[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Let's begin with when and where you were born. Where were you born?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I was born here in that house right out there February 15, 1897.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

And did you know your grandparents?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No. I had a grandmother to live that I can remember, but my grandfather on my mother's side died in 1893. That's when my brother next to me was born. And he was dead. And my grandparents on my father's side died long years before then. I don't remember them.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did your grandmother live with your family?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

She lived with my mother's sister. She didn't live with us. We all lived here at Bynum.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

So all of your family was at Bynum.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, for a while. I had three or four aunts here when I was a little girl, but there was one in Durham, and one of them finally moved to Wilmington. I don't remember seeing her; it's been before I can remember.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Were you close to all of your aunts who were in town? Did you have a lot of cousins to play with and people nearby who were related to you?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, they were, most of them, older than I was. But we were close together. We all loved one another. It's like I said the other day. It used to be like one big family here, because all of the people were [unknown] people, most of them; you know how. And we all visited one another, but of course my parents. . . . My father died when I was about six years old, just before I was seven, and I don't remember

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too much about him. It's my mother, mostly. She lived with me. I was the only one at home when I married. She and I were living at home together when Paul and I married, and so she stayed on with us. She lived, I reckon, about four years, something like that, after we married.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Do you know when your family first came to Bynum?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, I don't. I just don't remember that. I mean, I don't remember hearing them say. I went to see my sister in Carrboro yesterday afternoon. Well, she was at her granddaughter's out in the country. And she can't remember—she's ninety-two—and she can't remember much. And I just don't remember hearing them talk that much.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Was your mother born in Bynum? Do you know that?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

I don't think so. I'm not sure where she was born. My grandfather moved here with his family, and the grist mill was down yonder the other side of the raise. And he worked in the grist mill. That's what his work was, you know.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Was this your mother's father?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Uh-huh, my mother's father. He's the one that died in '93. And it was his wife that lived till I was a little girl.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

I see.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

I can remember her some, not much.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Do you think they had lived in the country before they came to Bynum?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I reckon so. Most of the places where these grist mills, you know, or something like that was then. . . . I just don't remember hearing her say too much about it. I have heard her tell things, but I couldn't connect one thing with another, you know, like

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it should be to be put down.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

But you don't remember them talking about having farmed or having owned a farm or worked a farm?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, they didn't own a place. Now she had a brother; his name was Madison, they called him Mad.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Your grandmother had a brother?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

My mother. And he was older than she was. I do remember hearing her say that she used to go to the fields some with him, you know. He farmed some. They would live out like that, and my grandfather would work in the mill. And it seems to me like it was towards Carthage or somewhere in that community. I just don't remember.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

What were your parents' names? What was your mother's name?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Her name was Madlena Williamson.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

And what was your father's name?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Elbert Riggsbee. He was raised in the Lystra Community.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

In Lystra?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Lystra Community, up between here and Chapel Hill.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

And do you know when he came to Bynum?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, I just don't know what year they moved there. I was going to ask my sister a few questions yesterday, but her daughter where I went thought she was there but she had gone home with her granddaughter yesterday and was going to spend the night last night. But I don't know whether she could have remembered what year they moved here. I don't expect she could now, because her memory is not too good since she got that old.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Were they farming up in the Lystra community?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes. He had a home up in there not too far from Lystra Church, and he sold that when he moved down here.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

But that was before your parents were married.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, he was living up there when my mother and he married. He had been married before and had one daughter, and her mother died when she was about three months old. And of course my mother raised her. I think she was about three or three and a half years old when she married him. He was a little older than my mother. But we never did know any difference. We were all raised together, you know, and she loved my mother as good as we did. He farmed some, and he was what they called a shoemaker then. He mended shoes, you know, half-soled shoes, we called . . .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

A cobbler. [Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

[Laughter] And he fixed harness for the farmers around, you know. When something would happen to their harness, he would fix them. And he worked a lot like that.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did he have a place in Bynum where he did that? Did he have a little shop or something?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

I think he did. I think he had a little shop down below the mill there somewhere. I heard my mother say, but I just don't remember much about it. I know he made shoes for. . . . There was a boy that lived over in the Pittsboro community, and he was born. . . . Well, they called him clubfooted; his feet. . . . That's the way he walked, like that, you know. And my father made shoes for him. You see, you couldn't buy things then like you can have them made now,

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to order. And he made shoes for that boy. I remember hearing her say that. I have seen the man, but I expect he's dead now. I just don't know.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Do you remember ever going to sit near your father while he was doing the work, or anything?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, not too much, honey, because, see, I was just six years . . .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

You were so little.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

. . . then. If I could get ahold of his tacks, I'd drive them in the chair whenever I could. [Laughter]

MARY FREDERICKSON:

[Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

He had one chair that he sat in, you know—it was a lower chair than the others—and I'd get me a tack and I'd drive it in there every time I could get ahold of one. [Laughter] I remember that.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did either of your parents ever work in the mill?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

He did. He watched. I don't know whether he done any work inside, but he was night watchman at the mill. I remember hearing her talk about that. And I don't know whether my mother ever worked in a mill or not. I just don't remember that.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Would he have done this at the same time he was making shoes? He would have done it at night?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

He would do that just at times when he would have time, you know, wouldn't be busy with something else. It was kind of on the sideline, the work was.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did you live in the house where you were born for a long time?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

I don't know just how long, but I don't think so because I don't remember living there then, but I have lived [Laughter] . . . . Since I've been married, Paul and I moved down there before my mother died. She had a slight stroke, and the doctors told her not to walk, not to get out much, you know. Well, I had a sister. . . . I mean a aunt, and her sister lived down in our house then.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

This house right here?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Uh-huh. And she asked us—the family was moving from that house—she said, "You all move down there," and she said, "Madlena will enjoy it so much." It's home more down there than it was up on the hill where we lived, up the street, we call it. And we moved out there, and she lived about three years after we moved down there. She died out there at that house.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

How far is it that way? Is it very far, like. . . .

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

What, the house?

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Right.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Right there, the next house to us here.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:

That house right here, right there, right there; that's the one right there. This one right here.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Oh, this house right next door?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Uh-huh, right there. That's where I was born. And that's where my brother was born, too, next to me.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

I see. So that wasn't considered on the hill, on the mill hill.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, it was.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:

Yes, it was.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

These were the first houses down this-a-way, and they kept building up the other way, you know, as they built more houses.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

So up the street is just the newer houses.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, but they don't look [unknown] it to look at them.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

But when you were small, they were new.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

They were built a good while after these were.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

I see. But why would your mother feel more comfortable in that house, just because she'd lived there for a long time?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yeah, it was home to her, because she lived there a right long time, you know, and that's why my aunt thought she would like it better. When she had to stay in, she could be on the porch and see more of what she'd lived around. But before then, when I was a little girl, we did live up on the hill at a three-room house; that's where my father died when I was about six years old. And then after that, a few years after that we moved out yonder in the next house, right across the street. And she lived there several years. I was a little girl for a good while out there at that house, so down this-a-way has been my home more or less, you know, than living up the other way was.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Why did you move to the three-room house and then to the house next door?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I just don't know their reasons for that. The people would change houses sometimes, and I don't know why they ever lived out there. I don't know, because I just remember living up there in that house. That's the only one I remember living in, because I don't remember living out here. I remember living in that one up there first.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Could you choose the house you wanted to live in?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, they had to go to the head of the company here and ask for a house. And they would let them have it if it was convenient

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for them to have it, you know. And pay rent through the mill.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

So your family always lived in some sort of mill housing, right? These were mill houses, too?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, it was all mill . . .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

I mean, rent was paid through the mill?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yeah.

Now one time we did. . . . My mother and my brother that hadn't married and one of my sisters, that one that lives at Carrboro, we. . . . Well, I reckon we were living out there then. And one of my mother's sisters lived. . . . You know, you've been over there at Mrs. Durham's.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Mm-hm.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, that house was Mr. Carney Bynum's house. And so after his folks, they all died, and my aunt was living over there in part of it, and they had some of their furniture and stuff in the other part. And they removed their stuff out, and she got after my mother to move over there in the other part of the house, so we lived over there in part of that house where Mrs. Durham's living. I was around maybe thirteen years old or fourteen, somewhere along there. I went to school while we lived over there. And you know, I was telling you about the old school building. Well, I had a picture here, and I wanted to show you that. Of course, that won't mean anything in what you're getting down, you can just see the back of it, kind of, how it was down behind the church, and how they had made a new road all back there.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Oh, I'd like to see that.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

I'll show it to you in a few minutes.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

What I was curious about was, if neither of your parents

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worked in the mill, how were you able to live in the houses and rent through the mill? Did people who didn't work in the mill rent?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

My father, I don't know what kind of work, but I imagine he did work in the mill when he first came here. But the last that I remember hearing her talk about, he was night watchman down there.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

I see.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

But I know he worked in the mill some, because that's the only way we had to make a living here, you see. He sold his home up in the Lystra community when he moved down here. And he worked in the mill—I'm sure he did—but I couldn't tell you what kind of work he done in there.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

I see. Okay. What did happen when your father died and if your mother wasn't working in the mill at that time? Did they let you stay on?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Two or three of the older children were working by that time.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

I see.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

And see, for that reason we had a right to a house all the time.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Okay. What did your father die of, do you know?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, I don't. He had rheumatism some, but I've heard her speak about it. He was taken real sick all at once, suffered so with his stomach, the side, and I've heard her say since then that she believed that he had appendicitis. They didn't know that there was such a thing as appendicitis then, you know. She said after she learned about it and knew how it acted with people, she said she didn't

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know if that wasn't what [unknown] took him away, that he was taken worse all at once, so bad off, you know, suffered so much, and he didn't live but a few days after that. But the doctors, they never had heard nothing about appendicitis then.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

