Forward

This story is about my life, going back to when I lived on Big Mt. The things that I am going to write about is the way I remember things that happened and the dates are from Mom's Bible and some from a family tree my niece Margaret made when she was in High School. Some of the dates and names I won't be able to fill in but I will try to be as accurate as I can be.

Some of the things are what Mom or other people have told me that happened before I was born or was to young to remember. I just decided to put down on paper some of my life as I remember it on Big Mountain and all I can remember about my relatives and familys that lived on Big Mt., Quinwood, Rupert and Greenbrier County when I lived there and up until now.

Big Mt. is located between Rupert and Quinwood, W.Va. It is ten miles across. My home was three miles from Rupert and seven miles from Quinwood. My Dad was Robert Orange McClung,, ever one called him Orange. My Mom was Lillie Dure McClung, she was a McClung before she was married. I had two brothers and three sisters. Their names was, Elmer Burn, Oneta Jane, Irene Zula, Peary Gladwin, Eula Oma and my name is Gertrude Marjorie (Trudie) McClung Miller.

Memories

Daddy was born Dec.26th, 1874 at Quinwood, W.Va. He had thirteen brothers and sisters. Mom was born on Big Mt. June 8th, 1879, she had five sisters. Dad and Mom was married Dec.26th,1900. Mom told me they rode horseback to the Methodist Parshnage at Rupert and the Rev. Barnette married them while they sit on their horses. Dad was 26 yrs. old and Mom was 21 yrs. old. Mom taught school before she got married. She didn't go to High School. She went to the Institute at Lewisburg and took a examination in order to get a certificate to teach. She had her own riding horse and rode it to school over on Mill Creek where she taught in a log school house. She said some of the boys was older and bigger then she was. I don't know how far Daddy went in school, I never heard him say.

They lived with Daddys Mother when they first got married. His mother and Father had separated and his Mother bought a house and farm over on the Mt. a few yrs. before. Daddys father deeded him some land on Peases Knolb above Quinwood and as soon as he got a house built they moved over there. Elmer was born not long after they moved over there. He was born Feb.23rd, 1902, Oneta was born June 11, 1906, Irene was born May 16, 1908 and Peary was born Jan.22, 1910. They was all born while they lived there.

In 1916 or 1917 Daddy traded farms with uncle Odey. That farm was on the Big Mt. between where Dad's Mother lived and where Mom was raised. After they moved over there, Eula was born June 21st 1917 and I (Trudie) was born Jan.4th, 1922.

My oldest brother Elmer was married first. He married Cathleen Dorsey Aug. 1926. He was 24 yrs. old and she was 18 yrs. old. I think they eloped. Her home was up there on the Mt. I think they rented two rooms from uncle Charley at the old store house when they first got married and was living there when their first child Marjorie, was born Oct.10, 1927. She died Nov. 23rd.1927. They said she was undernourished. Cathleen had her on the breast and had plenty of milk but it didn't have any nourishment it was just like water and she didn't know what was the matter until it was to late. She had to raise the rest on the bottle.

Daddy deeded Elmer his share of the farm after he got married and helped him build a house on it. They moved into the house after Marjorie died.

Homer Keith was born Oct.6, 1929, Barbara Lee was born Jan. 6th, 1932, Jo Ann was born May 28th 1935, Margaret Ann and Donna Lee was born Sept.17, 1938, (they was twins). When Cathleen was eight months pregnant with the twins she started having convulsions, they rushed her to hospital at Rainell. Dr. Jackson had to operate and take the babys, he thought he could save her life if he did a (Ceasarean section). One weighed two lbs and the other one weighed two and one half lbs. The babys lived but, Cathleen died eight days later. She was never conscious after the babys was born. She died Sept. 25th, 1938. She was buried at Mount Zion Cemetary beside of Marjorie. Marjorie was first buried at the Wilson Cemetary but they took her up a short time later and buried her at Mount Zion.

After Cathleen died Elmer was left with five children, his health wasn't very good, he had been having asthma for a few yrs. and wasn't able to hold a job. The twins was ready to leave the hospital when they was eight weeks old and a diceasion had to be made as to who would take care of them. A couple at Charmco wanted to adopt them but Elmer didn't want to give them up. Mom was 59 yrs. old at the time and her health wasn't very good she had asthma too. I was sixteen at the time and I was the only one at home. Mom didn't think she could take care of both of them so Mrs. Dorsey said she would take one of them and Mom took the other one. Mrs. Dorsey took Donna and Mom got Margaret. They was so small you couldn't tell who they looked like, and no one thought they would live. They wasn't identical twins. Cathleen had big brown eyes and Elmer had blue eyes and as it turned out, Margaret has big blue eyes and Donna has small brown eyes.. Margaret has light hair and looks like the McClungs and Donna has dark hair and looks like the Dorseys. They don't even have ways alike.

It was the last of Oct. when they brought them home. They had gained up to four lbs. by that time. They was put on unpasturised (our cows) milk and karo syrup. I guess God was looking over them and they both lived. Mom said she would wake up at night and couldn't tell if Margaret was breathing, she would think sometimes she was dead. We carried her around on a pillow until she gained some more weight.

Cathleen was a very religious woman, she was a good mother and worked hard all her short life, she was just 30 yrs. old when she died. You could always hear her singing above everone else in church. She was nicknamed Sister, all the family called her that, I guess it was because she was the oldest in the family.

Barbara went to stay with her Grandmother Dorsey, she stayed with them until she got married. She married Dick Golden. They had five children. They live at Charmco. Dick died in 1974. Elmer stayed in his house for awhile and Homer stayed with him. Joe Ann stayed with him part of the time and part of the time with us, she was just three yrs. old. The next year he moved his things down home in the upstairs and rented his house to Eula and Laurence.

Later on he moved back into his house, but after Daddy died in 1945 he sold his place to Peary and moved back down home in the upstairs. His health got worse and he took the money he got for his place and took Homer and went to Colo. He thought the change in climate would help him and he wouldn't have the asthma hut it didn't seem to help him any so they came back home.

After he came back from Colo. he went to a Dr. in Rainell. The medicine he gave him seemed to help him so much. He didn't know what it was he took it in shots. He got addicted to it and found out it was morphine. The Dr. and the druggist was sent to prison for selling it.

Mom had to have him comitted to a hospital in Ky. for six months to get him off the morphine. After he came home he still had to take shots all the time but it wasn't The morphine, I don't know what it was. He lived there with Mom untill she sold the farm. He rented a house at Hines, Joe Ann lived there with him untill she got married. She married Johnny Alport and moved to Belburn. They had three girls. Johnny died in 1975 with a heart attack.

Elmer met Bertha Jones after Jo Ann got married and. they later got married and moved to Belburn, he later had a stroke and the asthma got worse, he was in and out of the hospital untill he died July 10, 1969. He was buried at Wallace Memorial at Clintonville, W.Va.

Homer went in the Army in the late 40's. He was sent to Germany. While he was over there he met Betty (a German girl). They was married and he brought her back with him when he got out of service. He went to Beckley, W.Va. when he came home and got a job. They had two children, Susan and Michael. Him and Betty are devorced and he has remarried. He still lives in Beckley.

Donna married Kimton Brown from Hominey Falls and they had two girls and two boys. They was living at Rupert the last I saw them. Margaret married Roger Olson from Duluth, Minn. She met him when she was working in Columbus, Ohio. They have two children Curtis and Lourie. They live in Duluth Minn.

Oneta married Lawrence Burns, Dec. 28, 1927. They fixed up the upstairs there at home and got some furnature and that is where they went to house-keeping. They lived there for three or four yrs. He helped Daddy there on the farm, or whatever jobs he could get. They moved over to the foot of Bivens Hill in a farm house and while he was there he got a piece of land from his Dad John Burns at Sam Black and built a small house on it. It was in a bottom just back of Sam Black Church, on his fathers farm. They was married about four yrs. before they had any children. They had three boys and one girl, Robert Andrew named after his grandfathers, Orval, Curtis and Ruth.

Bob married Sue Agee, they live in Detroit, Mich. They had two boys, John and _?_. Orval married Beatrice (Bee) Bobbitt. They had two boys and one girl, Gary, Randy and Connie. They live in Enon, Ohio. Curtis married Gay ?, they had two children a boy and a girl. They live in Enon, Ohio. Ruth married Laton Leach, they had one daughter, Kathey. She devorced Laton and married Jeff Polen, she lives in Enon, Ohio.

Lawrence worked in the mines for a few years and he worked for the State Road for a few yrs. He got his back and hip hurt when he was working on the road, he was never the same after that he limped and walked with a cane part of the time. In the 50s he bought a weaving loom. He wove rugs and sold them untill he died. Oneta would cut the rags into strings and sew them together to make the rugs and Lawrence made the rugs. People would give them old clothes to make the rugs and pay him for making them and others just gave them the old clothes to get rid of them. He only had to buy the balls of twine that he used to set up the loom. I bought several rugs from them, I still have some of them. He made lots of beautiful rugs.

Oneta pieced quilts and quilted them. She sold some of them and give all of her children some of them. People would get her to set up and quilt tops they had pieced. She also crocheted doilies and scarfs, she sold some of them too.

In the 50's Orval bought a house next door to his home in Ohio and persuaded Lawrence and Oneta to sell their place in W.Va. and move to Ohio so they would be close to all the kids. Their health wasn't very good, Oneta had diabetes and had to be under a Doctors care. They was both getting up in yrs. They came back to visit every year untill Lawrence died. He was 81 yrs. old, he was buried in Ohio. Oneta is still living she is 77 yrs old now. Her health has been bad for several yrs. She is in a nursing home now not far from where the children live. She has to have constant care. I saw her last summer she seems to be contented, her memory isn't very good.

Irene was next to get married. She married Lester J. Witt, Nov. 8th 1930, in Elkins, W.Va. by Rev. Smith B. Hart. I was eight yrs. old and I couldn't understand why she had got married and was leaving home. They told me it was because I would slip out and play when I was supposed to help her with the dishes. I believed it for a long time and felt bad about it. Irene was the only one in our family that graduated from High School. She went to Smoot High School. She was salutatorian of her class. She didn't start to High School when she finished grade school, Mom wasn't very well and she stayed home to help with the work. She graduated in May 1930 and got married that same year. She was 22 yrs. old.

I remember the night she graduated, I had never saw so many people before in one place. Mom let me stay with her that night at the rooming house where she stayed. She was dating Lester then and he took us for a drive that night and I fell asleep before we got back. The next morning Irene had to go up to the school house, it was just on the hill above the rooming house. She left me in bed. I woke up and dressed and went up to the school house but was to bashful to go in and find her. I went back to the rooming house and waited untill she came back.

They went to house keeping upon the farm at Dawson where Lester was born and raised. His father was dead but his mother was still living. She lived there with them untill she died not long after they got married. Mom let me go over there and stay with them that next summer awhile. Lester was carrying the Mail, he had a two seated closed Model A Ford, while I was over there he traded and got a new 1930 Model A Ford Roadster, he brought it home and took me and Irene for a ride in it.

Glen their oldest son was born (July 28th 1931, he was born up home on the Mt. Irene had gone to see her Doctor and come up home and while she was there the labor started and he was born there. After that every Summer Mom would let me go and stay two or three weeks. I loved to go over there. They had a bunch of turkeys, if they didn't come to the house in the evenings I would go down in the bottom and round them up and chase them to the house. They had sheep too, we didn't have neither one up on the Mt.

Lester loved to tease me, I was very timid and bashful, I think that is why he liked to tease me. I found a dry land turtle in the wild straw-berry patch one day I had never saw one before and I was afraid of it, he chased me all over the place with it. He carved his initials on it and turned it loose. He was the only boy and the youngest in the family. They said his sisters and Mother spoiled him when he was little. He had a riding horse, and loved to ride, he liked to hunt too, he always had some hound dogs and kept a small dog too.

Their next child was Roe Edwin (Buddie) then Dale Lester. Dale was about six months old when Glen died Dec. 9th 1935. He died with diptheria. Nine yrs. later they had twins a boy and girl,(Carl and Carol), then later in 1947 they had another boy Murrel.

The farm where they lived was about a mile or more off the main road. They had to go through two farms to get to the house and there was five gates to open and close before you got to the house. The house was up on a steep hill, you could se the main road from the house but it took a while to get down there. If you was walking you could cut across the bottom it wasn't as far.

They moved to South Charleston once and Lester worked at Carbide. They was down there about two yrs. and they moved back to the farm. Another time they moved to Beckley and Lester helped his sister Hurtle in the greenhouse and florest Shop, they lived there about two yrs. and moved back, they lived at the Lackie place for a short time and another time they stayed in the Shelton house down on the main road one winter. Lester was driving the school bus and the kids didn't have to walk to catch the bus. They always went back to the farm.

In the 70s after the kids was all married, their son Buddie bought a house in Rupert and persuaded them to move into it, where they would be close to the store, post office Doctor and etc. Irene liked it real well but Lester was never contented living down there. He was still driving the school bus and he kept some dogs and a horse up on the farm and would go up there ever day to feed them. In the summer they would raise a garden up there and do their canning up there. Irene loved it up there in the summer but in the winter she couldn't get out any and at Rupert she can.

Lester died June 3rd, 1977, he had a heart attack and died on the street in Rainell. He was buried at the Dolen cemetary at Dawson. Their son Glen and his mother and Dad are also buried there.

Irene still lives at Rupert, the kids visit her often. She isn't very well but is still able to get around and do her own housework. She has a lot of friends around where she lives. I was over to see her this fall and stayed all night and we had a good visit.

Buddie married Edna Stevens, they have two children, Don and Rhea. They live in Grafton,Va. Buddie retired from the navy, his wife Edna teaches school, she is still teaching. Dale married Jenny Johnson, he met her in Calif. while he was in the service. They have one son Chuckie, they live in St. Charles, Mo. Carl married Ann Paterson, they have three children, Mikel, Paul and Bridgett. They live at Dawson, W.Va. He bought the Barlow farm it is close to where he was raised, near Maud Chapel Church.

Carol married Claurence F. Wescott from Va. They have two daughters, Tracy and Carla. They live in Seford, Va. Murrel married Donna Cadle, they have two children, Mark and Melody and one adopted son. They live in Covington, Va. All the kids play music except Buddie and Dale. Carl and Murrel play about any kind of string music insturment, guitar, banjo, mandoline and violin, they play real well. They have played with different bands. All of Carls kids play some kind of instrument; he has his own band at home. Murrel and his wife and their daughter Melody play and sing together. Carol plays a guitar and still playes with them when she comes home, she has a pretty voice, I haven't heard her sing for a long time.

They started playing music when they was real young. At first Irene would play the oregon and they would sing with her. Then they got a guitar and other instruments and learned to play them.

In 1975 they had a family reunion up on the farm, all the kids was there but Carol she couldn't come. They had their tents and campers set up in a field out from the house. They spent a week up there. Orvil and I went over there on Sat. and stayed all night. We had a station wagon we slept in it that night. They built up a big camp fire and played music and sang songs that night untill real late. Then the next day more people came and played music with them, and they fixed a big picnic dinner we had a wonderful time.

Peary got married next, he married Margarette Trout Oct.27th 1934. They just came in one Sun. evening and told us they had got married. They went to house keeping in the upstairs there at home. Margarette was born and raised on a hill above Green Vally about two miles from Quinwood. They lived on a farm at the end of a narrow dirt road. The road slanted in places we would have to set on the upper side of the car to keep it from turning over. Her father was Roy Trout, her mother Lucy (Amick)Trout. She had three sisters, Cleta, Malonie, and Rosetta. two brothers, Clifford and Veneable. There was a log Church up there on that hill. Margarettes uncle Rathe Trout was a preacher and he had it built. I have been over there when they was having a revival meeting. Cleta, Clifford, Bill Odell and Lovell Wells played guitars and sang at those meetings.

They had two children, Vada and Orren. Vada was born when they lived there at home. She had pnemonia when she was six months old and almost died. She has had asthma ever since. They moved up in Aunt Ollies house and Orren was born when they lived there. Peary had pnemonia when Orren was a baby. About that time pinnicilin came out and the Dr. gave him the tablets to take and it broke the fever, he was real sick. It was a real cold winter that year.

They later moved back in with us, and then moved in Elmers house, they lived there awhile then moved to Quinwood. After Daddy died they moved in with Mom for awhile and then Peary bought Elmers place and they moved in there. Later he sold it to Jim Price and they bought a trailer and lived at Levisy. He later took the trailer to Calif. They stayed there a year or two then brought the trailer back and lived at Levisy awhile. They started running the Co. Boarding House and sold their trailer. They left the boarding house in 1952 and moved to Charmco. They wasn't there very long untill they sold out and went to Oregon. Vada got married when they was in Calif. She married Erwin Aishire and they had moved to Oregon. They had two children a boy and a girl she still lives in Oregon. They came back once but Peary couldn't find a job and they went back to Oregon. They seperated while they was in Oregon and she went to Wash. State.

Peary and Orren came back to Quinwood and Peary bought a little house over there and he lived there untill he died June 22nd 1977. I havent heard from Orren since his Dad died. I hear he is still over there in Greenbrier County. He never got married and lived with his Dad.

