Ruth Davis interview recording, 1993 July 20
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Chris Stewart | And ask you if you could state your name and your address ma'am so I can get a voice level on the recording. | 0:03 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Okay. My name is Ruth Hall Davis. I live at 217 South 13th Street, Wilmington, North Carolina. | 0:08 |
Chris Stewart | Wonderful. Ma'am, have you always lived here in Wilmington? | 0:16 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No, I was born and raised across the river over in Brunswick County. | 0:20 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, you were? | 0:29 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Mm-hmm. | 0:29 |
Chris Stewart | What did your family do? What did your parents do in Brunswick? | 0:29 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, we had just a small farm, and my father worked at the fertilizer plant during the time that they called shipping season. That is when the farmers are buying the fertilizing thing. My mother was, well, I guess you'd say a housekeeper, she worked for different families plus being a midwife. | 0:29 |
Chris Stewart | She was a midwife? | 0:53 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. | 0:54 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, really? I haven't talked to anybody that was a midwife. | 0:55 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, my mother was. | 0:56 |
Chris Stewart | Did she care for women just in the area? | 1:00 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, yes. | 1:03 |
Chris Stewart | Travel? | 1:05 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, you know how it is when you live in the country, you live so far apart, different places. But she took care of pretty near all, I won't say all the women, but pretty near all the women in that, over there in Leland. | 1:10 |
Chris Stewart | In Leland? | 1:24 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes, Leland. | 1:24 |
Chris Stewart | I see. What kinds of skills did it require to be a midwife? | 1:25 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I don't know. | 1:33 |
Chris Stewart | You don't. | 1:33 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No. Well, I know you had, well, you had to know how long the mother could stay in labor before you called for help, and you had to know how to help with the delivery of the baby and cutting the cord. And then she would go back for nine days and bathe the baby and mother every morning and take care of it, yes. | 1:35 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. How did she learn how to be a midwife? | 2:01 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I think they had a class or something that she attended. Yeah. | 2:02 |
Chris Stewart | Did you ever go with her? | 2:07 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No, I won't ever. | 2:10 |
Chris Stewart | A frightening [indistinct 00:02:12]. | 2:10 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. | 2:10 |
Chris Stewart | How often did she get called? | 2:10 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, quite often. Yeah, quite often. | 2:17 |
Chris Stewart | You remember her being called in the night? | 2:23 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, the night and yeah, and stuff like that. And then after my father died, it was just, she and I were living there together, and some of them asked me, "Well, don't you be afraid after she leave at night and they come and get her at night like that?" I said, "Ah, no, I'm not afraid," but I worried, I was okay. | 2:25 |
Chris Stewart | Why weren't you afraid? | 2:41 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, it may be silly to some people, but when she would go out the front door, I could hear my father's footsteps coming in the back door. And people say, "You didn't do that." I said, "But I did." Because during his last years, he drug his feet, had distinct step. He'd step and he was sick, and you could hear him dragging his feet and I could hear him coming through the kitchen. This is right where that, so I told myself, when mama leave, I said Papa's in with me, and then look at me. And my mother always said, "Well, if there's any way that he can come back and take care of him, he'd be here because she was his pet." | 2:43 |
Chris Stewart | Were you the only child? | 3:22 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No, I was one of nine. I had one brother to die before I was born, that's in the flu epidemic in 1919. And then the rest of us grew up to maturity. Matter of fact, I had one brother to pass last month and well, I'm 71, and he was 70 years and four months older than I am. And the rest of my brothers and sisters all but one, my baby brother's younger than I am. I have two sisters now and a brother that's older than I am. So the Lord has blessed us with long lives, yeah. | 3:24 |
Chris Stewart | How old were you when your father died? | 4:12 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, I was 18 when my father died. | 4:15 |
Chris Stewart | So the rest of your siblings, had the rest of your siblings grown up and left the house? | 4:19 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, they all gone then. | 4:25 |
Chris Stewart | How did your father die? | 4:26 |
Ruth Hall Davis | He had, let's see, what did I say? He had a kidney disease, hardened arteries of the heart. Yeah, and Pellagra, I don't know. It was just a combination of things. Back there then, we didn't have doctors and you couldn't go, you come over here to a doctor or they were, at one time, there were two doctors out there that in another little town they call Acme and they would come around and visit the homes and things, but the people just didn't have medical attention like they have now. And so I guess if he had, he'd lived much longer. Yeah. | 4:33 |
Chris Stewart | Did your mother give any other medical care besides helping to bring children? | 5:16 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No. Well, I wouldn't say she gave medical care. During that time, people couldn't afford to come to the hospital, and if a neighbor had someone sick that they had to be up with them at night. I can remember her giving us our supper and getting us settled for the night. And then maybe walking, well, there's no other way to walk other than haul some carts back then. So she would go to this neighbor's house and spend the night with them to help out with the sick person. And then she would come home the next morning time enough to get us off to school if it was school time or my daddy off to work if he was going to work. And the next day, she'd do the same thing until that person got well or died. | 5:28 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember maybe some home remedies? | 6:13 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, yes. Because when we were coming up, we didn't know anything about, I remember once I had a fever for over a week and the doctor came, they called the doctor and told him, sent word to him or something. Anyway, he came by the house and he told mom that I had scarlet fever and he gave her some medicine, but he told her that it had about run the course when he got there, but she had different herbs and saying that was growing. And she would give us for stomach ache, she had something called calamus that, you get a piece of the root and chew it. And just a lot of home remedies and things that she would give us around the house. Well, any home that you went into out there, you could find those things. | 6:18 |
Chris Stewart | Mothers would have at home remedies. | 7:11 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, for their children and things. | 7:14 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. | 7:15 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. | 7:15 |
Chris Stewart | What was this? It was called calamus? | 7:16 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. Yeah. | 7:19 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember the names of any other kinds of medicines that your mom would give? | 7:21 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, there was catnip that she would give for fevers or babies when the babies were young. Let's see. And there was something that you would get out of someplace out in the woods, that was called wormwood. That was bitter. Now that was growing because you grow it around, that was wormwood and you grew it. And boy, that was bitter. In every spring, she would get a half a gallon jug and fill it with water and put some of that in it, and we had to drink some of it every morning during the springtime, so that would clean your blood out and get you ready for the summer. And sassafras, she'd go in the woods and you can get sassafras now from the herb stores, but she would go out in the wood and get it and make teas, and we would drink that in the winter time. And especially if when we were breaking out with measles or something like that, she'd give us a sassafras tea to make the bumps come on out so that we could dry up. | 7:24 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. Do you remember anything about the area that you lived in, or your neighbors maybe? | 8:40 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, where I live they were, okay, on the left. On the right of me was my cousin and his family. They were our closest neighbor, they were the Grangers. And on the left, further up the road, we couldn't see their home but it was the Baldwins, he was a minister and he had three daughters and two sons. But we always said, oh, they thought they was better than anybody else because they father was a minister and things, and they wasn't allowed to get out and play and do things. But really, I was a tomboy. I'd follow my baby brother and my little cousin around all the time. | 8:58 |
Chris Stewart | What kinds of things would you do with your baby brother and your cousin? | 9:47 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, I'd climb trees, go fishing. Most anything little boys would do, I'd get out and go do it. | 9:51 |
Chris Stewart | What did you like about doing those kinds of things? How come? | 9:59 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, there wasn't any other girls my age around, so if I didn't play with them, I was stuck in the house with mama around the house and thing with her. But yeah, we would always find something to keep ourselves busy. There was a little brook not far from the house, and I never learned to swim, but I'd go down there and wade. They'd be swimming in there, and we'd go down there and wade. | 10:01 |
Chris Stewart | Nice way to cool off. | 10:22 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. It was nice. | 10:22 |
Chris Stewart | What was the area that, I'm thinking the geographic area that you could play in? How big was the area that you were playing in? | 10:23 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh. I guess really it would be from here to Castle Street, the next stop light, up and down there because my father had a little farm, and then my cousin had a little farm next to that, so we could play anywhere in that neighbor. And then on the other side, my cousin's house was a little brook that we'd go down and wade in and swim in during the summertime. | 10:44 |
Chris Stewart | That's about three blocks? | 11:13 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, about three blocks area, something like that. Yeah. | 11:14 |
Chris Stewart | What did your house look like? What do you remember specifically about your house? | 11:20 |
Ruth Hall Davis | There was seven rooms, three bedrooms, the living room, dining room, and kitchen. And it was L-shaped, and they didn't put the back porch. They hadn't put the back porch on. And there was a huge chinaberry tree. | 11:27 |