I see. How many brothers and sisters did you have?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I have three sisters and two brothers.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

And you. [Laughter] In other words, six children in all.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

My half-sister that I was telling you about, of course we always said she was our sister; well, she was. She and another one and that one at Carrboro. They are all, of course, older. I was the youngest child.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

You were the youngest of the six.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Uh-huh, and I had two brothers, the one next to me, and then the one, I think there was a child between him and my brother next to me that died, a little girl. There was children that died when they was small, little girls, babies like.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Infants.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

I never did see them.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

How much older was your oldest brother or sister? Was a sister the oldest?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Her first child was a boy, and he died. He was I don't know just how old, but not when he was first born, because I've heard her talk so much about children having croup, you know, and he died with what they called the membrous croup. And he didn't live but just a little while after he took it. And I don't remember just how old he was, but he was just a baby. He was the oldest one, except my half-sister,

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of course; she was older. And then the next one was a girl. And I think the next one was a girl, too, my sister at Carrboro. And then a brother, Talton Riggsbee. He's got some children living here now. We've all been here at Bynum all the time. Now he lived here all the time. After he was married, he raised his family here. And my other brother, Roy, he moved to Carrboro.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Roy Riggsbee?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Roy Riggsbee.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

How old was he when he moved to Carrboro?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I don't know exactly, but he was married and had a family when he moved up there.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Why did he go? Why did he move to Carrboro?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

They put up a store, he and a Mr. Hinson there. They put a furniture store. It's there in that name now, I think. It still goes by the name of Riggsbee-Hinson, and I don't know whether Mr. Hinson is still living or not. But my brother and his wife are both dead. They both died at Carrboro.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Do you remember when he made the decision to go away, or were you too small to. . . .

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Oh, yes. He stayed here a while after he was married. He worked in the store. As a child, he loved working around the store, and that's all he ever did. And here he'd get a wheelbarrow and carry little things out to people. They'd buy them, you know. And they'd give him just a little something for him, just when he was big enough to roll a wheelbarrow. And he kept on, and there was a

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store right out here about where that road you come in. And it was built—I can remember that—and he worked there when he was a little boy one Christmas. They had a candy counter. You know, we didn't have toys and things only at Christmastime then, and fruit: we didn't have oranges and things like that except along about Christmastime. And we were always delighted, you know, and looked forward to that. And so he worked out there at the candy counter—they fixed a little counter and let him work there selling candy—during the Christmas holidays. I think that's about the first work he ever done in the store. But he just kept on, and then he worked. . . . There was a store down yonder above this house. They first called it the Company Store. I don't know exactly, but I think maybe the ones that owned the mill owned the store then, because they called it the Company Store. And later on it was sold to Mr. Jim Atwater and Mr. Rufus Lambeth. Mr. Atwater lived over yonder; Warren Durham lives over there in his house. And Mr. Lambeth lived on up the road a piece, between here and that station up yonder, [unknown] the highway. And they were all good people. And I went to school to Miss Julia Lambeth. She was one of my teachers, and I really loved her.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

What was her first name? Julie?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Miss Julia Lambeth. She never was married.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

But she was Lambeth's sister?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Mr. Rufus Lambeth's sister. She was older than Mr. Rufus. But I really did love her. She was good. Well, what I call. . . . Now she had common sense . . .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

[Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

. . . about things. She taught us common sense, to reason out things, you know. And you know, I don't want to go against the schools now, but I think children need some of that now, don't you?

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Mm-hm. Sure.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

How to take things and how to see them, what happens and all.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

How old were you when she taught you?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I was up maybe around eleven or twelve years old then. I had had teachers before her. My first teacher. . . . Well, I think it was Miss Mary Griffin. She's related to the Griffins over there at Pittsboro. They run the funeral home over there now. And she was a mighty sweet woman. I loved her. Because I was a child that didn't take up with just everybody, you know; I stuck to my mother. I just couldn't leave my mother to go nowhere. I stayed at home and didn't go out to play like I should with other children. I didn't want to leave my mother. And I was so afraid of thunderclouds when I was a little girl, and I would watch the trees, you know, the leaves, in real hot weather, how they'll curl up together. And I'd think, "Well, I'm afraid there'll be a cloud. I won't go leave Ma this evening; I'll stay here." And I'd stay at home around her, you know, so I'd be near her. I felt like if I were near her, then everything was all right. Now that's the way I felt about my mother, you know. [Laughter]

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Why do you think that was? Why do you think you were so close to your mother?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, she was close to her children. She loved us all. But

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I was just that type of child. You know, some children are more foolish about their mothers, stick closer to them than others, and I was that type of child.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Do you think it might have been because you were the youngest?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I think maybe, and they all petted me in a way. All of them were good to me, and my brothers and sisters. I think maybe that was it, too, you know.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

We were talking about your brother and his work at the Company Store?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

He worked with Atwater and Lambeth after Atwater and Lambeth bought the store. He worked with them down there several years. And then he got a job at Durham with Huntley-Stockton Hill, a furniture store up there. And he worked with them.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Were Lambeth and Atwater from Bynum?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, uh-huh, they lived here. Mr. Atwater lived over here on the highway, and Mr. Lambeth lived up further on on the highway, big house up there. I don't know the people that own it now.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Were they young men, Atwater and Lambeth?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

They were then. Well, Mr. Rufus Lambeth, he never did marry, but Mr. Atwater was married and had a family. But he wasn't an old man when he was down there in the store. He was Superintendent of the Sunday school here for several years. The first superintendent that I ever remember in the Sunday school was Mr. Carney Bynum, the man that lived over there where Mrs. Durham lives. And then after he got disabled, Mr. Atwater was Superintendent for several years.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

How did Mr. Bynum get disabled?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I just don't remember that, because I was a child then. I don't remember.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Was he badly crippled or something?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I don't think so. I don't know. I just can't tell you. I don't remember.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Had he worked in the mill?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, he never did work in the mill. He owned some land over there, and there were some colored people that lived. . . . They farmed for him. And I really don't know what he did.

But now Mr. Luther Bynum that lived out here in this house right next to us, he was over the mill at first down here.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

He was superintendent of the mill?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I don't know what they called it. I just heard him say he was over the mill. I don't know what they called it. But that's how Bynum got its name, I think; this family of Bynums were about the first here, you know. And Mr. Bynum really looked after the place. I've heard my mother speak about it, how he'd go around, you know, and if a little something happened that shouldn't have, he'd go and investigate about it, and tried to keep things in good order here, you know, while he. . . . I don't know who owned the mill, whether he was in it or not, but the J. M. Odell Manufacturing Company is the only one that I ever knowed the name that it went by.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

But Mr. Luther Bynum was over the mill when you were a little girl, right?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, before I can remember.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

How would he keep it in order, like if there was noise or

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if people were raising ruckus or something?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, the best that I can figure it out, if they didn't live kind of like they ought to and keep their homes right, I think he would just move them out. I don't think he would keep them here on the work. Now that's the way I remember it. I don't know whether that was the exact. . . . They didn't have as much law around then as they do now, and half the time the law don't do anything [Laughter] when it comes.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Do you remember ever seeing him when you were a little girl?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, I remember him. Yes.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Was he a nice man?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, he was a nice man.

I remember when he died. We were going to school down there in that old schoolhouse. He had a son and a daughter. They were both a little older than I was. But I remember. He went to Raleigh or somewhere, and his son went with him; his name was Jeff Bynum. And he was taken sick, I think

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

and Mary, but Mary's dead now.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

What did she do?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I don't know whether she taught school. . . . I don't know what she done after they left here.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Oh, they left here after he died?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes. Yes, a while. Mrs. Bynum stayed on a few years. I don't remember how long, because I was a child. I hadn't been going

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to school but just a little while then, you know. And I can't remember too much about that.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

We were talking about your brother at the beginning of this, and you said he went to Durham to work for Huntley and Stockton?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Huntley-Stockton Hill, a furniture store up there.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

How did he decide to go to Durham?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

I think Atwater and Lambeth finally went out of business down here, and the store work is all he had ever done. He didn't work in the mill any down here. My other brother worked in the mill all the time down here, as long as he lived. But Roy didn't, and he went up there. He got a job. I don't know just how. . . . He was already married and had some children then. I don't remember how he come to get the job, who recommended him or what, but he worked up there. And then he moved to Carrboro, and he and Mr. Hinson—I don't know the man—put in the furniture store up there. I think it still goes by the name of Riggsbee-Hinson. I don't know whether it does or not. It did the last time I heard them mention it.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Was your mother real proud of him going into business like that?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

She was dead before he went into business for himself.