Peary worked in the mines most of his life. He worked at Anjean when he first got married. Later at Quinwood and Levisy. He leased some coal and opened up a few mines himself and sold some house coal but he never made much money with them, usually ended up in the hole and in debt. He got black lung and drawed a black lung check and Social Security check after he got so he wasn't able to work. He died suddenly, he had a stroke in the morning and died that evening in Fairlee Hospital. He was buried at Mount Zion Cemetary. The Rev. Pearlie Orndoff was the minister at the funeral.

Orren and Vada both have night blindness they thought it was caused from the drops the Dr. put in their eyes when they was born, they don't know for sure.

Eula was the next to get married. She married Laurence Dorsey April 8th 1936 at Rupert at the Methodist Church. The Rev. Allen married them. They went to Lovers Leap and spent a night for their honey moon. Before they got married they fixed up a two room house that the Dorseys had used for a wash house and bath house. They bought a kitchen cabinet, breakfast set, a wood cook stove their pots and pans and dishes, and a bed room set and had it all fixed to go to house keeping before they got married.

Laurence was working in the mines. They was still living there when Herman was born, March 12th 1937. I stayed with them a week to do the cooking, washing and etc. Herman was born at home, Dr. Todd and Aunt Kon (she was a mid wife) delivered the baby. They later moved to a house that Cecil Smith had lived in about a half mile down the road. They didn't live there very long. Their next move was into Elmers house. They lived there about two years. Lorn (Laurences brother) and his wife Kathryn moved to Belburn, their house was across the road from where Laurence was raised and they moved up there because it was closer for Laurence to drive to work. Their next move was to Belburn, they didn't live there long untill they found a house at Quinwood they liked better and they moved up there. I was there and helped them move ever time. They didn't have much furnature and it didn't take long to move and set up everthing. We could do it all in one day and have supper ready when Laurence got in from work.

Not long after they moved there I went to Md. to work. I came home on vacation in 1944, Laurence had got his knee mashed in the mines sometime earlier and didn't think he would ever be able to work in the mines again. Eula went back with me to Md. to look for a job for her and Laurence. Our cousin Ed Smith was working at United Distillery, he got both of them a job there at the distillery and they could go to work as soon as they got moved. We found them a house to rent at Franklintown and Eula went back home and about a week later they moved to Md. Lawrence McClung moved them in his coal truck. They rode in the truck with him and Laurence went back with him. A week or so later the Dr. released Laurence and he came back in their car and went to work.

Their next move was to Glen Burnie, Md. That was their last move. They bought a new house there. That was in July, 1953. Orvil, Linda and I had went up there on vacation, we helped them pack, and set up. They hired a moving van to move them. Laurence worked at the Distillery until they closed down, he was transfered to The Four Roses Distillery. In 1964 he started having sore throat trouble and got hoarse, it was later he found out he had cancer of the throat. They operated on him and took his larnex and I don't know what else. They left a hole in his neck that he had to breathe through. He had to take his food through a tube that run from his nose to his stomach for a long time. He finally got so he could eat by mouth. He couldn't smell or taste anything. He didn't have any feeling in his nose. He couldn't talk for a long time, he had to write things down on paper. He finally learned to talk on his own so we could understand him. They didn't give him long to live, but he had a great determination to live, he lived six or seven years after the operation.

He was layed off at the distillery, and he got a job at Sweetheart Paper Cup Co. and worked right up until a month or two before he died Feb.4th, 1972. Eula worked at the United Distillery in the bottling room untill 1946. She got a job at The American Hammer Piston Ring, she worked there 32 yrs. she retired in 1978.

Herman had polio when he was eight yrs. old. He was sick and running a fever, the Doctors run tests but didn't think it was polio. He got better but kept limping. At first they thought he had jumped out of a tree and hurt his foot before he got sick and they thought that his foot just had not healed up and when they had it checked they found out that he had had polio and had a dead muscle in his foot. They put him in Childrens Kernans Hospital and they operated and transplanted the muscle in his foot. He had to walk on crutches a long time. His foot and leg never grew like the other one. He limps some but it has never been much of a handicap for him.

He married Laura Hall when he was 19 or 20 yrs. old. They had three children, Sandy, Scott and Sherry. They separated and divorced in 1972. Laura remarried sometime later. She married Ray Antheny. She had custody of the children. Ray adopted the children and their names was changed to Antheny. He died a few years later with a heart attack. Laura is married again, her husband now is Frank Dubiel. The oldest girl Sandy is married. Herman has remarried, his wife's name is Ann. She had been married before and had a son, Timmie.

The Dorsey family moved there on the Mt. back before I was born. Labon Dorsey was his name and her name was Rosie. I think he was raised in Nicholas County. His Father was Rev. Wallace Dorsey and his mothers name was Sara. He had one sister Nettie, she married Hubert Shawver. He had three brothers, Tommy, Kelly, and Maloy. Mrs. Dorsey was a Phitz­patrick, she was raised at Layland, W.Va.

They lived in a big log house up untill in the 30s, they built a big two story house. They had a big family. Their children was Cathleen born May 17,1908, she married my brother Elmer, Lowell was born Dec. 5, 1910, he never married. He had convulsions nearly all his life and died when he was in his 20s. Loren Aug.3, 1913 he married Katheryn Dodd. He was killed in the mines in the 40s, Laurence was born, Jan.19,1916, he married my sister Eula. Lorene was born, May 5,1918, she married John Fleshman. Emogene was born Mar.24,1922, she married, Frank Hammons from Balt. Billy was born, April 8, 1926, he married Mildred Fleshman. Bertell was born Sept.6,1929,she married James Greer, Labon Jr. was born, July 2,1930; he married Donna Odell.

Mr. Dorsey died in the 50s. Mrs. Dorsey is still living she is in her 90s; she lives in a trailer at Rupert by herself. Billy lives close to her. They sold the farm several yr's. ago, they have stripped the coal all around the house it don't look like the same place. Someone still lives in the house.

When Eula and Laurence was dating he bought her a guitar and Mom ordered me a guitar from Spiegal catalogue. She paid $8.98 for it. I still have that old guitar. Eula and I would play our guitars and sing ever spare time we had. One time we went to a singing convention at a church at a place called squatting dodge, about a mile from Quinwood. We won a home baked coconut cake, on the way home we stopped at a spring along the road up there on the Mt. and eat a piece of cake and drank water with it. The cake was delicious.

When we finished eating a meal we would get our guitars and play and sing awhile then go wash the dishes and other things that had to be done. We would sing while we was washing, the dishes. In the Summer when we was out on the porch they could hear us singing and playing clear up at Uncle Charleys about a mile, if the wind was blowing that way.

Daddys father was Charley Grig McClung and his Mother was Nancy (Shawver) McClung. They had 14 children, five boys and nine girls. The boys names was Ned, Lemon, Odey, Curley and Orange. The girls was Sally Martha, Ellie, Nanny, Myrtle, Emmie, Peachie, Piney and Ollie.

There was some of Daddys people I knew little about. My Grandfather must have been a very schrude person. I don't remember ever seeing him or hearing Dad or mom saying much about him. I have been told that at one time he owned all the land where Quinwood is now and a lot more all around there. I never did hear just how much he did own or how he acquired it. I have no record of his parents, their names or where they come from. Some say he was land poor, and some say he was always in a lawsuit with someone. He would sell a piece of land and if the party got behind on their payments he would sue them and get the property back and sell it again. He had a large farm over there just out from Quinwood, that is where all the children was born. I have never been out to where it was but I know about where it was.

I might be wrong about this but this is what I have figured out by putting bits and pieces together. My Grandmother was a Shawver, Polk Shawver was her brother. Polk Shawver was married to Mandy (?), that made my grandmother and Mandy sister in laws. After Polk Shawver died, this is what I have heard from my Mother. Mandy started coming to my Grand-mothers house and her and my Grandfather would sit around the fireplace and smoke their pipes and talk and grandmother would cook and wait on them. I don't know how long this went on but grandmother finally got tired of the way they was doing and decided to move out.

She bought a farm over on the Mountain, it was the Miller McClung farm. Most of the children was married at this time. Daddy was still at home and two or three of the girls. At that time there was a log house set there, in later years. They built a new house that is the one I remember. My Grandfather got a divorce and married Mandy Shawver. When he died he was buried there on the farm someplace. Some say a Coal Co. had it in for him and delibertly undermined his grave and it fell in.

I was very young but I remember Mandy being at our house one time. She was real old and still smoked a pipe. Mom called her Aunt Mandy. She would have been Daddy's Aunt and Step Mother by marriage.

I remember Daddy telling us his Dad took him and one of the other boys to the Worlds Fair in Chicago when he was about 18 yrs. old. That is about all I can remember that I have heard about my Grandfather Charley Grig McClung. I don1t remember ever seeing my Grandmother Nancy, I don't remember what year she died. She was buried at Mount Zion Cemetary. All I have heard about her was that she was a hard working woman and a kind person and a good Mother, she must have been to raise fourteen children. I have a picture of her and my Grandfather and some of the children that was taken not long before they separated.

I have no way of knowing if my Grandfather had any money when he died I have been told he gave all the children a few acres of land and some coal rights. Some of the children may have got some money I really don't know.

Uncle Lemon died when he was young, I don't know how old he was when he died or if he ever married. I remember when Aunt Sally died it was in the 30s. She married John Smith, they didn't have any children. They lived at Orient Hill. She had some money that she left to her brothers and sisters in her Will. My brother Peary was appointed administrator of her Will. I think she was the oldest in the family.

Uncle Odey married Rebecca (Jeffers), they had three children, Charley, Edith, and Lofton. His wife died when the children was young and he later married Etta Haynes. He was a Methodist Preacher. He owned the farm on the Big Mt. where I was born at one time and later built a house at Quinwood. I think he died in the late 40s. His son Charley married Alma McClung (Live McClungs daughter) they had two girls and one boy, Beckie, Helen and Charley Harold. Harold didn't grow very tall and they called him (Little Charley). They lived just below Uncle Odey. Charley had a hardware store in Quinwood for yrs. He sold out and moved to Florida in the 50s after his father died. He had a heart attack and died several years ago.

Edith married Roy Hedrick; they had two sons. They lived beside Charley. Edith's husband died when the boys was small, after the boys grew up and married she moved to White Sulphur Springs. She later married (?) Perry. She died in the 70s.

Lofton married Irene Zopp (Truss Zopps daughter) they lived on Peases Knolb with his mother. They had no children. He lost his mind back in the 30s and they put him in Weston State Hospital and he died there in the 60s.

Uncle Neds wifes name was Beckey. They lived at Bingom. I didn't know him very well but I knew some of the children. I think he was the oldest boy in the family. His son Elton married Pearl Witt. He was killed in the mines. Lulie married Willie Cole they lived at Anstead. They came here to see Mom one time. Claurence lived at Summersville. One of the boys married Mary Anderson from Big Laurel, they lived here in Webster Springs. He was killed in the Mines before I came here. Mary came here to see Mom quite often. She lives with her son Murrel in Florida now. Pansey married Luss Hines. There was some others but I can't recall their names. Uncle Ned and Aunt Beckey was buried right next to Mom and Dad at the End Of The Trail.

Aunt Emmie married Bud Smith, they had ten children, Earl, Erskin, Howard, Fred, Connie (Legg) Zula (Collins), Susie (Striuske), Huda(Perkins), Hattie (Forbes) and Gertrude. They lived on the other end of the Mt. just above Quinwood. I can't remember ever going to visit them. I saw them at church sometimes. Earl married Elsie Hamm. I don't think Fred and Gertie ever got married. I don't know who Erskin and Howard married. Hattie and Howard both died last yr. I never knew any of them very well except Earl, he lives on the farm now where Uncle Curley lived. Aunt Nanney married (?) McClung. I don't know how many children they had. Mom told me that her husband left her when the kids was little. She had to raise them by herself. After the kids was grown he got sick and came back to her and she took him in and took care of him untill he died. Her son Ira lived here in Webster Springs when I moved here. He had a Dairy Farm here at that time. His wife left him and he later got a devorce and married May Clevenger. He has been dead for several yrs.

I never saw Aunt Nanny but one time. She was 1iving in Arkansas, she came home for a visit and they had a reunion at Quinwood, that was in 1938. All the children was there but Lemon and Sally they was both dead at that time. I have a picture of all of them, and a group picture of everone that was there that day.

Uncle Curley lived up there on the Mt. close to the church. His wifes name was Montania, everone called her Aunt Mon., their children was Emily, Lincol, Curby, Jurl, Cutis, Alma, Montique and Witt.

Emily married Walter McClung, (Sam McClungs son) they lived there on the Mt. close to us, Lincol married Ina Price they also lived there on the Mt. Cutis married Claurence Odell, he taught school there on the Mt. for awhile. I think they live in Va.

Montigue married Loren Odell, they lived at Charmco. I saw in the paper she had died this yr. Alma married Olen Jones and they lived at Rainell, Curby married Mallie Faine, I don't know who Witt and Jurl married.

Aunt Martha married Isack Smith, they lived at Quinwood. They didn't have any children. I remember being at their house a few times. She had diabetes. They both died in the 40s.

Aunt Myrtle married Austin Smith. They lived at Quinwood, their child­ren was Carrie, Harry, Pat, Emma Lue and Jay. Carrie married Dayton Odell, they had one son, D. L.. Carrie taught school. Her husband and son are both dead. She lives in Quinwood. Loyds wifes name was Leigh. He worked in the Co Store there in Quinwood. I saw in the paper he had died recently with a heart attack. Harry died with a heart attack in the 50s. Emma Lue married a Parker they live in Charlottesville, Va. Jay lives at Rainell, W.Va. Pat married Bob Dabney and lived near Beckley, she has been dead several yrs. I think Aunt Murtle and Uncle Austin died sometime in the 40s.

I never knew anything about Aunt Ellie, I think she married a Bryant and lived at Clintonville. Aunt Peachie married Calvin McClung, they lived at Quinwood. Their children was Burk, Newlan, Blain, Orvil and Glen twins, Faye and Louise. Burk married Mammie McClung, Newlan married Hallie Boon, I think Faye married a Seabolt and I don't know who the others married. Both Aunt Peachie and Uncle Calvin are both dead.

Aunt Piney had scarlet fever when she was real young, she couldn't hear anything when she got over the fever. They sent her to Romney, W.Va. to school for the deaf when she got old enough. She graduated from school there. When she came home she couldn't speak. She used sign language and talked with her hands. Ever one around her learned to talk to her that way. I could talk to her some, but never got very good at it.

Grandmother left the home place to Aunt Ollie when she died to take care of Aunt Piney the rest of her life. She was healthy and helped Aunt Ollie with the house work and cooking. She sewed and crocheted and did a lot of things. She would go over and stay with her sisters, Martha, Peachie and Myrtle sometimes but she stayed at Aunt Ollies most of the time that was her home. Robert would tease her sometimes just to see her get mad, she couldn't holler at him, she would stomp her foot and chase him out of the house. She was in her 90s when she died. Her mind got so bad just before she died Aunt Ollie had to put her in a nursing home at Sweet Springs she died there. She was buried at Mount Zion Cemetary.

Aunt Ollie married Henry Price, their children was Robert, Mariam and Marie. Aunt Ollie was my favorite aunt and Robert, Mariam and Marie was my favorite cousins on Daddys side of the family. I guess it was because I knew them better. We lived in sight of them and was together a lot. Mariam and I was about the same age and was in the same grade in school.

When Mariam finished the eighth grade they moved to Lewisburg so the kids could go to High School. There was no high school at Rupert then. I sure did miss them. In about three yrs. they built a high school at Rupert and they moved back and Robert drove a car to Rupert that year and Robert and Mariam graduated there.

During that time Aunt Ollie and Uncle Henry seperated and Aunt Ollie rented a appartment at Quinwood and moved over there. She rented her house on the Mt. and later sold the farm to Robert Darby. They lived there a long time then sold it and moved to Rupert. I don't know who ownes it now, the house is still standing.

There was a lot of sugar maple trees on that farm, they called it the sugar orchard where they would tap the trees in the spring and catch the sugar water in buckets. They had a house and a place fixed inside to boil the sugar water down into syrup. They made a lot of it and sold some of it. They would take some of it, and boil it down, and make sugar out of it. I wasn't very old when they did that but I can still remember a little bit about it. We had a few trees that Daddy would tap and they would boil the sugar water down on the stove and make syrup.

That house had water piped into the kitchen from a spring across the road. They had a well drilled just outside the kitchen, they drew the water out with a well bucket, the water was ice cold. If we wanted a cold drink of water in the summer we went up there and got a bucket of water out of the well. There was no electric up there on the Mt. and they couldn't pump it in the house.

In the 30s Uncle Henry got a coal truck and hauled house coal. That is how he made a living for his family. He had a glass eye I don't know how he got his eye put out. Ever once in a while he would get on a drunk, I remember one time he sent the kids down home to see if we had any krout juice to sober up on. He kept drinking and Aunt Ollie couldn't take it any longer and she made him leave and she moved to Quinwood. Not long after that he fell out of the back of his truck and a wheel ran over him and killed him.

His fathers name was Nathe Price, his mothers name was Rachel. His sister married Linchol McClung, (Unc1e Curleys son). He had two brothers, Oakley and Acie, their home was there on the Mt.