Chris Stewart | What kind of tree? | 11:48 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Chinaberry tree that was in the backyard. And it covered, it went from the house back over from the pump. And my dad would always have a bench, what you call a loafer's bench under that tree. That's where he and his friends would sit and talk. And we didn't have running water, we had to had a pump, and that pump was under that tree, and you could pump it and the water would be almost as cold as ice water. It would be so nice and cold and clear. And I guess playing out in that backyard under that tree was really memorable. And I remember the night the storm came, I don't know just when that was, but I remember the storm blowing the tree over, and this tree just came right over in that opening between the L-shape, the house. It didn't do any damage to the house. It just squashed right down between the house. | 11:49 |
Chris Stewart | Oh wow. | 12:48 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. | 12:49 |
Chris Stewart | And you didn't have the tree anymore? | 12:49 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Uh-uh, no. | 12:51 |
Chris Stewart | Before or after your father died? | 12:51 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, that was before he died. Yeah. | 12:54 |
Chris Stewart | Who made the decisions in your household, say the decisions about disciplining the children, money decisions, mother or father? | 12:56 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, they did it together or whatever. If we needed punishing, and as far as the punishments and thing, I think my mother dished out more of that than my dad did, but he did his share of it too. As far as money propositioning thing, he would work during, like you said, the shipping season time. He know during the summer months that he wouldn't be working, so they would decide on what they'd come to town, come over here to Wilmington to buy up they staple foods and stuff, so they would try to get enough staple stuff to last while he was working to last during the summer months so that we wouldn't be out of anything. And so I think they mostly did, made the decisions together. | 13:10 |
Chris Stewart | So now can you tell me, I'm not familiar with Brunswick County now, and Leland, area that you were living in is located, where is it? To the coast or? | 14:17 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, no. Well, it would be inland from the coast. It was right off of the old 74, 76 highway. | 14:23 |
Chris Stewart | You said your father did, worked in shipping? | 14:29 |
Ruth Hall Davis | At the fertilizer plant. Well, his job there was to, they use, I don't know how it was, but the fertilizer would be in vaults or something, and he'd have to use dynamite to blow it loose so they could bag it and stuff or something. But I know he did a lot of the dynamite work at the plant. | 14:33 |
Chris Stewart | Visitors? | 14:57 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. | 15:01 |
Chris Stewart | How did he get back and forth to work? | 15:09 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Rode a bicycle. | 15:13 |
Chris Stewart | He did? | 15:13 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. | 15:13 |
Chris Stewart | How far away was it? | 15:13 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, I guess about seven miles, I guess, or something like that. | 15:20 |
Chris Stewart | Did your family go farming? | 15:23 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. We had our old little garden and we went, well, yes, we farmed at one time. We raised, we plant cotton, and then later he started planting tobacco, but we always had our own garden. We'd raise our own chickens and we'd raise our hogs, so we probably had our own meats and stuff so it's reason now, whenever he was working, he'd just get the staple stuff because we'd have our vegetables and meats and stuff that he raised right there on the farm. | 15:27 |
Chris Stewart | Did your family own their land? | 16:04 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. | 16:04 |
Chris Stewart | Do you know about how many acres they owned? | 16:05 |
Ruth Hall Davis | It was 14 acres. We had seven acres of clear land, and seven acres of woodland. | 16:09 |
Chris Stewart | Did your mother do any canning? | 16:19 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. Oh, yes. | 16:20 |
Chris Stewart | Tell me, what canning she did like? | 16:22 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, it was busy. You would have to gather the beans and feed and shell them, and she would can them and we didn't have canners like they is now, we'd have those big iron wash pots out in the yard. And so she would pad the inside of the—Yeah, we raised our own chickens and have eggs and stuff like that. So I was telling somebody the other day, I says, "Oh, when mama used to kill a hen, we'd have stewed chicken," put it on the cook, you could smell it all through the house, when now you can buy one and cook it forever and you never get that sit to it or the taste either. | 16:25 |
Chris Stewart | You said you raised your own hogs? | 17:13 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. | 17:17 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember hog killing? | 17:18 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. Yeah. What is it? Well, generally it would be, mostly he would kill the first ones maybe about just before Thanksgiving, and then maybe later after Christmas, we'd always have two or three to kill, but he'd kill one early, then he'd kill the others later, and they'd get out and they'd kill the hog and skull and pick the fur off of him and hang him up and let him drain after they open him up and take his intestines out and everything. And then they cut him up, and salt the meat down. You can't even salt meat down now like that. It spoils too quick, but we didn't have, we'd just salt it down and it'd stay. He let it stay there so long in that salt, and then he would take it out and wash the salt and stuff off of it and hang it up in the smokehouse and start a little oak fire in there and smoke it hanging there in the house. | 17:19 |
Chris Stewart | This sounds like it was mostly men who would do that kind of work. | 18:25 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes, it was. | 18:36 |
Chris Stewart | What kind of work would women do during hog killing time? What was their— | 18:36 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, well, they would clean the intestines. They would, after they cut the hog up and trim it off, there'd be a lot of fat. They would cook the fat out to make lard and cracklings and make sausage and liver pudding and stuff like that. | 18:36 |
Chris Stewart | It was a busy time for women too. | 18:53 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, it was busy time because see, once the men got through with killing the hogs and cutting it up, they were through. But then that was the time the women had to fry the fat out for the lard, and make the liver pudding and stuff like that. | 18:54 |
Chris Stewart | Would people come? Would it be just your family who would do it, or would there be other families? | 19:10 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, sometime someone would come in and help him, and sometime would just be him and maybe one or two of my older brothers would do it. | 19:14 |
Chris Stewart | How about women? Were there other women who were? | 19:29 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I don't think. Yeah, I remember my aunt coming over. My daddy's sister would come sometime and help. Yeah. | 19:35 |
Chris Stewart | Was this somebody who lived close by but just wanted to [indistinct 00:19:45]? | 19:42 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, she didn't live too far, but she wasn't right where we were. | 19:45 |
Chris Stewart | Were there areas where you grew up, where you weren't supposed to go, where your parents say, forbade you to go certain places? | 19:56 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Other than we weren't, not really, other than summertime we afraid snakes and stuff like that. We weren't supposed to go out in the bushes or around the, now where we would go and swim or wade, it was nice and clear, but we weren't allowed to go down the streams from that because of the snakes and things from that. | 20:08 |
Chris Stewart | You mentioned that your father died when you were 18 years old. | 20:39 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. | 20:40 |
Chris Stewart | At what point were you the last child left in that, the house? How long were you there? | 20:47 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, I think, let's say he died 1940. I think from about '37 on to that, I was there alone most of the time. | 20:56 |
Chris Stewart | How was that? Nine, where you had a lot of kids in your family, so how was it different for you being the only child of the house for three years? | 21:12 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, but me being almost the youngest one, it really wasn't too much different because the older children were gone anyway, so it wasn't really that much difference. | 21:26 |
Chris Stewart | Where did you go to school? | 21:38 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Okay. At Leland, they had the White high school. The Whites had a high school, the Blacks had a little two room school that we went and the Whites rode the buses and we walked. So I walked about five miles a day to school. | 21:46 |
Chris Stewart | Did the buses go by Black students while they were? | 22:02 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. | 22:20 |
Chris Stewart | Did Black students ever, how can I put this delicately? Some people have told me that as school buses full of White children would walk by, that some Black students would make nasty faces, or? | 22:20 |
Ruth Hall Davis | With us, it was opposite. They would pass and holler nigger and throw things out the buses after us. | 22:23 |
Chris Stewart | And how far did you say you were walking? | 22:35 |
Ruth Hall Davis | We walked about five miles a day, I think about two and a half miles each way to school, yeah. | 22:37 |
Chris Stewart | And you went to school, what was the name of the school? | 22:44 |
Ruth Hall Davis | It was just Leland Primary School. | 22:48 |
Chris Stewart | And so what grades did you come through? | 22:50 |
Ruth Hall Davis | First through seven. And then you either had to go to Southport or come over here to Wilmington to go to high school. | 22:56 |
Chris Stewart | And what did you do? | 23:04 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I came over here for a while, but I didn't finish high school. | 23:07 |
Chris Stewart | Did you go to Williston? | 23:11 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. Yeah. | 23:12 |
Chris Stewart | What do you remember about the school in Leland? | 23:16 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, I know it was, let's see, the first, second and third grades were in one room. The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh grades was in the other room. And it'd have a row for, in the first grade would be one row of six for the first grade, one row for the second, one row for the third. And the same way in the other word. But I do remember we had devotion every morning, and there were things that we had to do. We had to learn the Pledge of Allegiance, and at times we had to repeat Bible verses. And at certain times, the teacher would point out different ones that would recite poem or something like that. Just things that we just had to learn. | 23:26 |
Chris Stewart | Did you like school? | 24:15 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes, I did. | 24:15 |
Chris Stewart | What were the things that you liked most about it? | 24:15 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I liked history and math. I was lousy in spelling, I never. | 24:25 |
Chris Stewart | Aren't we all? | 24:28 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I like reading, but math and history were my pet subjects. | 24:32 |
Chris Stewart | Why? | 24:39 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I don't know, but I just liked it. | 24:39 |
Chris Stewart | Did school have any Black history? Did they teach you any Black history? | 24:40 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, yes, there was. Oh, Booker T. Washington and different things like that. There'd be some time doing there that we would have to study about those people. | 24:49 |