But she was proud; she was proud of all of her children. We all did right good. I mean, she had right good children. And I never did get a whipping. [Laughter]

MARY FREDERICKSON:

[Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

And she never did whip me. She didn't believe in whipping

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children, punishing them like that. She'd talk to them, you know, and they all minded her pretty good. I think the [Laughter] nearest that she ever come to whipping me was about a little boy. We thought so much of him when we lived out yonder; he lived in the house next to us. His name was Arthur Clark. And we loved him, and he loved us just the same as if he was our own little brother. And he called my mother "Ma." And I heard him one day. He was at home, when we were out there, and I heard him crying. His mother had punished him for something. Well, I was so mad I didn't know what to do, and I was just talking to my Mama, you know, about it, about his mother a-whipping him. And I remember her saying, `Louise, if you don't hush I'm going to whip you now." She says, "You mustn't talk thataway." She knew that she'd hear me. But I was so wrong with his mother because she had punished him, you know. [unknown] [Laughter]

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did any of your older brothers and sisters, do you remember them ever being punished for anything?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, I don't.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

I mean, your mother carried that policy out with all her children, right?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Mm-hm, yes, she did.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Not just you, because you were the youngest. [Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, with all of them. They obeyed her very good. She lived with her family after my father died, and they obeyed her pretty well. I had right good sisters and brothers; I'm proud of them.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did anyone ever live with your family other than just your sisters and brothers and your mother and father?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, I don't think so.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Anyone ever come to stay, or did people take in boarders around?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, now, she used to take boarders; I don't remember it. That was, I think, before I was born. It might have been when I was a baby. But she did have some boarders. They'd work in the mill and they boarded with her. She had some mighty good friends. I mean, she thought so much of them, you know. Yes, she had some boarders. I remember hearing her speak about them.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

But you don't remember. . . . They weren't there when you were coming up?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, they weren't there when I was. . . . I can't remember it. I know there was a woman. She was a Harmon. Her people lived over around Pittsboro. Mary Harmon. And she married a Mr. Frank E. Ferrell. And they moved to Florida. And she would come back to see us. She'd always come and see my mother when they'd come back, you know, to North Carolina to visit their people. She'd always come to see my mother.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

And she'd stayed with your mother while she was working down here in the mill?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, she boarded with her, you know, while she was working down here.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Was it sort of a general thing, that if you took someone in it was like they were almost made a member of the family?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, you took someone that you liked, a nice person, and they lived just the same as your family. Now Mr. Henry Abernathy's

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wife, Mrs. Alice Abernathy, she was a Ferrell. Frank Harris, he married a Ferrell. They run a store up yonder.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Frank Harris did?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Uh-huh. Harris and Burley was the name of the store. And Mr. Frank Ferrell was Louise Harris's daddy. But Mr. Frank was the youngest child in their family. What I was going to tell you, Miss Alice, one of the oldest children of Mr. Walt Ferrell's children, boarded with us a long time. And she was married when we lived out yonder, the second house from here, at our house, she and Mr. Henry Abernathy. And she was almost like a sister to us, you know, because she boarded with us a long time. Her father lived here, and he moved down in the Hanks Chapel community on a farm. He had a home down there. Hanks community. And they had the post office, she and Mr. Ferrell, and when Mr. Ferrell left she just stayed on in the post office, worked in the post office, and she boarded with us for a long, long time.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Now that was when you were older, right?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, I can remember when she boarded. That's the only one that I ever remember much about her boarding.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

I see. Did your family go to the church down here, the Methodist Church?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes. My father went to the Baptist Church at Lystra—that's a Baptist church up there—and he went to the Baptist church, but when they moved down here he went to the Methodist church, too. [Laughter] I remember hearing my mother tell about the preacher up there at the Baptist Church, and one time she said he'd go home with

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them Sundays, you know, for dinners a lot of times. And he wanted her to move her membership to the Baptist Church, you know. Well, she had always been a Methodist. Grandpa Williamson was a Methodist. And she said he told her, he says, "Well, if you don't," he says, "sometime you'll have to give an account of yourself." And she said she looked at him, and she says, "Well, I think, while I have to give an account of myself, some other people will have to give an account of theirselves, too." That was the answer she made . . .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

[Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

. . . when he talked to her about moving to the Baptist Church. She never did move her membership up there. She stayed on down here, you know, and of course my father went to church down here, too, after they moved down here from up there. But I remember hearing her tell that. She said he was so down on her, you know, because she wouldn't move from the Methodist Church to the Baptist Church.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Was this when she and your father were just seeing each other?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

First married. And she lived up there in the Lystra community with him when they were first married. There was one or two of my older sisters and brothers, I think, was born up there. But I couldn't tell you how many. I just don't know.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

How did the church work? Was there a minister who lived in Bynum when you were a little girl?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, just as long ago as I can remember, there has been one here.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

There's always been one?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

But I tell you, before they built the church here the people here went to Mt. Pleasant; that's up in the country some. And the cemetery was up there, and there's a lot of the people that lived here along then buried up there. My grandfather and grandmother are buried up there, and two or three of my aunts were buried up there.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Do you remember when the church was built here?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, I don't remember. That's the only church I ever remember going to. They went to church down in the old schoolhouse before the church was built here, but I don't remember that. I just went to this church. I've always been to the church out here.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Was the church ever used except on Sunday?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, they used to have prayer meeting on Wednesday night the week a long time ago. It hasn't been so many years that they. . . . But they got to having night work, you know. They just had day work along then. Everybody was off at six o'clock. But after they got to working night shifts and all, you know, services like that kind of cut out. But I remember several of the preachers that have been here. But of course there were some here that I don't remember. I've heard her speak about them, but I can't remember them. They were here before I can remember that time.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did the ministers come and go on a four-year basis like they do in the Methodist Church?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, most of the time. Now if they didn't like. . . . You know, now they'll move them. They'll stay two or three years, and if they want to go somewhere else or the people want another minister, if

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they go to the Conference head one. . . . It's not public, you know, but they just kind of work it around. And they make changes. But the limit is four years, most of the time, that the Methodist preacher stays. And the Conference sends the preachers. We don't have any choice about asking for one. Now like the Baptist Church, they call their own preachers, you know, the congregation. They'll know one, and he'll come and preach a time or two for them, and if they like him, you know, maybe they'd get him to come and be their minister. And the other Hanks church, that's the Christian Church down there, the community that I was speaking of. And that's where my husband went to church when he was a child. And they call their preachers down there, too. I think the Methodist Church is. . . . I don't know about the others, but they've always had the Conference, you know, and the Conference is the one that sends the preachers to us. Of course, the head ones in the church, if they want one, they can let it be known, you know, to the ones over them, and maybe that'll have some effect on it. I don't know.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Do you ever remember people meeting and deciding to ask a minister to leave or something like that?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, I don't ever remember that.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Were there groups that met, aside from the Sunday service and the Wednesday night prayer meeting? Like was there a women's group in the church?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, they had the Woman's Missionary Society, they called it. I think that was the grown women, you know.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did your mother belong to that?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, she used to. Then they had for the young people—you know, grown—they had the Epworth League, they called it. And my sisters and brothers that was old enough went to that.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did you go to that?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, I wasn't old enough when they had it here.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did you belong to the Woman's Missionary Society later?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, I haven't. But I've been to all the other meetings, and we had a class. We finally organized a class, you know, later on in years, the young ladies, the girls and young married women had a class. And they got it divided up like that better, you know, than what it was years before. But I went. Now my aunt that lived down there, she was my Sunday school teacher for years when I was a little girl. And I mean maybe there was seven or eight members of that class, you know, all about the same age, and we were really close together. And we loved our Sunday school and our Sunday school class and our Sunday school teacher and all, always. We loved going to church.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

You liked it.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

You always liked it?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, I always liked going to church.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

You mentioned a couple of men who were superintendents of the Sunday school. Was that a big job?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, he sat up at the front, and he would tell all the song numbers and time to go to classes, and he just conducted the Sunday school. Of course, it was a job. When he could, he tried to use his [unknown] to get people to go to church and all, and like that, but they

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were both good men, Mr. Bynum and Mr. Atwater. And my brother, the one older than me, was Superintendent for a while out here a while before he left here.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

That was Roy.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Roy. Well, I believe that your brother Leighton was a little while.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:

Yes, my brother Leighton was.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

His brother Leighton was Superintendent since then, in later years. Well, I haven't been to Sunday school since I had arthritis so bad, because I can't wear shoes and I can't get my clothes on. I can't get ready of a morning to go in time. It's like I'm so slow. But I think that my nephew's son, I believe is Superintendent of the Sunday school out here now. But we used to have it in the afternoon. When I was a child, we had Sunday school in the afternoon and preaching at night. We didn't have a morning service any. But now since they have the preaching and Sunday school all of a morning—they have the Sunday school fist; then it just goes into the preaching service, more or less—the Superintendent don't have quite as much to do as he used to, you know.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Why did you have it in the afternoon and the evening? Do you have any idea? Did people have to do something in the morning?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I don't know. I never did know.

But as long ago as I can remember, we went to Sunday school . . .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

In the afternoon.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

. . . about three o'clock, I think. And they had preaching at night. And the preachers that lived here then, they

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had this church, Mt. Pleasant, Mann's Chapel, Ebenezer, and I believe Cedar Grove. I don't know whether they had them all that time or not. I don't know how long Cedar Grove. . . . I think that was kind of one of the last ones. Well, Mt. Pleasant was one of the first. They had a church there before we had a church here. And the preacher had to go in a buggy, a horse, you know . . .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

And do a circuit, like?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Just have one service a month. That's all we had, one preaching service a month, because he was here one Sunday, and he'd have to go to a church another Sunday. It took him so long, you know, to go and come.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

So he would stay there like part of the week or something?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, he would go and come that day. His family would live here at the parsonage, but he would go to these other churches and preach on Sunday and come back.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

So that's why the preaching was at night, probably?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

It must have been maybe why it was at night here. I just don't know why. I just remember it being one night out of the month here. Well, too, we did have. . . . Now there was Third Sunday. They got to having another, got to having it at night, one night a month, after we got so we could have two. They didn't have quite so many churches. But we had Third Sunday morning, the third Sunday in every month, our preacher here. But that was in later years; that wasn't at first.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did you see the minister very often during the week? Would

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he come to visit people?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, they'd come around and visit the people. My mother, she was [unknown] close to them. I remember one that was Preacher Rose, and he had three boys when they moved here, and I think there was one child born after he moved here. And my mother—I told you that before—that she always went where there was babies born, you know. There was no nurses around to be with the doctors and [unknown] baby [unknown] . She was what you'd say was a midwife. And she'd go to so many places. Well, she was with Mrs. Rose. And we'd go over there at night. People visited at night then a lot. They didn't have time to go, because they worked all day long here, you know, and then people would come and sit till bedtime, they called it. We did that. I know, me and her and my brother next to me, we used to go around at night. We didn't have any lights here, and she had a lantern, a kerosene lantern, you know. We would carry that, and we'd go, say, come down here to Mrs. Moore. Mrs. Durham's mother lived here; maybe we'd come down here and spend a while with her. And if you go down there [unknown] , [unknown] lived down there. Or we'd go to my aunt's or just neighbors that we might have and sit till bedtime, and they'd come and sit with us some thataway.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

When was bedtime? What time was it?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I don't know. I imagine it was about nine, or between nine and ten o'clock, along there.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Then people would just go home and go to bed?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yeah, to get up and go to work.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did you go visiting like every night, or would you stay home

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some [unknown] ?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, we didn't go every night. We just went now and then, you know.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Like maybe a couple nights a week or . . .