Robert married Bulah Flint, from Quinwood. He worked for The Applachion Power Co. He built a house at Rupert. They had three girls and a boy. Robert died in 1982.

Mariam married E.C.Gordon, they had two girls. They lived in Owensboro, Ky. Mariam died in 1975. Marie married (?) Jarvis, she had one son Gregory. She lives in South Charleston, W.Va, her husband is dead.

Aunt Ollie moved to Charleston in the 40s. She lived with Marie for a long time. She was in a nursing home in Charleston when she died in 1976.

My mothers father was Clark McClung. He was born Sept. 1859, died Nov. 16,1908. He was 49 yrs. old. He had cancer. Mom said he had a mole on his face that he nicked or cut when he shaved and it turned to cancer, and spread all over him. He had a operation just before he died, they closed his rectom and opened a place on his side for his bowels to move. He didn't live long after that.

His Fathers name was Aleck McClung. He was born in 1813, died 1898. His mothers name was Mary, she was born 1816, died 1872. His brothers names was Aleck Jr., John and Snoden, his sisters was Jane and Susan.

Moms mothers name was Charlotte Jane (Zopp) McClung. She was born July 4,1856, died June 28,1922. She was 66 yrs. old. She went by Dot. most of her life. Mom said her father called her Daughter and ever one started calling her Dot for short. I don't know what her Dad and mothers names was. Her brothers names was Joe, Trus, Buren, Stonewall and Jack, she had one sister Zula.

There was six girls in Moms family. She said her mother wanted a boy so bad but ever time she got pregnant with a boy she would miscarry and loose it.

Mom was the oldest in the family, Lillie Dure, born June 8,1879, died June 8,1975. Rose born Sept. 1,1881, died Nov. 1970. Mattie born Jan.1,1885 died 1927. Biddie born May 16,1887, died July 1946. Bessie born Aug. 14,1889, died Feb. 1976. Vernie born Oct. 14, 1896.

Rose married Harvey Morrison, they lived at Smoot. They had three children, Stacy, Viola and Kieth. They had a store and ran the Post Office too. Both of them was in the same building. It was a small store but they made a good living at it. They raised a garden and had several acres of land there in Smoot.

Stacy taught school and didn't get married untill she was in her 30s. She married Jim Hobbs he lived there in Smoot all his life, he worked in the mines. After Stacy retired from teaching she ran the Post Office untill they closed it down. They built a brick home across the road from Aunt Rose. They kept Aunt Rose and Uncle Harvy awhile before they died. Jim died in 1982. Stacy is still living, she had no children.

Viola married Omer Henson, he was from Smoot. They moved to Fayetteville, Omer was a carpenter. They was married several yrs. before they had any children. They had one daughter Gaye.

Keith taught school and married a school teacher, Beatrice (Bill) Sheets from Hillsboro. They had two children, Sam and Carolyn. They lived at Crawley at his Dads old home place, then moved to Beckley. In the 50s they moved to Balt. Md. They bought a beach home down on the bay. Kieth had a heart attack and died in the 60s. Bill sold their home later, she still lives up there someplace and she has a sister that lives up there too. I heard last year that her daughter had died.

After Aunt Rose died uncle Harvey deeded the home place to Viola. She was living up around Washington at that time. Omer took palsey or Hopkin disease and they moved back to Smoot. Omer died in the 70s, Viola is still living there.

Aunt Biddie married Henry Amick, they lived at Carl. She had one son Charles. I didn't know her very well, I have been at her house a few times. She didn't get married untill she was in her 30s, Mom said she had a hard time when Charles was born and she didn't get the right care and later yrs. she got cancer.

She didn't go to a Doctor and didn't know she had cancer untill she got so bad they took her to the hospital. They found she had cancer and it had spread all over her, she just lived a short time after that She is buried at Carl Cemetary beside the church.

Aunt Bessie married Cavendish Odell. Ever one calls him Dish. His father was Morgan Odell, his mother was Ammer Odell. He had two sisters, Elizebeth and Annie and a brother Bill. His mother died and later his father married Nancy Trout. They had four children, Marvin, Albert, Lovie and Lucy.

Aunt Bessie didn't have any children and in the 20s they adopted a baby, her name is Imelda, they called her Buck. Her birthday is Jan.26,1924. They lived in Quinwood. Uncle Dish worked in the rnines. Aunt Bessie had Diabetes for a long time, she died Feb. 1976. Uncle Dish is still living and is able to get around, he is 95 yrs. old now.

Buck never married, she stayed with a Mrs. Ramsey at White Sulphur Springs for several yrs. Mrs. Ramsey died just after Aunt Bessie died and Buck came back home to take care of her Dad.

Aunt Vernie married Marvin Odell (Uncle Dishes half brother). They didn't have any children. They had a store in Quinwood and lived up over the store. Uncle Marvin died in the late 30s or the early 40s, later Aunt Vernie married his brother Albert. They had no children.

In The early 50s the State wanted to change the road there in Quinwood and Aunt Vernies store was in the way. She was forced to sell and they tore it down. She built a cinder block building just across the highway. It has a gas station and garage on the first floor and a appartment upstairs over the station. Later they retired and leased the station out.. They had a drive in theater at Nettie for awhile. They would go to Florida in the winter and come back to Quinwood in the spring.

They both liked to hunt, so they bought a piece of land upon the Mt. above Richwood and built a camp. Aunt Vernie got cataract on both of her eyes and had to have them operated on and after that she couldn't drive a car anymore. They quit going to Florida in the winter but they stayed at the camp a lot. Several of their friends built camps up there too. They kept the camp untill they was in their 70s, their health started to fail. Uncle Albert got so he couldn't drive up to the camp so they sold it. Aunt Vernies health was pretty good up untill about four yrs. ago, she raised a garden in the summer. she got diabetes, and in 1981 she had a brain stroke and hasn't been well since. She has had several strokes since then and had pnemonia recently. She is 87 yrs. old now. I saw her this fall, she isn't able to talk and is paralized all over, she has a special nurse to feed and care for her. Uncle Albert has had gland and kidney trouble for a long time and now he has cancer. He is still able to get around.

Aunt Mattie married Charley Smith, they had eight children. Velma died when she was a baby. Virginia, Edward, Clifford, Sue, Clara, Tollie, and Easton. I was to young to remember her, she died just after Easton was born. Virginia married Claud Brewer, they had two children, Billy and Betty. Later they devorced. She lives in New Jersey now, both of' her children live up there too.

Clifford married Marie Robison, they had four girls, Janet, Mary, Delores, and Patsey. They moved to Balt. Md. in the 40s. Clifford died in the 60s. Marie and the girls still live up there. Clifford had a club foot, he limped but got around good. He never had it operated on.

Edward married Glema Lester, they had one son, Jerry. They went to Balt. Md. in the 40s. Ed had to go into the Army. After he got out of service they got a devorce. Later he married Lottie Shifflet, they had two children, Chucky and Kathy. Ed worked at the asbestos plant for several years and he got asbestos dust on his lungs, it later turned to cancer. He died in 1977.

Clara married Cline Watson, they had six children, four boys and two girls. They went to Balt. Md. in the 40s and they still live there.

Tollie married Aneta Adkinson, they had four children and later seperated. They lived in Balt. Md.. Tollie died Nov. 1982 with cancer.

Easton has been married twice, he had no children. He lives in Pa. I havent saw him since back in the 50s.

Sue married John E. Pomeroy (Pete) from Quinwood. They had six children, Carrie Gail, John E.Jr.(Bud), Brenda, Jenny and Sam, their first child died at birth.

Pete worked in the Co. Store when they got married. They lived in Quinwood until 1943 they moved to Balt. Md. They moved back to Quinwood in 1947 and Pete worked in the Co. Store awhile then went to the mines. He bought a house in Quinwood. In the 60s Pete was hurt in a explosion and wasn't able to work for awhile. When he got able to work again he got a job at a plant in Petersburg, Va. He retired in 1982 and they still live down there in Va.

Aunt Mattie's father deeded her a few acers of land above the road on his place, before he died. Uncle Charley didn't get a house built on it untill after Mattie died. He had a store up near the church, he sold groceries, feed and etc. and he had a little mines across the road where he got out some coal. They lived upstairs over the store. That is where all the kids was born.

(P. 15)

They was living there when Aunt Mattie died, she died a short while after Easton was born. Mom took Easton and kept him untill he was four or five yrs. old. By that time Uncle Charley had built a house down close to us on the land Aunt Mattie had owned. Virginia was old enough to take care of him and he wanted to go live with his family and Mom had to give him up.

Uncle Charley had a hard time making a living after he closed his store. He rented or sold his house where the store was after they moved in the new house he had built down close to us. I think he still worked in his mine up there untill he ran out of coal and hauled it himself. The boys helped when they got old enough. They raised a little garden and had a cow and some chickens. The only water they had when they first moved there was a spring down below the road. They had to carry their water from down there. They caught rain water to wash their clothes and wash the dishes and etc. Later they got a well drilled.

The kids had a rough time, not having a mother to help them and show them how to do things. Mom would show them some things when they ask her but mostly they learned on their own.

Clara stayed with Aunt Rose for awhile and Easton went over there and stayed a little while but they liked it better at home with the rest of the family.

Some time in the late 30s Uncle Chancy moved to Quinwood. I think they lived in the old stone building in a appartment. Clifford and Ed got married and Sue went to work for Aunt Myrtle. She was staying there taking care of Aunt Myrtle and doing the house work when she met Pete and later they got married. Clara got married along about that time too.

In the early 40s Clifford, Ed, Clara and their familys moved to Md. and a short time later Uncle Charley took Tollie and Easton and moved up there too. The war was going on and there wasn't any jobs around Quinwood at that time so they went to Md. and got a job.

Uncle Charley died in the 50s in Md. They brought him back to W.Va and buried him beside Aunt Mattie at the Wilson Graveyard, their daughter Velma was buried there too.

Later Ed came back and tore the old house down where they had lived on the Mt. and took the lumber to Md. and used it when he built his house on Engleside Ave. I don't think they ever sold the farm. Ed and Sue kept the taxes paid up on it the last I heard.

I don 't know much about the Smiths, I know Uncle Charley had three brothers, Sidney , Ed and Austin and a sister Goldie. I believe the Smiths was raised there on the Mt. or over on Mill Creek. I don't know if Oat, Bud, Isack and John was related to Uncle Charley or not. There was a place there on the Mt. called Sid place, I just assumed that Sid and Lockie lived there when they first got married. That farm joined my Grandfather Clarks farm and I thought it might have been the old home place. Then I heard that Austin lived on Mill Creek at the old home place, I'm just guessing, and I have no way of knowing for sure.

When Virginia first got married she lived at the Sid Place for awhile, I think both of her children was born there. It was just up the road about a mile from her Dads. After she moved, Rigsbys lived there a short time. The old house must have burned down it isn't there anymore.

Moms Uncle Joe Zopp lived on Mill Creek Mt. I remember seeing him one time just before he died, he had dropsy. I think Grandma (Zopp) Dot was raised on Mill Creek. It was a small Creek that started over next to Quinwood and ran down to Hines and dumped in to Meadow River. We could go down in a hollow behind our house and go over on Mill Creek, but the road started where the Big Mt. road crossed the Creek and went down on the other side, it came out at Hines. I can't remember being down that way but once or twice.

Truss Zopp lived at Quinwood, I don't remember seeing him, his children names was Pet, Dee, Dena, Irene and Telford. Telford married Vernie Nutter, she was my first school teacher and boarded at our house before she got married. He would come over there to see her.

Stonewall Zopp and his wife Lula lived at Rainell, I believe Buren and Jack lived on Mill Creek. Aunt Zula married a Jeffers. I remember her coming to our house one time with Edith, she married Ediths Mothers brother. She had red hair, Mom said that is where Eula got her red hair.

Preston and Livingston McClung lived on Mill Creek close to the Zopps. Live McClungs children was Mammie, Alma, Lake and Lowell. Mammie married Aunt Peachies son Burk, Alma married Uncle Odeys son Charley, Lake marr­ied Nellie Fleshman. I don't think they was related to me.

There was some other McClungs that lived on the Mt. I don't know if they was related to me or not. Mom called them all Uncle, they might have been her great Uncles. I didn't think anything about it back then and didn't ask her about it. I just thought she called them Uncle because they was old but now I wonder if they could have been my Great Grandfathers brothers or cousins. They all lived around there on ajoining farms.

Miller McClung had owned the farm where Aunt Ollie lived. Some of his family was buried upon the hill above the house. Mom called him Uncle Miller, he died before my time but some of his family came to visit Mom when I was about 12 yrs. old, Mom said they was her cousins. They was living in Ind. then, I can't remember any of their names now.

Joe McClung lived on the adjoining farm, his wife's name was Kate. Their children was Jim, Dennis and Lockie. Jim and Dennis was both Doctors. They built the McClung Hospital at Richwood. Mom went to school with Lockie, they was close friends when they was growing up. Mom has told me some of the things they did when they was going to school. Lockie married Sidney Smith, they had five children, Noel, Norval, Bulah, Billie and Joe Eugene. They lived at the Joe McClung place when I was going to school. Norval was a school teacher, he was my teacher two yrs. Joe went to school with me.

Dr. Jim built a house at Rupert in the 30s for Lockie and Sid and they moved down there and rented the old house on the Mt. They later sold it, the house is still there.

Dr. Jim had a big farm at Crawley, they called it The Glenco Farm. Two of his sons are Doctors, their names is Bill and Jim. He had some girls, the only one I remember was Kathryn, she taught school one year on the Mt. His wife's name was Maude.

Wrease McClung and his wife Kate lived on the next farm. I don't think they had any children. He was a Baptist; he took Eula and I down to his church at Rupert one Easter to sing "The Eastern Gates". I was just four yrs. old and Eula was nine. I don't remember much about it just mostly what they have told me. I lead the song and Eula sang Alto. Eula said she had a hard time teaching me how to dwell on the chorus. He took us down there in his car. Rodney Shaffer drove it for him.

Uncle Wrease had a long white heard, he looked like Santa Clause. He lived upon the hill above the school house and would come down there some times.

Sam Mcclungs wife was Bell, I remember her. Their children was Walter, Brent and Luna. Sams farm joined the Miller McClung farm. It was down in a hollow about a mile and a half from where we lived. It was off of the main road, the road that went in there was down below the school house. There was two other farms down in there and the Wilson Cemetary was down in there too.

Walter married my cousin Emily. He lived down in there on his fathers farm. Their children was Maggie, Blake, Glen, Ruth, Dole, Monta Lee, Peggy and Willas. I never knew Brent, he lived down around Huntington. Luna married Willas McClung (Uncle Ecks son). They had two children, Burt and Elouise. They lived at Orient Hill.

Sometime after Uncle Sam died Aunt Bell married Dick Price. I don't know where he was from but he had some money. He had a two seated buggy with a fancy top on it, they called it a surry. No one on the Mt. had a fancy buggy like it. He bought a oregon for the church but he didn't want anyone to play it but Aunt Bell.

Mom would take me when she went down to visit her before she died. She gave me a handkerchief with wide purple lace on it she had made. It was so pretty I kept it a long time.

After Aunt Bell died Walter moved into his mothers house and rented his house to a family of Wilburns. They lived there a few yrs. then moved away and Goldens rented the house. I think the house caught fire and burned while they was living there.

I don't remember when the Beverages moved there but they lived down in there on a farm. I don't know who owned it before they moved there. Their oldest daughter was about my age. Their children was Madge, Myrtle, George, Morris and Wallace.

Jim and Opal Price lived down in there too. I think it was his old home place. Their children was, Alonzo, Velma, Hilda, Harold and James. Opals father was Bawler McClung, her home was on a Mt. above Anjean. She had a brother Okey and a sister Bessie. Neither of them ever got married.

Jims mother was Phroney Price and he had a sister Evie who married Oat Smith, they lived on a farm joining the Labon Dorsey farm and the Nathe Price farm. I think Jims father and Nathe Price was brothers, I don't know for sure. Jims house burned down and he rented Aunt Ollies house for awhile. He later bought Elmers place from Peary. Jim and Opal are both dead and their son lives there now.

Oat and Evie Smiths children was Cecil, Nellie, Emmitt and Lollie. Cecil married Iva Tharp from Cornstalk, she taught school up there on the Mt. He built a house there on his Dads farm and they lived there a few yrs. then moved to Hines.

There was a high Knolb behind Nathe Prices house, it was called Prices Knolb. They built a fire tower on top of it. I have been up there in the tower and you could see for miles all around.

Lincol and Ina had a house there on the Nathe Price place and Oakley Price had a house below the road there. Sometime in the 50s or early 60s a Coal Co. bought all that land through there and stripped it to get the coal, they tore all the houses down and it is grown up now so you can hardly tell where the houses were.

The Sam Shaffers lived down over the hill below the school house. Sam and Dorah had a big family. Their names was George, Della, Jim, Rodney, Lawrence, Wilbur, Louie, Eileen, Wilda and Imelda. After Uncle Wrease died they bought his place and moved up there. Imelda was the youngest, she was retarted. Their family was so big the boys slep out in a building out from the house. They had a big long eating table, and would fill two dishes of every thing they was having for a meal, one for each end of the table, so they wouldn't have to pass them so far. I went to school with Eileen, Wilda and Wilbur.

