Annie Thorne (primary interviewee) and Annie Babcock interview recording, 1993 July 1
Loading the media player...
Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Annie Thorne Babcock | Loop it up and down the floor. You didn't do that. You did not do that. In fact, I guess it was children were supposed to be seen and not heard. Okay? I'm not saying that it was right or wrong, but I'm just saying that that is the way we were all raised, and you obeyed. No matter what time, if your parents—No matter what they told you, it was considered right. And that's the difference in the generation now and then. | 0:01 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And Mr. Powell and Mrs. Thorne, you're nodding your heads. And this how you remember it as well? | 0:47 |
Mr. Powell | Oh yeah. | 0:51 |
Rhonda Mawhood | This is how it was for you growing up too, Mr. Powell? | 0:51 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah, yeah. If my father and mother had company, "You kids go in the house." They just look at you if you go out again. They didn't have to tell you now. They just look at you, we went out and didn't go back. Stayed out. | 1:12 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | They sure would. That's right. | 1:17 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Courting is another thing. It didn't bother me because I wasn't courting all that much, but I had a cousin whose father was a preacher. At 9:00, he set the clock, and they were in the living room, and the parents were in the bedroom. He'd push that clock in the living room, and it would go off. And that meant that boy was out of that house. He left. He had to go. | 1:17 |
Mr. Powell | Mm-hmm. Yeah. | 1:48 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. | 1:48 |
Mr. Powell | They tell you— | 1:48 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | At 9:00, they went. I mean, mama— | 1:54 |
Mr. Powell | My dad and mom tell me at anytime, "Boy, you want to go out play?" | 2:20 |
Mr. Powell | "Oh yeah, yeah." [indistinct 00:02:06] And I was back here, back home. If I had to run half of the way, I was back there before it got dark. Now that's true. | 2:20 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And did your parents ask you where you'd been when you got home? | 2:24 |
Mr. Powell | We'd tell them that before we left. And we'd have to go exactly where we said going. | 2:33 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah, that's right. You had to tell your parents— | 2:33 |
Mr. Powell | Where you going. | 2:35 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | —where you were going. | 2:35 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah. | 2:36 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | And approximately what time you were going to come back. | 2:37 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah. | 2:41 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | And who you were going to go with and what you were going to do when you got there. That was almost understood. | 2:41 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah. | 2:50 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. | 2:52 |
Mr. Powell | They were tough, mom and dad, but I'm glad they was tough. | 2:52 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | They were strict. | 2:53 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah, they were strict on their children. | 2:53 |
Rhonda Mawhood | My mother was the same way with me. | 2:53 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Oh, you were the same? | 2:53 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Yes, ma'am. Mm-hmm. | 2:53 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Oh, okay. | 2:53 |
Mr. Powell | Truly did. | 3:06 |
Rhonda Mawhood | But I know that not all parents are now. | 3:07 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. | 3:10 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah. Wasn't staying out nights and all that stuff, coming in anytime of night. And you know what that was. | 3:15 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | When they laid down, they didn't get up until they time for them to get up. | 3:31 |
Mr. Powell | And then we've got to go if they have company. We go if they have company. They could have company over and it's 9:00. Had to go. That boy had to go away now. They'll call bedtime on you and that mean you got to go. See, that's the way it happened. | 3:32 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Sure is. | 3:45 |
Mr. Powell | I know about it. | 3:45 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | And the boys would go upstairs. It's really 9:00 because we had [indistinct 00:03:53]. | 3:45 |
Mr. Powell | That's right. | 3:45 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | [indistinct 00:03:56] | 3:45 |
Mr. Powell | And you couldn't mumble back, couldn't say nothing. But just I got in, talking. He get out now. Sure go away now, because I'd have them call bedtime on me. I was gone 9:00. Sometimes before 9:00. I know. I had my watch in my hands and looking for what time it was. I said, "Hmm-mm. About time to wake me up." And I go out now because then you hear a chair move. Once you hear a chair move now, if somebody walked, time for you better be going. And go, too. | 3:59 |
Mr. Powell | That's exactly the way it was. | 4:31 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And this is a personal question Mr. Powell, but you don't have to answer if you don't want to. When you were courting these girls, did you get to kiss them good night? | 4:35 |
Mr. Powell | I didn't understand all that. What'd you say? | 4:43 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Could you kiss these girls good night when you went to see them? | 4:48 |
Mr. Powell | Oh, oh, oh. Well, sometimes I did. Sometimes we didn't. The parents sometimes didn't let them go. See? Yeah, sometimes they took— | 4:55 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No, did you kiss them good night? | 5:02 |
Mr. Powell | Oh, is that what she said? | 5:04 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Uh huh. | 5:05 |
Mr. Powell | Kissing? Nah, I didn't kiss them. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't. See? Because the men would—about going to overcome, in the way of the old times. I had to get out now. (all laugh) Didn't have time to kiss them. That's the way that was. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't. Yeah, that day was the day. A long way different from that now. I'm a tell you. | 5:11 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | I mean a long way- | 5:48 |
Mr. Powell | I walk out now, they won't even tell you where they're going or nothing. They don't tell you when they coming back. Tell you nothing. That's the way it sure is now, but you had to tell then where you were going, whose house you going to. And then, "Oh, son now you be back here," and you had to be back. And I was around 12 or 13 year old, 15 year old. I'd be back there. Yes, I was. | 5:48 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Sure would. | 6:18 |
Mr. Powell | 15 year old, I was back home. | 6:18 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | I was afraid [indistinct 00:06:19] at night and showing the way down, and it was time for them to come in. I know that. | 6:18 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Mrs. Thorne, when you were getting ready to get married, did your mother tell you how to be a good wife and a good mother? | 6:31 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Mm-hmm. | 6:41 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What did she tell you? | 6:42 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | She just told me, "If you ever get mad at this man, you don't never want to fight him. Be nice to him in everything." Telling me if I wasn't nice to him and speak to him and talk with him nice, that he didn't come in my house no more. Hmm-mm. | 6:43 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah, they tell you how to treat women now. All that stuff. | 7:12 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | She'd say right there, "If you don't treat him nice now, what you going to do when you're married? And once you're angry?" | 7:14 |
Mr. Powell | Mm-hmm, sure did. | 7:17 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And Mr. Powell, did your parents or your father tell you how to be a good man and husband? | 7:23 |
Mr. Powell | Mm-hmm, yes sure. On my marriage day, yeah. If you all be together, act together, [indistinct 00:07:39] treat people, treat your own self right, treat your wife right, she treat you right. And live together, work together, help one another, all that stuff. When we go out, we go out together, come back. And support her in everything, all that. | 7:28 |
Mr. Powell | But that's what they always tell me, and I support my people like that. Yeah. Always support, didn't have no problems on that. That was a good idea and good words he spoke. The words to say how to do, because some people think that you can go around and do things what you ain't supposed to do, but man and wife supposed to live together just like that. And do, you'll get along fine, won't have no problems. | 8:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I'll remember that if I ever get married. | 8:32 |
Mr. Powell | Well, it's a good idea to do. If you ever get married, stick together. And you won't never have a whole lot of arguments, this and that, fussing and fighting. I stay married 51 years, I never put my hands on my wife for it. | 8:32 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did anyone you knew put a hand on their wife? | 8:56 |
Mr. Powell | All kinds. Not with my wife, but with their wife. Yeah, they done fought and left one another too. I ain't never left my wife, she ain't never left me til she passed away. And we stayed together 51 years. | 9:01 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | [indistinct 00:09:23] right on the main street. Knocked her right down. | 9:22 |
Mr. Powell | Mm-hmm, yeah. | 9:22 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Sure did. | 9:22 |
Mr. Powell | They did all that. | 9:22 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | And another man walked up to him and said, "Ain't you ashamed of yourself?" | 9:22 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | "No, I ain't ashamed of myself. I hit her again if I want to." He said, "Well, hit her then." He didn't hit her no more because he was going to knock him down himself. | 9:22 |
Mr. Powell | Mm-hmm, yeah I tell you. If you get together good, but— | 9:30 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | He left that woman. He told her, "He didn't care about you leaving. I rather for you left when he started hitting instead of knocking her down, busting her up real good." | 9:35 |
Mr. Powell | Yes, sir. | 10:00 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Men folk used to be kind of nicer to women folk. The way I looked at it, ain't never had no man that hit me. So, if they had hit me, they'd have been in the ground long ago. Or somewhere. | 10:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | He would've been in the ground? | 10:16 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Huh? | 10:18 |
Rhonda Mawhood | If he had hit you, he would've been in the ground? Would your father have gotten mad? | 10:18 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | No, my brother was the one who would've gotten him. That means they would've got him, too. I got one they told him, "I better no never hear her telling you hitting my sister." He said, "I ain't going to hit her." Said, "I'm a put her where nobody won't have to hit her." He said, "You going to kill her then, huh?" He said, "No, I ain't going to kill her, but I'm a do something to her." | 10:27 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Mama, when did dad say something like that? | 10:28 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Huh? | 10:28 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | When'd dad say— | 10:30 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | That was my brother Charlie. | 11:03 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Okay, but I [indistinct 00:11:07]. | 11:03 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Mm-hmm, you don't remember anything like this ever? | 11:07 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No, yeah. | 11:10 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay, thank you. I was wondering, Mrs. Babcock, if you have any thoughts on how Princeville has changed over time since you were a little girl coming here? | 11:11 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Oh, gosh yeah. We got a drug problem. We can no longer go out without locking our doors. We never locked our doors. We used to sleep on the front porch all night and nobody bothered you. There was a neighborness, you know? Neighbor to neighbor. If my grandmother raised squash and the neighbor over here raised corn, they exchanged those things. One would give some squash and the other one gave green beans. | 11:26 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | And I think I told you about if you were sick, you didn't have to worry about it. Your neighbor came and took care of you. | 12:23 |
Mr. Powell | That's true. They were good for that. | 12:34 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | They did your wash, they cooked you food. They cooked food out of their house, took it over to your house and made sure your kids were clean. Well, we have changed in other ways. Princeville now has paved streets. They didn't have paved streets then. The houses are better. People have electricity, so my uncle put up the first electric lights in this town. My uncle Frank Cane Anderson, and at that time I think you just have to go if it was windy because Ed [indistinct 00:13:29] and I were talking about the other night. So you didn't get executed, electrocuted. They said they had to turn a switch or something and they turn them off. | 12:40 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | You can no longer go out at night. You can't go out alone at night anymore. We used to go to church and you only saw—There was a light, say on the main street. See, at that time, Macedonia Church used to be out on the main street. There was a light out there on the main street and it was so dim, you probably couldn't even read a newspaper under it. But then you'd come all the way down here, and then maybe there was one maybe right down here by the church or something and that's as—But nobody bothered you. You felt safe. You felt safe in your own community, you felt safe in your own home. | 13:43 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | If somebody came by to borrow something, they told you about it and then they might replace it, they might not. But you didn't have to worry. There wasn't that kind of a worry. It wasn't a physical. You didn't feel physically threatened. And I think the physical environment of the town has changed. The emotional, the social, and the neighborness has changed quite a bit. Even though we got churches here, even the churches are no longer as—In fact, when I grew up, you knew it was Sunday morning because at a quarter to 11:00, every church bell in the town rang. | 14:34 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Now, you don't hear a church bell ring, okay? And the wagons came filled with children. They stayed until late in the afternoon and then they didn't have any evening services, but they stayed until church was out. Then they would went to each people's house and they got fed on Sunday and have Sunday dinner. It was just kind of a different kind of a life. | 15:42 |