Chris Stewart | That's interesting, because lots of places that I've talked to haven't taught students any Black history so it sounds like you had really good teachers. | 25:02 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Good teachers, yeah. | 25:10 |
Chris Stewart | Very lucky. Do you remember any of your teachers right now? | 25:13 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, one of my teachers that taught me over there. She died about two years ago, a woman named Bertha Barry, and we had another one. I think she's still living at Southport. Her name is, oh gosh, what was her first name? But her last name is Swains, because I was down there and visited her not too long ago. And she taught the first through the third grade, and Ms. Barry taught from the seventh on through. And then there was a Ms. Austin that taught. But those teachers stayed there for a long time, they did not change teachers too often. They just stayed there, they'd teach one, I mean, one set of families right on up through the rest of them, because they stayed on. | 25:16 |
Chris Stewart | How did the teachers disciplines students? | 26:12 |
Ruth Hall Davis | With a ruler. I guess you got many a spankings, you didn't mind. | 26:19 |
Chris Stewart | Did teachers play favorites? | 26:26 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. | 26:29 |
Chris Stewart | How do you think they were decided? | 26:34 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, okay, take Ms. Barry. She was rooming with a family and those children could do anything. They didn't get disciplined, they didn't get scolded, they didn't have to stay in after school or during recess or stuff like that. | 26:40 |
Chris Stewart | Do you think that any of the teachers that you remember played favorites because of skin color? | 26:55 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, I can't say they did, but my brother was here and we went down to Southport and saw Ms. Swains, and he told her that some of the things that she used to do to him because he was dark, and so she laughed, she says, "I don't remember that." He said, "Yeah, but I will never forget it." | 27:13 |
Chris Stewart | I bet he won't. So you left, you went through Leland through seventh grade, you said? | 27:33 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. | 27:47 |
Chris Stewart | How was Williston different from Leland? | 27:47 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, so many more children. When you got to Williston, you had to change classes, you had your homeroom, then each subject you went to another different teacher in a different room and all. See, we didn't have any of that at Leland because at certain times she were teaching. Okay, when the seventh grade, if she were teaching the seventh grade and the rest of children supposed to be studying. And when she got to the sixth grade and the seventh grade, and other children were studying, and you better not make any noise, you better study. | 27:51 |
Chris Stewart | Was it frightening for you? | 28:29 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No, not really. | 28:29 |
Chris Stewart | How did you get back and forth? | 28:29 |
Ruth Hall Davis | There were some men that, some of my cousin that was working over here at that time that had a car, and we would come over in the morning with them when they were coming to work, and go back in the afternoon with them when they got off from work. | 28:38 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember anything, any of your teachers from Williston? | 28:53 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, Ms. Tucker and Mr. oh, what was his name? Oh, he was a man. Oh gosh, I can't think of his name right now. I'm trying to think. No, not really. I can't really think of his names right now. | 29:00 |
Chris Stewart | Did you like school at Williston? | 29:27 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, I guess I remember Ms. Taco because she was my history teacher. That was one of my best subjects. | 29:32 |
Chris Stewart | Yes. | 29:35 |
Ruth Hall Davis | And Mr. Haithland, he was my homeroom teacher. And I can't think of who else it was. | 29:36 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember there being any, or if you were involved in any extracurricular activities at Williston? | 29:57 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, well, there was, what was it? It was, what was the name? It was a club that a lot of us belonged to. And anyway, it was statewide. And I remember, I can't remember the name of the club now, but I remember them having the state convention here, and all the other clubs from the other schools came here to Wilmington for that. That was before 10th Street in front of Williston was paved, it was a dirt street. And I can remember every morning the city would go along and sprinkle the street to keep the dust follow out of town. People was in there, they'd keep it wet down to keep the dust, from it being so dusty while the people were here. | 30:01 |
Chris Stewart | What kind of club was it? What kind of club? | 30:57 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Gosh, what was it? I can't think now, but I first tried to go out for tennis, but that was so full, and that was during the time that Althea Gibson was going there, and the teachers really didn't pay attention to anybody else. | 30:58 |
Chris Stewart | I wonder. | 31:15 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. So I dropped out of that, and we all had to belong to something. And I can't even remember what the club was about. | 31:16 |
Chris Stewart | I heard something about a high wide club. | 31:26 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I think that was it. Something like that. But I can't really, can't even think about that. | 31:30 |
Chris Stewart | Somebody told me that there was a lot of religious instruction in the club. | 31:41 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. | 31:43 |
Chris Stewart | That was what [indistinct 00:31:45]. | 31:43 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, I think that's what it was. | 31:47 |
Chris Stewart | Sounds like it was a popular one. | 31:48 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, there was a lot of children belong to that. | 31:52 |
Chris Stewart | What about social clubs? Were there any social clubs at Williston? | 31:55 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I guess they were, but I just didn't belong to any of them. And too, by me living over in Brunswick and coming over, I'd have to leave in the afternoons and things so there wasn't too much socializing that I could do. | 32:01 |
Chris Stewart | Right. When you were a teenager, what kind of things did you do for fun? | 32:15 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, I don't know. Well, we'd visit my friends that was in school and we would listen to music go, well, it's a must to go to church and Sunday school. That was one of the things you had to do. But my mother was strict about different, about what they call them was juke joints. You go in and play records and dance and things like that. And the only way that I could go was my oldest brother would come by with his girlfriend and pick me up, and she'd let me go with them. But other than that, I just couldn't go by myself. | 32:26 |
Chris Stewart | Needed to have that chaperone. | 33:10 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh yeah. | 33:13 |
Chris Stewart | What were the juke joints like? | 33:13 |
Ruth Hall Davis | It was just a large room with a piccolo in it, and you could buy sodas or candy or stuff like that while you was in there, but there'd be a crowd there and she just didn't like me hanging out where there were crowds there. | 33:18 |
Chris Stewart | Where were they located? | 33:31 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Most of the time that I went, in our neighborhood, we didn't have one. And most of the time that I would go with be, and my brother would pick me up and take me down to this other little town called Navassa. | 33:35 |
Chris Stewart | Navassa? | 33:48 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Uh-huh. They had one or two down there, and we would go there. | 33:50 |
Chris Stewart | So that's where you have to travel. | 33:58 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. | 33:58 |
Chris Stewart | Did your brother have a car? | 34:01 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes, he had a car at that time. Yeah. | 34:01 |
Chris Stewart | Wow, that must have been exciting. | 34:13 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. | 34:13 |
Chris Stewart | Taking the car down. Why did you stop going to school at Wilmington? | 34:13 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I got pregnant. Yeah. | 34:19 |
Chris Stewart | Did you get married? | 34:22 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No. Not then, I didn't. | 34:24 |
Chris Stewart | So did you go back home then? | 34:27 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes, yeah. | 34:29 |
Chris Stewart | Perhaps I'm being redundant, at what point do you feel like that people started treating you were an adult? | 34:33 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I don't think my mother ever treated me, even after I was married, they were keeping the house. I was still a child and her. | 34:42 |
Chris Stewart | Her baby. | 34:50 |
Ruth Hall Davis | And I don't know, well, after my son was born, and then my father's health was bad and well, I had the baby there, and I stayed home and took care of them and think while my mother was working. So I guess they started saying I was being responsible and acting like an adult, so. | 34:55 |
Chris Stewart | What kind of values do you think your mother and father gave to you to take into your adulthood and made you who you are? | 35:20 |
Ruth Hall Davis | The one thing, they taught me that the world don't owe me anything. Whatever I want, I had to get on and work for it. That you don't depend on somebody else for anything. You try to make your own way one way or the other. And of course, there was always a religious bias of church and Sunday school and oh, I don't know, just so many things. I guess what I am today is because of that, and the things they taught me was the things that I tried to teach my children, and I can say I'm pretty proud of them. | 35:33 |
Chris Stewart | Sounds like there's a lot of strength in your family. | 36:19 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, there they are. | 36:22 |
Chris Stewart | Speaking of church, what church were you involved in? What did you belong to when you were young? | 36:22 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, well, my father was a Methodist. And the church that he belonged to, which was Myrtle Grove AME, it was closer to, we lived closer to that than we did the Baptist church. My mother was Baptist, and we would go to church with my dad on the first and third Sundays, there would be service at his church, and we would go there. Then on the fourth Sunday, the church at my mother's church, and I would go there. So I was raised up between the two denominations. But one thing about it, my mother never pushed me to be a Baptist, and my father never pushed me to be a Methodist. We grew up between the two churches, and we chose whatever denomination we wanted after we were old enough to decide for ourselves. | 36:27 |
Chris Stewart | What'd you end up choosing? | 37:21 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I'm a Baptist. | 37:23 |
Chris Stewart | What do you think? For you, what was the difference between Baptist and Methodist? | 37:37 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, I don't know. After I got older and started reading the Bible, one thing the Methodists, they have the residing elder, and the bishop, and the minister. So that's three people you have to support. You got to put that money in there for those three people. And the Baptist church, you only have your minister and the upkeep of the church. And see, I guess that's one thing that swayed me towards the Baptist church. | 37:37 |