After Sid and Lockie moved to Rupert a family named Dulaney rented their house. I went to school with two of the boys, Wilson and Frank. After they moved a family named Mitchell lived there awhile. I believe a Mr. Cales bought it after that. I don't know who ownes it now, the house is still standing.

If 1'm not mistaken Elliott Fleshman bought Uncle Charleys property where he had the store and built a house across the road from it. His wifes name was Bessie. They had eight children, Jerry, John, Bill, Mary, Macy, Nellie, Irene and Mildred. That house is still there.

The Goldens moved over on the Mt. in the 30s. They first lived in Walter McClungs house, three of the boys went to school with me, Verlie, Vanel and Victor (Dick). The girls was older I don't remember any of them but Dorcus. They later built a house up close to the church across the road from Fleshmans. The house must have burned it isn1t there any more.

There was a school house right next to the church. All the kids on that end of the Mt. went to it. It isn't there anymore. I think the school house where I went to school burned down. Someone has a trailer sitting ­there now. The Church is still standing but they don't have church there anymore. The windows are borded up. The Cemetary is kept up good, I think Dole McClung has been taking care of it for awhile.

Before the old store house that Uncle Chancy owned burned or was tore down some families lived there. Glen Dorseys lived there awhile and a Evans family lived there awhile too. I don't remember much about either of those families. When I was real small Hubert Shawver lived in a log house on the other side of the church but the house burned and he built on over next to Quinwood and later built a house in Quinwood. They had six children, Idella, Irene, Pauline, Helen, Helena and Jennings. Mrs Nettie Shawver was Labon Dorseys sister. Her daughter Idella married Johnny Coulter and they built a house across the road from where the old log house set. That house is still there.

Uncle Curley lived in the next house on around the road. In the 30s a family of Phipps lived off the road on the other side of Uncle Curleys. They lived there a few yrs. I think they had a sawmill up in there. They had a girl Effie that came down to Uncle Charleys some, I think she liked Uncle Charley. One of the girls was Margie, Peary dated her a few times and they had a boy Hansford, Eula. liked him but Mom wouldn't let her date him, I think she went out with him a few times anyhow.

There was a Miller family that lived above the road on the other side of Mill Creek. Back then there was no bridge across Mi11 Creek, they had to drive through the Creek or if you was walking you had to walk across on a foot log. They have a bridge there now. Just a little ways up the road is where the road forks and the one on the left goes down Mill Creek. The Hamms lived in the forks of the road. Their children was Elsie, Texie, Lorene and Jim. Then on up on top of the hill there was another house I believe Jennings Shawver lived there. Earl Smith lived in the next house and on around the road was where Uncle Bud and Aunt Emmie lived. There wasn't anymore houses untill you got almost down in Quinwood. Marslanders lived in a little house above the road. Uncle Calvin and Aunt Peachie lived at the end of the Mountain.

Sometime after Mom's father died, her mother sold the farm where Mom was raised. I don't know who bought it at first but when I was small Guye Kneathawks was living there. I can remember when the house caught fire and burned down. I don't think anyone was home and it burned every thing they had. I remember going over there and picking lilacs in the spring after the house burned. It is all grown up with timber now I can hardly tell where the place was.

Moms Uncle Eck, the one that built the house where I was raised. He lived there when his children was growing up. He was married twice. His children by his first wife was, Willas, Calvin and Duckie. and Other and Xerzy by his second wife.

Willas married Luna Mcclung, Calvin married Peachie McClung and Duckie married Gilbert Shaffer. Other lived up on Big Laurel and Xerzy lived in Quinwood and had a Restaurant, they had the best hot dogs, with chili that I ever eat.

I think Uncle Eck went to live with his son Other when he sold his farm on the Big Mt., he was getting up in yrs. I have saw him a few times. He was a big tall man, he was in his 80s when he died. I have never heard Mom talk about her other Uncles and Aunts, they must have been dead before I was born.

There was a John McClung that lived at Rupert but I never thought he was related to us. He had a Daughter Alma that taught school up on the Mt. one year and boarded with us. He had another girl Nellie McClung I don't know what her fathers name was, they lived across the road from John, she taught one year and stayed with us.

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Aunt Biddie was the only one that wasn't married when Grandma sold the farm. She was working down next to Hinton at McKinley Hospital. Grandma went down there to live with her and also worked at the Hospital. I don't know how long it was after that, she fell and broke her hip. They didn't use casts or pins back then and Mom said she had to lay in bed with sand bags on both sides of her leg untill it healed. After that she couldn't get around very good.

She was staying with Aunt Bessie just before she died, she had dropsey. Mom said it was in Feb. 1922, I was just a few weeks old. She sent word to Mom that she wanted to see her. She was real sick and Mom felt that she just had to go see her. Mom said the snow was deep and it was still snowing real hard. Daddy hitched the horses to the sled and they took me and went to Aunt Bessies. They had a quilt over us and the snow would get so heavy on the quilt that Daddy would have to stop ever little bit and shake the snow off. They was afraid it would make Mom and me both sick, she had me on the breast and couldn't leave me at home, but we didn't get sick.

I don't know how long they stayed but when they started to go home Grandma wanted to go home with them to stay. As soon as the weather got better Uncle Dish hired a surry buggy and took her over to my home. She stayed with us until she died June 28, 1922.

Moms father was born and raised in a log house above the road from the house where I was born. My Great Grandad deeded the land where the house set above the road and the land below the road 100 acres to my Grandads brother Aleck (Eck) and he built a house on it. I guess Grandad got the other half of the farm because his farm joined that 100 acres.

I don't know how long he lived there before he sold it to Daddys brother Odey. Later on Daddy traded his farm on Peases Knolb to Uncle Odey for the farm on the Big Mt. The house we lived in was a big two story house. It had two porches on the front. I believe they said when they moved there that it had a log kitchen. Daddy tore it down and built another one. It had two big rooms with a chimney in the middle and a fire place in each room. One of the rooms we used for a living room and the other room we used for company or when the girls had dates they used that room it was called the parlor. There was a big bed room on each end of the house. Daddy put a partition in the one next to the living room and made two bedrooms out of it. Dad and Mom had their bed in the living room so they could keep the fire up in the winter time. There was four big rooms up stairs.

The dinning room and kitchen was built on the back, it was T shaped. You could go into the dinning room from the living room or from the parlor. There was a little hall on the parlor side where the stairway went upstairs and into the dinning room, the kitchen was on the back. The dinning room and kitchen was just one story with a loft up over them.

There was a hall where you went in the front door. There was a archway that went into the living room side and a door that went into the parlor. There was a closet on the other side of the chimney. There was a big pantry off the kitchen and a big back porch on the same side.

Daddy had a sawmill down in the hollow behind the barn when he moved over on the Mt. He sawed his own lumber and built a big barn and other buildings on the farm.

He was a farmer, but some people might say he was a jack of all trades. He had a blacksmith shop, with the bellows, anvil and vice. He used it to fix things. He fixed his own horse shoes and shod his own horses. He had tools to do that with. Other people brought their horses there to be shod.

He later had a grist mill. He fixed it up in one part of the shop. He used a old gasoline engion to run the grist mill. He would grind corn for cornmeal and feed for the cows, He ground buckwheat and bolted it and made buckwheat flour. People would bring their grain there on Sat­urdays to have it ground. He didn't get payed with money, he just took a percentage of the grain he ground for grinding it. Before he got the grist mill he had to take his grain to a mill over in Nicholas County to get it ground.

He had a shoe staff, he put half soles on our shoes and also heels when they needed them. We did a lot of walking in those days and they wore out pretty fast. We went barefoot a lot in the summer. I remember when we walked to Rupert to the store, we would wear a old pair of shoes untill we got almost there, then we would sit down and put our good pair on and carry our old ones and do the same coming back home, stop and put our old ones on.

We had a big garden and Daddy raised corn, buckwheat, oats, potatoes. He would put up stacks of hay and fill the barn with hay, straw and corn fodder after the corn was shucked. Hubert Shawver had a thrashing machine and he would bring it across the Mt. in the fall and all the farmers would pitch in and get their oats and buckwheat thrashed. Which ever farm they was at, the workers was fed their dinner or supper. He went all over the country thrashing grain for people. I think in some places people raised wheat but the seasons was to short on the Mt. and the winters was to cold for winter wheat.

Daddy had to buy our flour, he bought it by the barrel or twenty five lb. bags he got it cheaper that way. The flour wasn't bleached back then.

One year several people raised sugar cane there on the Mt. They borrowed a cane mill and a pan to boil it down in and everone brought their cane to our place and helped make the molasses. They made gallons of it. It took all day and was late that night when they took the last of it off.

Moms Dad was born and raised in a log house above the road on the farm where we lived. I don't remember the house it burned or they tore it down before I was born. It was up close to the spring that we got our water from. There was a spring down below the road but it was lower then the house and couldn't be piped into the house. We used it for a spring house where we kept our milk in the summer.

The spring that we got our water from had a solid slate bottom and never went dry. Daddy layed pipe under the ground and piped it into our kitchen, he ran a pipe on down below the house to a watering trough so the horses and cows could have water. We let it run most of the time and the water stayed cold.

Daddy built a little house below the spring down close to the house. He made troughs to set the crocks of milk and butter in and the water run through them and kept the milk cold. There was a patch of red rasberries up close to where the old house had been, I think Moms grand parents had set them out when they was living. We would go up there when they got ripe and pick them. They made good jam and jelly. There was a crab apple tree up near the spring, Mom picked them to make crab apple jelly. She would dig horse radish roots up there and grate it and mix meal and vinegar in it so it wouldn't be so hot and we eat it on meat sometimes.

Daddy set out a patch of tame blackberries, they was bigger then the wild ones but not as sweet. We always went out in the woods and picked a lot of wild ones ever year. Mom made jam and jelly and canned a lot of them and canned juice to make jelly later on. She always made a kittle of apple butter ever year. We had two wolf river apple trees in the front yard, they was a large apple and made good apple butter.

We had a lot of wild strawberries that we picked, Mom made jam, jelly and preserves, and canned lots of them. We had plenty to eat raw with sugar and cream. We had red and black cherry trees, green plum, peach and pear trees, they was all canned. All the vegetables in the garden was canned, nothing ever went to waste. She made pickles, relishes, sanduage spread and a big jar of sour krout, when the krout was ready they put it in sealing jars and sealed it up. Our cellar was always full of everthing.

Someone had a cider press and Daddy would take apples there and have cider made out of them and they let it sour for vinigar. They raised enough onions to dry and have onions all winter and plenty to set out in the spring. They dried beans to have them in the winter and saved enough seed to plant in the spring.

Around Thanksgiving Daddy would butcher his hogs. He sugar cured the hams and sholders and salted the side meat or bacon. They cold packed the tenderloin and ribs, they ground the sasuage meat seasoned it and made it into cakes then fried it and put it in jars, poured the grease over it and sealed it. They turned the jars upside down so the grease would go to the top untill it got cold, it kept better that way. You would have to put the jars in hot water upside down to melt the grease before you opened the jar when you wanted to use it.

They ground the fat and rendered it in the oven for lard, we used it for shortning and seasoning. We cooked the backbones some of the ribs, liver and heart shortly after he killed the hogs. They would usually give some to the neighbors. There was some tenderloin left on the backbones and that is what made then so good. Mom boiled the head and neck and made scrapple and souse. I don't know just how she made it, she would cook it untill it was real tender and pick the meat off. some she used for the scrapple and I believe she used the brain and tongue for souse. She would grind the meat and mix meal and seasoning in it and cook it for awhile then put it in a big crock. When it got cold you could slice it roll it in flour and fry it in butter it was good that way. They also cleaned the feet and cooked them. All they didn't save was the intrels, ears and squeal.! We all had to help to get the meat worked up. It was a big job and a greasey one.

We had several chickens and always had plenty of eggs to eat and cook with and sold some at the store. Anytime we wanted chicken to eat we went out and caught one and killed it and dressed it up and cooked it. The way that we killed a chicken was hold it by the feet, lay its head on the chopping block, streach its neck out, take a ax and cut its head off and throw it, it would get blood all over you if you didn1t get it away from you. It would flop around untill it died. Some people would put them under a tub and others would ring their heads off, we didn't do it that way. After they was dead we would pour scalding hot water over them then pull the feathers off and then singe the hair off, then wash and cut them up and it was ready to cook. We usually killed the old ones and they had to be boiled awhile and then fried. If we had a lot of young roosters we killed them when they got big enough. Sometimes Mom canned some of them so we could just open a jar if we was in a hurry. She cold packed them. We saved some of the feathers to make pillows and cushions.

We had milk cows, one of my jobs was to go out in the field in the summer and bring the cows to the barn in the evenings and help milk them. We usually had two or three to milk. Some of them would kick the bucket over, we had to put kickers on them, Dad made the kickers. In the winter they was kept in the barn at night. We had to clean the stalls out and throw fresh straw down before we milked them. When we got through milking we turned them out so they could go and get water.

In the summer we kept the milk in the spring house but in the winter we kept it in the dinning room in a big cubbard, it was cold in there. Sometimes we had to take it in the living room at night to keep it from freezing when the fire went out in the kitchen. We had a wood cookstove in the kitchen and a open fireplace in the living room. That is all the heat we had. We would open the bedroom door to let some heat go in there before we went to bed at night. Our bedrooms was very cold we used lots of covers. We slept on a straw tick with a feather tick on top of it. Every fall we emptied the straw tick and filled it with fresh straw after the oats had been thrashed.

We had two horses one male George and a mare Nell, we had a mule Jack for awhile, Daddy used him to pull the coal car out of the mines. Some­times he used him to pull the plow when he was plowing the corn.

Daddy had a acre or two of coal rights his father had give him on Mill Creek. When I was small Daddy opened up a coal mine to get out some house coal. He found out a Coal Co. had come in behind and took most of the coal out. Daddy just got enough for our own use for awhile. I believe he sued them but didn't get much out of it, not near as much as the coal was worth. They had just left the coal where it was close to the surface.

There is a story Peary liked to tell when he came around me. I was riding Jack the mule one day when they was plowing the corn, Peary was behind the plow. He would let the traces hit Jacks legs when he was turning at the end of the row. Jack would start kicking and take off running between the rows of corn. It would scare me so bad I would just hold on to the hames and scream as loud as I could. After he would have his fun he would let the plow go deep in the ground and stop him. He was getting a big kick out of it. He would laugh so hard he could hardly stand up. Mom heard me screaming and come up to see what was going on. I was about seven yrs. old. Mom took me to the house and Eula had to ride Jack untill they got done. Daddy wasn't home at the time if he had been there Peary wouldn't have done that. He was always teasing me.

Our chicken house had a room and a shed built on to it. I think the shed was where Daddy kept the buggy and the room was just for storing things. There was no chicken pen, when the chickens was let out they wondered all over the place. Sometimes in the spring one of the hens would steal a nest, she made a nest out some place, lay her eggs and set on them untill they hatched. We would know she was setting someplace because she was clucking when she came in to eat. We would follow her back to the nest and find out where she was setting. After the chicks hatched out she would bring them in to the chicken house. Mom always set some hens in the spring. When a hen started clucking that meant she was ready to set. Mom would pick out some good shaped and smooth eggs, a dozen I think and put them under the hen. She pinned her up so the others couldn't bother her, she would just let her out long enough to eat and get some water then she would go back to her nest. I have forgot how long it takes for the eggs to hatch. If the eggs wasn't furtilized by the rooster they wouldn't hatch, or if they got chilled. They would get rotton and boy ! they would stink.

We always kept some roosters, some of them would get mean and try to spurr anyone that came near them, they was killed and put in the pot. We had chicken and dumplings then. We had diffirent kinds of chickens, Rhode Island Reds, Dominex and White Leghorns. Some was better layers and some was better to eat. For grit for the chickens in the winter when they couldn't get out, if we broke any kind of a china dish, plate, cup and etc. we would pound it up fine and give it to the chickens. Daddy bought grit for them I think it was oyster shells ground up. Chickens have to have grit to digest their food and make egg shells. Some of our chickens have layed eggs without a shell just a strifning, we called it soft shells, it was because they didn1t get enough grit Mom said. I have cleaned many gizzards in my time they always had a lot of grit in them.

We always had some cats around to catch the rats and mice, and a watch dog. We had a dog called Shep and one called Touser. We saved all the scraps from the table and milk that wasn't used and dish water, all that went into the slop bucket for the hogs. The bones and corn bread that was left over was give to the dog.

Daddy would take the cows when they was ready to a bull someplace. He never kept a bull. He always kept a bore hog for breeding purposes. If a cow had a bull calf he would trim him and fatten it up and sell him, and sometimes he sold the heffers. He had a place down at the barn he would fasten the cows up and saw their horns off.

He had his own plows, drill to plant oats, buckwheat and grass seed. He had a mowing machine, hayrake, a cradle to cut the oats and buckwheat and wooden rakes to rake them into bunches, howes, post hole digger, pitch forks, sledge hammer, axes, crosscut saw, handsaw, shovels, about anything he needed on the farm.

We would pick up chestnuts in the fall and take them to the store and trade them for some cloth to make us a dress or other things that we needed. I have a milk pitcher that we got with chestnuts, that was back before the chestnut trees blighted.