Speaker 1 | How y'all doing? | 16:22 |
Mr. Powell | All right, how you doing? | 16:22 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | And it was a different kind of life. A different lifestyle than it is today. I mean, as I said, physical part of it, the outer of Princeville, it's cleaner in some places, but it just isn't the same place. You don't get the same kind of feeling. Pull a chair. | 16:33 |
Rhonda Mawhood | —how Princeville has changed over time, and I've been talking with Ms. Babcock and Ms. Thorne and Mr. Powell for a couple hours now. What I thought would be my last question would be how Princeville has changed over time. Have you seen a lot of changes in Princeville, ma'am? | 17:08 |
Speaker 1 | Mm-hmm. Yep. | 17:28 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What kind of things do you notice changing? | 17:28 |
Speaker 1 | Yeah, yeah. I just can't recall the name right now, but I just can't tell. | 17:31 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Mm-hmm, but you have seen changes? | 17:42 |
Speaker 1 | Yeah, I've seen changes. | 17:45 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Thank you ma'am. | 17:47 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Oh, yeah. We have running water. We have running water, toilets, indoor toilets. Because when we grew up, that's the other thing. We had the outdoor toilet and you had the indoor chamber pot. So that had to be changed, had to be taken care of. And it's a real fact, my mama says—I don't remember the Sears Roebuck catalog, and we had the outhouse. You went into the garden, you had the outhouse. They changed them after so long. Mr. Powell, they would take the outhouse up and then would lime it. Would they lime it over or cement? | 17:50 |
Mr. Powell | Mm-hmm. | 18:40 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Which one you think— | 18:41 |
Mr. Powell | They put a cement slab in there. | 18:41 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | They put a cement slab on it? | 18:44 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah, in there and set the house on top of the slab. That's the way they did it. | 18:45 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Mm-hmm. | 18:48 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | [indistinct 00:18:53] and put it in there. | 18:48 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah, but going there, they didn't have that. | 18:54 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | No. | 18:57 |
Mr. Powell | They just dug a hole in the ground and made the paved one sit right over. That was before they started making slabs. Mm-hmm, but I hope so [indistinct 00:19:10]. The whole country. Boil the chambers. Didn't have no lights. | 19:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You didn't have lights? | 19:09 |
Mr. Powell | No, we didn't have no lights. | 19:09 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | No, they didn't have no electric lights in them. | 19:09 |
Mr. Powell | Didn't have no electric lights. | 19:09 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah, you could sort of stand out and the only thing you see was a little flicker every now and then in somebody's house, of a lamp. And in the summertime, people didn't even light their lamps that much. | 19:31 |
Mr. Powell | No, no. | 19:48 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No, because it was too hot. And as I told you, we slept out on the front porch. You slept with your doors open, your windows open. | 19:49 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah, nobody bothered you. | 20:02 |
Speaker 1 | Can't do it now. You get killed. | 20:04 |
Mr. Powell | No, you sleep on the porch all night long. Nobody worry about it. | 20:04 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | And nobody didn't even go in there and bother you. | 20:13 |
Mr. Powell | They sure wouldn't. | 20:15 |
Speaker 1 | Not out there now. | 20:15 |
Mr. Powell | Don't lay out there now, because you might lay out there and won't never get up. | 20:15 |
Speaker 1 | Sure right. | 20:15 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah, sure. | 20:15 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | They also slept on shuck mattresses sometimes, didn't they? | 20:15 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah. | 20:19 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | A shuck mattress meant that it was corn cob. Mattresses made of— | 20:21 |
Mr. Powell | Shuck. | 20:29 |
Speaker 1 | On hay. Slept on hay, too. | 20:29 |
Mr. Powell | Shuck. | 20:30 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah, and hay. | 20:30 |
Mr. Powell | Corn that'd been shucked and make what you call the filling in the mattress. Like a- | 20:31 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Slept on pallets on the floor. | 20:43 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah, shuck mattresses. | 20:43 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Slept right on the floor on the pallet. You'd take a coat or something and put it out there and then you put your pillow on your head and you lay right there, all night long. | 20:51 |
Mr. Powell | All night. | 20:56 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Take a sheet or something and spread it over you. | 20:57 |
Mr. Powell | Mm-hmm. | 20:58 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | That's what you do. | 21:00 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Oh, that's right. That's something else that has gone by. Nobody makes—Well, yes they do. My neighbor next door makes quilts, but that has just almost died out; quilt making. | 21:02 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah. | 21:17 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Everybody in the community made quilts at that time. Yeah, we still have some of my grandma's quilts. Yeah. | 21:18 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did women get together to make quilts? Or did they make them alone? | 21:26 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No, they got together and they made quilts. Except for my mother made her quilts on the bed. Can you imagine sitting there and making that—Roll it up and then as she made another row, she'd let it out. And then make another row and she made us a king sized quilt. My husband. She also made, every one of the grandchildren, I think, has the quilt that she had made. | 21:30 |
Mr. Powell | They were warm, weren't they? | 22:02 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Mm-hmm. | 22:02 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And where would your mother get the cloth for the quilts? | 22:06 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Oh, sometimes she just used scraps. Yeah, my grandmother sewed. Yeah, my grandmother made all the clothes for everybody, so that was the quilt scraps. | 22:09 |
Mr. Powell | Then they took the scraps, yeah. Took off, if you had someone making dresses and different things like that. They'd take all their scraps, lay it right down, sew them together, square it and lie it up just like they want, they're taught. Everything is like they're taught to do and that'd go on the bed, twin bed. That would suit. | 22:25 |
Mr. Powell | Then just quilt it out. Take a shirt in there and get cotton padding. Wasn't no other— | 22:47 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah, batting. | 22:47 |
Mr. Powell | Huh? | 22:47 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Batting? | 22:47 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah. | 22:47 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah, cotton batting. | 22:50 |
Mr. Powell | Remember that's the one where you wash it or put it so it wouldn't roll up on the inside. It stayed just like it was. They laid flat down, just like that. It wouldn't roll up then when you quilt. Quilts were them things [indistinct 00:23:21] come in here and make a little—Had like that. Line thread, like put it that close together. | 23:04 |
Rhonda Mawhood | A couple inches? Ah. | 23:25 |
Mr. Powell | And sew it up all the way around, all the way on the whole thread. And then you got filling it and fill it. Then there's line, there's [indistinct 00:23:41] all the way around. | 23:34 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah, we had a [indistinct 00:23:45]. You ever seen a [indistinct 00:23:47]? Yeah, and because where you lay it— | 23:45 |
Speaker 1 | Mm-hmm, it get high in there. | 23:50 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. | 23:50 |
Speaker 1 | Sure as just the one, til it's right. I loved to get in there, in the barricade when it's cold. We used to get in there, wrap up real tight. You'd feel good down there. | 23:50 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | If I had that, I wouldn't let you get in it. | 24:02 |
Speaker 1 | You said you already got one. You said you had one? | 24:03 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No, we— | 24:12 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | We ain't not got one. | 24:12 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | —don't have it anymore. Yeah, it disappeared. | 24:14 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Don't nothing beat them good old night quilts. Lining and everything and then you got them frames they put them in and cured them. I'm telling you, you got them and then you put that on your bed. You got them other things. I'm telling you, I done quilted many a night. | 24:17 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Who taught you to make quilts, Mrs. Thorne? | 24:41 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Huh? | 24:43 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Who taught you to make quilts? | 24:44 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | My mother. She showed me how to put the needle in. You know, you put the needle in, under there and pull it out. Then you take and you cut it down, just like you shoving it to the middle. And then you take, you pull that needle up and then that stitch is just as nice and small. That's right. I learned that from her and then my older sister learned me how to quilt some. | 24:46 |
Mr. Powell | I don't quilt. | 25:14 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Huh? | 25:14 |
Mr. Powell | I said, I don't quilt. You sure got it. You sewn over many quilts. | 25:17 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | I stayed up many nights til 1:00, quilting. | 25:19 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Til 1:00? | 25:30 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Mm-hmm. Sometimes I used to quilt all night. Mm-hmm, they had a nice light and everything. | 25:30 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you stay up all night because you were in a hurry to get it finished? | 25:44 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Yeah. I had to sit up all night long til I finished. | 25:47 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah, I did some of everything like sewing and make shirts. | 25:55 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Who taught you to sew, Mr. Powell? | 26:00 |
Mr. Powell | My mother. Mm-hmm. Taught me everything how to do it. | 26:16 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did other boys learn how to sew also? | 26:17 |
Mr. Powell | No, my mother showed me everything. I cooked, washed, sewed, patch. | 26:17 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah, he lives by himself. Well, he did. His daughter's here now, but when he lived by himself he has a garden, he cooks, he cleans, did all his stockings. Yeah, well he's really a carpenter, so. | 26:22 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah, I taught my own self in carpentry. | 26:36 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You taught yourself carpentry? | 26:39 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah, taught my own self in carpentry. Just paid attention to people. Went around and [indistinct 00:26:48]. And whatever he did, I took it. I didn't go to school for it. I went to school, but not for no carpentry. And I didn't go that high. I was like she said, I was out in [indistinct 00:27:02]. | 26:49 |
Mr. Powell | I stayed there and worked there for them. That's the way I did. And four or five begin before I got better. One of my sister, her husband was sick and so I got married in 1929. January the fifth. I got married '29, January the fifth. So I stayed there til '30, and '30 I moved out and I told her, her husband was sick, why didn't she go down from home? That's your mother and my mother to go down there and stay? Because he had two girls and you won't have no rent to pay. I done stayed there just [indistinct 00:28:07]. And I'll come in and help you, help support while I'm working. | 26:58 |
Mr. Powell | So, she did it. And so I went down every week. When i got my payroll, I carried her a box of food down there to my mama's. That's the way I did. Help her because she had no job, my mama wasn't working, and my father, he wasn't doing much because he old. And so, I support them. I helped support them with what they had. So that's the way all of them got along, just as nice. Because I had a good job. I was working for the Cole Veneer Company over back on Thacker Hill. Called Rick Veneer Company. I worked there for 33 years and that's the way I worked in there. | 28:11 |
