Matewan Oral History Project Collection
Sc2003-135

Mary Smith Ward Interview

Becky Bailey: May 31st, 3:00, 1989. Bailey first interview. Mary Smith Ward daughter of Willard Smith. Okay. So I guess the first question I'd like to ask you Mrs. Ward, when you were born and what your maiden name was?

Mary Ward: You ready?

B: Yes ma'am.

MW: Uh...I was born at Lynn, West Virgina [sic] about a mile up the road from Blackberry City here and, uh...February the 18th 1917.

B: 1917. And who were your parents?

MW: Uh...Willard and Matildy (Matilda) Haten Smith.

B: Were you an only child?

MW: No, there's uh...one older deceased, and uh...five younger.

B: Did you have brothers or sisters?

MW: Well there was uh...three brothers and three, two sisters. And one sister that I said was deceased.

B: Ok, and what did, what did your parents do?

MW: Uh...my father in the beginning, even before he married my mother, worked for uh...Norfolk and Western Railway, and then, he went for work for Lynn Coal and Coal Company, which was part of uh...uh...U.S. Steel, a Legend over here at Delbarton.

B: And what did he do at Delbarton?

MW: Uh...he...he worked at Lynn, where I was born, on a tipple and he was a car dropper at the time. You know how they drop cars to load, and then later he was assistant on the tipple.

B: Where were you parents families from?

MW: Uh...my father was born here, Ransom, here in Pike County Kentucky, and my mother was born at Steel Kentucky, which was in the area of Feds Creek Kentucky, still Pike County.

B: How did they meet? Do you know?

MW: Uh...well uh...when they have church back in those days they would go horseback, ride horseback to church, and uh...my father was living here in Matewan, a young man and uh...he went to visit his sister at Smith Fork of um...Pike County and he uh...met her at church.

B: What church was that?

MW: Uh...it's the old uh...I guess you would call it a regular Baptist.

B: Regular Baptist? Do you know who, who the minister was?

MW: No. Not at that time. Uh...but I know when they were married it was uh...Dodge, Reverend Dodge Coleman from Jamboree.

B: And, do you know if that church is still there?

MW: They still go to that church, but it's a nice church now. Its been remodeled through the years, but they still have service there.

B: Did you parents go to school?

MW: Yes, the fourth grade.

B: Was that both of your parents?

MW: Both, yes.

B: And did you, when your parents got married uh...what did your mother do?

MW: Oh she was just a little farm girl sixteen.

B: What did she teach you about, how to take care of the house?

MW: Yes, she taught all of us, boys alike, you know how to work in the field and how to garden, and uh...uh...a lot of baby sitting went on about that time you know, as women would get older. And we even had to miss school when it was worsh day, to help take care of the younger one while she did the worshing.

B: Did, did your mother just wash for your family or....

MW: No, she just washed for ours, there was enough of us to keep her busy.

B: Probably

MW: And you know women in that time were expected to garden, can, preserve, and to uh...uh...make quilts and keep on going.

B: Do you know how old your mother was when your oldest sibling was born, or how old?

MW: Well, no lets see, I would say she was around seventeen.

B: Around seventeen. And you say that you have five brothers and sisters?

MW: Yeah.

B: So there are six of you?

MW: Seven. First one died shortly before I was born and that would have been around uh...September in uh...1916 and then I come along February.

B: Did the doctor help her with the birth or did she have.....

MW: Yes they all births then were in the home.

B: Uh huh... So but was it the doctor that help her or did she have a mid-wife?

MW: It was a doctor...company, coal company doctor...I was born in a coal camp.

B: Did you know the name of that Dr. by any chance?

MW: Uh...Dr. Sorrell.

B: Dr. Sorrell.

MW: You'll find his name quite often in Mingo County records. He even delivered my husband....(laughing) right there in that room.

B: Oh really....so this is your husband's house?

MW: Yes, through the Wards it's been handed down through the generations. It was built in 1916 and he was born June 4, 1917.

B: OK. So you and your husband was delivered by the same doctor.

MW: Same doctor.

B: Yeah. Did the doctor come and visit after the babies would be born?

MW: Yes.

B: Did you and brothers and sisters have any childhood illnesses or...

MW: Uh...Nothing uh...only what was expected like measles and whooping cough and I've even had the Jaundice....and out of all of 'em, I was the only one...had Jaundice...I was born with it.

B: Uh...let's see...is there anything you want to talk about... about your childhood that you remember that...

MW: Well the first part of my childhood I remember, you know she would take us to the garden with her and put us under a tree, put an old quilt on the ground, and my sister was about five years younger, Marie and my brother about 2 months a few months younger... and uh...she'd leave us under the tree, but this was...the thing I remember so vivid about going with her to the garden while she worked was that she was a very tidy person and when she got ready to go out, no matter where she had...uh...Back in those days I don't ever recall seeing rouge as a small child...She'd take crepe paper that you made flowers, you know you make flowers then and take them to the cemetery, and always there was a bunch of flowers in everybody's house to, made from crepe paper...You take red crepe paper and fix her cheeks and the old bonnet had a tail, a little string tied in the back, and she put old stockings on her hands and go to work in the garden like that. Now we knock ourselves out to get a tan, back then they'd do everything in the world to keep from gettin' a tan.

B: Why was that, do you think that they kept from...they tried keep from gettin' a tan?

MW: Well uh...it must have something to do with the day and time that uh...you looked better with your natural complexion.

B: That's probable true.

MW: Truthfully we might be better off.

B: Yeah, that's what it seems like the doctors are saying now. Uh...lets see what other questions could we ask? How about, do you remember any of the, of the old school teachers, do you, do you remember any of your, your teachers?

MW: Well yes, uh...Mrs. Claude Madin she was from Chattanooga Tennessee. And she moved into the uh...coal camp and her husband worked for the coal company, and they lived just about three or four doors, about four doors from where we lived. And uh...I remember we hadn't been there very long when the child was born, and you know being a little nosy girl I liked to go and make an excuse to get a pail of water because ever so far the distance in the coal camp had hydrants where you would turn it on and take a bucket of water and go home. Well uh...I found out that the baby had been born, but I didn't know that the child had died. But I went wondering on in to say and that lady never did have any more children and she moved to Red Jacket to she was such a nice and seemed to love every child, and I just kept up with her through the years, and then after they retired from Red Jacket they went back to Tennessee and both uh...he and Mrs. Madin had passed on.

B: How long did you go to school?

MW: Well, I finished high school in 1935, May the 17th.

B: And what did you do after that?

MW: Well I got married...(starts laughing)

B: Had you been courting long?

MW: Oh...well you know how children are, they have big eyes, but you know you had to be at least sixteen year old before they hardly let a girl out of the house. And if they gave a birthday party, that was a big thing, you know everybody was expected to invite each other, and we, I lived up the road about a mile, and the old house is still standing up there where we lived when I got married. And uh...some of them down here in this community would give a birthday party and we'd come down here and they would come up there in that region and uh...the other things that we had like corn shucking, bean stringing, and molasses making was you know that was entertainment and I go to church when they'd have a revival. And uh...our next neighbor close to us there after the coal company had already pulled out their belongings and left just the houses and a few people stayed on uh...the women depended on each other to take care of the young girls to bring them to church and to get them back home safe. So uh... Ms. Nicholas, Mrs. Bertha Nicholas used to take care of my sister and she had two daughters, and of course I was in the gang with them, and uh...it was alright for a boy to walk you home, but they had to be right at your heels. (starts laughing)

B: Oh, so you had a chaperon?

MW: Yes, that's what we would call it today.

B: What did you all call her back then?

MW: Just somebody to look after, they called it looking after.