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Something like that. I can't remember. I just remember going, you know. I was always where she was [unknown] .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Where your mother was? [Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes. I was a. . . .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Okay. Oh, one other thing I wanted to ask you was, were the people who were superintendents in the mills and overseers in the mills all real active in the church? Like Mr. Edgar Moore?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yeah, Mr. Moore was. He taught a Sunday school class for several years out there. And he's about the only one that I remember [unknown] till he left and Frank Durham took it over, Mrs. Flossie's [unknown] boy. Mr. Moore was here, he lived there for years.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

But both of them were real active in the church?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes. His wife, well, she didn't teach a class or things like that, but she was a regular member of the Sunday school class and went to church. They were good to go to church, before the church.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did most of the people who lived up the street here go to the church? Did almost everyone go to the same church?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I don't remember about that, but there was a lot more that went then than goes now, that lived here on the hill. There was a lot more that went. I do remember that.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

If people didn't go, when you were younger, if people didn't go to the church here, would they go anywhere else to church?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, no, they couldn't very well go, because, you see, you had no way to go then, only in a buggy, horse, or a wagon. And they didn't go away from here to church much.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

So would you say most everyone went to church?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Went to church here, you know.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

What if they didn't want to go? Did anyone sort of ask them to go or. . . .

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, yes, they would talk to them, you know, and try to get them to go. They, of course, didn't force them to go, but they would treat them nice and ask them to go.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

If they refused to go to church or didn't have anything to do with the church, could they maybe be asked to leave?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I don't think so. I don't remember about that, if there ever was.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

You don't remember that happening to anybody.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, I don't remember.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Were there people who you remember who just didn't go to church?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I couldn't remember them by name and all. I know there were some that didn't.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

But there were some who didn't go.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, but I don't remember their names.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

I'm just trying to get some idea of how many people went. Like, say, out of twenty-five or thirty families, would twenty of them go?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I don't know, but we had a right good congregation here at church all the time that I remember, after I got old enough to remember going. Of course, I went before I ever got. . . . My mother always carried me to church. She always carried all of us to church. But we had a right good congregation, different classes for different ages, you know. They had the men's class. Well, now, they used to have the men and the women together, but they finally had the men's class and the ladies' class, you know. And then the girls. After I got up about nineteen or twenty, something like that, we had a class of the girls, and if some of them married, they still come to all the classes, the young married ladies. And they had the boys' class and the girls' class of the younger ages.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Why did they decide to separate the men and women?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I just don't know that. I don't know. I reckon they just had so many after there was more got to working here. See, there wasn't but just a few people here to start with, and they built more houses and more people lived here. And of course they grew up, and I reckon that was one reason; they just had to . . .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Okay.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Now Mr. Moore, he was teacher for the men's class for several years down there.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Mr. Edgar Moore?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Uh-huh. Mrs. Durham's brother.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

This was the same time he was Superintendent?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yeah, while he was Superintendent here. And Mrs. Durham was a

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teacher. After I got up old enough to be in the women's class, you know, she was my Sunday school teacher then.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

I see.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

And she was a good teacher. She was a good Christian woman, I'll tell you that, I think.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

What would the Sunday school teachers do? Would they like lead the lesson?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, they would study their lesson and talk, be so they could talk. Well, we'd read it—one would read a little, and the other one would read a little—and they'd ask questions on it, and we'd all talk our opinion, you know, of what we thought of the lesson, and questions, you know. That's the way it was then. But some places, you go and they just get up and talk—you don't say anything—but we did. We just talked to the teacher; she talked to us. And she'd ask a question and give her opinion about it, you know, and there'd be questions and answers in the Sunday school books that we'd have. We'd study them, and then if the teacher wanted to ask another question, they'd ask it and we'd give our opinions on it, you know.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

I see. Okay. Did people have a lot of different opinions about things, or did most people sort of believe the same thing?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

I think most of them kind of believed the same thing, that went to church.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

When did you first go to school? How old were you?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I don't know, but I think I was nearly seven years old. I might have been seven in July before I started in. We used to start about September, I think, somewhere. But I think I was about

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seven years old before I started to school, because I didn't want to leave my Mama and go to school.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

[Laughter] Do you remember leaving?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, I do.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Were you upset?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, I was.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

What did your mother do?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, my brother Roy, older than me, he was so good to me. He looked after me just like he had been my father or mother, one, when I started to school. Now Roy, he wasn't timid like I was. I was scared when I was a child. I was afraid of everything about it. Dogs, and then we used to call them dough-faces; they wouldn't have them only Christmastime, Santa Claus faces and like that. Well, I was scared to death of anything like that.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

A dough-face was a Santa Claus face?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yeah. Yeah. And I . . .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Because of the beard?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

I was afraid of Santa Claus.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

[Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

We'd go to church, and I didn't know who Santa Claus was then, you know. And we'd always, as long ago as I can remember, we'd have a Christmas tree and a Christmas program out here at the church. Well, Santa Claus would be there, dressed like Santa Claus, you know.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Who was it, usually?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, it was just some of the men here in the church. [Laughter] I don't remember no certain one. But I would be in my Mama's

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lap, and I would be scared to death. [Laughter] I can remember that. I remember when I got my doll. I've got a doll here now that I've had for, I know, seventy or seventy-one years, that had got off of the Christmas tree down there at the church. And I can see that doll hanging up on the Christmas tree now, and I knew it was mine, but I was scared to raise up and look, I was so scared of Santa Claus. Because he'd be up around the tree, you know. [Laughter] And I'd sit in her lap and stick my head down, you know, where I thought he couldn't see me.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Why were you afraid, do you think?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

I don't know. I was just always afraid of things like that. And I remember one time we was going to school down there. And there was a boy here, and he was full of mischief. He was old as my brother or a little older. And it was just his pride to pick at children, you know.

[TAPE 2, SIDE A]

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Okay. What do you mean when you say he had a dough-face one time?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

They didn't have them only about Christmastime or something like that here. That's the only time I had any Christmas thing, toys or anything, at the store.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

But what was a dough-face, exactly?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, they'd have just different old scary-looking faces.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Like a mask?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yeah. Uh-huh. They called them dough-faces, but you put it over your face, you know.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:

With a big white beard, or something like that.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, Santa Claus had the beard, but the others didn't. But that was Newton Garner. He lived over the river, on over yonder, and he was going to scare me. He knew I was afraid of [unknown] . And my brother was with me. And Roy, he never was a child to pick a fuss; he wasn't fussy, quarrelsome, you know, with other children. But now he was going to get right on that boy. I remember that. He told him he better leave me alone. And that's the way he was about me. He looked after me when I started in to school. I left my mother to go to school, and he was my mother [Laughter] while I was [unknown] .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

How much older was he than you?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, he was born in December, 1893, and I was born in July, 1897. About three and a half years' difference. But he really was good to me. I'll never forget him for that.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

I'm real curious about these dough-face things. Did kids wear them? Like you know now when kids dress up on Halloween?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, uh-huh.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Was it for Halloween?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I don't remember nothing about it being Halloween that long off. But they'd just have them here maybe at Christmastime, and they'd wear them, just try to scare people or something like that. I don't remember.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Like it was a game.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yeah. Something like that.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did you ever wear one?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Noooo.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

[Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

[Laughter]

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did girls ever wear them?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, I don't think they did; it was mostly the boys.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

The boys, like teenage boys or . . .

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yeah, and younger, some of them.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

And younger?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

But we didn't have Halloween programs then like we do now, you know, dress up the children and go . . .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

But that might have been for Halloween, instead of Christmas?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I imagine it was around Christmastime when they'd have them, because we never had nothing here like that that you could buy here. Well, you didn't go somewhere else and shop then, because you had no way to go unless you went in a buggy or a wagon or rode a horse.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

So you'd buy everything you needed here.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yeah, at the store here. There was the Atwater and Lambeth store. Well, there was another store further out there, but I don't remember that. That was the Bynum and Horton store. But I don't remember them selling things, but I do know it was there.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

So you finally did go to school. [Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yeah, I went to school. [Laughter] And I loved to go to school. I enjoyed going to school after I got started. And I learned fairly well, and I liked to study arithmetic, I liked to study reading, and I liked to study spelling. Now they were the three subjects that

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I loved most. But [Laughter] I didn't like, we called it grammar; it's English now, you know. I couldn't see any grammar to save my life. [Laughter] We had a man teacher after they built the schoolhouse up yonder. Well, I had never had a man teacher but one time before, but the first one I ever had, I loved him. He was nice and kind, and he was a Mr. Jerome.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

How old were you then?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I don't remember whether I was up maybe. . . . Maybe ten or something, up there. It was after they done away with this schoolhouse and built the schoolhouse up yonder, where Frank Harris lives. His home's on that lot now. Well, Mr. Jerome was really a good, easy kind [Laughter] , and later years—well, I know I was about fourteen or fifteen—and we had one by the name of Mr. Crook.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

[Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

[Laughter] And he was so stern, and I don't know, there wasn't a bit of fun. He was just. . . . Well, I don't know what kind of person you'd call him, but I didn't like him. Of course, I never done nothing against him. I didn't do that at school. Well, we couldn't get grammar. And we was on class there one day, and he told [unknown] , he says, "Well," he says, "you all haven't got a thimbleful of sense." Well, I tell you, that hurt me, because I never had had a teacher to speak like that to me before. And it went on and on, but I learned to like him more towards the last. But I had the headache so much. I had sick headache a lot when I was a child, and this Miss Julia Lambeth that I was talking about, she was my teacher then, and she told me—I was about twelve years old then—she told me one day, she

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said, "Louise," she said, "don't you come to school tomorrow." She said, "You stay at home." She says, "There's a eye doctor coming to here." Well, you see, we had no way to go to Durham and to places then to get glasses. She says, "You stay at home and let him examine your eyes and fix you some glasses." She knew how I had the headache. And I did study; I studied hard all the time I went to school to try to get up my work. And so I stayed at home, and I got my glasses, and I've been wearing glasses ever since. But it was a year or so after that that Mr. Crook was our teacher. But I was still having the headache, and I wanted to go to work in the mill. I was old enough to work. But my . . .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

How old were you, about fourteen or so?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I was about fourteen or fifteen along then. And I just begged my Mama to let me quit school and go to work down here. Well, my oldest brother was at home, and he didn't want me to, and my sister lived over there; after she married, she lived in the house with us over there at Mrs. Durham's. Well, they didn't want me to quit school and go to work. And so my mother went to Mr. Crook and asked him would he let me drop some of my studies, that I studied so hard and I was sick every evening. When I'd get home from school I was just sick as I could be with a headache. And he says, "Well, why do you want her to drop some of her work?" He says, "She never has come to me without a good lesson." She says, "Well, that's the trouble." She says, "She studies so hard, and," says, "she has the sick headache so bad." Well, he did let me drop two or three of them. I still kept my spelling, reading, and English and arithmetic; I

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remember them that I kept. But anyway, there was another girl and a man. He was a little dwarf. Mr. Harry Norwood. He was right smart, [unknown] . He's dead now.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

He was a dwarf?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, he was a little dwarf.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Was he from Bynum?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, his people lived up in the country, Mt. Pleasant community. But Dr. Ben Hackney lived here then, and Mr. Norwood was a kin to Dr. Hackney, and he come here and stayed. They lived over yonder on the other side of the road. And he went to school up here. Well, he and another girl, Naomi Sturdevant, they were just about what you'd call a grade ahead of me. We were not graded then like they grade them now, but they were having their English class with just them two together. I remember that mighty well, what Mr. Crook told me. And so I was through with my work when they went on their class. He said, "Louise," he says, "come up here and have this class with Naomi and Harry." And, well, the others in my other classes, you know, that just tickled them, because I was going to have to go on the grammar class, we called it. And so we were studying—I remember what part we was a-studying—he had to know the subject, the predicate, and the part of speech of every word in a sentence, everything about it. The [unknown] analysis, he called it. That's what they were on, and that's what we were studying, had to study that. He says, "You come up here and have this class with them." Well, I went on. I sure did hate to go, but I didn't say a thing; I went on. Well, we had about a four-line verse of poetry that we had to give the analysis: subject, predicate,

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every part of speech, every phrase and every clause in it, you know, everything about it. Well, when I came and did mine, we had to write it down. They did theirs. And, you know, I made better than either one of them, and I was a class below them. And he looked at me [Laughter] —I never will forget it; it done me so much good, because he'd already told us we didn't have a thimbleful of sense in our class, you know, before—and he says, "Well, Louise," he says, "I never thought you'd do that." Well, that helped me so much. It made me think more of him [Laughter] from then on, you know.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

[Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Things like that will stay with you longer than anything else, I think, that help. [Laughter]

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Where did most of the teachers come from who taught in Bynum?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, now I don't know where Mr. Crook came from. He moved here. He lived up on the hill in one of the houses, the company houses. They let him have a house.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

They let him have a house?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Uh-huh. Well, Mr. Jerome, he wasn't married. And I don't remember. He had some people at Pittsboro. It seems like he had a brother that was a preacher or his father was a preacher. Anyway, he was a good man. And I don't know where he stayed. Sometimes they would board with some of the people, like the Lambeths and Atwaters, you know, like that, they would, and I really don't know where Mr. Jerome stayed. Well, Miss Julia, she lived here. Well, Miss Lillie Atwater, she was a teacher, but she was. . . . We finally had two

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teachers in school, and she taught the lower grades, and she had lived here for a long, long time. And Miss Mary Griffin, she lived over in the Pittsboro community, my first teacher. And then there was another one, Miss Lotta Moore. I don't know where she was from. She was away from here somewhere, and I just don't remember. It's been so long.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

You mentioned that when you wanted to go work in the mill, and Mr. Crook said, "Well, why do you want her to drop some courses?" What happened with that? Did you go work in the mill?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, I didn't. I went on to school. He let me drop just a part of my work, and so I could go on to schooling, and not have to. . . . He said, "She don't never come with a bad lesson." He says, "She always knows her lesson." He told my mother that. He says, "Why do you want her to give up some of the work?" She says, "Well, she studies so hard, and," she says, "she suffers with the headache till we've got to do something about it." And so let me drop, I think it was history and geography.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Okay.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

See, there's a lot of reading in that.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

So then you finished school and went on. Did you go through all the grades, like you graduated from high school?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, we didn't have no graduation in our schools here, and we just went, most of them did, till they were old enough to quit and go to work. But I didn't go to work as early as a lot of them did, and I just went on to school. I don't know what grade I was in—I couldn't tell you—but it was somewhere around the tenth or something like that, the way they grade them now, because I was up towards the

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highest classes when I quit school.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Like you said, there were only two people in the class ahead of you, right?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yeah, I guess that was the class above me. I was next to them.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did they try to keep people in school? Did the teachers try to . . .

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, they did. They tried to get children to go to school, but they were not forced to go then like they are now.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

So most of them did go to work in the mill when they were around what, fourteen or fifteen?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, used to they would let them go to work about twelve years old, a long time ago.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

But when did your brothers and sisters start working?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I don't know. They went to work before I came to [unknown] . They were all older than I was, you know.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

When your father died and your mother was alone, did she get enough money to live from your sisters and brothers working?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, yes, but it was mighty close living. She was a good provider, and she knew how to make it go, but my mother had a hard time because she wanted to do everything she could for us children, you know. And she did work. Now when we lived out yonder, the second house from here, see, there was no houses below us down there then, and that place, well, she had it kind of cleaned up and had a big garden and a corn patch down there. She'd have it plowed—somebody would plow it—and she'd work it herself. I don't know how she lived to be as old as she did, she

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worked so hard. But she'd have a good garden, and we'd have a few chickens around the yard. They didn't have them like they do now, you know. We'd have maybe six or eight hens, and we'd let the hens set on the eggs and hatch . . .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Hatch chickens?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

. . . hatch chickens, and have frying-size chickens, raise our own fryers. And that's the way we lived at home then, you know. And they didn't have beef at the stores. We didn't have beef or things like that then, like we do now. Now once in a while, maybe somebody that lived kind of out in the country would kill a cow or a calf or something and bring it here. He'd have it cut in big pieces, but he'd bring it in a wagon or something and go around to the hill and sell it. And you'd go out and look at it and tell him how much you want, he'd cut it off for you. And that's the way we got our beef and stuff then. Of course, we raised our own hog. Now my mother, she'd get her a hog in every year and feed it and tend to it herself to have some homemade meat, side meat and ham and shoulder and sausage at home, you know.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did she make her own sausage and everything?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, yes, we made that.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did she do a lot of canning of stuff from the garden?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, she didn't do as much as people do now. They didn't can as much. Now she dried some stuff that could be dried, you know, and, well, she canned some. But she really worked, and she loved to fish. Oh, she . . .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Loved to fish?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Fish. Yes, she loved to fish. After I got up bigger, you know, and the others, my two sisters were at work and my brother in the mill, and Roy, of course, he was working in the store, well, she would work so hard every morning and cook her dinner. And she was a good cook. We had a-plenty. But she would get through her work, you know, and after dinner go fishing.

And my sister that lived down here, Mrs. Neill, she loved to fish, and Mrs. Abernathy and a Mrs. Murphy that lived here. And they would go fishing.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Where would they fish?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, they went across the river some, and they went on down the river to what they called Harkless.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Harkness?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Harkless. I don't know how you spell it; don't ask. [Laughter] But they always called it Harkless down there, the lower part of the river. And they would go and sit down, fix them a place to sit, and their fishing poles, they'd have reed poles or cedar poles. Well, they'd stick them in the ground, you know, and they'd let them set their hooks out in the river. It was resting, in a way, if you could have a good place to sit, you know. Well, I would go with them. I was just a little girl. I'd go with them and have me a little bitty hook and worms. If I could catch little minnows and perch, I'd stay, as long as they'd bite. When they wouldn't bite, I'd come back home. But my sisters used to say something to my mother. They were not fussing, but they'd just tell her they was afraid she worked too hard of a morning to get through to go fishing, you know, afraid she'd hurt herself too much. But she really did love to fish. And she caught

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one over the river one time, a carp that weighed thirteen pounds.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

My goodness. [Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

And how in the world she ever got that out with a hook, I don't know.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

[Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Oh, she was just thrilled to death over that.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Would she go fishing like two or three times a week or almost every day or . . .