We had white walnut and hickory nut trees, we would pick up the nuts in the fall and crack then on the hearth in front of the fire in the winter sometimes we used Daddys shoe staff to crack them on. We put some of them in candy and cookies and eat the rest. We had a big apple orchard with diffirent kinds of apples, we put the winter apples in a apple house out in the garden and would cover them with leaves. We would have apples to eat and cook all winter. Daddy buried his potatoes in a hole out in the garden, he put enough in the cellar to do us through the winter. He buried the handovers and cabbage so we could go out there in the winter and get some out to cook. He just left the parsnips and carrots in the ground and put more dirt over them.

Mom saved most of her own seed such as, onions, beans, tomato, cucumber, punkin, peppers, sweetcorn and etc. She had to buy some of her seeds but they wasn't but five cents a package back then. She raised her own tomato, pepper and cabbage plants. Daddy had his own potato, corn, oats and buckwheat seed, he had to buy grass seed and ferterlizer. He scattered the horse and cow manure on the ground he was going to plant and plowed it under. They used chicken manure and ashes on the garden. We had a long row of rubarb in the garden and a big bed of winter onions that came up early in the spring about the time ramps come up. We would eat out of them until the other onions was big enough to eat. They seeded themselves and didn't have to be set out every year.

Daddy owned one car, a Model T Ford. They said he tried to drive it one time and ran into a telephone pole and he wouldn't try to drive it anymore. They teased him and said he was so used to driving horses that it wouldn't Gee and Haw for him like the horses did. Peary or Elmer had to drive it for him.

Everone on the Mt. had a telephone that was on the wall and used dry cell batterys. It was a party line. When the phone would ring everone could listen in by just lifting the receiver. At first we could call the operator at Meadow Bluff, which was one long ring and she could connect us with partys off of the Mt. but when C&P took over we could just call there on the Mountain. Each family had a diffirent ring, ouers was three shorts and a long. You did this by turning a crank on the side of the phone. When a electric storm would come up we always unhooked the line that came into the house. Sometimes the lightning would run in on the line and it looked like a ball of fire. We always unhooked it if we was going to be away from home for awhile.

Dad and Mom was both Methodist, they belonged to the Mount Zion Church there on the Mt. I was converted and joined the church when I was fourteen yrs. old. We seldom ever missed any of the services, Sundays and prayer meeting one night a week. When I was real small we went to church in the buggy or sled if there was snow on the ground. After we got a car we went in it, sometimes we walked. It was three miles to the church.

Back when Mom was growing up a lot of the women dipped snuff, my Mom never did but I think most of Dads sisters did and several of the women there on the Mt. did. The men chewed tobacco or dipped snuff and some smoked a pipe and some of the women smoked a pipe too.

My brothers started smoking cigaretts, they would roll their own with Prince Albert tobacco, Elmer chewed tobacco too. When I was about 12 yrs. old Sue and Clara started smoking some and they got me started too. They would slip some tobacco from their Dad or brothers and bring it to school. We would tell the teacher we was going home for our lunch but instead we would hide our lunch around the road from the school house, we would go down in the woods and eat our lunch and roll us a cigarette and smoke it. Sometimes I would sneak a little tobacco from Pearys can of tobacco and take it to school. Joe Smith went home for his lunch and he found out what we was doing and started calling me P.A. meaning Prince Albert, I was afraid Mom would find out about it. They forbid us girls to smoke cigaretts. Eula and I was the only ones that got the habit.

After I started working for people I had my own money and I would buy a pack of cigaretts and take them home with me. They just cost 10 cents a pack back then. I didn't smoke much then. Elmer was looking for some thing in my clothes closet one day and heard matches rattling in my pocket and found my cigaretts, he cane out and ask me for a cigarette in front of Mom and Dad, I don't remember what I said but all they said was they had better not catch me smoking. I don't know what they would have done but I didn't want to find out. I never smoked around them. After Daddy died and I had been married about a year I finally let Mom know that I smoked. She said she had known that I smoked for a long time. I was old enough then to do as I pleased and she wouldn't try to stop me. I know now I would have been better off if I had never started smoking, back then we didn't know it might cause cancer or other diseases. Once you get the habit it is hard to kick the habit. I am still smoking but I hope some day I can quit, it is expensive and dirty, I know all that but I am still smoking.

It used to make me so happy to go home with someone from school and stay all night. Mom wouldn't let me go only some places. I remember going to Shaffers after they moved up close to the school house. I stayed with Mariam and Sue and Clara sometimes. They would come and stay with me sometimes too.

There was some yellow clay on a bank close to the school house we would get some of it to make marbles. We would make them and then bake them in the oven and they would last a long time. We never had glass marbles unless we traded with someone that had them. We played marbles a lot at school.

We didn't have any water there at the school. The teacher would send some of the boys around the road to Sid Smiths to get a bucket of water to drink and wash our hands. We took our own glass or cup to drink out of. We had a wash pan to wash our hands in. We had outside toilets below the road.

I liked to go to school. It started in Sept. and was out in April. Sometimes I had to stay home in the fall to pick up potatoes for Daddy. In the spring school was out before planting time. Most of the time I had a perfect attendence record. Nearly ever year the itch went around in school. I don't remember ever having it but once. The only thing we had to kill it was sulphur and lard. We had to rub it all over us where it was broke out and leave it on over night, then take a good bath and wash that all off and wash all the clothes we had been wearing and the bed clothes. It was hard to get rid of and some of the kids had it all winter.

I don't remember when I had the childhood diseases except the chicken-pox. I was really sick and they broke out all over me.

I started to school when I was four yrs. old. I was double promoted twice. I went to school eight yrs. but I stayed in the eighth grade three yrs. The first year I didn't take the examination that was required to get an eighth grade diploma. I would have had to go to Charmco to take it that year. Eula wanted to go to Layland with Laurence to get Lorene that day and Mom wouldn't let her go unless I went with her, so I missed taking it that year. The next year I went back to school, Norval Smith was my teacher and I had to go to Anjean to take it that year. Norval took me up there and I past the tests and got my deploma. The next year I couldn't go to high school because Daddy didn't have the money to send me so I went back to school because I didn't have anything else to do. Alaska McCutcheon was the teacher and I was the only one in the eighth grade that yr. I swept the school house in the evenings and got fifty cents a week.

I remember one year we made vegetable soup at school. The kids brought the vegetables from home and some of the older girls fixed them. Sid Smith brought a big pot of beef and broth around there and helped us cook the soup in a big iron pot over a fire on the outside. It sure was good and every bit was eat.

Mom kept boarders sometimes. Some of the women teachers stayed with us and in the 30s there was some coal miners stayed there with us for awhile. They just stayed during the week and wasn't there on week ends. We would have to get up early and fix their breakfast and pack their dinner buckets. Then in the evenings we had to heat water for their baths and fix their supper.

Mom had asthma and the dust from the flour would smother her if it had not been sifted and had time to settle so me or Lula had to make the biscuts. In our pantry there was two big wooden barrels, one for the flour and one for the meal. There was a big biscut board that covered them. We had a big oblong wooden bowl that we made the biscuts in. We would sift the flour into the bowl then make a hole in the middle, put the soda, baking powder, salt and lard in there and mix that up with our hands, then pour the buttermilk in and mix it up with a spoon until it was stiff enough to put out on the board. We would put some flour on the board and put the dough out on it and kneed the flour into it then roll it out with a rolling pen and cut out the biscuts and put them in a greased pan. Then we would scrape the flour off the board with the biscut cutter that was made out of a baking powder can, back into the flour barrel and turn the board over and cover it with a cloth. That is why the flour had to be sifted ever time, it had little pieces of dough in it and it made the biscuts lighter if it was sifted. We had a big round sifter, I think Dad made it.

Mom and Dad always got along good, I never did hear them argue or get mad at each other but one time. I was about sixteen or seventeen, Mom had set out a patch of tame strawberries just back of the garden in a field. Daddy had a patch of potatoes out there too. Someone had bought some timber from Mr. Darby, he had bought the farm next to us. Whoever it was that had bought the timber ask Daddy to let them bring the logs through our field and out through our front gate. They promised to close the fence each time they went through because Mr. Darby had some hogs running loose on the land next to ours. Mom didn't want Dad to let them go through there for she knew they would tear up the meadow through there. They would have had to haul them a lot farther if they went another way. Daddy was easy going and gave them permission to go through providing they closed the fence ever time they went through. One day Mom and Dad was gone and they left the fence open and the hogs got in and rooted all the strawberries and potatoes out. That made Mom so mad she wouldn't speak to Dad for a week.

Dad stopped them from coming through and they had to make another way to get the logs out. I don't remember if they paid Dad for the damages or not. They didn't argue about it, they just didn't talk to each other for awhile. Daddy stayed out a lot just came in to eat and sleep. Morn finally got over her mad spell and everthing was alright again.

Mom always had a lot of house flowers. In the fall Daddy would say you had better get your idols in I believe it is going to frost, just kidding her because he knew how much she liked her flowers. He usually helped her take them in so they wouldn't get froze. They wasn't very pretty during the winter but she managed to save them untill spring and she would reset them and they would bloom during the summer. I remember a big Christmas cactus she had and it bloomed almost every year at Christmas. She got the dirt to reset them from under rock cliffs that was over the hill from the spring down in the woods. We would take buckets and a shovel and go over there and get the dirt for her flowers, it was black and rich.

There was a place over there between two big rock cliffs that you could drop a rock down in there and you could hardly hear it hit the bottom it was so deep. If a dog died they took it over there and dropped it down in that hole they called it the dog hole.

In later yrs. if Mom wasn't feeling very good and was conplaining about not feeling good, Daddy would say "well I guess we will just have to take her over to the dog hole", just kidding her. Along about that time the ramps would be coming and Daddy would go to the ramp patch and dig a bushel or two of ramps and after she eat a mess or two of ramps she would start feeling better. She loved ramps, she could eat them cold for breakfast. They always said ramps was good for you, it was like a spring tonic.

There was a drummer that would come across the Mt. selling all kinds of things, clothing, medicines, flavoring, soap and etc. He had a horse and buggy. He always stayed at our house when he came across the Mt. Daddy would put his horse in the barn and feed it. He slept and eat his supper and breakfast with us. We would pick some things out that we needed and could use for his board. Some of the things we got we paid him. That was the way he made his living.

In the winter after we had gone to church on Sunday and came home and eat dinner, if we didn't have company, Daddy would get his Bible and set down in the living room and read it until it was time to go to the barn to feed the stock and milk the cows. In the summer he would sit out on the front porch in a rocking chair and chew his tobacco and spit off the porch. Later he would take a walk out in the fields to see how ever thing was doing and make plans for the next day. He didn't believe in working in the fields on Sundays, He always said if he worked on Sunday he never gained anything in the end. I think one time he had some hay down and it had rained on it. On Sat. it had dried enough to turn, on Sunday evening it was dry enough to put up and it looked like it was going to rain, that time he raked it and got it shocked before it rained. That is the only time I ever knew of him working on Sunday and I'm sure he didn't feel right doing it but he didn't want to loose the hay and if it had got wet again it wouldn't have been any good.

He just had one suit of clothes and a couple of white shirts and a tie. He always wore a hat. He just wore his suit to church on Sunday, funerals or if he had to serve on the jury at Lewisburg or things like that. He wore bib overalls all the time and a blue chamery shirt. He wore long handle tinder ware in the winter, he had a lighter pair to wear in the spring, they had long sleeves and legs, when it got real hot he wore a lighter pair they was called B.V.Ds they had short sleeves and legs.

His overalls usually had patches on the knees and the sleeves on his shirts and overall jackets had patches too. When he wore a hole in them Mom would get a patch from a old wore out pair and patch them by hand. She was very good at patching and darning socks. We all wore patches on our work clothes.

Daddy chewed tobacco all his life I guess, he bought plugs of Renolds tobacco. He always carried a pocket knife in his pocket, when he wanted a chew he would cut a piece off of the plug and put it back in his pocket. He never wore glasses only to read in later yrs. he got them in a store. He got pireia of the gums and had to have all of his teeth pulled. A Dentist by the name of Dr. Huffman came to the house and pulled them. He went without any for about two yrs. The Dentist came back and stayed over night and made his teeth. He never was able to wear his lower plate very well, he carried them in his pocket most of the time.

He had dark blue eyes, I think all the kids had eyes like him but me I have hazel eyes like Mom. He got two of his fingers cut off when he had the sawmill, somehow he got them caught in the saw blade. His middle finger was off at the first knuckle and his little finger was off at the second knuckle. I believe it was his left hand, I don't remember when it happened. He had a mustash up untill I was about ten yrs. old. He was shaving one night and decided to shave it off. He put on a old hat and overcoat and came around to the front door and knocked on the door. I went to the door, he ask me where my Dad was and I said , he is in the kitchen shaving. He started laughing because I didn't know him. He later let it grow out again but he shaved it off again before he died. He had a real heavy overcoat that he wore over his suit or other clothes when it was real cold. He never wore a belt, he wore suspenders when he wore dress pants.

He knew a verse of scripture in the Bible that would cure the thrash that babys get sometimes. Lots of people brought their babys there to him after the Dr. couldn't do nothing for them. It was called a charm. He would take the baby into a room and blow in its mouth and say the verse in the Bible to himself and in a few days the baby would be well, sometimes they had to bring it back the second time but most of the time once was enough. Whatever the charm was, they said he could tell a woman but he couldn't tell a man. I don't know why some of us girls didn't get him to tell us how to do it.

Mom saved old strong fat meat scraps and strong lard until she got enough collected to make a kettle of soap. She used an iron kettle and made it outside. I don't remember just how she made it. I know she used lye and borax and the old grease and water. It would take all day to make it. When it was done she poured it into wooden trays and when it got cold she cut it into bars. That is what we used to wash dishes, clothes and all our cleaning. We was lucky if we got a bar of ivory soap to wash our face and hands and hair and to take a bath. We didn't have shampoo back then, we used a little bit of vinigar in our rinse water when we washed our hair that helped to take the soap out and made our hair real soft. We didn't have tooth paste either, we used baking soda to brush our teeth and sometimes a tooth brush made but of a birch stick. We would take a birch stick about three inches long and break it down on one end untill it was like a brush on the end and put some soda on it and scrub our teeth up and down. When I was about seven or eight yrs. old they started giving kids in school a tooth brush and a little tube of tooth paste, that is the first tooth brush I ever had.

We didn't have indoor plumbing so we had to take a bath in a wash tub or use a wash pan of water and wash cloth and take a spunge bath they call it now. That is wash all over with a washcloth and soap and water. They used to say we washed down as far as possible, then up as far as possible then washed possible. We had a outside toilet, it was about fifty yards below the house. It had four holes, three big ones and one small one for the kids, it was lower then the other ones. We didn't have toilet paper, we used catalogue or magazine or old news paper, we had a chamber (or slop jar as we called it) in the bedrooms that we used at night or when it was real cold.

I have to tell this, when Margaret was about a year old she followed Joe Ann down to the toilet. She must have been looking down in one of the holes and fell in on her head. Joe Ann came running and screaming to the house to tell us that Margaret had fell down in the hole. I ran as fast as I could and got her out. You can imagine what a mess that was to clean that off of her. It was in her hair, ears and all over her. Mom had a weak stomach and started gagging and I had to clean her up. You could say I saved her life. I had to take a bath too. That is a experience I will never forget and I doubt if she has forgot it either.

There was a small building down below the meat house that was called the dry house. I don't remember when it was used to dry apples, peaches, beans and etc. I think it was used for that. It had a small laundry stove in it. Eula and I cleaned it up and used it for a playhouse in the summer when our cousins or friends come to visit we would play house and pretend to be cooking. I don't remember ever having a doll baby bought in a store, if I had one it was a rag doll Mom had made.

The cellar we had was above the ground, I don't know who built it. It had double walls about ten inches apart and sawdust between them for insulation. It had a loft and a foot or more of sawdust up there. It had a dirt floor, it had two doors the outside door went into a room that wasn't insulated, that is where Mom kept her empty jars. The door that went into the main cellar was double and sawdust in it too. If the temp­ature got down below zero Dad would light the lantern and hang it in there to make sure things didn't freeze, he hung a heavy canvas over the door. It was cool in there in the summer if the door was kept closed. It had bins for potatoes, apples and etc. and shelves all around for all the canned things. Eula and I would sneak up in the loft and play in the sawdust sometimes but we never let Mom or Dad catch us, We wasn't supposed to go up in there.

We had a corn crib and a grainery built together. The corncrib was open where the ears of' corn was put, the side where the grain bins was, it was closed in. There was a shed in front. Daddy kept the car in there until they got a garage built. The building was about three feet off the ground so the grain wouldn't get damp. Eula and I would go down there and sit in the car and pretend to be driving.

We had a big woodshead with a coal bin in one corner, it was just out from the kitchen a few feet, so we didn't have far to go to get wood and coal. Daddy would go out in the woods and saw down a tree, saw it into logs, haul it in with the horses and saw it into blocks with a crosscut saw then split it into stovewood. I helped him sometimes. I have chopped a lot of wood in my time.