B: Looking after. The lady looked after you, looked after teenagers was that....

MW: Yeah, see she had teenagers as well, and you see can't leave home, you know every night of the week, they were responsible for each others children.

B: So who went to the birthday parties and corn shucking and the bean stringing?

MW: Oh gracious most of them are gone. We had uh... McFallen families the Ward's, Starr's and uh...lets see the Pucketts.

B: Was it just girls or....

MW: Oh no we went to see the boys too.

B: Oh...(started laughing)

MW: (Laughing), Yeah that's where you got to play spin the bottle and play post office, and all those things.

B: Now, what did you do in those games, what were those games?

MW: They were kissing games.

B: Kissing games.

MW: U-hum..

B: What did, what did your uh...parents tell you about kissing boys was that something...

MW: Uh...well yes they talked about that uh...but you wouldn't get a uh...uh...big deal like you do get today you know they, we are taught in school most of what we learn, and you didn't have to rely on family. Now the uh...boys the daddies took them to the barn with them and talked to them, and we mostly learned about sex when we with, around the barn yard with animals. You didn't hear all that stuff talked in the home. But if something happened in a community and, and some girl and something would go wrong why you know the parents would sit the girls down and, and talk to them sometimes the daddies would give advice as well as the mother.

B: And you were saying when something went wrong would that be....

MW: Well that meant pregnancy you know when a young girl she'd be pregnant or something, our mother would say now that can happen to you, don't, don't cast any ill words cause it does happen.

B: So, after say uh...after a girl was married did her mother, would her mother tell her things when she would be expecting?

MW: Yes, I can remember going home and uh...uh...she help me make quilts and talk to me about what to expect when the baby was coming. What to look for you know.

B: What kind of things did she tell you?

MW: Well she told me that you know that whenever you got real heavy and uh...that uh...usually when the nine months was coming that you could look for signs of birth when, whenever you know that uh...you would have a, maybe a discharge or something or like a, a string, she called it string, and it would be a like uh....clear liquid like, and uh...it would come in little strings, she said you'd better get ready...

MW: you'd better get ready it's getting time.

B: Now what did getting ready mean? What did...

MW: That means that uh...you'd better get you baby close ready, and uh...get yourself prepared for birth, get your bath, get everything ready because that doctor may be called any minute. You see back then you didn't have an inside plumbing and all that, and you had to have plenty of water, plenty of towels, and uh...something to dress our baby in.

B: So, how many children did you have?

MW: Three. Three girls.

B: Did you have them at home?

MW: Yes and they were all breach birth.

B: Oh my goodness!

MW: It took two doctors at my house.

B: Oh really. What, what did they do for you.

MW: Well they try to turn the baby you know by moving your, by putting their hands on your body and keep moving ya, that way, but they was never able to turn one for me.

B: U-huh...Did you have any complication with...

MW: No, not after they were born, because that, in that time you was to stay in the bed, and uh...for nine days. U-huh only thing you could get up was uh...uh...and take care of yourself you know at that time that had such thing as a combinet (?) and uh...and uh...cause the outside privy would be too far for you to go. And uh...they'd always bring in a number three worsh tub, that's what ya got your bath in. And uh...uh...you had a washing machine at least.

B: So uh...what do your children do now? What do your girls do now?

MW: Well one of them works for the Mingo County Board of Education, that's where we was Louise (?) And uh...she uh...been with them about 25 years and we do believe she been going to college so well not continuously, uh...taking maybe three hours, or six hours, or nine hours at the time. And during that time she's been a working. She's up to the place now that all she needs to get elementary education finished is three hours of uh....what is it you call it? She has all her music uh...what do you call that three hours?

B: Is it uh...practical training?

MW: Yes, it is hu-huh...you put in the practice what you've learned. Now we've got it...(laughing) And I'm hoping that Marshall will bring it out this fall, so she can finish and she needs twelve hours student teaching.

B: How old is she?

MW: She's fifty-one.

B: When was she born?

MW: Uh...nineteen and thirty uh...January 30, 1937.

B: Was your husband around when she was born?

MW: Yes.

B: Where was he?

MW: Right with me.

B: Right with you.

MW: U-huh...

B: Was that typical?

MW: Yes back in that time it was.

B: So, he stayed right with you?

MW: U-huh, yeah because he has to travel miles to get a doctor, and usually you have to stay with the doctor in case he needs help, and he did, so only time he left was to go back to the company store because uh...the closest telephone was at a company store about oh....I'd say about uh...three hundred yards from where we were living.

B: Who else was with you when you, when you...

MW: A cousin, Hazel Smith from Phelps, Kentucky. She passed away back in March.

B: Well did, would she come and stay?

MW: Yeah, she stayed about six weeks before Louise was born and stayed the two weeks after.

B: How about your other girls?

MW: Well I have another that was born September the 21st, 1938, and uh...Louise was born in Conway Virginia, and Earlean was born at Conway Virginia.

B: Why were you in, in Conway Virginia?

MW: Well he left Red Jacket, and while we were living in Matewan we went to Virginia because two days a week is all he could here in the mines, and he went down in Buckhannan County where they were working five days a week. And that was the reason enough to move.

B: What reason did he tell you, was there a reason why he wasn't working but two days a week?

MW: Oh...well that was all that anybody was working at that time. There in, when they don't have orders why they can't work.

B: Ok. What do you remember about uh...Civil War II? Do you remember what you were doing?

MW: Well I have one more daughter.

B: Oh, ok I'm sorry...

MW: Uh...Jean uh...she was born November the 10th, 1940 at Big Rock, Virginia. That's Buckhannan County.

B: So you had your girls right close together?

MW: Yeah, u-huh.

B: How, do you know why you didn't have any more?

MW: Uh...yes I have a pretty good idea. Because I had uh...trouble you know after they were born breech, well, left me in pretty bad shape, physically, and uh...I had to have surgery. So I went to Grundy for surgery, and I never had any more chilren [sic] after that.

B: Did you have to pay for that operation?

MW: No, he worked in the mines, and uh...he had hospitalization through the coal company. Now in World War II you said what did I do?

MW: I worked in a ship yard for Bethlehem (?) Steele five field yard in Baltimore, Maryland.

B: Did you live there by yourself?

MW: No, no we uh...a little problem at home and, and uh...I went back to work. And uh...it was while uh...all of this was going but we got a divorce. But uh...after I left Bethlehem Steele, I went to work for Maryland Viaduct, and that was one of the most interesting jobs I've ever held in my life.

B: What did you do then?

MW: I was a ship fitter.(?)

B: A ship fitter, what's that?

MW: Well, you know you can't even find that word in the dictonary[sic], I've looked. And a ship fitter is one that works with uh... templets and just like a woman would work with a pattern. And uh...you worked by going to the mow loft getting orders to get the batting, the you'd go back aboard ship and uh...make a pattern whatever's needed, a piece of steels. Then they'd send you to the yard. Out in the yard where steels is stored, and you pick out the weight and size of the sheet that you would need. And you'd better be real careful how you lay that templet on there so you won't waste steel. Just like cutting out a dress you can waste a whole uh... oh...uh...a yard or three yards in one wack. If you don't watch what you are doing the way you turn it and everything. And uh...you have to be, take it back have it uh...put on a crane and delivered to the ship. And then you go back and you see that your work is put down like it is supposed to be. And by all means never leave too much, you know for a weld too big a crack in other words. Because of the certain size of the weld that's got to be in there if it's too big why it, then had to decide to, and your called to the office.

B: Who else worked doing this when you were there?

MW: Oh...uh...my boss was Joe Palumbo.

B: Were there women and men?