Mr. Powell | I started there, I think in '27. That's when I started there and I got married in '29. I worked there two years and I got married then in '29, January the fifth. That's right. So, everything worked out just nice. Ain't have no problem. Hmm-mm. | 28:56 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Thank you. | 29:18 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah, took care of my mama and looked after her and my father. Because when my father got sick, he already was sick and he wasn't able to do nothing. And I was up there. And only them was at the house then, and so every time he had one of them spells or something, they would call me. I go home and see about him. So that time, I went home and he had one, and I said, "Papa, what's the trouble?" He said, "I'm sick." He said, "I won't go out the door." I said, "You won't go out the door?" I said, "Can you walk?" He said, "Yeah, you can carry me out the door." | 29:19 |
Mr. Powell | So I said, "Okay, put your feet on the floor." I put his feet on the floor, I come wrap around his waist over this shoulder and carried him out on the back porch. Once I got on the back porch he come and say, "Getting weak, weaker." I remember I took him back, "Come on. Go back in the house and get back in the bed." And time I got him on the bed, he passed right away. Just like that. His head, I couldn't even get my hand from under his head. My hand was wrapped around on his head while laying him down and he passed on the way. | 30:04 |
Mr. Powell | And I called my mama and told my father had gone. I guess I got home in time, because see, I working over here in [indistinct 00:30:43]. And I didn't have plans to come and I come there in a few minutes. [indistinct 00:30:49] So I said, I reckon that's why the good Lord blessed me then. On goodness, I get back there to warn my parents. Anybody, you know a whole lot of people out here. People in the family, mother's side, father's side. I been around when all of them got sick, checked on them, see how they were doing. All of them looked for me because I was the oldest boy with my mother at home. She didn't have but two boys and one left when he was 14. And I stayed there. See? | 30:29 |
Mr. Powell | And he was in the army. I think when he was about 15 or 16 he got in the army, in World War I. And he stayed in there about four or five years, I believe. Mm-hmm. Then when he come back, he was married. He stayed in Boston Massachusetts then, and he come back home. First time I had seen him since he left home. | 31:23 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What was your brother's name, Mr. Powell? | 31:52 |
Mr. Powell | Moses Powell. | 31:53 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Moses Powell. | 31:53 |
Mr. Powell | Mm-hmm, yeah. | 31:53 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay, thank you so much for all the stories. | 32:02 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You were telling me, or Mrs. Babcock was telling me that your family is the oldest family in Princeville? | 0:01 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Mm-hmm. | 0:09 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Were your parents from— | 0:09 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | My mother and father, my sisters and my brothers. | 0:13 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. | 0:18 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | So at that rate, I ain't the oldest child, but I'm the oldest citizen living in town, in Princeville. | 0:19 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And you told me you were 94 years old, ma'am. | 0:28 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Yeah. | 0:30 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | As of September. | 0:33 |
Rhonda Mawhood | This coming September? | 0:33 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | This coming September. | 0:33 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, right, okay. Born in 1899. | 0:37 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | One lady told me I wasn't that old, I told her when I was born. I told her I was born in 18 and 99. And she could count from that if she want to. And I either take my word. So that's how old. I'd pick cotton. I got up by the bed at morning at 3:00, 4:30 and 5:00 and chopped cotton all until 12:00 at day. And then after dinner, I'd go to the house and eat my dinner. And then I'd come back, go to the field and finish chopping cotton. Yeah. I have did a lot of work in my life. And the lady told me says, "You ain't that old. You don't look that old." I said, "I can't help but looking it." I said, "Because I know how old I am." I said, "I know when I was born and when [indistinct 00:01:37] the old." I said, "My mother was named Edie Anderson. My father named Virgil Anderson." | 0:40 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Virgil Anderson. | 1:42 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Mm-hmm. And so at that rate, I got to say, I got sisters and brothers older than I am. And so I said, "That's all I can tell you about that." | 1:44 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You told me before about chopping cotton, Mrs. Thorne. How much cotton did you chop in a day? | 1:56 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | I don't know how much I chopped in a day, but we went by the row, we chopped the row, the grass and the cotton in the row. And that's how I know I chopped cotton. And picking cotton, you pick it by the pound. The man would weigh it up at the evening time. At least I didn't want to, but I had it to do. Yeah. | 2:03 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You didn't want to pick cotton? | 2:31 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | I didn't want it at first. But after I found out I had to do it, then I had to go right on and go to work. Yeah. Because when my mother tell you do something, you had it to do. | 2:32 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Were your parents born as slaves, Mrs. Thorne or were they born free? | 2:55 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Okay. There they are. That's their birth— | 3:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Thank you, ma'am. Okay. So they were born— I see. This is a photo of Mr. Virgil Anderson. Oh my goodness. Born the 12th of April 1862 and died 18 March, 1947. He was a judge? | 3:15 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | He was magistrate of this district, the first and only and last, okay, magistrate of Princeville and I'm not sure exactly what happened, but at that time he didn't try the felony cases. It was just like any magistrate. The magistrate in Rocky Mount, right now, they don't try cases. They might give them one, but in the time my grandfather was the magistrate of Princeville, they didn't have the kind of crime we have now. The only thing we had was maybe somebody got a little drunk or somebody might steal a little something from somebody. But it wasn't the kind of crime that we have today. | 3:32 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | And we have to consider, my grandfather, in this area, he was the only person who ever reached that status. And to consider that supposedly, he only went to school for three days, learned his ABCs, the alphabet, and then everything else is history. He learned to read to write. And when my grandparents moved here, the town was incorporated in 1885. My grandparents bought this property next door in 1897. I think the town had been incorporated 12 years at that particular time. And they did not move here until 1899. | 4:21 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Actually moved into the house [indistinct 00:05:21] you don't know this, but they were making say something like $25, $30 a day, so my grandparents took their money and saved it up in order to get the $50. They property only cost $50. They bought the property and then they immediately put it in hock until they could build a house. See, they had to get the money to build the house. And then they built a house and then they repaid that money back. And that's how they got that house next door. | 5:20 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you know where your grandparents moved here from, Ms. Babcock? | 6:03 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | It's out in Edgecombe County, but where I don't know. It was in Edgecombe County. Someplace in Edgecombe County. | 6:06 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And did you know your grandparents? | 6:14 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Of course, yeah. In fact, I was in nurses' training when my grandfather died. I was in the Air Force when my grandmother died. So yeah. Then every summer, if school closed on Friday, not later than Sunday, we were here. And we stayed until two weeks before school started. As I told you, we grew up in Rocky Mount, which means that we came down and we knew just about everybody in town. And we spent the whole summer playing around here in the streets where there was no pavement. It was all dirt roads. And we built a tire— You took a tire and put a rope on it and hooked it up on the tree. And you took the rims from a barrels and you took a coat hanger and you rolled it down the streets. And that was some of the things, how you played and you played the jack rocks. We played, what was it? Hopscotch. All the things that kids play. | 6:19 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | But a lot of times, my grandmother took in washing. So there was at that time, let's say, Charlie, Frank Junior, John Junior, my two sisters, and my stepsister, that makes seven. Yeah. (phone rings) | 7:33 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Usually like I pause it. [INTERRUPTION 00:08:00] | 7:56 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Oh, to get back to those of us who my grandmother had all of us here during the summer. Because we had two older cousins, no, three older cousins, but they were too old to do the bucket brigade. And there was a pump. So we pumped the water in the bucket. And my cousin, my oldest cousin, whose name is Charlie, would be the overseer. So as we pumped the water and you stand in line and you went until you get to the last person. And then it was dumped into the buckets so grandma could wash. And so that was the other time how we spent the summer. | 8:00 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | And my grandparents had peach trees. They had kind of a small peach orchard, it wasn't really a whole lot of peaches, peach trees. I guess, well, maybe about 10, we did have. And we'd all go out and pick the peaches and then grandma would preserve them and she'd do what, at that time they called it air tight, but right now it's— What they did, they put it up with water. It was just peaches put up with plain water in jars. And that's what they made the pies in the winter with. Okay? And of course, I have a garden now. And it's one of those things that we always have had a garden. But I don't remember. I was trying to remember the other day, I cannot remember working in the garden. | 8:52 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | With what? | 9:56 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | I can't remember. Mom, I can't remember working in Grandma's garden. | 9:56 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | You don't— | 9:58 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No, I know— | 9:58 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | No you don't. I know you don't because you were small. | 9:59 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No, we weren't that small. But what I do remember is going out into the garden. Grandma had the tomatoes. They were— | 10:07 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | They were small. | 10:16 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. They were tiny, tiny tomatoes. Cherry— | 10:22 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | They just started growing. | 10:24 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No, they're smaller than a cherry tomato. And I'm trying to find the word for it. I think it's called Champagne. I think it was either, I think that's what it was. I'm not sure. But it's called Champagne tomatoes and real sweet. And what we did was you took some, you didn't have to peel them because they were so tiny and you just put them in a pot with some sugar in them. And then since she had the fire outdoors, it was hot though, but she would boil— You had the board clothes in the pot and we put it around the pot and cooked the tomatoes. And then you took those great big biscuits for breakfast and you took them into the tomatoes and you had a glass of milk and that was your lunch. Okay? But as I was saying, that was the only time I can remember going into the garden to get anything. And now maybe it's because my grandma was real, real careful. | 10:25 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Her garden had to be it. And she didn't allow you to go in and mess. Okay? So I guess that was what I was [indistinct 00:11:49]. Because she had this one peach tree, it was a Georgia peach tree. And the peaches, I'm exaggerating, okay? But the peaches were as big as my two fists together. I know they really weren't that big, but they were the Georgia type peaches. And the rest of the trees we could shake. But this tree, the peaches were taken off, hand-picked. Okay? | 11:33 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | My cousin would go up the tree and then he would hand-pick them and then put them in this bucket. And then grandma would make special preserves and things and air tight those special for eating during the winter. And one of the other things that always amazed me was my grandmother had a choke cherry tree. You know what a choke cherry tree is? | 12:20 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Yeah. | 12:50 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Okay. Those little tiny cherries. And she and those birds, the birds liked them. And my grandmother wanted them. So she and the birds fought over those cherries. But my grandma always won. And I'm not sure exactly how she won, but she always got her cherries. | 12:51 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Then you on the fuss then. You let one of the other children hit one of the other one, you be all fuss then. And she didn't allow nobody to hit her grandchildren here. Not never. She didn't hardly want me. I told her they was mine and I've got to hit them when I got ready. She said, "You ain't going to talk your big chat to me." (laughs) | 13:19 