was cheaper on it in Maryland than it was in Virginia. And we’d go up in the mines in Pennsylvania, coal mines, and most of the time there they would load it on a car, we would take a truck and back her up. They had the dirk down there that picked the log up and placed it on the truck.
INTERVIEWER: Did you ever float any?
ROBLEY: We didn’t but there was a couple of men that used to cut wood and float them. We had a shipyard here then and I suppose they’d float them up there. I don’t know what they did with them.
MALISSA: I remember that in 1910, I think, the Pitts Creek Baptist Church down in Cedar Hall neighborhood, I don’t remember it, but I remember being told about it. That burned. And my grandfather at that time owned what they called the Big Island which was the very tip end of the land down past Beverly. And they had this huge, big pine on the Big Island. And he cut that pine, or had it cut, and all of the woodwork in the Pitts Creek Baptist Church was made from that wood that came from that pine. And that pine was rafted up the river to a mill. My mother could never remember the name of the mill that sawed it for the church. So, they did raft logs too, in those days.
ROBLEY: Yea. And it was two people. A man named Ike used to raft them. And I near about believe oh, Verne Spide’s father, I think he used to raft. And the man, Black, he couldn’t swim but he fell overboard one day and he walked to shore.
INTERVIEWER: Walked to shore?
ROBLEY: Walked to shore on the bottom. He couldn’t swim.
INTERVIEWER: What was the population then? Many people?
MALISSA: In Pocomoke?
INTERVIEWER: Yea.
ROBLEY: Well it seems to me that Pocomoke hasn’t grown as fast as you might think it has, although there’s a lot of new houses built. Those days we didn’t hear the census when they’d take them, we didn’t hear it here, did we?
MALISSA: Well, we just didn’t pay much attention I think to the results of the census, like we do now. We could have heard it, I’m sure, if we had been so interested.
ROBLEY: There’s so many houses that have been built in that development we had. Raymond Dryden, John Tull, and myself had this development out here on Market Street. Six blocks have been covered there with houses and the state got two blocks of land.
MALISSA: But there hasn’t been that many people added to the population. They just transferred from one place to another, I think. In our day, of course, it was smaller earlier.
ROBLEY: But I don’t have any idea what the population was.
MALISSA: I don’t either. My grandfather remembered when Pocomoke was Newtown, of course.
INTERVIEWER: What other names do you know of that Pocomoke has had?
MALISSA: Stevens Landing I think was the first name because there was a ferry here. And then it was Meetinghouse Landing because there was a church out there. And I don’t know of any other names except Newtown. There may have been others but that’s all I know of.
ROBLEY: Tell him about the counties. How they have divided up.
MALISSA: Well, back in the beginning it was all Somerset. And then in 1742 it was becoming more populated, you see, and they needed to have a kind of seat that was more available to the people over on the east side of the settlement, so they carved Worcester County out of Old Somerset. And Division Street in Salisbury was the dividing line between Old Somerset and Worcester. Princess Anne was the county seat for Somerset, and Snow Hill was the county seat for Worcester. And then in 1867, Wicomico became a county, and Worcester gave some land and Somerset gave some land. It always seemed kind of sad to me, I guess I feel a little love for Old Somerset because it was where my beginning was on my father’s side of the family. And they lost all the really valuable land, just about, that there was, that they owned. They gave it all up for the other two counties and became just one of the poorest counties in the state of Maryland. Seemed unfortunate, but that’s the way it was.
ROBLEY: And their courthouse for Somerset was over on Courthouse Hill they call it now.
MALISSA: That was in the real early days. Over near Dividing Creek.
ROBLEY: Yea, and the jail was on the river, right about where Milburn Landing is. And I don’t know whether the courthouse was there or not, but the jail was there. Maybe the courthouse was there. But they called this Sandy Hill Road there because there was a hill. There wasn’t much of a hill, but it’s off the creek sand and hilly.
MALISSA: That was very early.
ROBLEY: Oh yea.
MALISSA: Before any of the division came about. In the earliest days Old Somerset extended from the line of Virginia, which wasn’t settled until the 1800’s. They couldn’t make up their minds where the line really went. It went all the way to the Choptank River before Dorchester County became a county.
INTERVIEWER: What were some of the legends in Worcester County?
MALISSA: I don’t remember much about that. I’m sure Robley doesn’t either. I can’t remember any of the legends. I’m sure there were lots of them because these were the days of good storytellers, you know, they were entertainment for people in those early days, before television and radio. But I don’t remember any.
INTERVIEWER: What was the music like back then?
MALISSA: Well, during the days when we were you, Irving Berlin was the big songwriter, he wrote the classic Let Me Call You Sweetheart. He was in love with Eileen, I can’t remember of her last name. Her father was very bitterly opposed to her marrying Irving Berlin, and he wrote Let Me Call You Sweetheart for her. They later were married and were very happy.
ROBLEY: There wasn’t much music. Some people had victrolas to play records.
MALISSA: And then there was sheet music and a great many of the girls were taught to play a piano then, you know. And there were player pianos. And a lot of sheet music. Back then My Blue Heaven was popular when we were young, and It Ain’t Gonna Rain No More. I remember one year we had rain all year and that year that song came out, It Ain’t Gonna Rain No More. And Yes We have No Bananas. All sorts of crazy songs as well as some serious ones.
INTERVIEWER: Did you ever ride in a horse and buggy?
MALISSA: Oh, I did. Lots and lots of times.
ROBLEY: That’s the only way we had to get anywhere.
MALISSA: Yes, it was fun. I can remember now, at the time that when I was a little small girl, Wagram’s Mill Pond was still a mill pond. They had the dam under the bridge, like. The bridge was sort of over the dam. And all this water was falling down the sides, you know, when you went across, it made a squishing sound. I was always a little bit frightened going across that bridge that the horse might become agitated and jump overboard.