MW: Oh, yes, women and uh...men both worked there because some of them had the      ______ from coal mines and uh...that's how the older ones was in the ship yard for working, it was basically men. Because they were really needed. But uh...they sent us to training in a uh...building and uh...just like a classroom like you would go into my dinning [sic] room table only they would lawn tables, blackboards, cylinders, right angles, ivies? different kinds of uh...in circles and everything and then they uh...teach you to see uh... what's uh...on the other side of the board, had you be working on, is like looking at that wall over there. You know every so many inches that there's gonna be a two by four where you'll be looking for uh...different beams sometimes there maybe just uh...angle is straight and welded to it.

B: How long did you have to train?

MW: I believe we went six weeks. Best I remember you know the evening you come in early and go uh...to that building.

B: Hu-huh.

MW: And we were trained by Navy men.

B: So did, were you working for the Navy?

MW: Yeah, we, you were, it was a United States Government at that time, you know. Well I would say since we were trained by the Navy that that's what we were doing.

B: How long did you work there?

MW: I was there about a year with them.

B: And when was that?

MW: Oh, in forty-four, in forty-five.

B: Ok, and where were your girls at this time?

MW: They were with my mother in the uh...Louise was with her grandmother Ramey, and uh...my two were with Matilda Smith, my mother.

B: Lets see. What do you uh...when did you come back to this area?

MW: Well, in fact I don't think I was ever away, every chance that I would get a day off I would get the train and come home.

B: Oh, well how does the train travel down here?

MW: Oh yes, you could get a train almost anywhere, and uh...sometimes, we could go through uh...get to George Washington out of Baltimore, I believe it was. And we'd come to Huntington you know West Virginia, and then get over to Kenova and get the train up to Matewan.

B: How long did that train ride last?

MW: Oh I don't remember we's so excited to come home, that uh... and uh...many times you didn't get a seat you'd have to stand up because of the service men, uh...you know seeing that they have priority over things then. You'd get on a train that's just about what was in every seat. I have uh...couple of times go to Williamson, and it would be Bluefield before I would get a seat I would be standing out up between the coachers.

B: Why did the service men not get up?

MW: Well, uh...we respected them, and uh...maybe they had been on there for many hours or and uh...long destination point to go to, so we wouldn't say nothing to one of them. Once in a while you'd find one had lots a manners.

B: So where did you go after you worked at the, at the train, I mean ship yard?

MW: I come back home, back to Matewan. I was uh...uh...worked as a waitress, and I cooked for seven years to Mingo County Board of Education at Matewan Grade School.

B: Were your girls in school here?

MW: Yeah they were all, well two of them was home at that time. But uh...

B: There's uh...you know there's, there's notes by Lon Savage that he took of an interview with your father.

MW: Oh yes.

B: Did your father tell you much about Matewan history?

MW: Yes, I know about it, but uh...I've read those notes. I believe my daddy was a little bit confused, or something in some of the notes, but now u...as far as Cable Testerman he lived in the upper end of town we call it. Up about the house uh...to my memory was on along there about where Evelynn Brown lives. Next to the Overstreets up in the upper end of town. And the Smiths lived where you turn when your leaving town to come up over the railroad crossing house on the corner there.

B: So uh...what's your first memory of Matewan, what do you remember doing?

MW: My first memory of Matewan. We lived up the road here about one mile to Lynn, West Virginia, and uh...uh...whenever we'd come to town we'd down with daddy and of course uh...of course the dress and mode, and way of living in those days I think back about what we wore and my mother wore little knee pants and uh...dress pants and a little hat about a little derby of a thing around the top and uh...then just on a girls, a little tie in the back and a round collar. And daddy would bring us down to Schaeffer Brothers that was a store in Matewan that uh...had about three stories to it. And uh....they carried a line of clothing for you know the whole family. And uh...it would be dark by the time we would get back home, and uh...here behind where this house is built over the railroad was a big coal tipple. And the coal was coming out of Kentucky over the uh...over the top of the bridge, it was a overhead thing with cars. It would come to this side of the tipple to dump. And the old whining and like noise and seeing all those lights was the most, about one of the fascinating things of coming from to Matewan to Matewan, and when they cut down to Matewan why then always keep hand on ya to see that you, everybody's in the right place, you know, you never turn children loose then, you hang on to them.

B: Why was that?

MW: Well they didn't want them to uh...uh...get far away from them. I don't know what they had to fear or anything, or maybe it was just the way we were raised at uh...to stay with our parents.

B: What kind of uh...discipline did parents use back then?

MW: Well uh...they uh...hickory, uh...not a hickory switch they called it a hickory tea (?) just any kind of a little switch in the corner.

B: A hickory tea?

MW: Yeah I call it, they call it gonna have to give you some hickory tea, but that wasn't hickory. It was almost anything that they could uh...jerk a limb off of something and stand it in the corner.

B: Now was that your mother, or?

MW: That was my mother. Now daddy give us a little bit of a whippin' once a year, we only, got one about once a year from him. And we'd have to really do something for him to whip us.

B: Now how old were you when you quit getting whippins?

MW: Well uh...I'll tell ya I sassed him when I was fourteen years old and uh...he walked up and slapped me in the chair and fell in the floor and the chair went on down the porch, and he said he didn't allow that.

B: How did you discipline your girls? What did you, were you like your parents?

MW: Uh...no I let my loose. Let them go and you know, where I had to have a chaperon I let them go whenever they wanted to. Other girls, other boys.

B: Why was that?

MW: Well uh...times had changed. And uh...and uh...I went along with the crowd with the other mothers and fathers.

B: How, how did ya feel about how your daughters turned out, do you think they turned out to be as good as a daughter as you turned out?

MW: Well I'd say yes.

B: Ok, do they have any children?

MW: Yes, uh...one, the oldest has two sons, and one granddaughter. Which would be my great granddaughter.

B: And do they live around here?

MW: Yes, over at Taylorville.

B: U-huh, and how about your other daughter?

MW: Well uh...Earlean lives here at Blackberry City and Jeanie lives at uh...King, North Carolina. She works for      ______ and Winston Salem.

B: Now, lets see, lets back track a little bit. With your parents family, how far apart did their brothers and sisters live? Did people travel much back then or did they tend to stay in this area?

MW: Well uh...I would say uh...you know the number of people of Smiths that a lot of them have stayed right here in this area.

B: Do you see many relatives very often? MW: Well on my dad's side they are all gone, you know brothers and sisters. And uh...on my mother the same, but uh...I visit Feds Creek, Ramson, Kentucky and uh...my sister was here Sunday from      ______ Virginia, and we travel back and forth to see each other.

B: Uh...lets get into some events, uh...what happened during the flood of seventy-seven, were you here then?

MW: Yes,u-huh...uh...I kept my brother and sister which I still take care of, because they are, these are half brothers and sister, Estell, and Maggie, and the house they lived in was down at the uh...mouth of Mate Creek, which enters Tug. And between the railroad and river, and it was completely destroyed and had to be burned. So they stayed here in and another brother Michael stayed with me, and uh...two others stayed over at Earlean's house, my daughter, during that flood. And uh...I have, lucky enough for them to live shortly down here in this old building, at one time was uh...a beer parlor, which is again now at the present time. And they lived there six months. And then they moved to Hatfield Bottom, in a government trailer. And then after that uh...      ______ house put them in it. And whenever the Smith's built the towers they moved into the towers. And now I have moved them to Blackberry City, out of town, and they are living here. And uh...most of the family are all married or have jobs.

B: So was the flood bad or?

MW: Yeah, it was over, it was five feet inside the Head Start building and that's back of the back of the railroad tracks, and where the Methodist Church in Matewan.