Chris Stewart | This morning I was interviewing Mrs. McCrimmons. | 38:09 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, yes. | 38:17 |
Chris Stewart | [indistinct 00:38:19]. | 38:17 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. | 38:18 |
Chris Stewart | Her family also gone to Myrtle Grove. You know this, you probably. | 38:20 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, we're cousins. | 38:24 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, you are? | 38:25 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. | 38:25 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, okay. So strange, we've been listening to this and going, "There are a lot of similarities." | 38:36 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Of similarities, yeah. | 38:36 |
Chris Stewart | Did you live close to each other? | 38:36 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, not really close to each other, but was within the neighborhood. | 38:36 |
Chris Stewart | Was that area? | 38:40 |
Ruth Hall Davis | And we about in the same area. | 38:41 |
Chris Stewart | Her father was Methodist, and her mother was Baptist, and she ended up becoming Baptist. | 38:43 |
Ruth Hall Davis | And now the funniest thing, her mother and my mother were real good friends. She have a sister. I was born January the 6th, 1922. Her sister's born January the 5th, 1922. | 38:49 |
Chris Stewart | Isn't that wild? Wow. So both of you guys were pregnant together. | 39:00 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Pregnant at the same time. | 39:07 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. | 39:07 |
Ruth Hall Davis | And then the funny part, it wasn't funny either. I've always been known as Ruth all of my days. And when my oldest son was in Germany, he was going to send for me, and I had to get a passport. So I had to go to Southport to get my birth certificate. So one of my older children were going down there. I said, "Go by the register, can get my passport." They came back and said, "Mother, there's no Ruth Hall down there." Said there's some other woman, but it's not you. So I finally had to go myself. And when I got down there, they says, "No, we don't have a Ruth Lee Hall born to Dan and Pennie Hall in Leland. We have a Coral Lee Hall, which was my cousin's mother's name, and that was on my birth certificate." | 39:08 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, you're kidding. | 39:59 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Uh-uh. | 40:01 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. | 40:01 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. So then the girl in the, I said, "Well, I've been," I said, "All these years, my school records and everything have Ruth on it," so she filled out a blank and I got it changed so that I could get my birth certificate so I could get my passport. | 40:02 |
Chris Stewart | And this wasn't until you were an adult, with adult children? | 40:17 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Uh-huh, I know. Yeah. | 40:17 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. | 40:23 |
Ruth Hall Davis | And then the kids teased me about that, about, all right Coral Lee. Oh my gosh. | 40:24 |
Chris Stewart | That's funny. So did you stay then in your parents' house with your mother after you came back, or after your father died? | 40:30 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. I stayed there until I came to Wilmington and started working. But I'd go back because she kept my son for me, and I would go back every weekend. And then after I got married and moved out, she was determined I wasn't going to have my baby so she kept him and raised, and he had asthma real bad. So she went to New York to stay with my brother up there, and she carried him with him and the change of climate was so good for him. So when she came back, my sister kept me in Philadelphia with her until he was, I think about his last two years of high school. Then he came back here to live. | 40:40 |
Chris Stewart | What kind of work did you do when you came? | 41:32 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, domestic work. Yeah. Well, for a while I worked in restaurants. I worked out at the Cape Fair Country Club, and yes, but I end up doing domestic work, I worked for one family for about 35 years. | 41:35 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. You started by working out at your Country Club. | 41:50 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No, I was, oh gosh. I did a little bit of everything, I guess, before I settled one place. I worked at the laundry for a while, and I worked at, I did some domestic work, and then I worked at the laundry. I worked at the restaurant, and then I got, a friend of mine was working at the Cape Fair Country Club, and she got me a job out there. And then I worked out there until family that I knew this man, his wife had died, and he was looking for a housekeeper, and so they told me about it. So I went to work for him, and I worked there for 35 years because his first wife had died and he remarried, and then his second wife died. And at that particular time, he was an alcoholic and he had to have somebody there with him all the time so my children was all grown and gone. So I stayed down there most of the time with him, and he remarried, and then I came. I didn't have to stay. And then after he died, I stayed home and worked with his wife. | 41:56 |
Chris Stewart | Wow, you stayed with that family for a long time. | 43:06 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. | 43:07 |
Chris Stewart | And I'd like to go back to [indistinct 00:43:12], to when you first started working, how come you changed jobs? Were you looking at better wages? | 43:10 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh yeah, and better condition. I was working for a woman that was running a boarding house, and that was doing World War II. And when the war was over and the men left that was boarding there, then she didn't need me anymore. So I think I went to the laundry then, or to another home or something. I don't know. But that's just the way it went. | 43:20 |
Chris Stewart | Which laundry did you go to? | 43:44 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Modern Laundry. | 43:45 |
Chris Stewart | Modern? | 43:46 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Uh-huh. | 43:47 |
Chris Stewart | What were the working conditions that they were working in? | 43:53 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, it was, I guess the condition was okay. It was just hot. Yeah. | 43:57 |
Chris Stewart | How many women worked there? | 44:00 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, I don't know. I don't know because there was some pressing and some during the washing, things like that. | 44:03 |
Chris Stewart | Quite a few. | 44:14 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Quite a few, yeah. And after then I think, yeah, I worked out at the Alberta Motel for a while out there. | 44:15 |
Chris Stewart | Doing housekeeping? | 44:24 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, making the beds and things like that. And we had to do, when I first started out there, we had to do the laundry. They had a laundry room off there, and we would change the beds and do the rooms, and then we'd go down and do the laundry. | 44:26 |
Chris Stewart | When you were working at these jobs, how long were your hours? | 44:46 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, they would vary. Especially at the motel, we would work until the work was done. | 44:50 |
Chris Stewart | [indistinct 00:44:58]. | 44:56 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No set hours, just whatever time we could, because a lot of time we'd go in, say, for us to be there at, I'd say 8:30 or 9:00, but a lot of time, it's even 10 o'clock or later before you can get into any of the rooms to start cleaning them. So a lot of times you just be sitting around waiting for some of them. Then a lot of times you get all the rooms cleaned but one, and that person is still in there, and you have to wait until they check out before you can go in and clean that room. | 44:58 |
Chris Stewart | And then how long would you be there during the day? | 45:34 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Maybe eight. About eight hours, nine hours or something. | 45:34 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember what you were getting paid? | 45:38 |
Ruth Hall Davis | It wasn't better much, I'll tell you, but I really can't. | 45:41 |
Chris Stewart | Was it by the week or by the [indistinct 00:45:48]? | 45:44 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, it was by the week, but I can't even think of what it was, no. | 45:52 |
Chris Stewart | You said somebody helped you get the job out at the country club? | 46:02 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. | 46:03 |
Chris Stewart | Was it a friend of yours? | 46:03 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. | 46:07 |
Chris Stewart | What kind of work did you do out there? | 46:07 |
Ruth Hall Davis | When I first started working out there, I would just work at night when they'd have big parties and thing. I'd work in the cloak room, checking the coats and things. Then later, I started working in the kitchen with the salad lady that was making the salads and stuff like that. | 46:11 |
Chris Stewart | I'd like to talk a little bit about working conditions. It sounds like you worked at. | 46:30 |
Chris Stewart | I'd like to ask you a little bit about working conditions, the kinds of working conditions that you did both in terms of pay and how well, if the pay was enough to— | 0:04 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, I think during that time they had a set scale of pay that they had to pay you, they couldn't earn to pay you and the working conditions was pretty good. I never had no—I generally got along pretty good with everybody that I was working with. | 0:22 |
Chris Stewart | Was it after the working at the country club that you then went to working with the family? | 0:50 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. Yeah. | 0:55 |
Chris Stewart | What exactly were your job duties with this family? | 0:57 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, I was just a general housekeeper. I cleaned the house, I cooked the meals, I did the shopping. And later I took care of a lot of his business, like depositing his checks and stuff like that. So it was— | 1:02 |
Chris Stewart | When he became— | 1:22 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, so that he couldn't do it. I would take care of all that for him. | 1:23 |
Chris Stewart | Were you a live-in worker? Did you live there? | 1:29 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No, not at first I didn't. But after his second wife died and his health was bad, the doctor didn't want him to stay there alone. So he had a nurse that would come in. She would stay some nights, and then some nights I would stay, so we would switch around so that neither one of us had to be there all the time. | 1:32 |
Chris Stewart | So you were a day worker [indistinct 00:02:00] able to leave him in the evening? | 1:57 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. | 2:01 |
Chris Stewart | Can you talk a little bit about, did you know people who did live in work still? | 2:02 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No. Most of the people that I knew would just do day, they would go to work in the morning, get off in the afternoon, and come back home. | 2:08 |
Chris Stewart | And you were paid by the week? | 2:21 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. | 2:22 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember what you— | 2:22 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, when I first started, I think it was about 35 hours a week. And then I gradually got—They gradually gave him the raises. | 2:25 |