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | I'm telling you, them old folk was a sight then. They didn't allow you to say nary a word. Mm-mm. I'm telling you. But it was good old folks, I tell you that. They could go there and ask grandma and get them this and get them the other to give to them. I go there and ask her for one thing, I ain't going to get nothing. | 13:48 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So your parents treated the grandchildren different from how they treated you? | 14:14 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Uh-huh. | 14:20 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Their children? | 14:20 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Yeah. That's what they'd do. They save things for them instead of getting them to me. But I done all the work. And they'll go to their grandma's house fore come to mine sometimes. They love their grandma and their granddaddy. They say, "Mom, I'm going to granddad." I'd say, "Why are you going in that alley?" "That's all right. I'm going there." I said, "I dare you to go out this yard." They wouldn't go near there. Mm-mm, mm-mm (negative). "Get one, holler at them, "Mama said sister was going to go to grandpa's house and tell them, come back here." They'll come back too. Yeah. | 14:21 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Mrs. Thorne, when you were growing up, did you also work in the house? | 15:09 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | I would always be doing something or other, and then I go to the field and do some work out there. | 15:14 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | In the house, what do you mean in the house? | 15:22 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Things like, I don't know, cooking, putting things in order, cleaning. I guess the laundry was done outside. | 15:25 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Oh yeah. Yeah. It's like you got up, because of course they had to get up in the morning in order to get to work. So you got up and just made your bed and you ran, got out. They took everybody. At that time you went to work on a wagon and horse. A horse and buggy. Well, not horse and buggy, but a horse and wagon because people used to— I can remember this. They'd come and they'd stop at the end of the street. And then everybody who was working, going to that particular farm, would come down and they'd have their bucket for the food for the day. Sometimes the people on the farm fed them. But if they didn't feed them, then they would take their own lunch. And then they would take something to drink, maybe soda pop. Okay? And then they'd have the bucket of water. And I understand that they drank the water out of the dipper. Okay? People come by the dipper and they get the drink. Everybody would drank out of the same dipper at that time. Nobody worried about germs. | 15:34 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So the land that your mother thinks she worked on was not her parents' land? | 16:52 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No, no, no, no, no. | 16:56 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. | 16:56 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | The land was farmers'. The farmers would come to town and take people from the town to work out in their fields. Okay? For instance, in this neighborhood, I know several people like mother's neighbors. I know that Mrs. Rosa Rollins, was only I right now can remember who would go out and work on the farms. | 17:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So these were farms owned by White people? | 17:44 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Uh-huh. | 17:47 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, okay. | 17:47 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. They were farms owned by Caucasian, farms in the area. And that's why she was saying that they got, usually it was a hundred dollars for a hundred pounds of cotton. I mean, a dollar for a hundred. A dollar for a hundred pounds of cotton. And in those days, when we think about it, my grandparents bought things like gramophones and they pooled all their money and they had a really nice house, grass bed. And every house, there was cook stoves, nice stoves. And as far as I can remember, Grandma didn't have rugs on the floor. | 17:49 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | What? | 18:36 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | I can't remember if Grandma had a rug on the floor. | 18:36 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Uh-huh. Yeah. Some of them had a rug on the floor and some didn't. | 18:36 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Some people pooled the money and they bought pianos. In fact, Aunt Edie had piano. But during the flood, they had a flood, I think, and the flood washed it away. Not washed it away but destroyed it. It got water bound. And so that was the end of that because by that time she was old enough to get out and leave home. | 18:37 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I know there was a flood in 1919. | 19:38 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. | 19:41 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | I mean, that was a flood too. | 19:42 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you remember that flood, ma'am? | 19:44 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | That flood? I certainly do. Because I helped my parents get out in the water. And so at that rate, I know all about that flood. The water come halfway in our house, just like that side of that board. And so us had to get out of there and go somewhere else where the water won't rise in there. Yeah. | 19:48 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Mama, right after that too, I think Grandma bought the sewing machine. | 20:12 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Uh-huh. | 20:15 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Grandma had a single sewing machine that got destroyed and then they bought another one right after that. Because my sister has that sewing machine that was grandma's. | 20:15 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Yeah. That's when she bought that one. | 20:35 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. After that flood. Yeah. | 20:35 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | I mean, the folks were going from place to place when that high water was. I mean, you ain't never seen no water. But honey, you would've seen some then. 19 and 19. That water was so high you couldn't even think about getting out. Men folk what had boats and things, was hauling the women folk and children out the water. I said, "They sure know how to do something [indistinct 00:20:59]." (laughs) | 20:35 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Were you afraid during the flood, Mrs. Thorne? | 21:02 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Huh? | 21:02 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Were you afraid? Were you scared? | 21:05 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Afraid to get on there? Yeah, I was sort of afraid, but I wasn't old enough to know there was dangers of it. Yeah. I mean there was water, everywhere you looked was high water. I'm telling you. And Mama would tell her, "Don't y'all go down there, the way that water's higher in there than it is here." Just didn't go. | 21:11 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Mom, isn't that the year that they brought the boats over and they got everybody in it and took you over to Tarboro? I think that's the year that they brought the boats over. | 21:39 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Uh-huh. | 21:44 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Got everybody out of Princeville and took them over to Tarboro and they stayed with either relatives or friends somewhere. | 21:45 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Yeah, that's the year. | 21:52 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. | 21:52 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | I mean, there was some high water then, honey. You ain't never seen no high water over here, you would have seen some then. Everywhere you looked was high water. With nowhere no dry land nowhere. And the little children was scared to death of it because the parents had done told them, "You go out there, you going to get drowned." And they didn't know what drowned was, but she told them. Yeah. | 21:55 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did people's animals get destroyed? | 22:23 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Huh? | 22:26 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did people's animals die in the flood? | 22:27 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Uh-huh. Nobody didn't get drowned or nothing. Nobody didn't die at all. The Lord was with them all the way around. Didn't have no death in all that water because the folks started in time. They put them on high land as far as they could go and if there wasn't high land, there was water. There was—far enough to their waist, around here, that they couldn't get out. | 22:32 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You say that the Lord protected people? Were people praying during the flood? Do you remember people praying, ma'am? | 23:02 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | No, they didn't pay nothing. | 23:09 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Praying. | 23:12 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Praying. | 23:13 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Did they pray, Mom? | 23:14 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Huh? | 23:16 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Did they pray? I don't know. I gather they would be praying. | 23:16 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I was just wondering. Mrs. Thorne might remember, it's not— | 23:22 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | But I'm sure that the animals— That's right. During that particular time, everybody in Princeville just about, not everybody, but people had hogs and chickens and geese. My cousin had these geese that if you came— We were scared to even go around there unless somebody was out there because they really let everybody know that this was their territory and you did not invade it. Yeah, but my grandparents didn't have any geese. They just, my grandma raised chickens and my image of my grandmother at times is to see her standing out in the evening with this grain in her apron throwing it to the chickens. That's one of the pictures— | 23:27 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | I don't know how us fed the chickens. I don't know how we fed the chicken because the water was on the ground around there. But they found somewhere they could get something or other to eat. Us didn't lose no chickens. Us had chickens, large as a turkey, about. All them chickens lived and us cooked some of them and everything. Folks come there and ask Mama, "Sister Anderson, can you sell me a chicken?" Ma said, "No, I ain't got nothing to sell." Of course, she thought all of them going to die, you know, and she wouldn't have none herself. So we raised all our chicken, our ducks and our geese. No. | 24:23 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | I don't remember Grandma and them having them, but Mom does. And she also remembers they had— Was it a donkey, a horse or something that you had to go take him? | 25:13 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Talking about ducks. | 25:25 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No, Mama. Didn't we have a— you and Uncle— | 25:27 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Roy? | 25:30 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No, Uncle Frank Cain, used to have to go and take the— Was it a donkey? Was it a horse that you'd have to feed him in the afternoon. Take him up to the pasture? | 25:35 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Uh-huh, uh-huh. | 25:47 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Okay. I can remember talking about this a long time ago, but it just sort of dawned on me. | 25:51 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | So many things were going on. I can't think of all of it. | 25:58 |
Rhonda Mawhood | That's fine. The things you remember are very interesting to me. I was wondering, Mrs. Babcock had said that your grandfather was a magistrate and that your grandmother's a laundress. What other work did your grandfather do? | 26:01 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Oh, he was on the boat that went from Shiloh back to Tarboro. At that time the river bridge was wooden and you used to turn the river bridge around so the boats could pass through. And he worked at the— Ma, what's the mill over in the town that they make socks out of— | 26:16 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | The what? | 26:48 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | What's the name of that mill over town that they be— | 26:48 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Runnymede Mills. | 26:50 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Runnymede Mills. | 26:51 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | That was up to the depot then. | 26:53 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. | 26:54 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | My daddy, as far as that [indistinct 00:27:00] up there. Walked from over here and then walked clean up there to the depot every morning and walked back. | 27:00 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Was it far, Mrs. Thorne? | 27:06 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | No, it wasn't that farm. It was a man that had that place and he hired people to go there and work. | 27:07 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Oh, what she's saying is— No, it was a mill. | 27:16 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Yes. I was wondering if it was very far to walk to. | 27:22 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Okay, I walk up there all the time. It's about a good four miles and it's Runnymede Mill. I think they made stock and socks, but grandpa was the fire man, he kept the fire going, I think. Yeah. And he also worked in his later years, he delivered the Daily Southerner newspaper for years and years and years. And also he worked— There's some Caucasian lady, family, that he worked over in Tarboro for in his later years after— Since he lived to be 85, he worked almost until he died. So he was always working. The other thing my grandfather did, but we think my grandfather had the original flea market. | 27:27 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Had a flea market? | 28:33 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Flea market, Mama. He saved everything. There was string and wire and hats and pens and buttons. And if we had had all that stuff now, we'd probably make a mint. And I went to my uncle's, my uncle lives lived in Hanson, Massachusetts. And I went up there and we went down to his basement. His name is Chuck Charles Anderson. Charles Hamilton Anderson. And we went to his basement and there it was, Grandpa. I didn't believe that was— There was my uncle, except that my uncle had things like original books, first copies. Okay?. Pennies and money that's out of date. Coins, that coin collecting, all that kind of stuff. He had the good stuff. His wasn't exactly penny ante. | 28:35 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did your grandfather sell these things? | 29:53 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No. | 29:57 |