He had a workbench and saw horses out there in the woodshead. He kept all his carpenter tools out there too. He would go out there and piddle around fixing things sometimes if it was raining, or when he didn't have nothing else to do. Sometirnes we could hear him out there talking to himself when things was going wrong or he was trying to figure something out, I catch myself doing the same thing and it reminds me of Dad.

We had a big barn that Dad had built after they moved over there. It had wooden shingles instead of tar roofing. On one side was stalls for the horses and on the other side was stalls for the cows. There was a space in between where the feed was kept and the pitch forks and etc. A ladder went up into the loft where the hay, straw and corn fodder was kept. I remember when we used to go down there at night and shuck corn. We used a shucking pen on our hand to pull the shucks open, we always had a lot of corn to shuck, we used a lantern for light.

Until I was eight or nine yrs. old on Christmas we just hung one of our stockings on a nail on the mantle over the fire place. Of course I thought Santa Clause came down the chimney. Usually all we got was a orange and some hard candy, I was real happy to get that, we seldom ever got any candy from the store. Mom would let us make some candy once in a while if we had enough sugar.

I can't remember us ever putting up a Christmas tree but once or twice. Peary and Margaret put one up in the parlor when they lived upstairs one time. I got a tooth brush, crayons and some candy that year. Eula and I put up a little tree we found down below the barn one year. We made the decorations, like we learned to make in school and strung some popcorn. There wasn't many pine trees grew up there on the Mt. and we couldn't afford to buy one I guess that was the reason we never had a Christmas tree. I remember one yr. that Elmer and Cathleen had a christmas tree, she made cookies and strung popcorn and decorated the tree with them.

I just don't remember very much about my childhood, I guess no one remembers much, just a few things come to mind when I try to remember things that happened back when I was growing up.

There was no electricity across the Mt. untill the early 40s we used kerosene lamps and lanterns, no flash lights. If we went out at night we lit the lantern, sometimes we used carbide lights. Dad managed to get a delco when I was small and wired the house for lights. It used several batterys, as long as the batterys was charged up we could use the lights, but when they got low the delco had to be started to charge the batterys up. A lot of times we didn't have gas to run it and sometimes they couldn't get it started.

Daddy got Mom a Hagg washing machine in the late 30s the delco had to run all the time the washing machine was being used. Before that we washed the clothes on a washboard. We had a wringer that stood up on legs and had legs that folded down on both sides so we could set a tub on both sides of the ringer. We would scrub the clothes in one tub and put them through the ringer by turning a crank, into the rinse tub, then ring them out of the rinse water. The dirtiest or the ones that was stained of the white clothes was boiled on the stove in a tub with soap and lye in the water, ring them out of that water and rinse them again, we had no bleach back then, we used bluing in the rinse water. We starched a lot of the clothes and linens, we made starch out of flour and water and boiled it. All the clothes was made out of cotton and wool and had to be ironed with irons that was heated on the stove, even after we got electric we used stove irons because we couldn't afford to buy a electric iron. Mom finally got a iron after I went to Md., I think someone gave her a old iron, I still have it and I think it still works.

I don't remember ever having light bread bought at the store at home. I went to Md. in 1943, we baked biscuts or cornbread every day, sometimes baked lightbread or rolls. In earlier years we had buckwheat cakes a lot for breakfast cooked on a iron griddle on the stove with home ground buckwheat flour. The way Mom made them they was so good. She saved the left over dough and would add buttermilk, soda, baking powder, salt, part plain flour and buckwheat flour. I have tried to make them like she did but they don't taste like they did back then with country butter, ham gravy and cane or maple syrup. If we had buckwheat cakes for breakfast, Eula and I had to take them to school for our lunch. We put apple butter and butter on them they was pretty good that way.

The school where I went was a one room school, all eight grades in one room. There was about twenty kids going to school when I did. The school house was about a mile from where I lived. There was another school house up by the church, the kids on that end of the Mt. went to that school. The last few yrs. I went to school there was the Shaffers, the Beverages, Jim Prices, Walter McClungs, Henry Prices, Charley Smiths, Goldens, Dulaneys, Wilburns and Joe Smith that went to school with me.

In the winter there was a hill above the school house where we would sleigh ride, I just had a wooden sled that Dad had made. One time there was a crust on the snow and I had not took my sled to school, I would go up to the top of the hill and slide down on my coat, and before I knew it I had wore the back out of my coat. 1 was sure I would get a whipping for it but Mom just scolded me and told me never to do that again. She had to make me another coat.

Mom was fourty two yrs. old when I was born. I think that was the only time she had a Dr. with her to deliver the baby. The rest of the kids she just had a midwife. Most of the women back then just had a midwife and the baby was born at home. They knew what to have ready and what to do. Not me I only had one child and she was born in the hospital, they put me to sleep and I still don't know what it is like having a baby, just saw pictures on television.

We had oatmeal nearly ever morning for breakfast. If Daddy had cut on a ham or sholder we had that with biscuits, sometimes we had sasuage or fatback rolled in flour and fried real crisp, most of it had a lean streak through it and was good fixed like that. We didn't have a smoke house and didn't have smoked bacon like we do now. Mom always put a piece of fat meat in green or dry beans or handovers to season them when she cooked them, it made them taste so much better then other seasoning. If she had a ham bone she put that in them.

Sometime on Sunday evenings in the winter Mom would make corn fritters for supper. She made them like cornbread only she made the dough thicker, thick enough so she could take some in her hand and make fritters. She put the cracklings from the fat of the hog after the lard was rendered, thet made them taste better and real light. She put them in the griddle and baked them. When they was done we crumbled them in milk like cornbread and milk. Sometimes she made cornmeal mush, we ate it like cereal with cream and sugar when it was hot. If there was any left over she would slice it and roll it in flour and fry it in butter the next day.

We always had plenty of milk, cream, butter and buttermilk. We skimmed the cream off the milk with a gravy laddle and put it in the cream pitcher. Sometimes we made cottage cheese out of the skimmed milk after it had clabbered. We would set it on the back of the stove where it was just warm. The cottage cheese would come to the top and the water would stay on the bottom. We would drain it in a colonder until the water was all out. If it got too hot the cottage cheese would be tough.

I have done a little bit of everything there is to do on the farm or helped, Daddy had me raking hay one time on a hillside with the big rake and horses. I was about fourteen then. I can't believe it now that I ever did it. I remember when I got off the rake I had wore the seat out of my dress trying to stay on the seat of the rake. I have shocked hay and rode the horse hauling the hay at hocks to where they was stacking the hay and sonetimes I helped to stomp the hay down on the haystack, raked oats and buckwheat into sheaves, helped tie them and then shock them, we always broke the top down on one of the sheaves to put on top of the shock to keep the water out of the shock when it rained. I have helped plant corn, then howed it and helped cut corn and shock it. I have helped plant potatoes, we always had to cut them in pieces before we planted them. Then came howing time and then we had to dig them I usually had to pick them up and put them in the sacks.

I never did ride anything but a work horse without a saddle. I never wanted to ride a horse very much, I think I was afraid of them. I remember a few times I rode one of the horses from the field to the barn, they would try to run when I got close to the barn, I was afraid I couldn't get it stopped and it would drag, me off going in the barn door I guess that is why I never had a desire to ride horses.

We always had to churn milk for butter and buttermilk two or three times a week. I never liked to do that much because you had to stand in one place and push the dasher up and down and sometimes it took so long if the milk wasn't the right tempature. I have the churn Mom used all of them years, I didn't get the dasher.

There was all the crocks, lids, strainer, milk buckets had to be washed and scalded twice a day. Thinking back you never run out of something to do living on a farm.

Sometime in the 30s Daddy and Peary built a two car garage out of rough lumber, Peary was always tinkering around on the old cars.

When the girls in our family learned to cook Daddy woke us in the morning to get up and fix breakfast and let Mom sleep untill breakfast was ready. First it was Oneta then Irene then Eula and then me. After I learned to make biscuts Eula and I would take turns getting up to fix breakfast. When breakfast was ready everone got up and eat together. After Eula got married it was just me to fix breakfast. Daddy would get up and build the fire in the cook stove and wait untill the oven warmed up, then he would wake me. I always hated to get up in the morning, sometimes he would wake me two or three times. When he thought he had me awake he would go to the barn to feed the stock and clean the barn out. Sometimes I would go back to sleep and wake up a little later, sometimes the fire would be almost out, I would rush around and try to have breakfast almost ready when he came from the barn. I remember a few times I didn't wake up untill I heard him in the kitchen fixing the fire, boy! did I ever jump out of bed then. He never said much only that he was going to fix his own breakfast, that made me feel bad and I would vow to myself that I wouldn't do it again.

He would always come in, wash his hands and face and comb his hair, and if breakfast wasn't ready he would go in the living room sit down and wait untill it was ready. He was in his 60s at that time. I remember when he walked he crossed his hands behind his back and stooped over a little. He was getting a hump on his back when he died. His head was bald on the top, he had some hair he combed over the bald spot. Mom cut his hair.

Mom made all my clothes, my dresses, underdress or slip as it was later called. We wore bloomers with elastic in the top and legs. I wore long, cotton stockings she ordered from the catalogue. We used elastic garters to hold our stockings up. Sometimes we cut a piece of intertube and sewed it together for garters when our elastic ones wore out. She made my coats out of a coat that someone had outgrown. I had rubber overshoes to wear in the winter time over my shoes. Mom knitted our mittons and toboggons.

She always cut her own patterns out of wrapping paper from something we had got at the store or catalogue. She had a singer sewing machine she used for years it was about wore out. I can remember when a man came around selling sewing machines, she traded it and got a Elgin, it was almost like a Singer I have that sewing machine now. I used it for a long time, it started skipping stiches, I could have got it fixed but Orvils sister had left a portible electric machine here and I started using it.

We had ground cherries in the garden, they made such good preserves. They came up ever year all over the garden and would vine all over the ground. They wasn't good untill they got ripe which was late in the fall. They would turn yellow and had a thin pod like shell on them. They had tiny seeds in them something like a strawberry. When we was howing the garden we would cut most of them off just left enough to make a few jars of preserves. They got ripe just about the time it frosted. I haven't saw them anywhere else, I think Irene got them started in her garden. Mom had sage in the garden, she would pick some leaves and let them dry and crush them up to put in the sasuage for seasoning.

When we churned butter we had a wooden bowl and a wooden paddle to work the milk out of the butter. When it was ready we put it in a wooden one pound printer, it was two piece, when you got it full you pushed it from the top and pushed the butter out, it had a flower design on the top. I wish I had gotten those things when I went after Moms things, at the time I didn't realize how valueable they would be later on, all I thought of then was something I could use. Mom had a long handle paddle she used to stir apple butter out side in a brass kittle. We didn't have a brass kittle we always borroed one from Aunt Ollie. she had a short handle paddle she used to make diffirent kinds of butter on the stove, such as pear, peach or plum butter and sometimes she made small amounts of apple butter on the stove.

After Daddy died Mom sold the horses, she kept one cow and some chickens. She sold the cow later because she couldn't get out in the winter to feed and milk her. She kept some chickens so she would have eggs and would kill one once in a while to eat.

When I was little we had a old Home Comfort stove to cook on. I guess Mom and Dad got it when they got married. It was all burned out and the lids was worped. A few yrs. before Eula got married Daddy got us a Foster stove. We was so proud of it. It set up on legs, had a warming closet and a resivore by the oven to heat waler to wash the dishes and etc. We always kept a teakittle full of water on the stove so we would have hot water when ever we needed it.

When I was away from home for awhile staying with someone and even after I went to Md., when I went home I would clean the house all over for Mom. Both of them was getting old and couldn't do the work like they did when they was younger. Mom would tell everone that I scratched in ever corner. The old house was hard to keep clean with the open fireplace and wood cook stove. There was so much dust and smoke. After Daddy died Peary put a coal heating stove in the living room, it kept the house warmer, in the winter.

Mom had several big stone jars and crocks that was left over there, I guess all of that stuff burned when the house burned down.

When I was eight yrs. old I jumped out of a apple tree and ran a stob in my foot and it broke off in my foot. Eula and someone else was with me, they didn't think I was hurt and ran off from me. I went limping and crying to the house. My foot swelled up and got infected, I had to set with my foot in hot epson salf water for days. My foot was so swollen you couldn't see the stob. Finally Peary and Irene took me to Dr. Leach at Quinwood. He exrayed my foot and found the stob. He lanced my foot on the top and bottom, it was almost through my foot. He tried to pull it out with tweasers but just pinched pieces off it. It took two people to hold me and they said they could hear me screaming all over Quinwood. He finally gave up and told them to bring me back in a day or two and he would put me to sleep and take it out. The day I was to go back Mom got me out on the front porch and looked at my foot, she could see it was just ready to pop out, just a little piece of skin holding it. I wouldn't let her touch it because it was so sore. She gave me the needle and told me what to do with it and then had me press a little bit around it and it popped right out. I was so happy, I was afraid to go back to the Dr. and would have done almost anything to get it out. It soon got better and healed up, I still have scars from it. I kept that old stob for a long time to show to everone, you could see where the Dr. had pinched pieces off of it.

We had a organ at home, Mom could play it real good by notes. It was a old one with peddels and pegs to pull out for sound. Mom taught all of us how to play it. Some of us learned to play by ear, I never learned to play by notes. Elmer took the oregon when he moved off the Mt. he must have sold it or give it away, I don't know what happened to it.

After Eula and I learned to play the guitar we didn't play the organ much. We all was musicly inclined, Peary would tune the guitar up like a banjo and he could play a little bit, Elmer could play the fiddle some, Irene and Oneta stuck to the Oregon. Daddy was a good tenor singer and Mom sang alto, they sang a lot in church. We had a phonograph I think Lawrence Burns bought it. It looked like a suit case when it was closed up. You had to wind it up with a crank on the side before it would play. We didn't have many records. Later Peary got a battery radio.

There was a big corner cubbard that set in the dinning room. Uncle Eck had left it there, it went up to the ceiling. lt had glass doors in the top. Just after I went to Md. a man from Lewisburg bought it and a big chest of drawers Mom kept in the dinning room. They was anteak, Mom didn't get much out of them though. After they sold them Daddy built a flu in the dinning room where the cubbard had set and moved the kitchen in there, it was much warmer in the winter time.

We had two long eating tables, one in the dinning room and one in the kitchen. They both had a long bench behind them next to the wall to set on, we used chairs on the other side and ends. Each table would seat eight people. All of our chairs had split bottoms. Daddy would get hickory bark and make the bottoms himself. I don't know how he did it. I still have two straight chairs that he put bottoms on.

We had a safe or cubbard in the kitchen that we kept the food in not having a refrigator we put the food and some of the dishes in it. I still have the safe, I keep it out in a utility building to put things in. We kept most of our dishes in that corner cubbard. After Mom sold it she bought a second hand kitchen cabinet to put her dishes in. We had a apple pealer and a cherry seeder, I guess they was all left there when Mom sold the place. Mom had a spinning wheel, I don't remember seeing her use it. She gave it to Eula when she got married. Eula gave it to Herman and Laura, I guess her grand children will get it.

We had a big old dinner bell on a pole just out from the kitchen porch. When dinner or supper was ready we would ring, the bell and everyone would come in from the field or where ever they were.

Mom always raised lots of tomatoes mainly beefsteak, some yellow and pear tomatoes. They planted the sweetcorn at diffirent times so we would have corn on the colb for a long time not all at once. They raised diffirent kinds of beans, bunch, pole and corn beans, some was tender hulls and some was tough hulls. We had fresh green beans all summer and canned them to have in the winter. They raised early and late cabbage. They always made a big jar of sour krout in the fall, later after it had worked off they put it in sealing jars and sealed it. Mom never made pickled corn or beans, I guess they didn't like them pickled.

She raised peas, handovers, swiss chard, kale and mustard greens, carrots, parshnips, peppers, lettuce, onions, cucumbers Punpkins, they planted some pop corn so we would have some to pop in the winter time.

One time Lawrence Burns raised some tobacco, he had picked it and had it dried. I got a leaf one day and crumbled it up, I didn't have any cigarette papers and I used tissue paper and rolled me a cigarette and took it down to the toilet and lit it and took a puff or two, Talk about sick, I got so sick I could hardly get to the house. I told them I was sick, they said I was as white as a sheet, I didn't tell them what made me sick and I never tried that again. Sometimes we would go out in the woods and get cinnanon vine and cut it in small pieces and dry it in the oven and smoke it. I don't remember how it tasted but it made our tongue sore. I don't remember ever smoking corn silks, I might have tried that too, others have told me they tried it.

When Ed Smith my cousin was eight or nine yrs. old he started chewing. tobacco. He knew Daddy always carried a plug of tobacco in his pocket, he would come down and where ever Daddy was at he would go there and stand around watching him work for a long time, when he got up enough nerve he would ask for a chew. Daddy always knew what he wanted or was up to when he saw him coming. He would wait untill he ask him and then cut him off a little chew and he would take off for home.