INTERVIEWER: The mill pond you talk about.
MALISSA: Wagram’s yes, near the line of Virginia.
INTERVIEWER: That’s where I stayed.
ROBLEY: Did you live down there?
INTERVIEWER: Uh-uh.
ROBLEY: They used to have a mill right there that ground corn, didn’t they?
MALISSA: Yes. My grandfather, he grew white corn, nothing but white corn. He was very proud of his corn. He saved it from year to year. And the boats used to come up the river, when I was a tiny little girl, and people would bring their boats up there and buy his corn. He kept his own seed, of course. He took that corn to the mill and you gave them a bushel of corn to have a bushel ground for yourself.
INTERVIEWER: Did you ever go to Red Hill?
MALISSA: Oh yes, I remember once when I was a little girl, we had a real late fall, and it was the third day of October, that I went down there and the crowd went swimming, and I guess somebody walked along the path up there, and I guess they didn’t see us swimming, and they thought well here these clothes are, somebody’s left them So they took our clothes and we had to go home in our bathing suits. We finally got some of them back.
ROBLEY: Back in those days they had a big day. The first Wednesday in August. And if you could grow some chickens up big enough to fry by that time you were lucky, because you start out in the spring and the hen would lay the eggs and then she’d sit on them for three weeks. And then you’d grow them so, it took about twenty weeks to get one big enough to eat. And we’d have fried chicken and sweet potatoes to take down. And we had what they called a surrey. That was a two seated style, and you’d usually use two horses to it and we’d take off in the morning to go to Red Hill and spend some hours down there, and then you’d would return home at night.
INTERVIEWER: That was a real big day.
ROBLEY: It was a long time. Life, too, those days.
MALISSA: Everybody went a long way to have a picnic dinner.
ROBLEY: They used to have a merry go round and things like that. Harry White, you know, had one. I don’t know whether he had one there or not, but we used to move the merry go round for Harry White with trucks.
MALISSA: When they had the fair. The County Fair.
ROBLEY: Yea. In 1931, I think, was the last fair they had out here. Out here at the racetrack you know, that’s where the fairground is.
MALISSA: It was such a lovely grand park because it was a bit of a hill and the racetrack was down in the lower part, you know, and people could stand on the grade of the hill and everybody could see real well.
ROBLEY: Stand or sit, either one you want.
INTERVIEWER: Did you go there often?
MALISSA: Oh yes. A lot of people would get a season ticket and go every day.
ROBLEY: Yea maybe during its run, but they only had it a week. Maybe I’d go twice. But later, about 1929 or 30, along in there, I had a stand there. I sold hot dogs and drinks and so forth.
MALISSA: Also, the county fair. The Accomack County Fair.
ROBLEY: That was the last fair down this way that stayed open.
MALISSA: Yes, that was the last county fair in this area.
ROBLEY: They had one in Tasley that closed up before that one did.
MALISSA: They were interesting. The first mechanical refrigerator I ever saw was at Pocomoke Fair. Oh, and I tell you I thought this was the nth degree of luxury to have a refrigerator that made its own ice. The iceman came and brought your ice, if you were lucky, and had money enough to buy it, and you’d put it in a refrigerator that are being collector’s items now.
ROBLEY: This Model T truck I had, I drove it down there and I had canvas put over the top and two cuts in there and George Thompson and myself would sell ice cream. And we’d have a stand about, oh, about six-foot-long, and he would cut these ice cream blocks up and I’d pass them out. One day we sold over one hundred gallons of ice cream. Big crowds would go there then. I was working there, in fact, I was asleep that morning about nine o’clock and he was out walking around, and he told me to get up the yard was full of people. So, we started selling ice cream, and we worked until about one o’clock that night and we sold over one hundred gallons of ice cream and sandwiches.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember (unintelligible)?
MALISSA: She was Marshall.
ROBLEY: Henry? No, it wasn’t Henry.
MALISSA: No, her father was Parker Marshall, you were named for him, and her mother was Comfort Chase. Though they may have been related to, hard to say, I don’t know that he was, because he was born down here on the shore too. Her mother was a Chase. And my mother was a Mariner. My grandmother was an East, and her mother was a Savage from Savage’s Neck, down on the lower part of the Eastern Shore in Virginia. My father was Jackson, and he descended from a straight male line of Jackson’s from the first Samuel Jackson who came to the Eastern Shore, Old Somerset in 1660. He became a headright for William Colburn in 1660.
ROBLEY: The reason she knows this is she’s been checking ancestry.
MALISSA: I’ve spent a lot of happy hours doing that. It’s an interesting hobby.
INTERVIEWER: You said your grandfather was a Jackson.
MALISSA: My father.
INTERVIEWER: Was he any kin to the president?
MALISSA: No. I can’t claim that. They were Scotch-Irish and we were English. Neither was he related to Andrew Jackson, that I know of, I mean, Stonewall Jackson, sorry, Andrew was President. However, there was a governor, (unintelligible) of Maryland. Now he wasn’t a close relative, but we came from the same line.
INTERVIEWER: What were the shipyards like on the Pocomoke?
ROBLEY: It was located just west of Cedar Street and Clark Avenue. And they built some large boats and we used to go down and launch them. The school children would turn out. When they’d launch them, they’d go across the river and they pretty well took up the whole river they were so big, see the river wasn’t too wide there. They’d cut them loose and they’d step down the railways to the water. They built several of them. I forget how many, but a lot of people lived here, worked there, Mr. (unintelligible) Ward and (unintelligible), John Connelly. A lot of people worked there.