Chris Stewart | When did you first start with this? | 2:39 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, gosh. Was it 19—It must be about 1958 or '59, something like that. | 2:42 |
Chris Stewart | So you worked at some of the other jobs that you worked at for quite a while. A long time. What job prior to your job with this family did you work at the longest? | 2:53 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I'm trying to think. I think it was Cape Fear Country Club. | 3:09 |
Chris Stewart | And why did you decide to leave that job? | 3:11 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, I was working and they hired another girl and they give her the regular hours and put me on split hours. I'd work maybe during lunch hour, then I had two or three hours off and I had to go back for suffering. I didn't like it, so I quit. | 3:14 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. That's not good. That's hard. | 3:41 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, it is. | 3:42 |
Chris Stewart | Especially if you have—Did you have kids? | 3:42 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, yeah. I had kids. They were old enough to look out for themselves and things, but I still didn't like those split hours. I had all the night work and I thought they should've split it after all I was there the longest. So I should have gotten the choice hours not, but they didn't do that. | 3:44 |
Chris Stewart | When did you marry? | 4:12 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I get married in '40, '42, I think. | 4:12 |
Chris Stewart | How did you meet your husband? | 4:15 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, his family moved from South Carolina over in Leland to, they were sharecropping a farm over there and I met him there. | 4:18 |
Chris Stewart | Did you meet at church or at a—I mean, did they just introduce themselves [indistinct 00:04:39]— | 4:32 |
Ruth Hall Davis | At Shellhouse, well, when they were sharecroppers, they were working tobacco and I think I probably met him when I was working at tobacco barn with some of them. | 4:38 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. What did you do in the tobacco barn? | 4:53 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, you know, you used to string the tobacco. You had these long sticks and you used to string the tobacco on them. At first, I was handing tobacco. I learned how to hand the tobacco. Then I learned how to string the tobacco. So I did that and my daddy he had a tobacco barn and he started raising tobacco and his health was bad. But my baby brother was supposed to keep the steam up in the barn during the day and I'll keep it up at night and he would sleep there at night. So it was my job. Soon as I go in and maybe trying to get a nap during the day, my mother come in and say, "You better go check the steam boy—" Big brother called him boy, he went to sleep and I don't know whether the steam is up or not. So that was it. I still had to do my work and his. | 4:57 |
Chris Stewart | Were there special jobs that men did with the tobacco than women did with the tobacco? | 5:48 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. Most of the time during the harvesting the tobacco, the men would go in the field and we had these long trough, like things that was drawn by the mules. They would go in and crop the tobacco and they'd bring it up to the barn where we'd be under the shed stringing it. And they'd bring one cart up and take another cart and go back in. They did all the crop and we did the stringing and then they would pack it, put it up in the barn, and saying, we couldn't do that. Yeah. | 5:52 |
Chris Stewart | Did your family own their own mules? | 6:28 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. | 6:29 |
Chris Stewart | What were their names? | 6:30 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I don't think we had a name or I don't remember. | 6:33 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember? I don't mean to sound strange. The people that we've talked to, a lot of people remember the mules, their mules because they either hardworking or stubborn or difficult. | 6:33 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, our mule, he worked all right. But when my father died, no, before my father died, my brother took the mule one day to go someplace. And my dad, when he'd hook him up to the cart and go off with him, anytime he'd meet somebody in the road, he'd stop the mule and talk to them. So my brother came home and says, "Papa's got this mule trained. He won't pass nobody in the road without stopping." No wonder That takes him forever to go anywhere as they come back because he stop and talk to everybody. And every time the mule see somebody, he stops. | 6:34 |
Chris Stewart | Can't teach an old mule new tricks. Oh, that's funny. That's good. How long did it take your brother to train him? | 7:30 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No, he never did, I think but after my father died, we sold him and got rid of it. | 7:38 |
Chris Stewart | Did your brother continue to do farming after your father died? | 7:45 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, for a while. Not too long afterwards. Yeah. Go back. Bye-bye. Go back. | 7:45 |
Chris Stewart | Did you keep the land and— | 7:45 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, we kept it for a while and then my mother sold it. | 8:04 |
Chris Stewart | Who did she sell it to? Was it another family in the area? | 8:06 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, she sold it to a White man named Paul Hollis, and he died and his wife sent me word at one time, asked me did I want to buy it back. But at that particular, I never could get up with her. And I hadn't been out there until about two or three years ago. My cousins were having their land—One of their brothers died and they were having, they land run off so that each one of the children could get their part. | 8:11 |
Ruth Hall Davis | So I went out there with him and there's some more people bought land down there. But if that land was run off like it's supposed to be this one woman family's house is built on part of our land and the road is not over where it's supposed to be. I went up there and I looked at it and I says, "Boy, this place is messed up." I says, "It really is. It's not", I said, "But it's not my fault. I mean, I don't have anything to do with it." None. So they just go on. The only way that I can tell where the old homestead was, there's a huge sycamore tree that was in our backyard and it's still standing. Everything else is gone. | 8:43 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. Aw, that's got to be sad. | 9:28 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, it is. | 9:37 |
Chris Stewart | So you mentioned you married in '42. How long did you and your husband to be court? | 9:40 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, I don't know. About two years. | 9:40 |
Chris Stewart | What would you do when you would see each other during the courting period? | 9:41 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, well, we would go to movies and there was a lot of time we'd just ride around and just different little things. Nothing special. I think we saw a lot. I think we saw just about every movie that was in town because really there wasn't too many things to do. | 9:47 |
Chris Stewart | Did you come here or did you go to town and— | 10:04 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No, we were over here at that time. Because he was— | 10:05 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, because you were working— | 10:12 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, I was live working over here and he left home and came over here and started working. So we were both living over here at that time. | 10:14 |
Chris Stewart | Where did you live when you were living here? | 10:21 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, when I first came over here, my sister had she and another lady had a house that on Seventh Street between Nun and Church. And I lived there with them. | 10:24 |
Chris Stewart | So how long then? Until you got married? | 10:37 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes, when I got married, then I moved out. | 10:41 |
Chris Stewart | What did your husband do? | 10:43 |
Ruth Hall Davis | He worked for the shipyard down during shipbuilding time down there. Then when the shipbuilding closed, he went to the railroad. | 10:45 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, he went to— | 10:53 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Railroad. | 10:53 |
Chris Stewart | [indistinct 00:10:54]. He worked there then for his— | 10:53 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, until they moved and went to Jacksonville and then he didn't go with them. | 10:57 |
Chris Stewart | And then what did he do? | 11:01 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, he run the service station over on North Full Street for a while and right after then, we separated because of—So he would do different little things. | 11:05 |
Chris Stewart | So where did you live then after you got married? Where would you live? | 11:25 |
Ruth Hall Davis | First, we had a room with a family over on Rankin Street and then we moved over in Taylor Homes. And then my mother told me that before my second son was born so she said, "Why don't y'all just move back out here in the country with me?" And we did. We stayed out there with her and then we built a house out there in the country on my part of the land. But the roads were so bad the children couldn't get to school and it's so bad getting in and out from where we lived until we bought this house over here and sold the one over there and the man moved it off of the land. | 11:30 |
Chris Stewart | When did you buy this house? | 12:20 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, gosh, I don't know. But we bought this house— | 12:22 |
Chris Stewart | How long have you been living here? | 12:34 |
Ruth Hall Davis | It's been about 30 or maybe 35 about. I know it's been 30 years. | 12:36 |
Chris Stewart | Did you buy it before you got the job with the family? | 12:40 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, with the— | 12:45 |
Chris Stewart | Doing domestic work. | 12:45 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Doing domestic work. I'm trying. Was I working? No, we bought it before I started to work for them. So it's been a good long time we was here. Yeah. | 12:46 |
Chris Stewart | So when you were still living out in Brunswick County? We're coming back in then to work at the country club? | 13:04 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, well, when I was working at the country club was when after I moved back to town, about time we moved back in town. But when I was over there, there was a little restaurant out there. I did some work sometime. Not regular, but I'd help them out when they needed some help, something. | 13:16 |
Chris Stewart | Right. Did you do any farming as well? | 13:33 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, we had our little garden and tobacco and stuff like that for a while. Yeah. | 13:39 |
Chris Stewart | What are the things would you and your husband do for entertainment? | 13:45 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, I don't know. I think maybe that's one of the things that as we grow older, we grew apart because after the children came, then he was always on the go. I was home with the children. We could never do anything together. Maybe sometime on the weekend, we'd all come to town, either visit his sister or my sister or something like that. But we never rarely had anything. Every once in a while we'd go down to the beach or someplace or another like that, but it wasn't too often. | 13:56 |
