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Oral History Interview with Evelyn Gosnell Harvell, May 27, 1980. Interview H-0250. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)

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Moving in with her father during the Great Depression made for a lot of fun

Harvell's mill closed down during the Depression, so she and her family went to live with her father on his farm. Living with her extended family was fun. "We had a big time," she remembers, and the family had plenty to eat.

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About this Excerpt

Interviewer	Allen Tullos
Interviewee	Evelyn Gosnell Harvell
Excerpt Length	0:01:35
Start Time	00:30:45
Stop Time	00:32:20
Subjects	Piedmont Industrialization > WORK > Other Piedmont Industrialization > WORKING PEOPLE AND COMMUNITIES > Impacts of Work on Family

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Evelyn Gosnell Harvell, May 27, 1980. Interview H-0250. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

ALLEN TULLOS:: What was it like at the mill during the Depression years?
EVELYN GOSNELL HARVELL:: I didn't work during the Depression. My husband worked. We got married in '29, and the Depression was right after that.
ALLEN TULLOS:: Did you stop working as soon as you got married?
EVELYN GOSNELL HARVELL:: No, I worked a while after I got married, and then I had my oldest child. She was born in 1930. And then I didn't work any more for a good while, till after the second one, I believe, was born. But there wasn't any work during the Depression. It closed down.
ALLEN TULLOS:: Dunean closed down.
EVELYN GOSNELL HARVELL:: For one month. And then they just worked a little bit. But that didn't bother us. We went to the farm, my daddy's place.
ALLEN TULLOS:: Did you raise some food out there, or just move out there?
EVELYN GOSNELL HARVELL:: We just went there and stayed while the …
ALLEN TULLOS:: While it was closed.
EVELYN GOSNELL HARVELL:: Closed, and all of us together. We just had a big time. As far as the Depression, it didn't bother us like it did some people. Some people didn't have much, but we had plenty.