Rhonda Mawhood | He collected? | 29:57 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | If anybody wanted something, they just said, "Oh yeah. That Mr. Virgil's got it." And they'd go over to him and get it. And he had it, then they'd come get it. Yeah. I'm sure my grandma got tired of having this stuff all under the house and all them [indistinct 00:30:17] every place. But people came and got it. There was no problem. | 29:58 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did he ever say why he kept all of these things? | 30:23 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Well, I don't— No. But see, my grandfather was born in the middle of the Civil War. And his life, I'm sure, was not very pleasant after, because if he was born in 1862, but the war ended in '65, which means that there was three years. So he was about three years old and the war ended. Which means that during Reconstruction, Black people had a bad time. So I'm sure that he had this thing that he had to hold onto something and this gave him, I guess, security. I'm not sure. But if you notice that we who were born during the— well not born, but grew up during the Depression and the Second World War are also collectors. | 30:27 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | We collect things. I don't know what, I collect all kinds of— I'm not sure whether it's a hangover from my grandfather or whether it's also a part of that not being able to have. So you collect something. And one of the things that my grandmother's always telling me about is grandfather's biscuits. He loved biscuits because when he was growing up, he never got enough. It's just like, remember Abraham Lincoln never got enough of gingerbread? Yeah. I always think of my grandfather and biscuits and grandpa's mother said she one time made these nice little tiny biscuits, you cut them out, and my grandfather wouldn't eat them because his idea of a biscuit is a biscuit, is something that's this high and this big. | 31:24 |
Rhonda Mawhood | A big one. | 32:24 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. That to him was a biscuit and that little fancy stuff, that has nothing but hard crust was not a biscuit. Yeah. | 32:25 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When were you born, Mrs. Babcock. May I ask? | 32:42 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | I was born in '26. | 32:44 |
Rhonda Mawhood | '26. Okay. And you grew up in Rocky Mount? | 32:48 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Uh-huh. Halfway. | 32:49 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Where was that? I'm sorry. | 32:49 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Halfway. | 32:49 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Halfway in Rocky Mount, halfway here. | 32:49 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. | 32:57 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What were the differences and maybe the similarities between the two places where you grew up? | 32:59 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Okay. Princeville was country when I grew up. And Rocky Mount was kind of a small town. Most of the time in Rocky Mount, people worked in the tobacco factory, as my mother did. Mother worked in the tobacco factory, although she's talked about picking cotton. For all my life, only thing I remember her doing was working in the tobacco factory. Okay? And she worked two jobs and she would work the 11:00 to 7:00 shift in the tobacco factory and then she'd come home, wash up and then go and do a domestic job until 2:30. I think that one of the reasons I'm still going to school, I still go to school somehow or other, I'm still taking something. I'm taking a cake decorating class right now. | 33:06 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | It's that my mother would get on the front porch and she never said, "You will" or anything. She just said, "Don't be late." And we knew that she meant that we were going to go to school and you were not going to be late. And we all went to school. We went to school. But that's sort of a side thing. But the tobacco factory would open in the fall of the year. Well, actually in August and then it would run, say, maybe until March. And most of the people worked in the tobacco factories. They did domestic work and of course, there was the teachers and the doctors and the professional people, as they are always in any community. | 34:04 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | The other thing is you were not allowed to have the hogs and the chickens in Rocky Mount as people in Princeville were allowed to do, and Tarboro too at that time. The streets in Rocky Mount were paved. Okay? There was never a bus system and there wasn't a bus system here. There was a high school in Rocky Mount and then there was, I think, two or three elementary schools. In Princeville, there was only one elementary school and no high school because everybody in Princeville went to Tarboro to high school. They went to Patillo High. | 35:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What? I'm sorry which— | 36:05 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Patillo. And my cousin's husband is now the principal of Patillo School, but it's not, it's no longer a high school. So it has come along— The town and everything has come a long ways. At one time, my grandfather and the other people who were running the town at the time saved the elementary school because they wanted to send all the children from here over into Tarboro to the school. And my grandfather and them said no, because these children would have to get up in the morning at 5:00, 6:00 in the morning and it's dark and they just can't do that. | 36:07 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | So of course, they saved this school and the school that's up there now, but that's not the same school. The school that Mother went to, you know where the [indistinct 00:37:17]? Okay, that was the school and many a day, that's the other place we did. We went up to the school and played on the swings and the boards and you had pine trees. We had the pine trees out there. And it was a real rural setting where we had just all kinds of fun going up there, playing on the play equipment on the playgrounds in the summertime. | 37:06 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What part of Rocky Mount did you grow up in, Ms. Babcock? | 37:58 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | I grew up on Beal Street in Happy Hill. | 38:02 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I'm wondering about the differences between Rocky Mount and then Princeville as an African American town. Did your grandparents or your parents talk to you about the history of Princeville when you were growing up? | 38:21 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No. You see, we took it for granted. It was something you just took for granted. You're going to come to Grandma's house and you never thought about it being an all Black town. You just thought you're there and it never dawned on us that my grandfather made history. We thought that it—and, oh, the other thing is we had a Black mayor and we thought every town had a Black mayor. And it was just when we found out—Remember when Medgar Evers was killed and then his brother had became the mayor of Fayette, Mississippi? Then it dawned on everybody, at least me, it dawned on me that Princeville had made history because we just took it for granted. And we just took it for granted that everybody else's grandfather was a judge, was a magistrate. He was Grandpa, he was not the judge. To us, he was just Grandpa. | 38:33 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What did your grandparents' neighbors do for a living? Do you remember any of them? | 39:40 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Mm-hmm. They worked in the fields and of course— | 39:45 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | They worked just like my daddy did. | 40:01 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah, they— | 40:01 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | They didn't have no more than us had. | 40:01 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. It was just a small town where every— Oh, they did domestic service. Okay? When we grew up, I don't remember— The only people that I can, I'm trying to— Oh yeah, there was a few teachers around, but most of the people either worked in domestic service, they did farm work because at that time, this was the kind of community that it was. And as I told you, everybody had chickens. Some people had— The Madisons had a goat if I remember. But they had geese, chickens, turkeys, a garden and vegetables and fruits. And that's something else, there was a difference in the community. | 40:11 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | For instance, when I say community, like in Rocky Mount and in Tarboro, if somebody in Princeville died, my grandmother made a wreath out of flowers. She took food over, they still do now. And if somebody was sick, they fixed the food, took it over, sat with them, did their wash, cooked, did all those things. It was just like Little House on the Prairie in a way, as opposed to Rocky Mount. if somebody died in Rocky Mount, I don't remember having gone to anybody's funeral in Rocky Mount. I don't remember that. In fact, my impressions of life does not center so much around Rocky Mount is it does around Princeville. Now I'm trying to figure out why. And I think it's because the kind of relationship that we had with our grandparents. | 41:31 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | I do know that when I was in Rocky Mount that I used to teach BYPU and I had all the kids in the neighborhood and I made some ice cream on the weekend with my little allowance. And I combed their hair. In fact, my sister was surprised when I didn't have any children because she expected me to have 15 or 20 and she's the one that had the six children. (all laugh) I didn't have any. | 42:39 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | And that's about the difference. And see, also we couldn't play in the street because there were more cars in Rocky Mount than there were in Tarboro. And when I grew up and I was here in the summertime, we saw maybe a car maybe once a day, maybe you saw one once a day. If car come by, everybody went, "Oh. Who is that?" [indistinct 00:44:25] And if somebody came from New York, [indistinct 00:44:25] other than Princeville, everybody said, "Oh!" It was just so amazing to see somebody with a— And if they had a new car, oh, they were rich. Oh, it was [indistinct 00:44:36] | 43:29 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | They have a fit over that. | 44:35 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Oh, I know what I didn't tell you. My uncle. You asked about the work. I had an uncle, my dad's brother, who lived down the street. You know right where the empty lot is, where the senior center is right here. Okay. My uncle lived there and he tinned houses. So a lot of these houses, he tinned some of them. Like the church, the tin, the roof over there. Okay. He did that kind stuff. Yeah. | 44:39 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Interesting work. | 45:08 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Talking about [indistinct 00:45:12] | 45:12 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No, Mama. Uncle Robert. Uncle Robert. | 45:12 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Oh. | 45:12 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | And [indistinct 00:45:19] was the town recorder. He was my mother's cousin that lived up the street down here. | 45:23 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | That [indistinct 00:45:39] and them daddy. | 45:33 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. | 45:33 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Was your father also from Princeville, Mrs. Babcock? | 45:41 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No, my father was from Edgecombe County someplace, but I'm not sure exactly where he was born in. My father was a World War I veteran and in fact, my mother has the distinction of being the widow of a World War I veteran, the mother of two women veterans, my sister and myself. And I'm Korea and Vietnam. My sister is Korea. My mother is also the grandmother of— | 45:44 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | —veterans, and my husband is 30 year Navy. My sister's husband is Second World War, and my husband is Second World War, Korea, and Vietnam. He's 30 years retired. She is the auntie of four veterans. And this is Army, Navy, Coast Guard. All the men in her life, from my dad, and seven of her brothers [indistinct 00:00:47] military. | 0:01 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Would you like me to take that off you, Mrs. Thorne? | 0:51 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Huh? | 0:53 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Would you like me to take the microphone off you? I could put it on Mrs. Babcock if you would prefer, if you'd like that better. | 0:54 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | I don't understand that. | 1:00 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Mom, she wants to know if you want to take the microphone off? | 1:03 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you want to take this