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

About two or three times. She'd get her ironing. . . . We had a washerwoman, we called them, usually a colored woman, would come home from their homes and wash for us. But she always done her ironing. And she'd get through with her ironing; she'd get through with every bit of her work before she'd go fishing.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

You were talking about your mother fishing, how she'd get her ironing done and everything before she'd go. And then did she cook a lot of the fish she caught?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, sometime, yes. They didn't catch them every day that length. Just once in a while they'd catch a nice one. But they loved to go; if they didn't catch a thing in the world, they loved to go fishing just the same. And they would call it baiting their place. They fished with cornbread. She'd put the cornbread and make the inside up in little round balls and put it on the hook. They didn't fish with worms; they fished with the cornbread bait. And then when they'd have some left, they'd throw it in where they were fishing. They called it baiting the place. Well, the fish would learn to come, you know, to get

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something to eat there. And they'd have their places baited to go fishing.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

I see. [Laughter] Did men ever go fishing with them?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, mostly the men was at work all then, and of course my mother didn't have a husband, but the others did and they were at work. I reckon the men fished some. I don't even remember. I know I was down at Harkless one time with her, and I was standing over there near a tree and she was sitting over [unknown] , and she looked at me and she says, "Louise, come here a minute." And I went over near her, you know. She says, "Look over there." And right near where I was standing there was a snake. She says, "I was afraid to tell you that there was a snake there, to get out of the way," she says. "I was afraid you'd jump in the river." She knew how afraid of them I was, you know?

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Mm-hm.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

And that's the way she had to get. . . . She says, "Come here a minute," and I went over nearewr to her, and then she pointed and showed me the snake over there where I'd been standing.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Was she afraid of some of the same things you were? Like was she afraid of thunderstorms and snakes?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, she wasn't. Because I used to beg her. She'd go out on the porch, maybe, if there was a cloud and it was lightning right much, and she'd stand and look. And I'd just beg her; I'd say, "Mama, please come back in the house." She wasn't afraid of them. She wasn't afraid of things, anyway. That wasn't why I was afraid. She didn't put it into me, as the saying is.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

When you finished school, what did you do? Did you go work in the mill then?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

You know, the first mill here burnt down, and when they built this new mill back, I went to work when it started. And I learned to wind in there, and so I worked in there till I married. Well, I worked a little while then, and when, Hetty's my oldest child, and then my mother got poorly, and I didn't work any until my. . . . She only lived with us about three years after that.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

How old were you when you first went into the mill?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

I don't know, but I was around eighteen or nineteen years old. I didn't go in early like a lot of them did. But then after Hetty was born, and then I had another baby right after my mother died. Well, it lived about a year in all. It didn't have much help. It was a sickly child, but it died. Well, I got so. . . . They had two shifts on down there then. When I worked they didn't have but one; we just worked all day. But during that time they had put on another one, and I worked some at nighttime. I wouldn't work all night. They would let me work maybe about six hours or something like that, extra, and when Paul would be at home with Hetty I would go down there and work some, you know, at night to help out. And the Depression came, you know, in 1928 on. Oh, we really had it then.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

When you first went into the mill, you said you learned how to wind?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Mm-hm.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Do you remember who taught you how to wind?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, yes, Mrs. Ida Hearn. She lives at Carrboro now. She

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was in the hospital last time I heard from her. When the mill burnt down she was working here, but she went to Carrboro and worked. Some of them did up there. They had a cotton mill up there then. And a Johnson girl that used to live over the river; she's been dead several years. They had one little winder down here in the old mill, and she had worked on that. Well, they knew how to tie the knots and start them up. Well, they learned all the rest of us then, that learned to wind; they learned us how, taught us.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Who were the other people you were working with? Were most of them young women like you?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes. Well, now, Paul's sister, we worked right—I called it an alley—together. My winder was over here, and hers was over here, the sides. And we worked in the same alley together. And there would be somebody along the other side. But most of them. . . . Well, now, there was one young man. He worked on the other side of me. Because he had spooled, we called it, in the old mill, and you tie the knots and all. It's right much like the winding. And then, well, there was one or two maybe older married women, young married women, but most of them was just young girls like, you know, that went to work down there then.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did most of the women quit when they married?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, yes, they quit, and maybe if they had a child or two they'd go back and work some like I did, you know, at night, to help out.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

How long had you been working in the mill when you married? What year did you marry?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

I married in 1923. And I have forgot whether this mill started in 1916 or '17.

But anyhow, I went to work when this new mill. . . . We call it the new mill now, because the old mill burnt down, and the old mill, it was a wooden building. And the lightning struck it. I never will forget that. Ooh, what a high . . .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Were you in one of these houses right here?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, I was living up on the hill. And there was a bad thundercloud that Sunday afternoon, and the lightning and all. But we had opened the door, and one of the neighbor women, Mrs. Mabel Anderson, and her little boy had come in to sit with us, you know, during the cloud? And my mother opened the door, and I was sitting where I could see out the door, and I could see the tower. It had a kind of a tower. Well, there's a picture hanging in there on the wall of the old mill. They had steps to go. . . . Well, they had an elevator, too, but they don't have no steps to go up and down stairs. But they had two sets of steps out as you went in the mill, you know, in the tower, then went up. And it struck twice that Sunday evening in the tower and set it afire. And I looked down there, and the blaze was just going up, and I said, "Lord have mercy." I said, "The mill's afire." Well, everybody, by that time, was out. And they didn't have the water. Well, they had the hose down there, just what they could use at the mill, you know, but they didn't have the fire stations like they do now to come in and help. Of course, they knew it wasn't any good to put it on the mill, because that was wood, and there was so much oil and cotton and all in there, and that thing just went up right now. But they did put the water on the cotton house. It was

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out thataway; that's the cotton house there. And they were all wooden buildings then. But they were trying to keep the other buildings from catching afire, too, you know. And a lot of them would get water at the well pumps, the wells, you know, and just carry two buckets at a time and try to on the outside and around the places, to . . .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Everybody came down and started trying to put buckets up?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes. Yes, they did.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Ooh.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

But they went to work, cleaning off the machinery and all. Now my oldest brother, he worked. He stayed on here; he didn't leave. And he was married. He lived in the house with me and my mother then. I wasn't married. He had one child. But he stayed on here, and he helped work, cleaning out the old machinery, and helped them work when they started putting in the other. So he just stayed on here till they got ready to start the other mill.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did the men have jobs then, working to rebuild it? Were they paid for rebuilding and cleaning up and everything?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, if you had a machine to run, you had to clean that up. That was included with your work, while you was in the mill, you know. But, of course he got paid for going down there and helping, just like he was working in the mill then. He was helping them clean up . . .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

After the fire.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

. . . after the fire. And getting ready for them to start the new building.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Could any of the women earn money doing that, or were they

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just laid off?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, there were not many of them that could do anything like that. There was some of them like I spoke of then, too, that started winding with us; they both left here and went somewhere else to work.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Went to Carrboro.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

And my sister that lives there at Carrboro now, she and her husband left here. They moved to Carrboro and lived there a few years, and then they moved to Mebane and lived there for several years.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

When you were first working in the new mill. . . . Well, let me back up for a second. Were people real excited when the mill opened again and real happy, and did you think that it was a beautiful . . .

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Oh, yes, they were. It was so much better than it was in the old mill, you know. They were all happy with their work, in a way. But the new ones that got old enough to go to work and learn, they had to come in and learn, you know. A lot of us winders, we didn't know how to wind. Some of them had worked in the mill before, but they didn't have winders in the old mill except just one little frame that they used it for something; I don't remember what. And when they put the winders in. . . . They had what they called a warp mill donw there in the old mill, and you spooled, run the thread on big old spools, they called them. They were round at each end, and that run from the warp mill, in the warp mill, and they baled that up and sold it thataway then. But after they put the winders in, we run the yarn on cones, and they packed the cones in boxes and sold the yarn like that then.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

When you started to work, you said you just worked during the day. What time would you start?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

We'd go to work six of a morning, work till twelve

[TAPE 2, SIDE B]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I don't know exactly, but I think it was somewhere around a dollar a day. I couldn't say for sure; I just don't remember.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did everyone make about the same thing? Did the men and women make about the same money?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, the men could make. . . . I reckon, maybe, that on the other jobs different, they could make a little more than the women. The women were mostly spinners in the spinning room, and the winding.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did the winders make more than the spinners, or about the same?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I reckon it was somewhere. . . . I just don't remember, but I think the wages were around the same. We didn't get much then. But we had just as much, in a way, as we have now. And I saved some money while I was at work.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

You were able to save some money.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, I saved me some money. And I spent the last of it during the Depression after we were married. And we had the two children during the Depression, and Hetty, that girl that comed here, she was in the hospital. She had mastoid trouble. And she never had been bothered with the earache, but I always thought she got such a cold. They had the schoolhouse up yonder, and they couldn't get the fires to going every morning, and it would be so cold they'd send the children

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outside in the sunshine. And she had such a cold that I always thought that's what. . . . It just settled in her ear and had [unknown] . And she was sick a long time, and Dr. CHAPIN, our doctor at Pittsboro, he came to see her. And he finally told me, he says, "Well, you'll just have to carry her to McPherson's and let them see if they're what needs". . . . He says, "It got to be something [unknown] ." Well, she lost so much weight. That was the poorest little child, just skin and bones, as the saying is. And we carried her up there, and they examined her, and they told us—of course, we didn't tell her—that she would have to have an operation. And we told her after we come back home. I was to go back in a few days with her. And we told her we was going to carry her up for treatment; that's right. And she didn't know they were going to operate, and she still didn't know they operated till after it was over with.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

[Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

And I went with her. She stayed ten days up there, and I went and stayed. I didn't come out of that hospital during that time. I stayed right in there with her.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did they put her to sleep?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes. And so I think it was about the second time that they dressed her head, and the nurse forgot and left a little tray there on the table. Well, they packed stuff in it, just like what I call gauze tape, you know, that we sew. It looked just like that. Well, they'd just pull and pull and pull. Well, I never seen so much. I don't know how in the world they got so much in her head. And the nurse forgot and left the tray there one day, on the table. And she saw it. She says, "Mama," she says, "I believe they operated on me." She says, "You

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look at there, what they got out of my head." And I told her then that they did. See, she was through with the operation; I knew that wouldn't excite her. But she says, "I believe they've operated on me."