Mom hardly ever let Eula go anywhere unless I tagged along, I guess she thought she wouldn't do anything she wasn't supposed to or I would tell on her, but I didn't, instead I have told a few white lies to keep her out of trouble. One time we went up to Uncle Charleys, Sue Clara and I was out playing, and Eula and Virginia was in the house. It was about time to go home and we went in the house. Eula had found a bottle of wine or something that Uncle Charley had hid and took a drink or two out of it and she was as high as a kite, she had never drank anything before. Ed and Clifford and all of them was there except Uncle Charley. They decided they had better take Eula for a walk before we went home to sober her up. We took off up the road, she was talking a blue streak and they couldn't get her to shut up. It was coming a storm and was thundering, she was saying here comes the tater wagon ever time it thundered. I got scared for fear that Mom and Dad would find out about her drinking and I started crying as usual, after a while they decided it was safe for us to go home it was almost dark. When we got home Eula went straight to bed, I don't guess they ever found out about it.

Back during the 20s Daddy had a few dollars in the bank at Rupert. In the thirtys when Hoover was president the bank went bankrupt. I think he got some of it back I'm not sure. His taxes went up to $100.00 a yr. and he could hardly manage to pay them. After President Rosevelt was in awhile his taxes came back down, I don't remember how much but I heard them say they wasn't as much.

Daddy usually kept some hogs and calves he could sell if he needed some extra money, or sell some hay. It was pretty rough for a farmer back in them days.

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Mariam and Marie Price lived on one side of me and Sue and Clara Smith lived on the other side. They was my cousins, Mariam and Marie on Daddys side and Sue and Clara on Moms side. I could get along with them all but they couldn't get along with each other. I had to play with one or the other at diffirent times. If they happened to all be playing with me they would get into a argument or fight and Mariam and Marie would go home mad.

One Thanksgiving Daddy had went turkey hunting with Peary and Elmer up on Coal Knoib. Mom and Irene had went over to Aunt Roses. I was seven and Eula was eleven yrs. old. we fixed our dinner and invited Sue and Clara to come down and eat with us. Mom had cooked a chicken and we fried it and had mashed potatoes and gravy, I don't remember what else we had. Our eating table was so big we put a tablecloth on the cook table and put our food on it so it would look like we had a lot of food to eat. That evening after we had eat dinner Mariam and Marie came down to play and sure enough Sue and Clara did something to them, pinched them or something, it didn't take much and they went home crying. It happened that way nearly ever time they got together.

Most of the time we could hear or see someone corning up at the road. If we had a dirty dress on we would run and change our dress and comb our hair before they got to the house, Mom would just put on a clean apron. Oh! we did some funny things back then. I thought I had forgotten everything but when I set down and started thinking back a lot of things come back to me.

Mom always had long hair, she never did cut it. She would put it up in a bun on the back of her head, or braid it and put it up. She always took it down at night and combed and platted it before she went to bed. She wore it that way until she died. She cut all of our hair, I remember when I had bangs. She always wore a hat or bonnet when she went out in the sun, she made us girls wear a hat too.

Mom always made the pies, custard, apple, dried apple and berry pies, the older girls made the cakes. I remember the first cake I baked, it was after Eula got married. I used a receipt for cottage pudding which was a lot like cake. I got the receipt out of a big Dr. book that we had, it had receipts in it too. I baked it in layers and put chocolate icing, on it. It turned out pretty good. It was Moms birthday and I baked it for her. When Mom baked cottage pudding she made a dip with milk, some sugar and vanilla added, it was good that way. We never measured anything much back then, just guessed at the amount to put in things, like a pinch of this or that. If it was a small amount it was a small pinch, if you was making a large amount it was a large pinch. For biscuts or cornbread we used a small pinch of soda and a large pinch of baking powder and a small pinch of salt. We usually measured the buttermilk or about so much.

Mom made corn pudding, she used fresh corn cut off the colb, added milk, sugar, eggs, salt and butter and baked it in the oven. I liked it so well I could have eat all that she made if she would have let me. One time a salesman came around selling glass baking dishes. He guarenteed they wouldn't break. That evening Mom made corn pudding in the biggest one that she bought, guess what? It cracked all around the bottom and the corn pudding ran all over the oven when she started to take it out. You talk about a mess and was Mom mad. She found out later what she had done wrong. She had not read the instructions on what to do before you bake anything in them. She was supposed to temper them by putting them in a cold oven and let them get hot gradually before you baked anything in them.

One time Daddy killed a beef steer. He had most of it engaged to other people before he killed it because it was to much for us to use, all of it had to be canned, it wouldn't keep any other way, they cut it up in small pieces and cold packed it. It was a cold day and started to rain before they got it dressed and cut up. Elmer had to deliver it to whoever was to get the part they had engaged. Somewhere on the way he had a flat tire and had to fix it in the rain. He took a bad cold and it went into pnemonia, after that he started to having asthma attacks and had it the rest of his life.

I didn't know what steaks and pork chops was back then, Daddy didn't cut the hogs up like they do now. He always cut the tenderloin off the back bone so it could be canned. Sometimes they sliced the tenderloin and fried it like pork chops. Part of the tender loin was left on the back bones and that it what made them so good.

We didn't live close to the river so I didn't get to fish any untill I was about twelve yrs. old. All the family went on a picnic down on Meadow River at a park. They fixed me a wooden pole with a line and hook and they put the bait on for me. I thought it was great. I caught several little fish. Lester would spit tobacco juice on the bait and I would catch one nearly ever time. I still like to fish, and do ever time I get a chance.

The tough hull beans they was going to dry and shell out to eat, they would put them in a room upstairs that wasn't used for anything but junk. They was always ripe when they was picked the hulls was dry and yellow. They spread them out on a piece of canvas. When they was dry enough they would thrash the beans out with small switches tied together. The beans would all come out of the hulls on to the canvas. Then we would have to pick the hulls out, blow the chaff and dirt out of the beans and put them in a cloth bag and hang them in a cool place so they wouldn't get worms. The bean would come to the top of the water if they was worms, that is how we could tell if they was worms.

Most of the fences we had was split rail fences, split out of chestnut wood. Some was wide boards nailed to the posts. If I remember right that was the kind that was along the road in front of the house. There was a path that went out to the road in front of the house. Daddy built steps on both sides of the fence so we didn't have to climb over it. The house was two or three hundred feet from the road. There was a road that went up to the gate on the right of the house, if we was going to walk up the road we went up the path to the road and if we was going down the road we went up to the gate.

The house set upon a knoll, the foundation was big square pieces of stone. At one time they thought that knoll might have been an Indian mound because they found a lot of Indian arrows around there. There was a white picket fence around the front of the house. We didn't have much grass to cut because Mom had so many flowers all around the fence and some up close to the house and porches. Some bushes such as snowball, lilaces and others out from the house. We had two big wolf river apple trees in the front yard and a pear tree in the back yard. The meat house, delco house and woodshead was all in the back yard. There was just enough space between the woodshead and delco house to walk between them, that is the way we went to the toilet. There was a fence between the delco house and the meat house, then one from the meathouse to the garden fence, a gate in between that went to the cellar. The garden fence was higher it ran all along one side of the house and a gate went into the garden from the back just out from the kitchen. There was a wire fence around the rest of the garden so the chickens couldn't get in. There was a gate that went into the garden so Daddy could get the horses in to plow the ground. Mom had rose bushes all along the side of the woodshead on the side next to the house, a gate went out to the chicken house and the barn on that side, you could go through the woodshed too. There was two gates in the front.

The kitchen didn't have weather boarding on it, there was a vine that Mom had set out that vined all over one corner of it. The woodshead was a big building it had a dirt floor, we chopped our wood in there most of the time, and used the chipps to start the fires. Daddy had a long work bench where he did carpenter work and fixed things.

Mom had a lot of flowers that came up ever year, peonies, twelve oclock, bleeding hearts, lillies, flock, sweet williams, jonquils, snow on the mt. chrisanthemums and others I can't remember. She always had dallias, sweet peas, morning glories and others she would set out and plant in the spring. She saved the seeds in the fall and dug the dallia roots in the fall and put them in the cellar. She cut some of them in the yard and some in the garden. She sure loved flowers and always had a lot of them.

We just used a scythe to cut the grass in the yard. I think just before Daddy died they got a push mower. Daddy turned the cows out in the lot around the yard at night and they kept the grass and weeds eat down we never had to mowe it.

There was a scrubby little apple tree beside the path that went out to the road. It was about halfway between the house and the road. When the leaves was on it we couldn't see who was coming untill they got past the tree. A year or so before Eula got married we slipped out there one evening just about dark and sawed it down. The next morning Mom and Dad saw it had been cut down, they said I wonder who could have done that? We just kept quite and never owned up to doing it. I'm sure they knew who the guilty ones was but they never let on. I think we told Mom we did it before she died. I don't remember getting a whipping but I know that I surely did, I must have blocked it out because I didn't want to remember. I do remember Mom kept a little switch sitting on the mantel and if I got rowdy or loud she would threaten to whip me and that was all it took. I'm sure I needed more than I got because I was the youngest and they all say I was spoiled but I never thought I was.

Back then people would visit each other more then they do now. Sometimes on sundays someone would ask us to go home with them for dinner. Other times we would ask them to go home with us. We always had a good time. The kids would play, the women would fix the dinner and the men would sit in the living room and talk. After dinner the girls had to wash the dishes and clean up the kitchen and dinning room, then go back out and play untill time to go home.

In the spring after the garden was planted Mom would take me and we would walk down to aunt Bells or Walter McClungs sometimes the Beverages or Jim Prices, we would go diffirent places at diffirent times. We would get down there before dinner time and stay untill time to go home to fix supper, Mom would fix Daddy something to eat for dinner before we left, then sometimes they would come ad spend the day with us.

Just before Decoration day ever year Mom would get some flowers to set out and we would take hows and walk down to the Wilson Graveyard where her Dad and Mom and most of her people was buried. We would clean off the graves and set out flowers.

I don't think anyone lives down in there anymore. The road that went into the houses and graveyard isn't kept up I don't think you could even get a jeep in there anymore, you would have to walk. The last I heard Oather McClung was keeping the cemetary cleaned off, his father and mother is buried there. It has been many yrs. since I have been down in there. There was places along the Mt. road that was named so we could identify where we was and etc. Between our house and Elmers was a little hill that was called the cabin hill on up farther was the oak tree, than the Dot place, the rocky hill, the S turn and the Sid place. Starting at Rupert there was the high banks, the Dietz place and the school house.

There was a Dietz family that lived down near the end of the Mt.. The old man was Alderson Dietz, he had a son Quincy, I don't remember any of the other names, I never knew them very well.

Daddy never eat a meal until he said thanks at the table. He was always serious when he was eating. Eula and I was always laughing or giggling at just any little thing, guess all kids are like that. Sometimes we would get tickled about something at the table. Daddy would put up with us for awhile and then he would tell us if we couldn't be quite we would have to leave the table. If Mom was in a good mood she would giggle out just a put on laugh and that made us worse. We would finally settle down but if we looked at each other we would burst out laughing and giggling again. Finally we would get over it and settle down and eat our meal.

I was bad to blush when I was young, if I got embarriest my face would turn red. Everone teased me about it, that only made it worse. During my teans and even after I got married I would take spells of crying some­times I would cry all day if someone just looked at me I would start crying, I didn't even know why, I guess it must have been my nerves. I told my Dr. about it when I was pregnant with Linda, he said not to worry about it that I wouldn't have time to cry after she was born and he was right I got over it. I started having sick headaches when I was eight or nine yrs old, once a week I could hardly raise my head off the pillow without vomiting. After I went to Md. I quit having headaches. Daddy, Elmer and Oneta had headaches like that too. I always thought we had inherited the headaches from Daddy, I guess the change in the climate helped me.

Mom started having asthma I think after I was born. There was times she could hardly get her breath at all. She used asthmador when she had those attacks. She got it in the drug store, it was in powder form, she would put a little bit on a lid and light it with a match, it sparkled and smoked, she inhaled the smoke and it would loosen the phlem and make her cough the fleam up and she would get releaf. I have heard just recently that asthmadore contained marijuana and they have taken it off the market. That was all she ever used. She kept having attacks up until she broke her hip and moved in with us here in Webster Springs. She didn't have it anymore unless she got a bad cold she had a few attacks before she died the Dr. called it cartiac asthma.

Things was never the same on the farm after Daddy died. Mom was 65 yrs. old and she started getting a little check from Public Assistance for her and Margaret, hardly enough to buy the groceries they needed. She still raised a little garden. The place was getting run down pretty bad because there was no one to take care of it.

In Feb. 1952 I was living in Webster Springs then, Peary came after me on Sunday to go over to Moms. She was sick in bed with the flue. I took Linda she was four yrs. old then and Peary took us over to Moms. Peary and Margarette was running the boarding house at Levisy at that time. I stayed a week and cleaned the house and waited on Mom, she was able to be up and feeling much better when Orvil came after me.

Mom decided then if she could sell the farm she would buy or rent a house at Quinwood where she would be close to the stores, Doctor and school. There was talk of the school closing on the Mt.. Margaret was in the 7th grade. Dave Legg bought the farm and Mom was looking for a place to move. On March 25th in the evening she was stretching curtins, getting ready to pack, Margaret was mopping the kitchen floor, Mom went into the kitchen to get a curtin and slipped on the wet floor and fell and broke her hip. They got her to the hospital at Richwood the next morning and called me. They put a pin in her hip and kept her in the hospital two weeks.

I was living in a small trailer. None of the rest of the family was able to take care of her, so Orvil and I decided we would rent a house and take her to live with us as long as she lived. She was 72 yrs. Old and the Dr. said she would never be able to live by herself again. The rest of the family agreed that if I took Mom and kept her that what she got out of the farm would be mine. I think it was $4000.00. The farm was in Daddys name and it was to fall to the children at his death but Mom had a life time diary. We all had to sign the deed when she sold it. I found a house to rent here in Webster Springs on Morton Hill. Eula and I went over to the farm and got some of Mom's furnature that I could use and her clothing and things that she wanted. What was left Elmer took what he wanted and Oneta came and got what she could use and the rest was left there in the house.

Peary had a big coal truck and he moved the things for us. That was the last time I was ever in the house where I was born and raised. The Old Home Place.

A few years later the house burned down. Once in a while I drive across the Mountain. The old memories are still there but the old farm doesn't look anything like it did before we sold it. When I took Mom in to take care of I didn't think I could take the responsibility of keeping Margaret too. She was 14 yrs. old. I thought her Dad should keep her awhile. Jo Ann was still at home then, but it didn't work out that way. Mom had been her boss all her life and she wouldn't listen to her Dad and he couldn't do anything with her. So in June or July he brought her and her clothes over and left her with us.

As it turned out I guess if was for the best. She was old enough that I could leave her with Mom and I had more freedom to get out and go places. Later it was like having a builtin baby sitter. I could leave Linda with her and Mom and everthing turned out all right. She graduated from High School here and later went to work and took care of herself. It was rough at times but somehow we made it.

Mom just got a small check about $30.00 a month for the both of them and Orvil wasn't making much at the garage but we got by somehow. I have no regrets that I took them both in and kept them. Margaret was like a sister to Linda. We just had one child because we thought we couldn't afford another one. Then after we took Mom and Margaret we had all we could take care of. I guess I have always been closer to Margaret because I helped to take care of her when she was a baby and then she was with us for about five yrs.

When Uncle Eck sold the farm to Uncle Odey he owed Uncle Eck $1000.00 and a vendors lean was put on the place. Uncle Odey payed off the loan but never had it took off the records in Lewisburg. When Daddy bought it from Uncle Odey he thought he had a clear deed and didn't have the records searched. when Dave Legg bought it from Mom she told him it was a clear deed and he didn't have the records searched. He owed Mom $1000.00 and was going to sell some timber so he could pay Mom what he owed her. Meadow River Lumber Co. was going to buy the timber but they looked on the records and found the lean against the place and wouldn't buy the timber untill it was cleared. Uncle Eck, uncle Odey and Daddy was all dead, so we had to take it to court. It had been over thirty yrs. and the judge had it took off the record and cleared. After that Meadow River bought the timber and Legg got the money to pay Mom what he owed her on the farm.

Back in the thirtys after people started buying cars and trucks. The road across the Mountain was a dirt road, the coal trucks would rut the road out so bad in the winter you could hardly get a car over the road. There was places where a truck would drag. If it was dry a car could straddle the ruts and get through all right. If a car happened to slip off into the ruts they would have to jack it up and throw rocks dirt or anything they could into the rut and under the wheels in order to get the car out. The state never sent a grader up there but once a year to scrape the road. Daddy has pulled cars out of bad places close to where we lived with the horses lots of times.

After Eula got married I would walk up to her house on Saturdays and stay all night and go to church on Sunday. She lived close to the church. Sometimes if the snow was deep and it was cold Mom would say it's just to bad for you to go up there, but I would wrap up real good and go anyway. I would call when I got up there to let them know I made it ok. I always came back on Sunday evenings. This one perticular Sunday Daddy called up to Eulas and said Mom had been real sick all day with a pain in her right side and they was afraid it was appendicitis. Eula and Laurence took me down to Elmers and we walked on down to the house, the road was so bad he didn't try to drive on down to the house.