Chris Stewart | Did you belong to any organizations for anyone married? | 14:36 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, yes. I've belonged to the United Order of Tents, which is an organization that was organized about 150 years ago by two slave women. And I belong to United Order of Salem. That's just a local organization. But the United Order of Tents it is all through the East Coast from Georgia through New York. And I belong, well, we are in Southern District number one. It started out that these two slave ladies didn't like the way that the masters were burying the women whenever they had died. So they started this organization with the help of two White lawyers. And— | 14:38 |
Chris Stewart | How were masters burying women? | 15:39 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I really don't know. Somebody said just wrap them up in a sheet or something. But they weren't— | 15:44 |
Chris Stewart | You didn't feel like they— | 15:47 |
Ruth Hall Davis | A proper burial. So they started this organization so that the women that belonged to it could have a proper burial and it's been going on ever since then. | 15:48 |
Chris Stewart | So how would they insure proper burial? Would they raise the money for— | 16:00 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. Well, okay, Tent when I joined, we weren't paying, but what, I think it was about 35 cents a month or something like that. And of course, when you died, you didn't get but maybe a hundred dollars or something like that. But back then that hundred dollars was a lot of money. But now we have an insurance and it's according to your age that you get up to a thousand dollars. And not only is—Well, we have expanded we give, I think it's four complete scholarships each year. And we have our own home office in North of Virginia. We have a rest home in Hampton, Virginia. | 16:06 |
Chris Stewart | This is just for women? | 17:02 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, anybody can go to the rest home, but only women can join the organization. We have purchased land in Rocky Mount. | 17:04 |
Chris Stewart | Okay, what are we talking about? | 17:16 |
Ruth Hall Davis | The organization. Right now we have $2.6 million grant from the government to build senior citizens' apartment in Rocky Mountain. Well, we tried to get a loan through HUD to do it at one time and they turned us down. But then a reporter did interview on the organization and the things that we are doing. And so the woman that was working with it, she said, "You not only got the money for what you want, but you have a grant this time instead of a loan." So as soon as Rocky Mount can finish up—Well, we are waiting now for Rocky Mount to get through with whatever paperwork and things they have to do so we can do the groundbreaking and start on those apartments. | 17:28 |
Chris Stewart | Sounds like you've been very active in the service— | 18:24 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, we have. | 18:26 |
Chris Stewart | When did you join? | 18:27 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh golly. I've been a member for about, I know, over 20 years. Yeah. | 18:30 |
Chris Stewart | What does the organization look for in a woman? What kinds of qualities? | 18:40 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, you have to believe in the Supreme Being, you have to be a Christian, you have to have good morals and you have to be Black. That's in the charter. That was, we have a charter in Washington, D.C., and that's in the charter because we have had, some of the members have White friends that want to join, but because of the charter, it just have to say it like it is— | 18:45 |
Chris Stewart | Well, it's Black women doing work for their community— | 19:15 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. And we give to the NAACP, we support Shaw's University, we give to the hungry. We send money overseas for something. I don't have all that right before me now. But we don't just look out for ourselves and when they first started giving out scholarships, it was to girls only. But now we give to a young men too if they needs it. | 19:19 |
Chris Stewart | Was the organization actually started in North Carolina? | 19:55 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No, it started in Virginia and spread. Yeah. Yeah. | 19:58 |
Chris Stewart | It sounds like the organization here in Wilmington is very active. | 20:05 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. We have our own—Well, we have a building we bought over on McRae Street that we have our head for meeting place because other organizations and things meets there too. And this member chair in Wilmington that works with the general body as a matter of fact, I'm on the board of directors, so I helped makes the laws or pass the laws and things for right now for things that's going. And we have a deputy that looks over all the other organizations here. Oh, well we are doing pretty good. | 20:18 |
Chris Stewart | Are there any sort of companion organizations— | 20:58 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No. No. That's where we are different from the Eastern style anything else. No male connected. When we have our conventions, anytime a male comes in unless it's an open house, we have an open house or a public program, then the men are welcome to come. But if it's doing like we have the convention and the male from the city wants to come in and welcome us to the city or something, then we stop our business and he's excluded in when he gets through. He's excluded back out. One of our accountants is a man and our lawyer is a man, but they know that they cannot come in our meetings unless they ask. And they know when they finish what they have to say, they'll exclude it back out of meeting. | 21:00 |
Chris Stewart | Why is this exclusively women? What's the purpose of that energy? | 21:54 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, I really guess it's because the founders started it that way and since the charter is recorded in Washington, there's nothing we can do to change it. | 21:59 |
Chris Stewart | What do you think personally the benefits are of having an exclusively Black women's organization not just— | 22:11 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, I don't know whether this is far as being exclusively Black or whatever, but it shows that a bunch of Black women can get together and really make a difference. Well, we can make a difference in our lives. We can make a difference in the lives of other people, especially young people because we have juvenile departments that we train the young girls and thing. So I think that we have made a difference and we are still making a difference. | 22:19 |
Chris Stewart | Well, I tell you, I'd heard of the United Order of Tents— | 23:02 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Tents. | 23:02 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. And their reputation is really proceed them. It's amazing and it sounds like a wonderful organization— | 23:03 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, when I first joined it, I didn't—I just joined. I didn't attend my meetings and thing at first, but my sister-in-law got me to go to a convention one year with her and I saw what the whole thing was about and how they were doing and what they were doing. And it just made me interested enough to really want to get in and work like we've been doing. | 23:13 |
Chris Stewart | Why did you originally join? | 23:41 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, well I first joined, there was a family living across the street. There were two sisters living there and one of them sisters belonged to it. I used to go over and sit and talk to them and things. So she talked me into joining and I joined through her. | 23:46 |
Chris Stewart | What about the other organization? The United Order of Salem did you say? | 24:05 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. That's a local organization. Well, it's right here in North Carolina, but it was originated here in Wilmington. We have the Salem Hall at 12th and Castle and it's kind of on the same order, but I really don't know. I joined it, but I don't know too much about all the beginning of it and things like that. But it's just— | 24:08 |
Chris Stewart | So did you belong to any other organizations here besides the United Order of the Tents and United Order of Salem? | 24:40 |
Ruth Hall Davis | What is it? The Courts of Corinthians now that is part of the Pythians, there is a male organization that goes with that, but the Salem is male and female. | 24:57 |
Chris Stewart | This is the Court of Corinthians is the women's organization of— | 25:14 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Of the Pythians. Knight of Pythians. | 25:20 |
Chris Stewart | What kinds of activities did the Court of Corinthians participate in? | 25:24 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, well we do some of the same things almost that the Tent does because we have scholarships, but we just was not as large as the Tents. So we can't do as much as the Tents do and the requirements are just about the same to join. | 25:28 |
Chris Stewart | Did anybody join or is there a process through which people have to where there's a decision as to whether or not— | 25:51 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, you fill out an application and it goes into your local Tent or subordinate here, then we really supposed to have group of people to go and call it an investigating committee. But mostly if somebody join, somebody knows them that's in there and know their character and thing, it's really hard now with so many dope addicts and things out there in the street. You have to really screen your people that's coming in because we've had a good name all these years and we don't want to bring it down. | 25:59 |
Chris Stewart | Is it the same process for some of these other organizations— | 26:41 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. Yeah, they're supposed—Yeah, you have to send in an application and then the application goes in, then the members vote on whether they want to go in just for instance, I like the Court of Corinthians young lady wanted to join and we had to turn her down because of her health's sake. We knew that she had bad health. So you don't take somebody in that you knows is sick. That's already sick. | 26:46 |
Chris Stewart | Do the organizations, and I guess I'm not talking about these organizations but other organizations, are people with certain kinds of occupations asked to join certain organizations— | 27:27 |
Ruth Hall Davis | All of these that I'm talking about, anybody can join. It doesn't matter what your—And you take the United Order of Tents, we have housewives, retired people. We have people with doctorate's degree and master's degree. So it's all the way up. It doesn't matter— | 27:40 |
Chris Stewart | Are other organizations that are not so inclusive in there do you think? | 28:05 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well none of them is really not exclusive. It's just that you have to be of good character and that's the biggest of it. We just can't take some rowdy person in something like that. But long as you got good character and a good reference and things just like the Tents, well you have to believe in the Supreme Being. So most of the organization is based on religion oversought so that's mostly the criteria for joining. | 28:12 |
Chris Stewart | So it sounds like you were pretty active in your organizations through much of your adult life. | 28:50 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes, I've tried to be at least for the last 10, 12 years anyway. | 28:59 |
Chris Stewart | What about social clubs? Were you ever— | 29:03 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, yes. When I was younger. Well, I'm trying to think of some of the clubs that I did belong to. There's one club was Social Thrifty. We'd meet and we'd put on projects and things and just before whatever money we would raise would be divided up just before Christmas. But we would give during the Christmas times, whenever they're trying to get toys and thing for the underprivileged and things like that, we would give to that and things of that sort. But we'd always have that would be our little Christmas money, whatever we put in that social club for that time. | 29:06 |