off? | 1:06 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | No, I just don't want it to twist up around my neck. | 1:10 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, that's fine. Okay. Actually, I'm wondering, Mrs. Babcock— | 1:16 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | The only thing I got is Army folk. (laughs) | 1:17 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You sure do. | 1:17 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Everything in my family belong to the Army. Belong to Uncle Sam. It's all right. Just so as he don't kill them. (laughs) | 1:20 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Are you proud of your family being in the Army? | 1:39 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | No. | 1:43 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Mom, you said, yes you are. You said mom, listen to what she said. She said, are you proud of the fact that we were in the military? | 1:44 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Yeah, I'm proud of them. | 1:53 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Okay. | 1:53 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Wait, I wasn't tired of them. | 1:54 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Oh, she thought you said tired. | 1:57 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Okay. | 1:58 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, I'm sorry. | 1:58 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | That's all right. It's okay. | 1:58 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, of course you're not. | 2:01 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | No. Long as they at work and ain't in the street, they ain't harm nobody, then I'm all right. But when you get in the crowd and get the fighting, and the killing, and going to do it, don't come my way. Keep on going. Be like my baby child. When she tell the police had them knife, and them pushing thing around on it, she holler right quick. "Mama, Mama, Mama." I said, "What's the matter, baby?" "Look at that man got." I said, "What he got?" "He got something up there, he said [indistinct 00:02:43]." "He ain't going bother you." She said, "He ain't?" I said, "No, because you ain't done nothing." She said, "Well, what I do, he got to do what to me?" I said, "He got to put you in jail and lock them doors." | 2:06 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And was your baby girl little? | 3:00 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | No, she a child, little girl. She around nine, 10 years old. Yes, but she scared of them. She scared of the police ones. | 3:02 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Were these policemen White men or Black men? | 3:13 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | They were White men. | 3:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | They were White men. | 3:15 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Some of them was fighting, some of them was dark men. Yeah. | 3:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Mrs. Babcock, that's one thing I wanted to ask you about, is about police in Princeville. Were there Black police here, or— | 3:24 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah, we've always had a police force. At one time there was just one. At one time there's just one policeman, Mr. Staton. | 3:32 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Mr. Staton. | 3:46 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Mm-hmm. His name was Staton. Mr. Staton. | 3:46 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | You mean Robert Staton. But he ain't now in there, though. | 3:48 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. | 3:59 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Oh, he dead. | 3:59 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. But, and of course now we have a police force. I mean, we have police here. Yeah. That's a part of the Sheriff's Department, I think. Well, we have always, Princeville has always been self-sufficient, as far as, what we haven't had, and what we really have needed was an economy. An economic base. But as the years have gone by, that's increasing now. But they've always had stores, the Madisons have had this, you've heard about them. | 4:03 |
Rhonda Mawhood | The Madisons? | 4:44 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Glen Madison, Glennie Madison. Okay. And the undertaker's department. Now those are things that we had. But Ed Bridgers' father had a store, and then Ed inherited that store and made it —when you go out here, look up the street and you'll see the brick building? | 4:46 |
Rhonda Mawhood | To the left? | 5:09 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | To the left. Uh-huh. And Edward just made that into a real nice store. Okay? But he's retired, so he doesn't run it anymore. We have beauticians over here, and that's something else we've always —no, no, because we had to go to Tarboro, Miss Gladys. When I was growing up we went to Miss Gladys Madison, who lived over in Tarboro. She did our hair. I don't remember exactly when they started the beauty shop, when the beauty shops became a part of Princeville. But I know that they do have them now. | 5:10 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | In fact, I think we're getting another one. And let's see, I think this make about four or five. Not sure. There was a saw mill at one time here, and I think it was up on Beasley Hill. And there is a cab company over here now. There's a barbecue restaurant, there's a restaurant over here. There is an electrical service. Car shop, automobile shop. So the economy is slowly becoming more noticeable. But we don't have anything like a department store. | 5:57 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | And it would be nice to have just a little kind of walk-in mall so you wouldn't have to go walk over to Tarboro. But that would sort of mess up things, I suppose would mess up Tarboro, if we had that over here. Because Tarboro derives a lot of its revenue from Princeville. They always have. | 7:05 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did these businesses, did many of them exist when you were a child, spending a lot of time in Princeville? | 7:29 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No. The only thing that I can remember when I was going up here was the stores. The little snack —well, no, because, well, no. The Madison store was a real store. I mean, they sold food, and poetry, and all the things that stores —it was a retail store, and it was also an ice house. It was an ice house because, well, most people didn't own a refrigerator, electric refrigerator. And you had this —that's right, my grandma had the ice box and you went and you got the ice, and by the time you —it dripped from up to the store down here. | 7:37 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | It was about, I guess, about maybe not quite a fourth. And then they wrapped the paper around it and they put it in the box. Yeah. And that's how they kept things cold. Yeah. | 8:28 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So your grandparents did their shopping at these stores in the neighborhood? Or did they go to Tarboro also? | 8:44 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No, they went to Tarboro also. But most of the things that we bought at the store up here was just the little things. You bought ice— | 8:50 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Bread. | 9:00 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Ice and little —yeah. Those are little things. But the big things, the big food —but actually, when we grew up, there wasn't that much that we had to buy, except for flour. Because my grandparents, I said, they raised their hogs, so they had their own lard. And at that time everybody used lard. That's why we all got high blood pressure these days. But you had your lard, and then they took the corn meal. Oh, I'm sorry. Newburn's Mill. Now, that was run by a Caucasian. Newburn's. And oh, I have to tell you about that in a minute. But that's where they got the corn ground into meal. Okay? Up at Newburn's. And they also sold all kinds of little things. In fact, that's where my mom and dad met. In fact, grandma sent —if it hadn't been for a rock of snuff, I wouldn't be here. Grandma sent mother up to the mill, to get a box of snuff. | 9:01 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | And Dad was up there. He had just not too long, gotten out of the military. And so, I don't know. They got together somehow. So they started the courting, and they got married. | 10:24 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So Mrs. Thorne, you met your husband at the mill? | 10:45 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Huh? | 10:51 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You met your husband at the mill? | 10:51 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Mm-hmm. | 10:53 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And what did you think of him when you met him? | 10:56 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | What you said? | 10:58 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Was he a handsome young man? | 11:00 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Yeah, he was a nice man. He didn't never want to fight nobody. | 11:02 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | I got— | 11:02 |
Rhonda Mawhood | He didn't want to fight? | 11:14 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | No, he didn't never fight no men. Don't bother with the women folks too. If he going to fight, fight men folks, don't fight the women folk. He ain't never hit me a lick in his life. Or fight me. He said he didn't marry that woman, then fighting her, and knocking, beat her up. Her Mama done that whooping herself. He didn't have to beat us. He never moved his guns, neither. Might been the only time he moved, was when he hold them up—hold them in, from the book, see, pat 'em then. He wasn't a fighting man. Uh-uh. You hear women say, "I wish I had that man, be my husband. He don't fight with you." I said, "No, he don't." They said, "You ain't got none bruised place on you." I said, "I ain't going to have never from him." | 11:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did your friends, the other women, have bruises on them? | 12:12 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Huh? | 12:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did your friends, the other women, have bruises on them? | 12:16 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | My husband. | 12:20 |
Mr. Thorne | (door closes) Good evening. | 12:21 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, hello. Excuse me. [INTERRUPTION 00:12:22] | 12:22 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Excuse me? | 12:26 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | I ain't had no knocking and stomping on the door. I ain't never had a beating on the man in my life. | 12:27 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, I'll take that. Excuse me. Yeah. | 12:39 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | I think we ought to talk about Mama's church, since she's the oldest member. She's an original member. | 12:52 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, and which church is that? | 13:03 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Macedonia Baptist Church. It's M-A-C-E-D-O-N-I-A. Macedonia Baptist Church. | 13:05 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Were you baptized in Macedonia Church? | 13:11 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Right down here in this river. | 13:21 |
Rhonda Mawhood | The Tar River? | 13:25 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Huh? | 13:25 |
Rhonda Mawhood | The Tar River? | 13:26 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Uh-huh. | 13:28 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | In fact, that's where everybody up until maybe, I guess, in the '50s, they used to baptize when everybody was baptized, in the Tar River. That was the kind of immersion, make sure you really got the river of Jordan. Yeah. And it was Baptist, the Baptist church. Okay. And it's a Missionary Baptist church. | 13:28 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | In fact, Mother is the last of the original members. My grandmother and my mother became members of the mission of Macedonia. My grandfather stayed at St. Stevens. In fact, something happened between my grandparents and the pastor, I guess. And my grandfather was one of those men that says the preacher would go, but he's not. But my grandmother's one says, "I'm going to get out and I'll do my own thing." So they started the Macedonia Baptist Church. | 14:09 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you know what the disagreement was about, exactly? | 14:57 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. But I would prefer not to go into that because I might get it all wrong. And I don't want to accuse somebody of something that I'd have no idea what really went on. | 14:59 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I understand, of course. | 15:17 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. | 15:18 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Mm-hmm. So you went to church when you were a little girl? | 15:19 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | I certainly did. Uh-huh. | 15:25 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you like church and stuff? | 15:25 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | I was baptized at that church. No, I was a child. But still I know all about it. I heard about it and I seen some of it. And what I seen weren't true. After I got up from inside, I told Mama, "That wasn't so." And she said, "How you know?" I said, "Because I seen it." I said, "Call the preacher. Call the person, husband's woman, either kiss a girl." I said, "That don't say he going with her," I said, "He doesn't know that. Dad doesn't remember her." One said that they's right. And so they dropped it. Because I tried to tell the truth about everything. So that was all I did. | 15:25 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you sing in church, Mrs. Thorne? | 16:19 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Mm-hmm. | 16:24 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What did you sing? | 16:24 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | What I sing— | 16:24 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What hymns? Do you