They had to go to Quinwood to call an ambulance and they tried to come up from Rupert but got stuck up and couldn't make it. They sent the stretcher up on a truck, it was getting dark by then and Mom was in so much pain and it was cold we knew she couldn't ride in that rough truck. We called Laurence to see if he thought he could take her to Quinwood, and he said he would try it. He came down and got her and met the ambulance at Quinwood. He said the car drug nearly all the way but he got over there. The pain had stopped before she left home. It was appendicitis and her appendix had ruptured before she left home. They kept ice on her and didn't operate untill the next morning. It had turned to gangreen, they said it was a miracle that she lived. She was in the hospital at Rainell and Daddy stayed over there with her until she was out of danger. She was in the hospital three weeks before they would release her and she had to stay over there close to the hospital for awhile before she could come home. I think she stayed with one of her cousins. Daddy and I went over there once to see her while she was still in the hospital. We went with someone in a coal truck, I remember in places the truck was dragging the ruts was so deep. When they brought her home they had to come over the Mt. from Quinwood. They couldn't get the car any farther then Elmers and she had to walk the rest of the way. There was a near way down through the woods that we always walked instead of going around the road. She was so glad to get home, it was a long time before she was able to do anything. That was the same year that Margaret was born and Cathleen died.

The Rev. Frank Plybon was sent to Rupert his first church when he started preaching. Mount Zion Church on the Mt. was one of his churches. He was from Barbersville, W.Va. his wife Bertha was from Huntington. They had two children Betty and Frank Jr. when they moved there. They had another son John later on. Ever one liked him, he was like one of the family. He called Daddy Uncle Orange and Mom Aunt Lillie. They was the only ones on the Mt. that he called Uncle and Aunt. He said our house was the only place he could feel free to drop in at meal time and eat without letting us know ahead of time, it was like home to him. They was at Rupert three or four yrs. They took me to Huntington with them one time when they went to visit Berthas parents. That was a treat for me I had never been that far from home before. Franks brother Bob came and stayed with them one summer, I was just about 13 yrs. old then and Bob was around 16 yrs. old. A few yrs. later Bob went into the navy. Rev. Plybon was sent to Yegear, then hack to Smoot. Bob was in on furlough and came to Smoot to see Frank. He had not forgot me and got Frank to bring him up on the Mt. to our house. It was in the winter and the roads was bad, I had no idea then that Bob had come up there to see me. He wrote me a letter after he went back and told me he had come up there just to see me. We started writing letters to each other after that, That was Dec. 1939.

He was stationed at Norfolk, Va. in 1942, he bought a car and drove from Norfolk twice to see me. Then in Dec. he came in and I went to Barbersville with him to see his family. He had slid into a gardrail coming in. The road was slick and banged his car a little bit so he left it at home to have it fixed and two of his brothers brought us up. Bob went into the bus station at Rainell to get a ticket back to Norfolk and they told him in there that Pearl Harbor had been bombed, it was Dec. 7th 1942. We had not had the radio on all day and had not heard about it. He took me up on the Mt. and that was the last time I saw him. He was on the Battle ship Yorktown and was sent to the west coast. We kept writing to each other and he ask me to marry him and wanted me to come to Calif. and get married, I thought it over and wrote and told him I would wait for him. He was a gunner on his ship and was in the Midway battle when it was hit and was killed and buried at sea.

I had gone to Balt. Md. and went to work just a week when I got the telegram from his parents that he had been killed. That Aug I went home for awhile and went down to Barbersville to see his family. While I was home Rev. Plybon came to see me, he was living at Union, W.Va then, he took me home with him for a few days and then brought me back home. A few days after that I caught a bus and went back to Md. and went back to work.

In 1943 before Sue and Pete moved to Md. Sue and I went to Md. with Marie and her brother Carl, they had came to W.Va for the week end and we went back with them. We stayed with Clara and Cline and Uncle Charley, they all lived upstairs in a appartment on the Sauders farm. We stayed a week and came back on the bus. Sometime later Sue and Pete moved to Md. Clara and Cline had moved to Green Haven down on the bay and they moved in where Clara had lived. They came to W.Va for a weekend and I went back with them in June 1943. I got a job at the Cotton Mill at Alberton, Md. working in the spinning room. The bus that picked up the ones that worked at the mill came by where Sue lived and I stayed with her. That fall Pete was working at the shipyards and they found a appartment at Catonsville near the street car lines and they moved over there so Pete wouldn't have to drive to work. That was in Oct. I started bording with Carrie Holcomb. She worked at the cotton mill in the weaving room and worked on the same shift I did. She lived on Dogwood road and the bus ran right by her house. The bus just carried the employes that worked at the mill. I stayed with Carrie about a year and a half. We worked on the evening shift.

I came home on vacation for a week in Aug 1944 and Eula went back with me and got her and Laurence a job and when they moved up there I started staying with them. I stayed with them untill I got married in July 1945. During that time Daddy got sick in Nov. 1944, I had quit my job at the cotton mill and had went to work at The American Hammer Piston Ring. Eula and I went home to see him. He had pnemonia and we set up with him for several nights and finally got him in the hospital at Rainell. Eula went back to Md. and went back to work. I stayed home with Mom to help with the work untill just before Christmas. We had a big snow storm and the snow was about three or four ft. deep up there on the Mt. I decided to go back to Md. and go back to work, I was afraid I would loose my job. There was just a walking path in the snow from home to Rupert. I payed a Darby boy to carry my suit case to Rupert and caught a ride to Rainell and went to the hospital to see Daddy and that night I got a bus to White Sulphur and got a train back to Md. I had just been back to work a short while when Mom called for me to come back home again. I went back home on Jan. 4th. They had brought Daddy up to my brother Pearys at Quinwood and Mom had to go over there to help take care of him and they needed me to stay on the Mt. to take care of Margaret she was six yrs. old and was going to school. I had to keep the fires up to keep things from freezing, feed the horses, cows and chickens and milk the cow, I was there two weeks. The Dr. advised us to take Daddy to John Hopkins Hospital in Balt.

We didn't have the money so Uncle Odey gave us $100.00 and his son Charley went with Peary and me. We took Daddy to Hinton in the ambulance and got a pullman car on the train to Balt. Eula and Laurence met us at the station. We took him to the hospital the next morning and they put him through the clinic. After they had examined him they told us there was nothing they could do for him but they wanted to keep him awhile untill he was strong enough to make the trip back home. That was the 23rd of Jan. he lived untill the 6th of Feb. he died there in the hospital. He had hardening of the arteries and I can't remember what else. They said a artery burst that goes to his heart was what killed him.

We brought him back on the train. We had his wake at our house on the Mt. His funeral was at Mount Zion Church, Rev. Frank Plybon preached his funeral and he was buried at "The End of the Trail at Clintonville, W.Va Feb. 9th 1945.

Mom and Margaret stayed there on the Mt. after Daddy died. Peary and Margarette moved in with her for awhile then Peary bought Elmer's place and they moved up there and Elmer moved back down home in the upstairs.

Just after Sue and Pete got married I would go over there when I got a chance. They was living in a two room apartment and Pete worked at the Company store. Sue and I would set up and talk untill 12 or 1 oclock. Pete had to work and he would go to bed early. He would fix his own breakfast and Sue and I would sleep untill 10 or 11 o'clock. We would get up in time to fix his lunch before he came in at noon. One morning he left bread in the toaster it wasn't automatic and when Sue and I woke up the appartrnent was full of smoke. We thought he did it on purpose but he said he didn't he just forgot to take it out.

They later moved into a larger appartment up over the store. We had some good times there. Some Saturday nights others would come in and we would play Set Back or Rook. A few times we set up and played cards all night. They would usually take me home on Sunday. Sometimes we would play Kro Kay over there at my home. I remember one time it got dark before we finished the game, Pete turned the headlights on in his car so we could finish the game.

I stayed with Vi and Omer Henson at Fayetteville two or three weeks before she had her baby, she had to stay in bed. I came home for awhile but promised to go back if they needed me after the baby was born. In the meantime Io Perkins was expecting and I went over there to stay with her, I had to leave Io's and go back to Favetteville, Vi had her baby and they came after me. I stayed three weeks that time. I think they payed me five dollars a week.

I stayed with Kieth and Bill Morrison one winter, I did the cleaning and helped with the cooking and kept their daughter she wasn't old enough to go to school. I stayed with Lorna Nunley at Quinwood when she had her second child.

Staying with people doing house work, cooking, washing, ironing and taking care of babys was all the work I knew how to do untill I went to Md. and went to work. I worked in the spinning room and liked that work I think I made $30.00 a week, I worked there about one and a half yr. then went to work at the American Hammer Piston Ring. I worked in the shipping Dept. filling orders and stocking bins, later I was fileing tickets. I got a bonus after I started fileing tickets, I forgot just how much I made I think it was fifty or sixty dollars a week.

When I stayed with Sue and Pete they didn't charge me any board I helped Sue some with the house work. When I stayed at Carries she just charged me five dollars a week for board and room. I stayed at Sues nearly ever weekend and when Eula moved to Md. I didn't have to pay her any board, I helped her with the house work and cooking. I sent Mom and Dad some money ever month, I had them down as dependents at work.

I would go down town nearly ever Sat. and shop for clothes. I didn't always buy something but I liked to shop around and buy what I could afford. After I got married I quit going shopping I had other things to do and I had to buy other things beside clothes. I worked at American Hammer untill Oct. 1946, Linda was born six months later.

Carrie Holcomb the woman I stayed with was from W. Va, I found out when I ask her about boarding with her. She was from Quinwood and was a McClung before she married Jessie Holcomb. They had lived on Peases Knolb in the house that Daddy built, and all their children was born there. They had six children, Donald, Vonita, Grey, Aldine, Regnald and Peggy. Carrie was like a mother to me. I shared a room with Vonita, we became very close friends and double dated. She was three yrs younger then I was. She graduated from high school after I started staying there and went into Nurses Training there in Balt.

She and my cousin Tollie started dating, he had been running around with Orvil Miller and he brought him with him and introduced him to me. The four of us started dating and going, places together and that is how I met Orvil and later married.

Vonita was my bridesmaid and Tollie was best man when Orvil and I got married. Vonita and Tollie stopped dating each other, Tollie later married Aneita Adkinson and Vonita married Stanley Mayer. We still keep in touch with each other. Carrie and Jessic got a devorce after I quit staying with them, and he moved out and Carrie stayed there on Dogwood Road.

In 1948 Orvil and I bought a trailer, we rented a spot in Carries backyard to set our trailer. The house where Carrie lived belonged to Mr. Kirk, he let us set it there. We lived there about a year and then moved the trailer to W.Va.

Carrie later married Herman Knolb, he was a widower with two girls. All of Carries children was married but Peggy, his girls was about the age of Peggy. Carrie moved into his house up in Balt. Some yrs. later he died. She now lives at Randlestown, Md. near Vonita and Grey, they both live at Pikesville, Md.

I didn't date much before I went to Md. I never had a steady boy friend. I had a few dates with Bill Fleshman and I dated Earnest Sutfin from Quinwood. He had a car and he let me drive his car up there on the Mt. before I got my learners permit. After I got my learners permit Eula and Laurence let me drive their car some. Eula took me to Lewisburg to take my drivers test, in a 36 model Pontiac. I didn't drive a car much untill after Orvil and I got married.

Lawrence was the only one Eula went steady with. I went just about ever place they went. When Laurence was coming down in the winter Eula would build a fire in the parlor. I would go out to the apple house and get a bucket of apples and take them in to them. I would sit there by the fire and eat apples. I didn't give them a chance to do much smuching Ha! It's a wonder they didn't kick me out. They was just kids themselves, Eula was 18 and Laurence was 19 yrs. old when they got married.

After they got married they would take me to the movies with them when they went and I stayed with them on weekends sometimes. Bob Plybon was the only one I was ever interested in, I wrote letters to him but I never got to spend much time with him, I was 21 yrs old when he got killed. After I went to Md. I went to the movies with my cousin Tollie, then I met Turp Spencer, I dated him awhile and he bought me a ring, then he had to go in the army. After he came home a few times I didn't like the way he was acting and I gave his ring back and we split up. Later I met Frank Ruppalt we dated awhile he was in the Air Forse, he also bought me a ring. After I met Orvil I wrote Frank a Dear John letter while he was over seas and broke the engagement.

When I first met Orvil, we went to the movies and Parks and boling with Tollie and Vonita, I didn't like him very much, he was younger than I was and he wouldn't go in anywhere they sold drinks because he was under 21 yrs. and couldn't buy a drink. I said to Tollie one day,"can't you find someone to run around with besides Orvil Miller"? But we kept going out together and after a while I got to liking him better. When I went to work at the American Hammer he worked there too and I rode to work with him. I saw him ever day and we dated a night or two a week and on weekends. When Daddy died he brought us to W.Va, Laurence didn't have a car that would make the trip. I think Orvil borrowed his Dads car. After awhile I fell in love with him. I think the others besides Bob was just infatuation. I didn't know them very well and I was mixed up after Bob got killed and I didn't know what I wanted. Orvil and I was married July 28th, 1945 and we are still married thirty eight yrs. later I think that speaks for itself, it must have been love.

Dad and Mom taught us when we was growing up to be very saving. When we pealed anything like apples or potatoes we was taught to peal thin pealings and to scrape everthing out of a pan when we was cooking and to eat everthing we put on our plates. We saved everthing we thought we might be able to use later on. Their motto was "waste not want not ." Of course over the yrs. a lot of things was collected that was useless but we never knew when it might come in handy. I have found that is true in my life time.

I didn't have much schooling but I have learned a lot of things on my own and from experence and sometimes the hard way. We never had the money to hire someone to do things around the house and I have learned to do a lot of things such as hanging wall paper, painting, laying rugs and carpet, fixing light fixtures, a little plumbing like putting washers in spickets and things like that, just recently I have been learning to type without any lessons. I think I took after Daddy when I start something I keep on untill I get it done no matter how long it takes me. I sew a little bit, I have watched Mom sew and learned some from her. She sewed and made all my clothes until I was old enough to work and make some money to buy something that was already made from the store.

I learned to crochet when we was living in the trailer. I have picked up on that the past few yrs. making afgans just for past time. When Mom was living with us she wasn't able to get around very good and she croch­eted a lot. She made bedspreads, doilies, scarfs, tablecloths, she could make anything just by looking at a pattern. Even after she couldn't get out of bed she would sit up in bed and crochet. That kept her busy and her mind off of other things. She lived here with us twenty three yrs. after she broke her hip. She was 96 yrs. old when she died and her mind was still good.

We lived on Morton hill from April until Oct. the year that Mom broke her hip. We bought this house we are living in now. It wasn't much of a house when we bought it. We payed $3900.00 for it. We couldn't afford to pay much for a house then. Orvil wasn't making but about $50.00 a week at the garage. We used $2000.00 that Mom had got from the farm and borrowed $1900.00 from the bank. We paid $25.00 plus interest a month untill we got it payed off. We have made several improvements on it over the yrs. First we had it raised up off the ground and set on blocks all around, new porches and had it painted on the outside. Several yrs. later we had new wiring and electric heat put in, storm windows and doors, insulation blowed in the walls and over head in the attick and insulated underneath the house. Later we had aluminum siding put on and both porches inclosed. We have had it roofed a couple of times and it needs it again. We had all new plumb­ing put in about three years ago.

We used a warm morning heating stove to heat the house and a laundry stove in the kitchen for heat and to heat our water before we got electric heat put in. We have had the old flues taken down they was getting dangerous to use they was so old.

I have worked on the walls inside it was papered all over even the celings and the paper was loose and the celings was bagging down. I tore all the paper off that I could get off and have repapered it.. This house was build out of old lumber to start with, the celings and walls are tongue and groved lumber. It is still a old house but it is warm and confortable in the winter and it don't cost a lot to heat it. We don't have much but neither of us ever had much so we are pretty well satisfied with what we got. We wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

We have a 1977 Ford L T D low milage on it when we got it in 1981. We drove it to California to see Orvils Mother that year and the next yr. we drove to Duluth, Minn. to see Margaret and her family. Orvil has a 1968 Jeep Wagoneer low milage, he drives it to work. We have a old model camper we go camping once in a while, we pull it with the Jeep. We have a 12 ft. boat with a electric motor we take fishing sometimes.

When Orvil first started working at the Ford Garage here it was the McCourt Motor Co. They sent him to Rock Island, Ill. to school for three weeks to learn front end allignment, they paid his expences, that was in 1951. He worked there untill in the 60s he got lead poison in his system and the Dr. advised him to get out of the garage for awhile. He got a job in the mines at Bolair and worked there untill the mines closed down. He went to work for Joe Clifton in a garage here in town for a few yrs. When Joe sold out and closed the garage he worked at Whites Chevolet. McCourt sold out to Claypool and Knicley it was called C&K Motors. They ask Orvil to come to work for them and he quit down at White and went to work for C&K Motors. He worked there untill they closed the garage. He quit there twice and worked for a coal co during the summer months but went back to the garage. After they closed the Ford Garage here Orvil had a chance to go to work at the State Road Garage doing mechanic work that is where he is working now. He has been working there about five years.

I went to work for the Board of Education in Feb. 1966, doing the cleaning at the Boards office. I worked there until last year. I quit the 8th of Dec. and am now drawing my Retirement and Social Security.

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We wish to thank John (Bud) Pomeroy for bringing this wonderful record to us. Al Zopp scanned in the pages so it could be coded for posting in html.

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Page Begun 10 Dec 2003
Updated 11 Dec 2003
Updated by John Pomeroy
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