Chris Stewart | Do you recall either when you were growing up or even as a young adult seeing Jim Crow signs? | 30:07 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, yeah. Oh, the bus station. You had your White water fountain and Black water fountain. You had your White waiting room and your Black waiting room, they had a little lunch counter in there and you'd go around to the side and buy your food out of a side window. And they were all over everywhere. | 30:10 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember hearing about anybody who broke the rules of segregation? | 30:33 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Not until they really started—During the time just before the riots start here after Martha Luther King died, they got killed and it was—That's when most of the rules were broken during that time when he was really trying to get rid of segregation and things like that. Now I'll tell you, when Williston burnt and when after Williston burnt and they rebuilt the school, the desks and thing, the furniture that was supposed to go into Williston, went over here to New Hanover High School and they took all the old desks and thing out of New Hanover High School and put it in the new building and we never got any new books. We got all the old books out of New Hanover High School pages missing and all that stuff. That's what we had to go through with. | 30:39 |
Chris Stewart | This again, may sound redundant because it sounds like you started to answer anyway did you feel at any time during this period before Civil Rights, that there were people who treated you like you were a second-class citizen? | 31:53 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, yeah. You'll see that all the time. You find that all the time. You get on the bus and if the bus was spoiling, you were sitting down. Although you paid your money, White person got on that bus you had to get up and stand up and give them your seat. Yeah. | 32:02 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember any other specific examples that might have happened to you? | 32:15 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No, I don't know. I guess I just didn't put myself in a position to be in those ways. | 32:26 |
Chris Stewart | Right. Right. Right. Right. Can you talk a little bit about, you've lived here for over 30 years. | 32:29 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. | 32:45 |
Chris Stewart | Tell me about how this neighborhood has changed. | 32:45 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, when I moved here, all the homes in this block, the people owned their own home and they took pride in keeping them up and keeping the neighborhood up. But as they gradually moved out and built out in the suburbs and saying the property was a rental property and it's just a lot of the houses has gone down as some of them is boarded up and stuff like that. Mine don't look that good now because I'm in court with my insurance company. I had damage during the storm in March and we've already been to the Magistrate court, small claims court, and I won. They've awarded me the money to have my house fixed. So they're appealing it now so we got to go back. So that's the reason my screen is down off my porch and all that stuff. | 32:51 |
Chris Stewart | The insurance— | 33:44 |
Ruth Hall Davis | The insurance company, I've been paying that insurance for years. That's the first time I've ever had a claim and they refused to pay it. So right now I don't have any insurance because I can't get insurance from no other company until this claim is settle. | 33:45 |
Chris Stewart | Why do you think they're refusing? | 33:59 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, it's the roof, and they said the roof it's an old roof. Well, it's a metal roof and my son generally go up every year and paint it for me. There's one little spot over on that side that is kind of rusty, but he'd go up there and sweep it off and paint it. It's fine. Never had no leaks. I had a leak in the bathroom around the—But I didn't file no claim for it or anything because it was just a small leak. So they're saying that it was an old roof and it would've came off anyway. Well, it's an old roof. I've been paying insurance on it all these years. So why can't they go ahead on and pay it? | 34:02 |
Ruth Hall Davis | And my insurance is $250 deductible. Plus I paid, the agent told me to go ahead and get somebody to do the temporary work up there, which I did. Then I had to pay a lawyer $300 to go in small claims court with me. But there's going right into my hands now because when I go to big court, I'm not just going for a judge. I'm going to ask for a jury trial and then I'm asking for my lawyer fee plus whatever I can get for my house being like this all summer, not being able to use my porch, and embarrassment of people coming up seeing my porch like that. It's just ridiculous. | 34:44 |
Chris Stewart | It's outrageous that an insurance that's what they're supposed to do. | 35:29 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. Why you carry the insurance if they're not going to pay a claim when you file it? If I had been filing claims all these years along, I could say, "Well maybe I filed too many but I never filed a claim before." | 35:32 |
Chris Stewart | So the neighborhood has changed— | 35:49 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes, it has changed a lot. | 35:51 |
Chris Stewart | The rental houses who are they owned—Who owns them? | 35:59 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well the people that owns them used to live in this neighborhood, but they built now the two doors down. Well, this house here is the man that owned it lives across the street, but the people moved out and he haven't really—He said he had to paint it and things before he can put it back up for rent again. People on the other side are there, it belongs to James Lee and he lives over in Leland. He built him a home over there. And the two-story house over there that's belongs to the Browns, they're living in New York now. | 35:59 |
Ruth Hall Davis | But they said they're trying to sell it because they said well, they're planning on coming back in, but they're not going to live over there. And the little cinder block house that's a rental property. But she keeps that up real nice. She's bought a home out in Echo Farm, so she lives out there and then another house down there that's boarded up, that's heir's property, they had a sale for it and one woman wouldn't sign it so they couldn't sell it. And it's just things like that, that's bringing the neighborhood down. But it's not really— | 36:33 |
Chris Stewart | Would you remember what you thought and felt about the violence that took place during the [indistinct 00:37:26]? | 37:20 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I thought it was unnecessary because it didn't do anything, but okay, it brought the neighborhoods down, all that burning and stuff like that. I don't see where one violence could—If you do something bad and then you go ahead and do something even worse, it's nothing. I really don't think it was necessary for the things that happened because it could have been handled a different way and yeah, it really could have been. | 37:27 |
Chris Stewart | Did you ever have older relatives when you were very young who remembered the Wilmington Riot of 1898? | 38:05 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I have heard some of them talk about what happened, but not saying that they knew just was hearsay as you know about things like that. But I didn't know. | 38:21 |
Chris Stewart | What did they say? | 38:35 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, they say it started about an editorial in the Black newspaper and they were saying something about that they said the streets would run with Native bloods, something like that. But it's one of those things and that was unnecessary because editorial was true because so many of the people back in slavery time, the men were using the slave women for their own benefits and having children by them and things. So they could be pushing their own brothers and sisters off the sidewalk. Who knows? | 38:35 |
Chris Stewart | Did you have any relatives who've—We've had people sell up that they've had relatives who would run out of town or had to hide. Did you have any relatives? | 39:17 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No. No. No. Not that I know of. No. | 39:33 |
Chris Stewart | But people did hear about it right? | 39:35 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. | 39:37 |
Chris Stewart | Was it something that people talked about and made sure that say children or grandchildren knew about? | 39:40 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, yeah, they talked about it some. I would hear my mother and them talking amongst themselves about the things that happened and things like that. So it's just one of those things— | 39:48 |
Chris Stewart | But not specifically to talk to children to make sure to be aware or be careful. | 40:03 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No, I've never known them to do anything of that. | 40:09 |
Chris Stewart | Well, can you think of any questions that I should have asked you that I didn't? | 40:12 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No, I really can't. I think we've covered just about everything. | 40:12 |
Chris Stewart | A lot of different things. | 40:13 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. Yeah. Yeah. | 40:13 |
Chris Stewart | Well, I've got a couple things that I need to do. The first thing is to ask you just a few more questions it's biographical information that will accompany the interview. I've tried not to ask you too much about names or the dates because doesn't seem—We just don't do that but this is the names and dates sections of the interview. And it should just take a couple minutes to go through. We'll start with your full name. | 40:22 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Ruth Hall Davis. | 40:43 |
Chris Stewart | Or Coral Lee? | 41:03 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. Oh, boy. Those kids too. | 41:05 |
Chris Stewart | Maiden name is Hall? | 41:10 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Hall. Yes. | 41:12 |
Chris Stewart | Your current address is 217 South 13. Your current phone number? | 41:24 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Is (919) 763-8927. | 41:26 |
Chris Stewart | And how would you like your name to appear in any written material that might result from this tape? | 41:32 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Just like you have it there [indistinct 00:41:42]. | 41:41 |
Chris Stewart | And your birthdate. | 41:47 |
Ruth Hall Davis | 1/6/22. | 41:49 |
Chris Stewart | That's right. And you were born in Brunswick? | 41:51 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Brunswick County. | 41:57 |
Chris Stewart | Who did your mother have, was there another midwife that your mother had to help— | 42:07 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, yes. You mean that my mother had for what? | 42:12 |
Chris Stewart | For giving birth to her children. | 42:14 |
Ruth Hall Davis | They was, but I can't think of her. I don't know her name right now. Yeah. | 42:16 |
Chris Stewart | Are you divorced? | 42:22 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes, I'm divorced, but both of my husbands are dead now. | 42:24 |
Chris Stewart | And your mother's full name? | 42:27 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Penny Haynes Hall. | 42:34 |
Chris Stewart | Haynes? | 42:40 |
Ruth Hall Davis | H-A-Y-N-E-S. | 42:41 |
Chris Stewart | Any relationship to Edward Haynes? | 42:45 |
Ruth Hall Davis | That's my first cousin. | 42:46 |
Chris Stewart | We've been interviewing all of these people. Interviewed Mr. Haynes for the first Monday we were here. | 42:48 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. Well, his father and my mother was sisters and brothers. | 42:57 |
Chris Stewart | My goodness. Your mother's date of birth do you recall? | 43:01 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Ooh. Oh, let's see. It was October. October the 15th, 1885. | 43:05 |