remember what hymns you sang in church? | 16:25 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | No, I can't. There's so many of them, I can't think of them all now. | 16:28 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | But Mom sang in the choir up until she had the stroke in '80. Yeah. She was a member of the choir, up at her church. | 16:34 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | And she raised flowers for the church, and she belonged to what they had, the Florist Club at that time. And the elderly women in the church raised flowers and they would have monthly meetings, and they'd go from house to house, and each one would outdo each other with the kind of entertainment. Food service and all of this. Stuff. It was real fun. And in fact, after she had the stroke, that was one of the things we kept going for a long time, was her social activities, because that gave her a chance to communicate. That kept her communication skills. Yeah. And her socialization skills. | 16:45 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And you're a nurse, is that right? | 17:36 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Mm-hmm. Yeah. | 17:38 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What was it that made you decide to become a nurse? If I can ask you that. | 17:43 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | In fact, I'm not so sure if I can answer that. I just know, I guess, well, if you remember, there wasn't so many things that women could do in those days. And I got a scholarship to school, I mean, to a college. But I didn't take it because it would only pay so much of my expenses. And so I decided I would do something else that I feel that I would be able to pay my own way. | 17:54 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Which school was it that you got a scholarship to, Mrs. Babcock? | 18:32 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | It was A&T. Yeah. | 18:35 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And so, where did you do your nurses' training, then? | 18:40 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | At Good Samaritan Hospital School of Nursing, in Charlotte, North Carolina. | 18:42 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And were your parents happy when you decided to continue into nursing, when you decided to take up nursing as a career? | 18:51 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. | 18:59 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. Well, I guess I had always wanted to, in a way, had wanted to be a nurse. That's right. I know what. We had this Black nurse who was Public Health, and she used to come around the neighborhood all the time. And I think that that was one of the inspirations that I wanted to become a nurse. Yeah. | 19:01 |
Rhonda Mawhood | This was in Rocky Mount? Or Princeville? | 19:29 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | North Carolina. I mean, Rocky Mount. Mm-hmm. Yeah. | 19:32 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I haven't really asked you about your father. You mentioned your parents meeting at the mill. I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about your father? | 19:36 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Okay. | 19:46 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Come on in, if you want to. | 19:48 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Oh, you're finished? | 19:50 |
Speaker 1 | Mm-hmm. | 19:51 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Okay. Just lay it up, up there on the table. Okay? | 19:51 |
Speaker 1 | Okay. | 19:53 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Okay. And then I'll call—[INTERRUPTION 00:19:55] | 19:55 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No, what was it I said? My dad was a World War I veteran. He worked at a hardware store until when the market fell in '29. And up till then, everybody was kind of like, up there. Well, when the market fell, then he had to sort of find other work to do. What you want? | 20:02 |
Speaker 1 | I need my key for the [indistinct 00:20:38]. | 20:36 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Okay. | 20:36 |
Speaker 1 | Excuse me. | 20:36 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | So then he started to work in this tobacco factory. And that was in the wintertime, the fall and winter. But he also worked in the coal yard. He delivered coals. In fact, my dad was kind of a different man in lots of ways because he worked about two blocks from where we lived. And at dinnertime, he came home and fixed our dinner, when we were going elementary school. So we always had a hot dinner. And all the rest of the kids —we didn't know that that was kind of unique. We thought all kids got, daddy did that. | 20:44 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | He was [indistinct 00:21:34] the Bible. | 21:33 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | But now that I look back on it, most of the fathers didn't do that. | 21:35 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | No, no. | 21:44 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | And my dad didn't think too much about it. It was just something he did. | 21:47 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Only thing about the mothers (laughs). | 21:53 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | And one of the other things that he did that sort of sticks out, my mother was a disciplinarian. My dad never was, to us. And my mother told us, we were always left with this little lady in the neighborhood because as I told you, they both worked. They had to. And so she'd say, "Now go sit on the porch, get your lessons. Don't pull off your shoes, don't do anything but sit there after you get your lesson." We don't do that. You know we didn't do that. | 21:53 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | I pulled off my shoes, I left them on the porch. I went to play. I came back, the shoes were gone. I thought my mother, when she heard about it was going to say, "That's all right. I'll buy you another pair of shoes." She said, "You will go to school tomorrow barefooted." Well, I thought that she was kidding because it frosted the next day. And this was in October. Well, I went to school barefooted. | 22:37 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | But the night before, my mom and my dad had a kind of, "This is my child." "But no, this is my child," thing. "She will not go," "Yes, she will go." So my mom, of course, being the disciplinarian, she had won out. But at —let's see, recess time, here is my dad with this box. | 23:08 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | That was shoes. | 23:31 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | New shoes. And you know what, everybody on the school ground came to see me put on those new shoes. And they cost two dollars and 98 cents. The other shoes only cost a dollar. So I— | 23:32 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | She's telling the truth. | 23:53 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I'm sure she is. | 23:55 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Oh, she telling the truth. | 23:56 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. You remember, too, don't you? | 23:57 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Yes. | 24:05 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | So I got two dollars and 98 cents —and in those days, if you got two dollars and 98 cents pair of shoes, that was considered almost rich. And I'm not being [indistinct 00:24:17] I'm saying, but that was meant that you didn't have to wear those old ugly shoes. I mean, that was —you got the nice stuff. But no, those are just the kind of things my dad did. | 24:06 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | And one of the other things he did was, at Christmas time, the only time I could remember it snowing in Rocky Mountain at Christmas, my dad took two sticks and ran them across the top of the house. And how he did that, I'm not sure. And the next day he told us that Santa Claus took his sleigh and stood it on our house, and went from our house to the rest of the houses in the neighborhood. | 24:35 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | And if you are talking about three kids that walked around, we didn't even have a bus line. But by God we made money. Those are the kinds of things. That's the kind of man my dad was. And of course, but to get back to his work, he was a machinist at the Naval yard in Norfolk, Virginia during the war. And that's where he retired from. | 25:04 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I'd like to ask you some questions about Princeville itself, what you remember about it. | 25:42 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Okay. | 25:45 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I'm wondering what kinds of organizations there were in Princeville, clubs or associations, things like that. | 25:47 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah. Mom, what was the —there was the Masons. | 25:55 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Oddfellows. | 26:05 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | The Oddfellows. Yeah. Okay. And what's the Masons, the women of the Masons? The Star- | 26:05 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Eastern Star. | 26:20 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Eastern Star. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Those were the kinds. Those was the organizations. But most of the time in Princeville, that was the church. The church was the nucleus of the community. And beside this church over here, and this is the oldest church in Princeville, I guess it's Mount Zion. Okay. Mount Zion. And I'd like you to go, on your way out, go out and look at the stone in front. | 26:20 |
Rhonda Mawhood | It's over here? | 26:54 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Uh-huh. Over there. And the reason it's called Church Street because there were two more churches on this street at that time. And one was run by a woman by the name of Cheney. It was Cheney Parker. Cheney Parker. She was a woman. And there was a mess of this church down the street too. So that they called it —that's why it became Church Street. Okay. But as I say, and the church still is the nucleus of this community, if we really get down to brass tacks. | 26:56 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did members of different churches get together sometimes for fellowship, things like that? Or did the churches remain separate from each other? | 27:33 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No. No. They get together. They have a union. Mr. Powell knows about the union. Mr. Powell is 83 years old. So he's a friend of—oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. He's 84 years old. (laughs) I don't want to cheat you. | 27:44 |
Rhonda Mawhood | We won't rob him, now. | 28:05 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And Mr. Powell, you know about the churches? | 28:32 |
Mr. Powell | Oh, yeah. Yeah. So many churches. [indistinct 00:28:35]. | 28:35 |
Mr. Powell | Some of them have one year that goes around practically every four month, I believe. It goes around different churches, the union, all churches, four churches, we cooperate together. | 28:35 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And what kinds of things would the members of the churches do together, sir? | 28:44 |
Mr. Powell | Oh, they work together. Prepare different things like Sunday school and all that. Different things out. | 28:48 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | They get together, and members they feed. | 29:04 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah. | 29:10 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Okay? It's like a picnic, they have on a Saturday, you have food. They feed everybody. The host church feeds the other three churches, they come together as a union. Okay? | 29:11 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah. | 29:24 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | And then they have business meetings and they organize what they need to do within the church circles. I gather they also go over what has been gone over in the conventions, this kind of things. | 29:25 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. Thank you. And Mrs. Babcock, were your grandparents members of any of the Masons, or the Eastern Star, or the Oddfellows? | 29:47 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Grandma was member of the Oddfellows. Mom was a member of the Oddfellows for years, I think— | 29:59 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | No, Household of Ruth. | 30:02 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Okay, so it was Household of Ruth. | 30:06 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | It comes from the Oddbrothers. The Oddbrothers that men folks used to do. They said for it was the women— | 30:12 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And what kinds of things did you do in the house— | 30:19 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | We did just like we do in church. Organized things. We'd talk about different things, and everything and agreed on it. Then when everybody agreed on it, they could get out if they wanted to. | 30:22 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | I gather that, Mom, what they did mostly was, things that had to do with the community, because it's just like, I guess, the VFW, the Veterans Support was, and the auxiliaries and things that what you do is, within that organization you have things to have, what goes on in the organization to help the organization, but also to help the community at large. | 30:36 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Maybe. Excuse me. Excuse me. To raise money for scholarships, and this kind of thing. I'm sure that that's probably what they did. But I'm sure that they didn't send children to school at that time. I'm sure that what they probably did was to help do something for the community itself, since there was no roads, they probably did things like make sure that if there was to increase the road capacities. Do you understand what I'm saying? | 31:03 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Yes, ma'am. Make it wider? | 31:41 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Make it wider. Make it wider. Yeah. But because at one time, this was just a little cow path, this street. Okay. About like this street that's running up in here? | 31:41 