MARY FREDERICKSON:

How old was she?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

She was nine years old. And Dr. McPherson, he was head of the hospital, the older, but he had quit operating. He'd had a nervous breakdown. But he always went in and stood and watched them, you know. And the first time they dressed her, he'd come out with the nurse and the other doctor. And he says, "Well, Hetty"—she didn't groan; she didn't holler; she was the best thing—he says, "Well, Hetty," he says, "Well, I declare," he says, "Most of the grown people, when we do what we've done to you, they holler, but," he says, "you haven't said a word." [Laughter] But she got along real good. But I declare, that child, she was just gone, so far as weight was concerned, when we went up there with her. She had suffered so much. And that was during the Depression; that's why it hit us hard.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did you have to pay them in cash for the . . .

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, Dr. McPherson told us, he says, "If you will get fifty dollars to pay for the room and board," he says, "you can pay the doctors then after your work picks up." He says, "You pay that long as you have it." Well, now, you think going there and staying ten days and nights, for fifty dollars. And you can't stay at a hospital now one day for fifty dollars. Well, we didn't have that money. I had just a little bit that I had saved, not enough to pay it, but Mr. Carey Durham, hadn't been running this store very long down here, and Paul went down there to him and told him, you know, what we needed,

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that we needed fifty dollars. Well, he let us have the money. Well, just as soon as Paul's work picked up, he commenced paying it back to him, you know. But we paid it back to him. But I didn't have any money to carry with me to go out to get me something to eat. My people, they would come to see Hetty every day, you know. Well, my sister lived at Carrboro then, and my little boy was about two years old. And Paul went up there and carried him up there to her the first day or two, and Paul stayed up there, and he'd come back and forth, you know, go back and forth to see her. And she'd fix me a box of chicken and stuff, you know, send it to me to eat. Well, I had plenty to eat, and I had a cousin lived out there at West Durham. She came out there to see us, and she sent me a box of something to eat. They knew how it was with us, you know. It wasn't only us; it was a lot of people that was in that shape then. And so the nurse one day. . . . There was one woman in there in the room where Hetty and I were; there was only two patients in that room. And her little granddaughter came—she was, I think, about eleven or twelve years old—nearly every day, and stayed part of the day with her. Well, they'd bring the lady—I forgot her name—her lunch and Hetty's, you know. Well, they wouldn't eat near all of it. And one day the nurse was in there, and she says, "Mrs. Jones," she says, "if Hetty leaves anything on her tray that you'd like," she says, "you eat it." She says, "We don't do a thing but throw it away when we carry it back in yonder." Well, after that, if it was anything I especially liked. . . . But I had a-plenty to eat. And Hetty didn't like sweet milk, and they'd bring her sweet milk every time. And there was a colored man that would come in every morning

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and clean up. And we knew him by name—I don't remember it now—but she said one morning, she told him, she says, "I don't like sweet milk." And he says, "Well, Hetty," he said, "do you like buttermilk?" She said, "Yes." He says, "Well, you're getting buttermilk hereafter; you won't get any more sweet milk." And they never brought her no more sweet milk. [Laughter] They brought her buttermilk after that.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

[Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, this lady didn't like her sweet milk much, but the little girl that came and stayed with her grandmother, she liked sweet milk, and she drank Hetty's and this other lady's. Near about every time she'd be there at mealtime, she drink the sweet milk. [Laughter]

MARY FREDERICKSON:

[Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

But they were all so good to us and friendly.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

How did you get back and forth? Did you have a car then?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, we had one, but we had a Model T Ford; they were open, you know. But I just stayed up there. The nurse told me, she says—of course, Hetty was small, you know, and she was so thin—she says, "Mrs. Jones," she says, "I'll give you a pillow, and if you can lay on the bed, put your head towards the foot, if you can lay on the bed with Hetty," she says, "it won't cost you nothing to stay here." And she gave me a blanket, you know, to spread over, and that's the way I slept. Well, I had plenty of room, because Hetty was so little. And so when we got ready to bring her home, we were living out there in that house, and a neighbor lived across the street from us, and he had a closed-in car. And he brought Paul up there that. . . .

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We was going to bring her home in that, you know, so she wouldn't take cold. And I had one dollar with me up there, and I sent downtown and brought her a little bathrobe, the heavy kind, you know, to wear home over the other clothes. I didn't want her to take cold. And so Herbert Williams. . . . And he's just got out of the hospital at Chapel Hill. I told Paul last night, I says, "We've got to go see Herbert." And he went up there and brought her home that Sunday.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Was it real unusual for a child from Bynum to go up to the hospital?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes. Yes, it was. It wasn't often that one had to go [unknown] .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did grownups go very often, either?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I don't think there was too much going to the hospital along then, not that I remember. Not like it is now; every time anybody gets sick, it's go to the hospital now.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Right.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

And if they could be treated at home, I think sometimes they'd be better off at home. I'm old-timey.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

I wanted to talk to you about your mother's work with sick people. You told us the other day that she spent a lot of time taking care of sick people and . . .

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, she did.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

. . . visiting sick people and . . .

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

She did her own housework and all, but she'd go. It was mostly at night, you know, when she'd go be with a woman. Sometimes

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it'd be during the day, but it was mostly at night. And I slept with her, you know. And when she'd have to go at night, I'd sleep with my older sister, and I wouldn't like it a bit in the world because I had to sleep with her and Mama was going out, you know. Somebody was sick. That was me. [Laughter]

MARY FREDERICKSON:

How did they call her or get in touch with her when . . .

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

They'd just come, you know. It was all here in the hill together. They'd just come after her to come go be with her. And she was with a lot of women around here then.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Would she go when they were beginning to deliver a baby?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Mm-hm.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Would they come get her when they were in labor?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yeah, when they'd start, they'd come and get her, and she'd stay till it was over with. And she'd carry me the next day when she'd go back to see them, to see the little baby, because I loved babies so much, you know. And she'd put them on a pillow and let me hold them.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

[Laughter] Did she actually deliver the baby most of the time?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, there was usually a doctor there. Now she did. . . . That little boy that I was talking about thinking so much of us, you know . . .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Yeah.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

. . . and I come so near to getting a whipping about I didn't want his mother to spank him. They moved across over yonder in the country; they left the hill and moved over there on a farm. Well, she had another child then after that, and he came over here

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after my mother, to go over there and be with her, she was sick? And he had to go to Pittsboro on horseback after the doctor. Dr. Farthing was the doctor over there then. And that baby was born before the doctor got there. She was the only one there with the woman, but she took care of her. And it got along all right.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Was that the only time you remember that happening, that the doctor didn't make it?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, that's the only time I remember hearing her tell it. They was usually here with her when one would be born.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

How did she start taking care of women when they were delivering babies?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I just don't know, because she'd been doing it ever since I could remember.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Had her mother done the same thing?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, if she had, I don't know it. But my mother, I know she could just hold up under anything. Now if one got hurt, if one got cut real bad, she'd go and fix it up, you know. They didn't take stitches in everything then like they do now, and she'd go and fix it up for them. I think I told you about the little boy falling in the fire and burning his hands so, and she took care of his hands. They were all right.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

With someone who got hurt like that, would the doctor even come?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I don't remember, but unless they were bound and compelled to have the doctor, they'd usually get her to go.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

I see.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

She could just hold up. I remember hearing her tell one time, when she went to dress that child's hands, his father had him and his mother had him, and they both got sick, you know, and had to give him up. She said she told them, she says, "Well, somebody's got to hold him." She says, "I got to fix his hands." You see, there she was, going through with every bit of it, and they were all getting sick, couldn't stand it.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did people ever pay her or give her anything for helping?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No. Maybe they'd give her a Christmas present or something after that, but that was all she ever got.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did she have any special remedies that she would suggest that people take, like would people bring babies to her, maybe, who had the croup? Did she give them something?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, no, they wouldn't bring. . . . She treated her own, [unknown] but that was one thing that she was afraid of, was the croup, because, you see, she lost her first baby with that membrous croup. And we all had it some more or less, the croup, along then.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

What did you call it, again? Membrous?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Membrous. It's membrous croup, or something like that. She had the doctor, but he couldn't do a thing for him. He just died right out; he just couldn't get his breath. But she was always afraid when one had the croup. She would get nervous over that again, more so than anything else, after that.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did she ever suggest that people take medicine or take . . .

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I don't remember, but I imagine she did know things, you know. Maybe they'd ask her about it. And she had a lot of home remedies that she would use at home, you know, and oh, I don't know when I. . . . I was scared to death of a doctor. I was scared of everything when I was a child. [Laughter]

MARY FREDERICKSON:

[Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

And I was just scared to death of a doctor. I don't know whether I ever did go to a doctor. I was sick right much when I was a baby. Of course, I didn't remember that. But after then, she just doctored me at home when I got sick. I never did have a doctor.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

What would she give you? Do you remember her ever giving you medicine?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, nothing, only just cold remedies, and that's about all I'd have. And maybe in the spring of the year, we'd have the bowel trouble, the stomach would get upset, you know, and she'd give us a little something, just a home remedy. I know my aunt that lived down there—I was telling Hetty the other day—she had bought her some potted meat, this little canned potted meat? And it was good, now, because I used to, nearly every spring when I was a child, my stomach would get upset, and Aunt [unknown] would say, "Louise, get you some potted meat, and it'll help it," and it would. It would stop it, near about every time.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Hm.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

And just remedies and things like that, you know, was what we used then so much.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did she ever make anything up to give to people, like honey

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and lemon, or . . .

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, if she did, I don't remember. She maybe would tell them, you know, what she thought was good, and if they wanted to use it they would.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Do you remember what she'd give you when you had a cold or a sore throat or something?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well [Laughter] , she didn't give me anything much, because I couldn't take it. Everything in this world I tried to swallow would make me sick as a dog when I was a child. I never did take much; I just went on and toughed it out. [Laughter]

MARY FREDERICKSON:

[Laughter] Gee. Did your mother ever treat men? Did they ever call her when a man would get sick?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No. She just went when the women were sick, when they needed her.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Would she ever go be with women except when they were having babies, like if something else was wrong with them?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, no, not unless it was absolutely necessary for somebody to go in and help take care of them, she did. It was just mostly when the birth of a child.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Do you remember anything about women needing her, maybe, when they would miscarry a baby or something like that?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, I don't, because they didn't tell us things like that, you know, like they teach children now. We didn't know. Talking about Santa Claus, well, my sister finally told me who Santa Claus was.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

[Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

I never did find out. Oh, I was just wrapped up in Santa

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Claus, you know. And we was living out yonder [Laughter] , and I was a good-sized little girl. I remember. It was Evvie, that one that's at Carrboro. She says, "Louise, don't you know who Santa Claus is?" I said, "No." She says, "Well, Ma is your Santa Claus." I said, "That's not so, Evvie." She says, "Yes, she is." And that's how I found out who Santa Claus was.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

[Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

And I was that old.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did that make you feel better?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, no, I don't think you enjoy Christmas after that like you did when you [unknown]. Of course, we didn't see Santa Claus when he come; had been, I'd have been scared to death. [Laughter] But they'd leave our things, you know. We'd go to bed, and they'd leave our things where we could find them.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

What did you usually get for Christmas when you were little?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, a doll is what I had. I loved dolls. I played dolls more than anything else when I was little.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did the other little girls do that, too?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Some of them did. Now there was one lived here, Mrs. Moore—Mrs. Flossie Durham was her sister—now she was about the age of my brother. She was a little older than I was, but she loved dolls. And Mr. Bynum's little girl was about her age, too. They were both older than I was. But we played dolls together. Now the stair steps goes up in that old room in there, and under the stair steps there's a little closet. That's the way they used to build old houses, you know. Well, Fleeta, that was the girl's name . . .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

What is there under the stairs, a closet?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Just a little closet back in there, you know, where it goes down to where it. . . . But there wasn't room for nothing much. Now I keep my canned fruit in it. It's in there where we have a fire. And I have my boxes of canned stuff. I said fruit; well, it's snap beans and tomatoes and things. It's a good place to keep things like that. But Fleeta had a playhouse, a doll house, we called it, in hers. And Mary Bynum, they had a closet, but it was different from that out at her house, and she had a doll house. And we'd have little, just homemade little furniture, you know. Just beds, and I had a bed; I think my mother made it for me. And just about that long. And we'd have the mother doll, the brother, and the father. And they made little bitty dolls then. And we'd have little, little dolls with long dresses on, the little baby. That's the way we played dolls. And, oh, we had a good time.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

How old were you when you quit doing that? Would you have been pretty close to twelve or so?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, maybe around ten or something like that before we quit playing dolls.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did you want to grow up and have babies?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Oh, law, I didn't get grown until I was way past grown. I never did grow up and want to be out with people, you know. I wanted to stay at home.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

But did you want to have babies and take care of babies and . . .

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I wanted children but I dreaded having them. You know how you suffered with them. When I married, I dreaded having them, but I wanted children. I had three. And I enjoy tending to them. Oh,

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yeah. I enjoy tending to a baby. I never left them for nothing.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

You said that you weren't taught about sex or anything like that. Do you remember how you first learned where babies came from, or . . .

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I think just gradually, as you grow, you learn a little more and a little more. They never did come right out and tell us. Now there were some that were done a little earlier than others, but they didn't tell them like they do now, you know.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Well, did you sort of hook up what your mother was doing, going to help women deliver babies, to know?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, I thought the doctors brought them.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Oh. [Laughter]

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yeah, they'd tell me the doctor brought so-and-so, give so-and-so, a baby. [unknown] . One time there was a lady, Mrs. Brown, and she had a family. She had children coming on, you know, like maybe two and three years apart. And she went one night, and Mrs. Brown had a baby. And she had one maybe two years or between two and three years old. The next morning [unknown] she said, "Mrs. Brown's got a little baby the doctor brought her last night." And I just preached him out. I says, "Why in this world, Ma, couldn't he give you that baby?" I says, "You know you've got somebody can help you take care of it." And I said, "Why didn't he give you that baby? Mrs. Brown's got a baby; she didn't need it." Now that's the way I felt about it then, you know. I was a little [unknown] .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

[Laughter] Was there anyone else around like your mother who would care for people who were sick, or helped deliver babies?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, there wasn't, not along then, but now in later years,

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after my mother passed away, Louise Durham over yonder that lived at Miss Flossie's?

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Mm-hm.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Her mother was like my mother about going around helping people in their sickness and children, babies especially. She was so good with babies. She come to my house a lot when my baby that died was sick, you know, and helped me with him, tell me what she thought would be good for him and what to rub him with, cold remedies, you know, and things like that. And she was really good.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

What was her name, do you remember?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Mrs. Ida Smith.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

So she sort of took your mother's place after . . .

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

In a way. Of course, it was several years after that, but she did along like my mother did with the people here, you know. She'd go. If they had a sick child, they'd maybe send for Mrs. Ida, or if she'd know it, she'd go anyway.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Did people always want her to come? Do you remember ever anyone not wanting her to come?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, I never remembered that. I know she stayed. . . . When my baby that was so sick, Dr. CHAPIN was tending to him, and we had had the flu, and he had bronchial pneumonia and he got [unknown] with that. And in a week or two he took the other pneumonia. It used to last nine days before they'd make a change, you know, for better or worse. And she'd come to my house every day, and she'd grease him from head to foot with the cold remedies, you know. Well, that did help.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

What was it, do you know?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, she'd just mix maybe some turpentine and lard and camphor and maybe the croup remedy we'd have together, you know. And so he come to see him every day, and he says, "Well, now, you all doctor the outside; I'll doctor the inside." Well, he pulled through. He made a change. And I held that child in my lap—for nine days and nights, I didn't go to bed—on a pillow. But the ninth day, when he made his change, I thought he was gone. And my half-sister that I was telling you about, she was there with me. She was living over there with Roy then; he lived over yonder at that house on the highway. And she was there with me. And I says, " [unknown] ," I says, "take Paul Elbert"—that was his name—and so she took him. And I didn't give him up at all until that day. But he got better. And when Dr. Chaffin come to see him, and he had the brightest brown eyes; they were just as bright all the time he was sick. And he says, "Well," he says, "he's got the brightest eyes, to be as sick as he is." And after he made his change, then he came back and he says, "Well," he says, "it wasn't what we done." He says, "It's what the Lord done for him that brought him through." That was what he told me. But he died then in about six or seven months after that. He had colitis. And he was real sick for about three weeks with that, and he finally passed away.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Could they do anything for that?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, they did all that they could. We changed his milk, and they gave him medicine and everything, but it just wasn't intended, I reckon, for him to get better. And it was in January, I think, when he had the pneumonia like that, and it was in, I think, about July when

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he died. You see, he didn't have too much strength [unknown] up from the other. It hadn't been so long, you know, since he'd been that sick, and I think that was one reason that they couldn't do much for him.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Do you remember, when your mother would go around and help women deliver babies, do you ever remember any of the women getting in real serious trouble with the delivery, and maybe dying?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, no, I don't remember hearing her say much about that, because I was too small then, you know.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

It always sort of came out okay?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Yes, pretty good [unknown] .

MARY FREDERICKSON:

How long did she continue to do that, until you were married?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No, unh-uh, no. She hadn't been doing that in several years before she died, because as she got older, you know, she wasn't able to get out and go so much at night and all. And she hadn't done that in several years before she died.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Who had started doing that?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, I don't know. Now, that Mrs. Ida Smith that I was telling you about, she was good to go, but she didn't go, I don't think, [unknown] cases like that as much as my mother. I don't know. They finally got to having places more. Now they had a clinic at Pittsboro, Dr. MATHESEN; of course, that's just been in the later years. He's over there now, but he don't have his clinic.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

When you had your own babies, did you go to the hospital to have them?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

No.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

You had them at home? Who delivered them?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Dr. Chaffin. He was the doctor at Pittsboro.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

Was there anyone with you? I mean, was there a woman?

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

My mother was with me for the first one. And then my sister-in-law and a neighbor lady, Mrs. Snyder, that lived out here, she would go sometimes. I sent out there after her that night.

MARY FREDERICKSON:

I wanted to ask you about how you met your husband and how you decided to get married and all that.

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

[Laughter] Well, he told you, you know, that he'd lived on a farm. Well, they moved over the river. There was land over there with that house, and they farmed, but he finally come to work over here. But when I went to work, his sister went to work, and we were the ones that were working in the alley together? And we were together a whole lot. And I don't know, we just finally got to going together. I don't know how. [Laughter]

MARY FREDERICKSON:

What did you do like when you were what people call dating now, or courting? Did you go ride around together, or did you go to church together or . . .

LOUISE RIGGSBEE JONES:

Well, when they had church at night, he'd come and we'd go together. But we'd go ride to ballgames; then they had cars by that time, you know, and his father had a car and he could use it when he wanted it, him and his brothers. And we'd go to Pittsboro, maybe, to the ballgame or out like that. We didn't go around too much. And sometimes we'd go [unknown] shopping, and