Chris Stewart | When did she die? | 43:15 |
Ruth Hall Davis | May the—[indistinct 00:43:21] | 43:20 |
Chris Stewart | —the year? | 43:20 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No, I can't even do that. I know it's 20 some years ago. But— | 43:28 |
Chris Stewart | How old was she when she died? | 43:29 |
Ruth Hall Davis | She was 83. I did have one of her obituaries. | 43:32 |
Chris Stewart | '68? She died in '68? | 44:01 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, I think so. I had one of her obituaries in here, but I don't see it now. | 44:03 |
Chris Stewart | Was she born here? | 44:09 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, she is born in Columbus County. | 44:14 |
Chris Stewart | Columbus County. And her occupation? | 44:14 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, housewife, midwife. | 44:24 |
Chris Stewart | And your father's full name? | 44:35 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Daniel Hall. | 44:36 |
Chris Stewart | Is that I-E-L or I-A-L? | 44:46 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I-E-L. | 44:46 |
Chris Stewart | And his date of birth? This is always such a difficult one. | 44:46 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh gosh, I don't know. | 44:47 |
Chris Stewart | When did he die? | 44:47 |
Ruth Hall Davis | He died January of18th, 1940 and he was 63 when he died. | 44:51 |
Chris Stewart | 1877? | 45:01 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Something like that. But I don't know because he was older than my mother, so I don't know. | 45:07 |
Chris Stewart | Your mother and father were old enough then to remember the Wilmington Riot— | 45:15 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. Yeah. | 45:19 |
Chris Stewart | And where was your father born? | 45:22 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Brunswick County. | 45:23 |
Chris Stewart | And his occupation? | 45:33 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Just a laborer. He just worked at the fertilizer plant. | 45:34 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. Now the names of your brothers and sisters. | 45:49 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Okay. | 45:50 |
Chris Stewart | I won't ask you for any— | 45:50 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Names. Okay. My oldest brother was named Gus Hall. Augusta Hall. We called him Gus and the second brother was named Walter and Nathaniel then there was Mamie. | 45:51 |
Chris Stewart | What was her—Was she married? | 46:18 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. Mamie Hall Weaver and— | 46:22 |
Ruth Hall Davis | —and then it was, it's Guthrie, and John, Dean, and myself, Ruth, and Charles. | 0:05 |
Chris Stewart | And your children's names and birthdays if you remember. | 0:38 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh no. | 0:42 |
Chris Stewart | We won't actually ask for months, just the years. | 0:44 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes, that's going to be a problem with some of them. Let's see how many I've got in here. My oldest son is named Richard, and he was born November the seventh, 1939. | 0:46 |
Chris Stewart | What's Richard's last name? | 1:05 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Hall. Wallace. | 1:05 |
Chris Stewart | Is that your family Bible? | 1:18 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, yeah. Trying to see how many of them I have in here for the birth— | 1:20 |
Chris Stewart | What's Wallace's last name? | 1:24 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Burns. Patricia Jones. | 1:26 |
Chris Stewart | Do you have a birthdate for Wallace? | 1:35 |
Ruth Hall Davis | August the 26th. I don't have his year down here. It was, let's see, '45, [indistinct 00:01:59] it must be '42. | 1:51 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. And then Patricia's birthday? | 2:06 |
Ruth Hall Davis | May the fourth, 1945. Walter Burns, March the seventh, '48. Beverly-Shareef— | 2:10 |
Chris Stewart | How do you spell the middle name? | 2:27 |
Ruth Hall Davis | S-H-A-R-E-E-F. | 2:31 |
Chris Stewart | E-E— | 2:36 |
Ruth Hall Davis | F. | 2:36 |
Chris Stewart | [indistinct 00:02:38] | 2:36 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Shareef. Okay, so that was November the second, 1949. Ronald Burns, June the 16th, 1951. 'Cause Dan, I didn't put this in here, I didn't put his in. Daniel Burns, his birthday is January the 14th, 1947. | 2:37 |
Chris Stewart | Seven children. Do you have grandchildren? | 3:09 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. | 3:21 |
Chris Stewart | How many do you have? | 3:21 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I think there's 15. | 3:21 |
Chris Stewart | Do you have great-grandchildren? | 3:22 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. | 3:23 |
Chris Stewart | How many great-grandchildren do you have? | 3:24 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Last count was nine. | 3:34 |
Chris Stewart | Congratulations. | 3:39 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Thank you. | 3:39 |
Chris Stewart | Okay, now we're to your residential history, you lived in Brunswick County— | 3:45 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Brunswick County, yeah. | 3:49 |
Chris Stewart | And— | 3:51 |
Ruth Hall Davis | That's where I was born, and raised over there. | 3:51 |
Chris Stewart | [indistinct 00:03:54] | 3:53 |
Chris Stewart | Okay, and the names of the schools. You said you went to Leland? | 3:53 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Uh-huh. | 4:18 |
Chris Stewart | Was that Leland Primary? | 4:20 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Primary School, yeah. | 4:20 |
Chris Stewart | And that was for grade one through— | 4:26 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Through seven. | 4:28 |
Chris Stewart | And then you went to [indistinct 00:04:40]? | 4:36 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. | 4:36 |
Chris Stewart | Through what grade? | 4:36 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, through 10th. | 4:36 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. Now on to your work history. | 4:49 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, no, don't answer that. | 4:50 |
Chris Stewart | Well, I actually have some things written down. You mentioned that you first worked at— | 4:51 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I think my first job was with the family that ran the boarding house. | 5:01 |
Chris Stewart | What work were you doing there? | 5:15 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Well, I would help with the cooking and cleaning the rooms and things. | 5:15 |
Chris Stewart | How old do you figure you were when you were doing that? | 5:19 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, that was right after Richard was born, so I was probably about 18. Where did I go from there? [indistinct 00:05:59]. Okay, let's see. Okay, put motel. | 5:35 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember what the name of the motel was? | 6:04 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Alberta. | 6:04 |
Chris Stewart | And how old were you when you were doing that? | 6:04 |
Ruth Hall Davis | I was probably 20. Yeah, probably not, but that's just about 20, something like that. | 6:10 |
Chris Stewart | And the laundry? | 6:24 |
Ruth Hall Davis | And the laundry was after then, so I guess I was about 22. | 6:31 |
Chris Stewart | What exactly were you doing at the laundry? | 6:36 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Folding sheets. | 6:40 |
Chris Stewart | What did you say the name of the laundry was? | 6:45 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Modern. | 6:47 |
Chris Stewart | Modern? | 6:48 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Mm-hmm. | 6:49 |
Chris Stewart | About 22? | 6:55 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. And Cape Fair Country Club. I don't know, in between there, someplace. I probably was there in about 29 or 30, and maybe I might have been over that, I can't think right now. | 6:56 |
Chris Stewart | So you thought you were about 30 years old? | 7:27 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah, I think it was maybe 30. I think it's early 30s anyway. And then for the William Hills on Wrightsville Beach, and that was from then up until I retired in 60s, [indistinct 00:07:56]. | 7:30 |
Chris Stewart | Have you ever received any awards, or honors or held any offices? | 8:09 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Awards or honors. | 8:15 |
Chris Stewart | [indistinct 00:08:34] maybe? | 8:33 |
Ruth Hall Davis | [indistinct 00:08:38] oh, let's see. The people that I worked for, she gave me a plaque, and that was that. | 8:39 |
Chris Stewart | Oops. Okay. [indistinct 00:08:42]. | 8:42 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Okay, let see where I was at. Okay. [indistinct 00:09:14] that was when I ended my 25th year with them. | 8:42 |
Chris Stewart | It's a beautiful plaque. | 9:16 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Okay. And I've got my two gallon pen for for giving blood, and I've had— | 10:09 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, wow. | 10:14 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. | 10:15 |
Chris Stewart | I used to work in a laboratory, so I know what that means. | 10:22 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yeah. | 10:28 |
Chris Stewart | Is there anything else? | 10:28 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, that's all that I think of. | 10:32 |
Chris Stewart | You're currently Baptist? | 10:33 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes. | 10:34 |
Chris Stewart | What church do you belong to? | 10:34 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Mount Nebo Baptist Church. | 10:35 |
Chris Stewart | Mount? | 10:36 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Mount Nebo. | 10:38 |
Chris Stewart | Have you had any past church memberships? | 10:46 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Yes, I used to belong to Shiloh. | 10:51 |
Chris Stewart | Now we're to organizations, and I'll start with United Order of Tents. United Order, the same— | 11:04 |
Ruth Hall Davis | The same, yeah, United Order. | 11:08 |
Chris Stewart | [indistinct 00:11:29] | 11:08 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Mm-hmm. | 11:08 |
Chris Stewart | Social Thrifty Club? | 11:08 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Mm-hmm. And I'm presently secretary for the New Hanover County Democratic Women. | 11:47 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, congratulations. | 11:54 |
Chris Stewart | You talk to a lot of women, you're very involved— | 11:54 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Involving women, yeah. Yes. | 12:11 |
Chris Stewart | Any other organizations you'd like me [indistinct 00:12:23]? | 12:14 |
Ruth Hall Davis | No, that's all I'm think I'm thinking [indistinct 00:12:25]. | 12:14 |
Chris Stewart | Are there any other activities or hobbies that you'd like to have down on— | 12:14 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Oh, I love to read. Oh, well, that's about all. I guess. | 12:30 |
Chris Stewart | Well, the final thing that I need to do is, I need to ask your permission, or get your written permission to place this tape in our collection. What we have is, we have what's called an interview agreement form, and what it states is that you give the rights to this interview to Duke University so that students and researchers can listen to the tape, and read the transcript of the tape, and use it in their classrooms and in their research. About Wilmington, about—Well, any of the number of the things that you've talked to me about today. | 12:41 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Okay. | 13:26 |
Chris Stewart | And I can show you what we've got. This is the agreement. | 13:26 |
Ruth Hall Davis | Okay. | 13:29 |
Item Info
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