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Dancie Street, which is two lanes, now. | 31:53 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Mm-hmm. Yeah. But it was just one. Yeah. So I'm sure that this is probably what the kind of things that they did, because at that time they were not organized enough to —school, as colleges are today, was not a priority. I'm sure they weren't. | 31:55 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Mrs. Thorne, where did you go to school, ma'am? | 32:23 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Went to school right up here. I didn't go no higher than sixth grade because my parents took me out and put me in the field to work. I told her, I said, "Mama," I said, "I thought I got to finish school." She said, "This here is what got to be done, and you got to work, to have work do, do it." I said, "I don't want to." She said, "You got to do what I said doing." And I had to do it. Yeah. So I went on to school and finished the sixth grade. That's how high I got. And they graduated from high school, colleges and everything. So they daddy wanted them to finish school. | 32:26 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You say that their daddy wanted them to finish school. Did you want them to finish school, too? | 33:15 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Yeah, I wanted them finish school. But my folks didn't want me to finish school. I told mama, I said, "Mama, I can't get into high school." She said, "I don't mean for you to go no high school. You got enough, you can read and you can write." That's what she told me. And I had to do what she said do, I'm telling you. | 33:20 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And could your mama read and write, then? | 33:43 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Huh? | 33:45 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Could your mother read and write? | 33:46 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Uh-huh. Yeah, she could read and write. All of my folk could read and write, but I had the letter to call my little nephew, my cousin, all them could do more writing and all than I could. I didn't worry about it. Just so I could read and write and go and eat. I wasn't thinking about the other part. We all got to learn to write, though. | 33:48 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you like school? | 34:18 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Yeah, I liked school. The teacher liked me. Well enough. But that was all if I —that's why I could read and write my name. That's all right. So my children, they could read and write. Because when my baby come along, and [indistinct 00:34:49], I said, "Lord, I ain't got nothing to read and write for me. And she read and write my name and everything else." Yeah. | 34:20 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Were your children born at home? Mrs. Thorne? | 34:54 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Yeah, they were born at home. | 34:59 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | In fact, I was delivered by a doctor. | 34:59 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Say what? | 34:59 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | I was messing with you. No, I was the only one that was delivered by a doctor, because as I said, I was born in '26, that was before the market fell. So they were a little bit —they had money. They had enough money. | 35:08 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | I understand you. She knows she's got to finish, then. | 35:30 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And the others were delivered by midwives? | 35:30 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Uh-huh. | 35:40 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | I didn't mind not finishing. I was glad she did finish, because I didn't finish that didn't keep her from not finishing. I guess so she didn't go to no jailhouse, nothing like that. | 35:40 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When you were growing up, Mrs. Thorne, did you hear about people going to the jailhouse? | 35:53 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | I cared for them. I didn't want them to go there. But I couldn't help it. Because I didn't have no boss over them. | 36:00 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Mom, when you were growing up, did people go to jail? They didn't go to jail when you were growing up, did they? | 36:08 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Huh? | 36:13 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Did people go to jail when you were growing up? | 36:13 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Uh-huh. Yeah. They didn't have that jailhouse. And they didn't have that prison house. They just came right there and lock them up. Whatever they said, they went. | 36:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | They, the police? | 36:30 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Mm-hmm. Whenever the police said, all they said, they went. No one else couldn't say nothing. | 36:33 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | What do you remember about the jails and stuff? | 36:45 |
Mr. Powell | I don't remember that, matter of fact, she's talking about. Way back. | 36:47 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | No, I mean what do you remember about jails and prisons when you were growing up? | 36:55 |
Mr. Powell | Well —well I remember stay away from there. Don't do nothing go to jail. (Annie Anderson Thorne laughs) I didn't do nothing, but I never been to a jail in— | 37:01 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | I know that. But did they have a jail? Did they have a jail in Tarboro? | 37:05 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah, over there on the railroad. | 37:12 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Sure did. Right there on railroad. | 37:12 |
Mr. Powell | On St James Street, right down there to the railroad. | 37:12 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Right where that jailhouse is right now. | 37:12 |
Mr. Powell | Right there. That's where it was at. Yeah, we had one. And then they were locked up in Town Hall, and they didn't put you in jail. You stay there till your trial. | 37:24 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | They sure did. | 37:32 |
Mr. Powell | Mm-hmm. | 37:34 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | And you couldn't get out of there no more than you could out of the jail. | 37:34 |
Mr. Powell | Mm-mm. | 37:41 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | I don't remember. I don't remember. | 37:42 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | I know you don't. | 37:44 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | I don't remember anybody in town going to jail when I was— | 37:45 |
Mr. Powell | Oh yeah- | 37:52 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | —when was growing up. | 37:52 |
Mr. Powell | Oh yeah? | 37:54 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Maybe I didn't pay any attention to it. | 37:54 |
Mr. Powell | You must not. | 37:56 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | I don't remember anybody going to jail. | 37:57 |
Mr. Powell | Yes, they did. | 38:00 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | They sure did. | 38:00 |
Mr. Powell | Yeah. In Tarboro. | 38:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Mr. Powell, what kinds of things did people go to jail for? | 38:05 |
Mr. Powell | Well, first one thing they did, fighting, shooting one another, all that kind of stuff. Cutting. Some of them get drunk and all like that. All that went on. And people, they just locked them up 'cause of disorder. See? That's the way it was. | 38:09 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | In the street. | 38:22 |
Mr. Powell | Streets. In the street. I knew a man, right now, he was old then, and he got to the habit. He'd rather be in jail than be home in the wintertime. And he'll do something many time go to jail in the wintertime and stay there, and don't want nobody pay him out. If anybody goes out and pay him out, he'll get mad. Cuss them out. That's true. And wouldn't pay them back. "I didn't say pay me out in jail. That's my home, in the wintertime." And he had a family. That's right. | 38:31 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And this man lived in Princeville, sir? | 39:05 |
Mr. Powell | Mm-hmm. Yeah. He had a family. Yeah, he did. Yeah. | 39:09 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What did his wife think? | 39:14 |
Mr. Powell | Couldn't say nothing. That's what he wanted. That's what he did. (laughs) He liked going to jail. See? Oh, he was a good worker. Make good money, all of that. He left in jail when the wintertime come, keep from working anywhere. Just in jail. | 39:16 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | The first time, [indistinct 00:39:40], so the police have him, and— | 39:40 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | You told us about that, didn't you, Mama. | 39:43 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Huh? | 39:43 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | You told us about that, I think. | 39:44 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Yeah. They told Mr. Piver, "Mr. Piver, Mr. Piver, the police has got that man." He said, "I can't help you, honey. I can't do a thing about it. But you ought to go there and tell them to turn him loose." (laughs) That what my baby told this here man. "You ought to go and tell them to turn him loose." But he see the police had him. He couldn't tell the man to turn anyone loose, he wasn't no kid, [indistinct 00:40:13]. So he had to stay right there. She told her Grandma, and Ma said, "That's they business. I ain't got nothing to do with that." | 39:46 |
Mr. Powell | That's right. Has to be push. | 40:27 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Yeah. That was, one more told Sarah, that's my baby. | 40:30 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Sarah? | 40:38 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Uh-huh. Ma said, "That's it. That's they business. She have no business seeing it, and doing nothing to him. So he got himself in that his self." Yeah. I tell my granddaddy, too. Ma said, "Tell him he ain't got to do nothing." | 40:45 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | We should better get my two sisters names in that. One's name, Ethel Lee. | 40:53 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Ethel Lee? | 40:57 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Thorne. T-H. Because she never got married. And the other one is Sarah Louise. | 41:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And Sarah, does that have an H at the end? | 41:12 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Uh-huh. | 41:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And did she marry? | 41:16 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Yeah, she's married. She's the one with the six— | 41:18 |
Rhonda Mawhood | The six children. That's right. What's her last name now? | 41:19 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Lewis. L-E-W-I-S. | 41:24 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Mm-hmm. I'd like to ask you some biographical information of family information in just a minute. | 41:28 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Okay. | 41:33 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Would it be possible for me to ask you a couple more questions before we wind up? Okay. Thank you. I was wondering, when you were growing up, how did you see segregation? How were the borders of the different communities drawn in Rocky Mount, and then in this area, for you? | 41:34 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | Okay. We lived in Rocky Mount, two houses from the community store. And the community store was run by a Caucasian man. Okay? And you just went up, you never thought about it. You went to school. Unless somebody really mentioned, or was mean, or something, you never thought about it, okay? | 42:03 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | In Princeville, you never had to think about it because everything was community oriented. It was Black. And so you came, you went to church, you played with your friends, and you never left the community unless you went out to Tarboro to shop. And when you left to go to friend's house, you went through Tarboro. And then, well, we went into Tarboro, but we had relatives in the Black community, in Tarboro. So you went from one community to the other. In Rocky Mount, you also did the same thing. But in Rocky Mount, you associated with the Caucasian community. In fact, daily, because you worked in the community. Everybody worked in the community. | 42:42 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And how did your parents teach you behave with adults, both African American and Caucasian? | 43:56 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | It was just sort of some understood that if your mother says, "Sit down," you sat. Nobody taught you. It wasn't something that was verbally explained. It was just something like was understood. For an instance, if your mother said, as an example, we were allowed to go play. You could play anywhere you wanted to, but, before the sun went down, you were to be home. And many a day I had run to make sure that I was sitting on the steps when the sun went down. That's just— | 44:18 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | You were right about that. I know all about that. | 45:15 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | And if your mother said you can go to the movies, but be back at six, I mean, eight o'clock, you were home. | 45:18 |
Annie Anderson Thorne | Yeah. [indistinct 00:45:37] eight. | 45:34 |
Mr. Powell | That's right. | 45:37 |
Annie Thorne Babcock | You were allowed privileges. You could do almost like anything. You could not sass. And sass was talking. I mean, many of us sassed, I mean talked back, mumbled. I mean, we mumbled. We mumbled. But you did not. Say for an instance, like these kids now will say, their Mama says, "I said sit down." And they turn around and say, "I ain't going sit nowhere." Or, "I'm not going to do anything." You did not do that. If your mother said, "Sit down, I'm talking," you shut up and you went someplace else and you said, as they said, "Go play someplace," you went to play— | 45:39 |
Item Info
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund