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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Christine and Dave Galliher, August 8, 1979. Interview H-0314. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

Description of courtship and marriage

Christine and Dave Galliher describe how they met at a local medicine show and their subsequent courtship. The Gallihers were married shortly after they began courting when Christine was not quite sixteen years of age and Dave was nineteen years old. They do not recall needing permission from their parents and argue that marriage at a young age was not uncommon in their community.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Christine and Dave Galliher, August 8, 1979. Interview H-0314. 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

JACQUELYN HALL:
How did the two of you meet?
CHRISTINE GALLIHER:
Well, now, this I'd hate to admit, but I have seen it on TV lately. You know you asked what there was for entertainment. They had medicine shows. Now you're going to get in deeper. [Laughter] I saw on I believe it was the South Carolina program this older man; he was still in the medicine show business.
JACQUELYN HALL:
Oh, yes, there's a medicine show that comes around Pittsboro.
CHRISTINE GALLIHER:
Anyway, it was at a medicine show. Mama and my sister and I were there. Usually, maybe a family or two would get together and go someplace like that. It was over on Elk Avenue where those buildings are; I just don't know which one. But it was a vacant lot at that time; there used to be houses through there. And he said, "Let me take you home." I said, "Well, I don't know you." [Laughter] And that was the first time I ever saw him, and so I don't remember how we really did get together. But the first time I saw him was at a medicine show. Now that'll make interesting reading, but I wouldn't want the people around here to know. [Laughter]
JACQUELYN HALL:
How did you decide to get married? Did he ask you?
CHRISTINE GALLIHER:
Yes.
JACQUELYN HALL:
Would he come over to your house to visit?
CHRISTINE GALLIHER:
Yes.
JACQUELYN HALL:
Just kind of court you.
CHRISTINE GALLIHER:
Yes. Or we could maybe take a ride in his T-Model. And if it was a trip, Mama went with us.
JACQUELYN HALL:
Did he have to go in and ask your father's permission [to marry]?
CHRISTINE GALLIHER:
No. I told you, we're sort of independent people.
JACQUELYN HALL:
You just decided to get married.
CHRISTINE GALLIHER:
Just do it on your own. You do; you do it. [Laughter]
JACQUELYN HALL:
Did you get married at the justice of the peace or at a church?
CHRISTINE GALLIHER:
It wasn't at a church; it was at a preacher's house.
JACQUELYN HALL:
You were really a young girl when you got married, weren't you?
CHRISTINE GALLIHER:
Yes, but people just don't give much thought to the more serious things. And at that particular time, people didn't know it. They just did what come naturally. [Laughter]