B: How long did it take for the flood to go down, do you remember?

MW: Well it was in, well let me see, I believe, then next day or two days or days everything was down to where you could get into Matewan.

B: That sounds like an awful flood.

MW: It was, you know you take, you drive through Matewan and you drive around where the Methodist Church is and just imagine that the Head Start is right beside that, it was, and it's upon several, it was up five feet inside that Head Start building and where the senior citizens building is, that was the only dry spot, uh...it was up the step, to the door.

B: Was there ever any other floods like that?

MW: Well not like that, that's a hundred year flood. But uh... 1963 we had a big one. And uh...lets see fifty-seven and fifty-eight, and sixty-three, and I believe uh...sixty-seven somewhere along in there was another pretty good size one, but now seventy-seven was the big one.

B: That's what I've heard. Well how about if we get into some of the local legends. Do you know many stories about the Hatfield and the McCoy feud?

MW: I've read a lot. And I know that my sister, Fanny, married a Hatfield, and uh...his great grandfather was a brother to Devil Anse, his great grandfather was Joseph. And his grandfather was Albert Hatfield. And uh...his uh...Ronnie that would be my nephew, his father was uh...uh...William Shay (?) that's all out of Joseph's family.

B: Did people talk much about the Hatfield and the McCoy feud anymore?

MW: No, you don't hear too much about it unless somebody comes through and mentions it because people, the Hatfield's marry McCoy's and vice versa and so uh...everybody gets along now. Seldom ever hear much said about it, now I know here, about two years ago a lady, Katie Johnson from uh...Washington D.C., would put the mission on aging visited here and uh...I thought John Fullen was going to come up from the Boards Office and uh...take them for a ride around town and show them a few things to them you know and explain to them about the uh...uh...mine wars and the Hatfield's and the McCoy's and all of that. But he didn't uh...get to come out to the center so he sent me out with uh...Doris Pelphrey from uh...Huntington with the Southwestern District. And uh....a young lady from Washington. I enjoyed it I never met neither one of them but, I really enjoyed their presence.

B: Well what did you all talk about?

MW: Well uh...they wanted to uh....oh uh...for me to take them to the different sites, grave sites of uh...Ed Chambers and uh...Cable Testerman, and Sid Hatfield. And...

B: What did, what do you know about the coal mining war?

MW: Well uh...you see I come along about three years later. And mostly what I would know about that would be what's been handed down through the time. I know my daddy told me about being in Matewan, and that's when these shots started firing, that he uh... was, back of the uh...town there between the uh...railroad and depot and that building. And there used to be some steps, and about when the shots started firing he just got down and rolled down the steps and stayed there until all the shots had stopped, and all the shooting, and he come out and that's when he saw people and you know some uh...already had been shot. And uh...from the way he told it, he come on up to Lynn.

B: So he just left, right?

MW: Uh-huh. Yeah he didn't stay around too long from what he told us. But now Cable Testerman did shoot him when he was nineteen years old over his wife.

B: Which wife was that?

MW: Jessie.

B: Jessie.

MW: Yeah, see she later married Sid Hatfield.

B: What do you know about Jessie?

MW: Well from what uh...everybody else had said about Jessie, and uh...my daddy even said she was a good looking woman. And uh...how come my daddy to get involved with Jessie uh...my grandfather was a blacksmith and a butcher. And you see no uh...uh...refrigeration all they had was ice and you know that was delivered. And uh... uh...there where the Head Start is now there's an old ice house is still standing there on the corner of that, if you want a picture there's a good picture for you the ice house is still standing.

B: Where did you get the ice from?

MW: Uh...I don't know whether it come in on the trains or Hankins Ice in Williamson I think delivered the ice. I know even in the coal camps when I was a little girl, that uh...they would bring ice. And there's an old, out here stored on this back porch is an old time ice box. You know I think this one out here will hold seventy-five pounds.

B: Was your grandfather a, excuse me was your father married when he, when he knew Jessie?

MW: No, he was about nineteen at that time. And like I said his grand, his father was the butcher and he delivered meet up and down the streets to the people you know he'd take orders and uh...and they'd have to know they gonna get rid of that uh...animal uh...in those days because it had to go fast to be cooked and used.

B: Where did the animals come from?

MW: Well uh...most everybody even in the coal camp had a plot of land behind the house and a barn yard where you could store you know for a horse or a mule, mostly mules cause I think they were most easier to take care of, and you used them for farming purposes any how to plow with, and uh...had a barn one side was for the old mule one side for the cow, and uh...you had to go milk morning an night. And uh...like I said they had that privy out in one corner in the coal house and another.

B: So did you take uh...would people raise their own animals and then take?

MW: Yes, see they uh...take them to a field for, and turn them loose, because I can remember when I was a child up here at Lynn, uh... going to water the young calves and we would go to the river and get buckets and, and uh...get water and carry it back across the railroad tracks, now we were pretty good size when we were doing all of that. And uh...fill up a big worsh tub and it didn't take a, a cow and uh...a young calf long to consume a worsh tub full of water.

B: What did the butcher charge for killing people's animals for them?

MW: Uh...I really don't know, I just know that he was a butcher and uh...even in my childhood I remember that people helped each other when it come time to butcher, and they would fix up, big uh...uh...trees looked to me like you know it looked pretty big for a child, you know a person to look at, and it would be about five or six inches through but more so six inches, and about as high as that door you see there, and I would say that's about 6'8. And uh...they put uh...uh...one across, pole across and they would have to tie a hog up there and split it down the middle. And uh...let it bleed so long before they'd even attempt to uh...cut it up.

B: Um-hum. How did you all eat your meat, what did, what did you do?

MW: Oh uh...well they'd chop it up into uh...uh...backbones, ribs and uh...ham. Now here in this very house at one time that room you come in, in the kitchen back there was a meat house, and uh... they had big tables in there and uh...they put the meat on that and salted it down you know just big, looked like cakes of salt what it really looks like on fresh meat. And you know then they didn't have all these fly's and, and things, insects like we have they, they were out there but not numerous like they are now. And uh... uh...they would use that room as Mrs. Ward's told me how they use to do that.

B: Was there a particular meat that people ate more around here than others?

MW: Yes, well I wouldn't say that because most of them would have uh...now here uh...I don't think ever kill beef here in the Ward family. They talked about to me, about hogs and young shoat. That was bigger than a pig. And uh...to have chickens, ducks.

B: Now this might silly, but was a shoat a boy or a girl pig?

MW: It could be either one.

B: Uh...

MW: There's just a size you know, they in between. We say something about a cat, a cat, it's a kitten, and then uh...it's uh...uh...a cat. And, well no that brings to memory about uh...a saying one time, well it's almost a cat. In other words it's bigger than a kitten and it was almost a cat. And another thing too that happened when they use to have uh...meat house away the house and like we had at Lynn, it was about ten, fifteen feet from the house and we had tables, we knit and uh...we called it the smoke house. And uh...you know uh...rats is awful bad to uh...want to get around things like that, and if uh...a person in the community would happen to have a ferret, do you know what a ferret is? Well a ferret will kill a rat no matter how big it is, it will kill a rat, and they would borrow the ferret. And for some reason the ferret didn't run away.

B: So then there was a lot of ferret...

MW: Yeah hu-huh.

B: How did they get those ferrets here?

MW: I don't know that's one that, uh...that I've even thought about myself.

B: That does sound a little strange.

MW: Uh-huh. That be a good thing to uh...to look it up and see what happened. And you know hey you never hear anybody talk about a ferret anymore we have to many mouse traps and uh...uh...rat traps and decon, and stuff to rid the place of uh...rodents.

B: That makes me think. Did children have pets when you were a girl?

MW: Oh yes, we had dogs, cats.

B: What did you, did the dogs or cats serve any purpose?

MW: Oh yes, they kept uh...uh...dog around you know uh...to keep uh...a dog would let you know if anybody was coming around, you know watch dog and uh...they were for protection as well. And uh...a cat if you didn't a mouse they'd get rid of it.

B: Oh really.

MW: Uh-huh.

B: Lets get back to uh...some of your personal life, if you don't mind. Uh...were you the only young woman around here that was divorced?

MW: No, I've been married four times.

B: Four times?

MW: Yeah.

B: Who else did ya marry?

MW: I married Estil Barrat. And uh...uh...William Hatfield. My mother had two son-in-laws that was uh...Bill Hatfield.

B: Two Bill Hatfield's?

MW: Yeah, two Bill Hatfield's in one family. William Guy, and William Shay.

B: Were they related at all?

MW: No. And then I married Wesly Ward. That was the happiest days of my life.

B: When were you married to these gentlemen?

MW: Oh gracious. Nineteen, February Nineteen and thirty-five, and uh...February 1946, and uh...September of '53, and uh...let me see, what, the January 5th of uh...'62. Now that was child hood, puppy love. And uh..uh...I've often made the remark" took me twenty-six years to get that ring", it lasted.

B: Did uh...so did you divorce your first three husbands?

MW: Yes, oh, they were women chasers.

B: Oh...So uh...was it mostly women chasing that went on or was there ever any men chasing?

MW: No huh-uh...as far as hunting for a man, I've never went out to, like I've seen some women and hunt for a man. I reckon that I've been good to work and take care of my family. Always someone out there wanting to get married. I know my husband had been gone two weeks and uh...someone called here, well I know who it was, it was an old friend from childhood, and uh...I wasn't interested. And I've never been interested because I was a happy woman with him.

B: If you don't mind me asking uh...when did he pass away?

MW: December the thirteenth, nineteen and seventy-nine. And he's buried here at Blackberry City.

B: Uh...was he sick?

MW: Yes he had uh...uh...worked in the coal mines he'd been in World War II, and worked in the coal mines and uh...he had surgery, and he the miners disease Silicosis, numacomosis [sic], and all that.

B: How long did he work in the mines, do you know?

MW: Well he, about twenty-three years.

B: Did he ever tell you about his experiences in World War II?

MW: Oh yes many times.

B: What did he tell you?

MW: Well he'd, he'd tell me mostly whenever there was war picture, only he didn't talk too much. But if there was ever gonna be one on that would be showing in different places in Europe, and uh...in France, and uh...in Germany and uh...what else. France and Germany. And then he, you see, he was in Panama too. He was in two services, first time he went to Panama, and then the next time he was in uh...(UNINTELLIGIBLE) and he was in the department where you hang uh...communications, and he said that he never got anything but a few scratches during the war.

SHE TALKED ABOUT SURGERY. HE WAS A STRONG UNION MAN. HE WOULD GO ON STRIKE. FOR EXAMPLE, HE WOULD WALK THE PICKET LINE WHENEVER THERE WAS A STRIKE). THIS IS A SUMMARY OF A GARBLED PASSAGE

SUMMARY OF QUESTION B: WHERE WERE THESE PICKET LINES?

MW: Well, he would go out at night and, and picket, you know sometimes it would be over in the Logan County area. And uh...there, really the older people is what made the union. These young don't really realize what their doing. Whenever they bring these people in here, non-union people, they uh...think their getting good wages, but now it can uh...whenever they take a notion to leave here, and they've mined this place out, I won't be around to see it, but there gonna learn some of the things that we learned. That's whenever a coal company and in our time went broke or cleaned out and left all we had was an ugly looking place to live and uh...not much to go on, to eat or for clothes or for shoes or anything else or to raise out family on. And these young people, what their doing now are in my estimation they are what you would call union busters.

B: What do you think your husband would think now?

MW: Well, even when he died almost ten years ago, he though [sic] it was terrible that people would stoop to that, whenever the union really made this place what it is around here. And of course my, I have uh...children, grandchildren that work for non-union mines. And that's all they've got, that's all they can get here, unless they get up and get out of here. One grandson works for Old Ben which is union, but uh...that's the only one I know of around here that is union.

B: What do you, in your opinion, what do you think the union did for this community?

MW: Well uh...the union made this place what we have around here, and uh...these people say their doing more for us, but the example I've already said they will leave here and these people will starve to death. There won't be nothin' here for 'em. That's how I feel about 'em. Of course I draw widows pension.........

B: Do you know uh...when the union came in here do you?

MW: Well you see my, back in the uh...twenties when we were having all this trouble, but as far as being union I, it was in the thirties.

B: You want to answer that?

MW: Say that there were non-union. B: Did your husband ever tell you much about what went on in the union meetings?

********************************************************

MW: No, he didn't discuss. I know we uh...uh...one time I said something about a gentleman that lives around here and uh...he answered me, he said that's to be expected because when we have a union meeting, if we will follow that couple, two men that would come to the meeting, they go straight to the boss and rat.

B: Now did the wives get together? Did, did you, did you know other wives that, that, their husbands worked with your husband, or had he retired from the mines when you married?

MW: No he was working in the mines when we were married.

B: How old was he when he, how long did he work in the mines?

MW: Well he had about twenty-three years in there.

B: How old was he when he retired?

MW: Well he had to take a disability.

B: Oh he did?

MW: Um-hum he was in his forties when he took a disability, because of that surgery, you know I told you.

B: Um-hum.

MW: And uh...he lived about fourteen years and a half after surgery. And it was just a slow everyday you know uh...sickness, he could get out and mow the yard, or take a weed eater, and uh... had a little garden down behind this house, next to the...alley over behind us. And I would go complain to the doctor, and the doctor would just look at me and smile and then after he'd hear my complaints, he'd say I told him to do that. Because they have to have exercise, or they won't live.

B: Now what doctor did he go to?

MW: Doctor H. Henderson. Doctor Henderson lives over at Hinton now.

B: Was he a company doctor?

MW: No he had his private practice in Williamson.

B: Can you think of anything else that we, we need to talk about, or you'd like to talk about?

MW: Well I'm a firm believer in education. Uh...because uh...you see I wanted to be nurse whenever I was a young lady, girl growing up in high school, but there was no money, no uh...outlets you know to go anywhere to have any means you know to feed six people in the house and a mommy and daddy in another household. There was no money in nineteen, thirty-five. And my daddy made two dollars and eighty-eight cents a day on the railroad. After he uh...see uh... when he was nineteen he lost an eye on the railroad, and he had lifetime promise of a job. Didn't have any money in those days to pay hospital bills and then pay you a compensation they gave you the promise of a lifetime job. So he left there after that and worked for a coal company and when it went broke he went back with the Norfolk and Western. And uh...so I didn't see much promise where in the uh...you know in the future so we got married. And then later, I wasn't, I always been a bookworm all my life. In this house uh...you'll find a book under the bed, on the bed, in the closets, and everywhere in this house there's books.

B: What kind of books do you read?

MW: Uh...I read uh...christian books, I read National Geographic, Readers Digest, and the Work Basket, and Psychology Today.

B: What do you think of, of what you read about in National Geographic?

MW: Well I, I like National Geographic, because it covers everything world over, and if uh...you see something on TV you will get a uh...you have the time to go over your National Geographic and you get more in detail, and uh...not only that they send a map every so often and I love maps. I have two double, these big huge ring notebooks back there and that's it, just maps and everything.

B: So you like reading about the world.

MW: I read about the world. I like the world now, it's, and uh... one thing like I said while ago I was a ship fitter, and whenever the USS Iowa, whenever the explosion showed it on the TV that day why, being a ship fitter you the first thing you think of an explosion you can almost see it yourself what's gonna happen to that ship. Well what I worked on was the Liberty and the Victory, and that thing I guess would have looked like a gnat beside of the uh...that big ship.

B: The Liberty and the Victory.

MW: Uh...yeah. And it, on that uh...when I was working there I had a specialty that I did and that was uh...gun mounts, at gun mounts, water tight doors, and Ford math magazines so you see I know about storing ammunition.

B: How did the men back here feel when they found out that you had, had worked on, on, on, on the, on the ship yards on this kind of stuff, how did they feel, did they ever say anything to ya?

MW: Uh...no but in, working in a ship yard you know women uh... being away from home uh...lot of times they think they're easy prey. And, but uh...after you work for a while and you let people know what your standards are, and your values, they treat you like anybody else.

MW: Yes, two others from Matewan area.

B: Also you weren't up there by yourself...

MW: I know I wasn't by myself.

B: Who else went with you?

MW: Uh...well uh...I went by myself, but I first stayed with Robert McCoy's grandmother, Cora Chambers, and his mother and daddy, Robert and Henrietta McCoy in Baltimore.

B: Why were they up there?

MW: The war. They went, they left here and uh...uh...for jobs. Now Robert was born up there. I'd say I was one of the first from Mingo County to see Robert about the long. I believe he was borned on tenth street, in uh...Brooklyn.

B: Well you were saying you were a strong believer in education, what do you mean by that?

MW: I mean that I didn't have a chance and I went back to uh...uh...my, desire to gettin' a better education. I went to Southern, I graduated an honor student from Southern.

B: When was that?

MW: In seventy-eight. And I then I uh...accumulated up to about a hundred and twenty-nine hours. Which was a crazy trick what I did, I uh...graduated in Louisville State, but I took an RBA degree and me with a hundred and twenty-nine hours, and three more hours in getting an history that is not recorded up there, and uh...I was in secondary education. And I had asthma and sometimes I'm uh... laid up for a week or two at a time and I've lost my husband too you know, so I went back after he died and do a little more work.

B: What an RBA degree?

MW: That's a Regents Bachelor of Arts.

B: Is that an honorary degree?

MW: No it's a degree that you take for, I uh...chose myself you know to uh...uh...take classes I only needed fourteen hours to get that with a hundred, and ? seventy-eight hours you know to have it. And uh...uh...some of them are TV classes, some are from Marshall, like geography and education 406 and for the handicapped class 321, all that. I really enjoyed, you could take me to a classroom right now, and I'd just as happy as uh...a lot more than some that are, just step out the front door of the high school. Cause I love people, I love to be with people, and a book really is my means of getting lost many a time around here. Uh...I know I read six or seven of the Bible in the past year like Ruth, and marymen (?) and all that so...

B: Are you a religious person?

MW: Yes.

B: What religion do you belong to?

MW: Uh...Matewan Missionary Baptists Church.

B: Now I've been, I've been reading about the, the Missionary, and, and, and the Freewill Baptist Church, are they different?

MW: Well uh...lets see a Freewill Baptists does not have Sunday School. That's what my mommy and daddy belong to. After bringing us up in, and we would uh...that's something...I want to tell you about is religion in a coal camp. In a coal camp we didn't even have a church house. And the Board of Education let us use the uh...school house for a place to have Sunday School on Sunday morning. And my dad uh...would take us to Sunday School, and he always helped the school teacher whoever it may be. And uh...gathering up things for Christmas or decoration, trees or and uh...and for the tree they could always depend on him for things like that. But that's one thing that stands out in my mind was, as a little girl going to that school house to uh...Sunday School.

B: What uh...coal camp was this?

MW: This is Lynn Coal and Coke. That's one mile up the road here.

B: Ok.

MW: Going East.

B: Were there other religions that had their churches?

MW: No that was the only one in that coal camp, but we had a Pentecostal Holiness here at Blackberry City and it was in the basement of a house where uh....J. E. Boggs lived here out near what uh...we call the Battery Shop. And the house had been torn down and moved out for many years but uh...he opened up his basement a concrete floor and put benches in there, and the Pentecostal people come in. And I went to Sunday School there. Then I went to Methodist Church, I was a member of the Methodists Church fourteen year and a half and when I married Wesly Ward when he was converted he wanted to go to the Baptists Church, so like a dutiful wife I went with him.

B: Why, why did you go to these different churches, and why were you a Methodists?

MW: Well uh...really and truly I'd say I'm still a Methodists. Uh...because I left my church through duty. You know I happen to feel like uh...uh...the man is the head of the house, and uh...it would look strange for me to get out on one side of the track and send him on over to through the viadock [sic] and, to a church by himself.

B: Can you tell me a little bit about the difference between...

MW: Well there's not that much difference in doctrine when you come to the Methodists. Only thing about Methodists through years I've been taught that at one time that the reason they uh...come uh...holiness use to be in Methodists they come out because they've believed in tongues, and Methodists don't. And uh...I've never heard anyone in the Baptists Church say anything about believing in tongues, I've never heard it nor seen any uh...uh...you know verification of anything like that.

B: Now this was in the Baptists Church?

MW: Yeah. So there's nothing considering tongues. But if they think about it they keep it to their self. I've never heard anybody discuss it.

B: How do the people down here believe in speaking in tongues, how do they explain that to...

MW: Uh...

B: people that don't?

MW: Well uh...I know around Phelps and different areas around here that they talk about it and it is a experience that only that their church and their people have. They'll tell you right quick, I know a lady told me one time when I was in the Methodist Church, she said honey you're alright as far as you've got. Is the way she said it to me. And uh...I didn't quite understand the whole works and I was talking to another see, they said she meant you would be right if you had the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, and speaking in tongues. I've never spoken in tongues, I've never had the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, but I've been shaken and I remember that in and old uh...church that used sit behind the Freewill, not the Free will, the Missionary Baptists in Matewan. The flood took that one off, and it was a former church and it had been there in, uh...probably come with the town, it was so old you know. I know we use to go out their for service and there was a black minister would come out there and he was well known in the coal mines. Mr. Smith and when Reverend Smith preached the white people went to the church as well as the blacks. And that's the only time I've ever really had a real good shakin'.

B: What's that mean?

MW: That means your whole body tingles and your uh...shake. Now he really preached uh...real uh...gospel and even the coal miners that worked with that man would tell you that if he, a man was really close with God, it was, they'd call old preacher Smith.

B: Mr. Smith.

MW: Um-hum. And after that I taught Sunday School in the Methodists church, and his grandson, and probably his great grandson was in that class and uh...when their class would break and we'd go in to be dismissed in the chapel he would go down front, he would never sit, if I'd stop off in the middle of the congregation you know before dismissal uh...he would be right down on the front row right in the front pew......And I would study real hard because that little Smith would know everything I was going to talk about. His grandaddy had a hold of him.

B: Did blacks and white go to church together down this way?

MW: Uh...that little boy used to come to the church I don't know uh...I've not, not witnessed one in our church in the Baptists church. They would be welcome though. I know if it was left up to me they would sure be welcome, because I'm not raised prejudice.

B: Were many people around when you were growing up, were they prejudice?

MW: Oh yes. I can remember uh...when people would uh...times would be harder, well they weren't that hard when we were small, cause coal companies, and everything was working then, and but, if I, someone would knock on your door or come to the uh...gate and holler come out, my mother would go out to see who was calling, and uh...if a black man was standing there and he'd say lady can I get something to eat, see then they would uh...uh...hitch a ride on a freight train or anything they would hop for transportation, find work, and my mother would say uh...just sit down I'll be back. And she'd go in and uh...uh...she'd fry eggs and, there's always biscuits left and she would uh...slice open the biscuit and put a couple of eggs and two biscuits and uh...take an old glass out. And uh...put some cold coffee in it, and he'd uh...take that little bag and go up the tracks with two biscuits and a cup of coffee.

B: How many men did you see like that when you were, when you were young?

MW: Oh that happened on the average of uh...about three, four times a year.

B: Now were your parents religious people, or were you raised...

MW: Uh...no uh...my mother and daddy would go to that uh...church in the school house. But my mother mostly stayed home. You know.

B: Why was that?

MW: Well she just stayed home and took care of the home and the children. But now she's taught us uh...about the Bible and everything you know the Ten Commandments and, and uh...teach us right. But my mother was not a busy bodied person as close as Lynn is to Matewan up here about a mile up and about a mile down, two miles. She went to the dentists and uh...about once or twice a year, that's all she would leave the home and go to Matewan.

B: Who did the grocery shopping and thing like that?

MW: Well we had a company store, you've heard that song about you owe your soul to the company store. Well you trade in the company store.

B: So your father did the, the grocery shopping?

MW: Yes, or when we'd get big enough he'd send us to the store.

B: Who was the dentists in town?

MW: Oh uh...uh...Mr. Simpkins, and uh...Ory (?) Whitt. Now Ory Whitt, several years in the past, was at church one Sunday morning and he come out of church, the Methodists and went across and he though the train was going west, on a west bound track, but the train was on an east bound track going west, and he just cross over in front of it and he was killed. Uh...somewhere along there I think they picked up his body about where the uh...about where that alley is between the brick and the post office now. Now if you want to know how far uh...Matewan is above sea level you'll find it on the wall, right there at that corner, that building.

B: Really, that's marked on there?

MW: Um-hum.

B: What did, what did you all go to the dentists for?

MW: Well extraction mostly and fillings.

B: Did anybody ever get braces.

MW: Never heard of them.

B: Never heard of them.

MW: No.

B: How old were you before you heard of them?

MW: Well uh...I really don't remember. I was up in twenty-five, thirty years old, I guess, I know my sister and I went with her to a Doctor Cleek (?) in Bluefield by train, and uh...he told her he was too old for braces. Cause see her teeth was a little bit, one lapped over a wee bit in front. All he did to help was pull one you know extraction the man call it, uh...one on each side. One over here and one over there, and so in time why they straightened up.

B: This was all...

MW: Yeah.

B: Well there's a couple of questions that Paul McAllister, and I think, I'm sure that you've heard of him...

MW: Yes, I've met him.

B: Ok he's the been wanting us to ask people about the buildings down town. Do you know anything about, you know what used to be.

MW: Well, my father used to run a restaurant in what is uh..now known as it's a club. Steve Collins runs a uh...club there. And it was called a, the Town Tavern. And uh...Willard and Matilda Smith run a business there, just general restaurant.

B: And how long was that?

MW: That was back in the forties. But now the uh...one over on the corner not, not where uh...uh...the insurance is the one next to it. The building next to that, was the old building where Cable Testerman had a saloon. Now there's an old piece of uh...marble out there in that old building, and here in on this lot, now that come out of a bar that was in that old building.

B: Oh really.

MW: Um-hum.

B: Would you mind if somebody ever came out to look at that?

MW: No.

B: Do you remember anything about the other buildings in town?

MW: Well now the uh...Buskirk building was built in nineteen and eleven that was about seven, six years before I was born. Now my grandfather uh...Abe(?) Smith used to tend bar for uh...A. W. Buskirk.

B: How long ago was that?

MW: Gracious uh...I would say that would be my father was a uh...I'd have to go back to I guess nineteen and ten, or even before that. See he was tending bar it wasn't, didn't go in to operation the building until nineteen and eleven but they still had something to drink.

B: How, how long did he tend bar?

MW: I don't know.

B: Was that his only job?

MW: Oh no he was a blacksmith and a butcher.

B: Oh so he was....

MW: Oh he liked to drink.

B: So he, he like to uh...he held several jobs?

MW: Yes.

B: Was that common around here, would the men do things like that?

MW: From what they told me back in that time they did. Even before that he was on a log job up around uh...in fact I'd say toward War Eagle back in Knox Creek, and uh...uh...when my daddy was a young man, sixteen years old he'd take him with him on the log jobs, and uh...they would wait for the waters to get up, they would call it and they would raft down the river all the way to Catlettsburg. See that was before my time but my daddy was part of it.

B: Did the women ever work after they got married?

MW: No, they, all they ever did was keep house and can now uh...up here at Lynn, Peggy Varney, that would be uh...Richard Varney's uh...uh...mother. And uh...uncle Henry they called him, now he's buried at the cemetery at Lynn and uh...they had, I remember this house it was across the tracks there from the school house at Lynn, and it was a huge two story house, and uh...up stairs and down, and uh...they kept uh...black people that stayed with them, to farm, and they had a cook house out behind that house. I've been in that before the house burned, and they had a open fire place, big hearth around it, and big long tables. That they had worked in. And uh...that's where you did the cooking.

B: Did, did they worked hands stay in the house?

MW: Uh no they had a place outside that they stayed in. I remember that cook house very well. Because, and there was an old story too about that, uh...she married a Ferrell first and uh... he went to uh...uh...cut trees one day up here, on the map you see it says Little Blackberry, but we always called it Dry Bone because with the water uh...if things would go dry and the creek there wouldn't be no water or anything you know sink down to another water table uh...      _____ and uh...Mr. Ferrell went to cut uh...a tree one day and he took his dog with him and the tree fell on him, and the dog and then Peggy, uh...uh...followed the dog back and that's how she found her husband he was under the tree. Then after that she married uh...a Varney. Now the Varney's uh...Richard lives in the apartments, Buskirk apartments now. He's gettin' kind of feeble and his brother got killed here a few months back down at the uh...uh...where the new clinic is below Matewan is, a big sixteen come through there and he cut off across in front of it and he was killed. That was Bill Varney. Now his widow lives in a trailer right below the uh...B & G Pharmacy.

B: Now can you think, this is really interesting about how the place on the map is not what the people around here call it the Little Black      _____ can you think of other places...

MW: Yes right here where I'm living. That's right here where I'm living. Uh...uh...whenever my uh...father-in-law bought the property over in front of this here, well I did live over in the house across the alley uh...it was called Piketon, West Virginia.

B: Piketon.

MW: Piketon, Piketon. See there's a Piketon, Ohio. Now this is Piketon, West Virginia. And it uh...one day the uh...dry cleaners come along picking up dry cleaning and I gave them my sweater and uh...two months later I'd keep calling about my sweater and uh... uh...we can't find it, we seen it out on the dry cleaning, on the truck, well uh...it was a different clerk, every time I'd get a different clerk, at the Dick & Cleaners in Williamson, and uh...come to find out they had, had put Blackberry on it and that's over here at Ransom, Kentucky, up in Pike County. Instead of saying Blackberry City my sweater was gone for a good while. So it's confusing if you don't know where you are.

B: That's true.

MW: I always tell them, when they say where do you live, I say Blackberry City on Route 49, out of Matewan.

B: That's a good precaution. A couple of other questions that they wanted us to ask was uh...can you think of anybody else that you know that knows a lot about this area and the history?

MW: Yes, there's a man that works out here and he has a store, his name is Charlie Elliott. Now he's in his nineties. And I talked to him today and he, he will talk to ya.

B: So, how is he, how is his health?

MW: Well I think that it's great to think that a man can still cut meat go in butcher shop and cut meat for people and talk to everybody everyday.

B: He still works?

MW: He still working.

B: Anybody else that you can think of?

MW: Yes Wade Christian. Now his father was involved in that Hatfield and McCoy uh...war you call it. He was in the boat that went over here whenever they killed the McCoy boys and tied them to a tree. He was in that group.

B:      _____ Christian.

MW: Yeah, Mose Christian.

B: As a matter of fact I've got a list let me get that out, of people that we've got so far, and actually how we've gotten them is by asking people. How about if I show you this.

MW: Now he past on as you married someone else down in Florida. And when she died, they brought her back here and buried her at Maher.

B: Now this was Rufus Starr's sister.

MW: Sister.

B: Was married to Ed Chambers. Do you know who she married after?

MW: Oh I can't think of that union lawyers name but he, he was for the union at the time that all this was going on.

B: Did she meet him?

MW: I imagine she did during that time.

B: How about, is there anybody else that you see on there or that you could think of?

MW: I know John. Have you interviewed John?

B: Not yet. He can tell you a lot.

MW: back in there, and then uh...every time, attempt to, the river here back up Lick Creek in that region.

B: Did you ever see the, the tent fall?

MW: No, no I wasn't old enough at that time.      _____. Too young for that. I was about three you know when that was happening.

B: Were things pretty calm by the time you were a little girl?

MW: Well uh...yes and I'll tell you one thing that I remember too, about the Ku-Klux-Klan.

B: Oh...what can you tell me about that?

MW: Well uh...we lived in uh...a coal camp and uh...back then in you know we had very few blacks that lived in the coal camp and to me the blacks didn't bother anybody. And but now they would lay switches if you uh...uh...did something that you wasn't supposed to be doing back then if somebody was going with somebody else's wife they would give a warning by laying switches on the porch.

B: Who was this?

MW: Uh...the people in the, that belonged to the Ku-Klux-Klan would do that, and I remember seeing a big light one night and in the coal camp and it was a uh...cross being burned out in the yard. And after that I never heard any more. I must have been about five, six years old when that happened.

B: Did other people know who was in the Klan?

MW: No, you never know who's, who belongs to that stuff, but my daddy was one of them. And uh...Charlie Staten, and uh...J.C. Ferrell.

B: Do you know why that they belonged?

MW: No they just come around like they do now I guess and have membership.

B: How did you know that your father belonged?

MW: I heard him talking.

B: Were you overhearing?

MW: Yeah, I was overhearing. You don't ever uh...the way we were raised you didn't go in on a conversation you uh...could be seen but you better not be heard.

B: What did you hear them talking about?

MW: I heard him talking about that they was gonna have to whip him. They's talkin' about a man that was uh...going where he shouldn't be, and I went to ask my mother about it, she said your not suppose to be listing, and uh...whenever they'd have anything going on and get together, why you didn't listen to nothing like that your supposed to be out of the way.

B: What do you think your father told your mother?

MW: I imagine he told her everything. I'd say he did. And another thing too about uh...uh...long after that mine war was here people come around and with uh...a gang, and I remember one time, I heard a man tell my daddy that if he didn't have that little girl with him, that was me, he'd kill him. And you know I remember about that man? I don't remember his face, I remember his riffle how it shined and uh...his leggins. You know they wore things, even the state police back in those days, like uh...a protector or something out of real good grade of leather, and it would shined like you would wax a floor now. And that's what I remember about that. And uh...when they tried to organize or have union meetings my daddy had something other to do even back then, uh...with the treasury, because they would meet in our house and we had old green window shades. I don't know if you ever even saw a shade, green. Dark green and uh...they would pull the window shade down and get in one room and we was sent off to bed.

B: What was the purpose of the dark room and the window shade?

MW: So the light wouldn't shine out I imagine.

B: So was it uh...do you think it was a union meeting that...

MW: Well that's what I would say it was because it was different men from down in the coal camp that would visit in there.

B: Who do you think the, the man with the leggins was?

MW: Oh he had something to do with uh...I would say uh...it was an off shoot or something from that labor dispute is what it was. Cause we've had people live uh...right around us, what my daddy said.

B: Well...

MW: Now do you want to see the back bedroom where the bullet holes are still in the mantel?

B: Yes mam. Let me unhook here and I think. Ok your gonna take me to the back bed room and show me.

MW: Yeah, I'm going to, the back bedroom which was at that time the front of the house. See they built the house in proportion of where the railroad was. Everything had to face the railroad then. And right here, there was two windows that was the front of the house and they were shot out from the hillside over in McCarr which is Pike County, Kentucky. And right here you see there and up in here, get up there and put your finger in those holes.      _____

B: How many holes are there?

MW: See over here, there you see where one shot a hole in there and that, and then this door over here too has been put putty in you know, see that. All that is part of the mine war. And when my husband bought this home, we sold the new house, I didn't want to sell but he was sick so I, he wanted to come home. So we moved over here, and I, one thing I told him that if we move over there, we will not take down the mantels.

B: Who, who was in the house when, when the shooting occurred?

MW: Uh...Thomas Ward and Sally Ward, and their family, and uh...uh...Mrs. Ward my mother-in-law, Kelly would come back here this was the boy, at that time you know, they'd moved the boys in the bedroom, and she would get them out of the bed, three of them, take them in here stand them up in front of the mantel, so they wouldn't get shot, from the hillside. Now this is the grandfather, that's John Ward, that's the father of Thomas Ward, he's the great grandfather of our, used to be our prosecuting attorney in Williamson, uh...Thomas Ward the one that just vacated, and uh...his great grandmother Aunt Katie Abshire, they are descendants from Pike County, Kentucky at Fish Trap. Isn't she pretty?

B: She is. Is that a photograph?

MW: Yes, that's the uh...great grandfather. And you notice he does not have a tie on at that time they clipped a bow tie in there. And a girl came here one time uh...taking pictures and doing      _____ work, and she told me that where those old specks in the back of that picture you, it had got air trapped in it at one time, and it left spots. She wanted to take frame and all and uh...I guess my husband wouldn't let her take it out of the house. And now in this room, this lady comes from uh...let me see if I can tell you the uh...her husband comes from Dinwhitty(?) Virginia, Houston Street, and that was my husbands grandmother, uh...Manny Manett Renolds?, and they lived Bramwell.

B: Um-hum.

MW: Because uh...Kally? uh...used to play at Pinnacle Rock on Sunday's that's where they'd go to play go up on rocks. She said I'd like to go back, she died, she's about eighty, no...yeah. See uh...she said she'd like to go back to see if she could find her initials.      _____So here is a lower ten pipe off her father.

B: Oh goodness.

MW: Um-hum. Look at the styles. You notice the styles of her dress there and with the puffed looking sleeves there bringing them back.

B: Um-hum. When do you think this was made, do you know?

MW: Oh I wouldn't know. Back in the 1800's.

B: Did uh...did your, so your husbands family moved here?

MW: Yeah uh...see Mr. Willard was a railroad man, and after her mother died and Mr. Stright(?) uh...she uh...met Mr. Ward and uh...lived at Bluefield, Virginia a while, and the first child I saw was here to visit and he's seventy-seven, come here about two weeks ago from uh...West Columbia, South Carolina, and uh...they're oh..........................................and he met her somehow down in Mercer County.

B:

MW: I don't know if I can get that fixed or not it's in bad shape. I didn't tell quite everything.

B: Is there anything else you'd like to tell me about.......... before...because we're getting near the end.

MW: Well, let's see. This is a wonderful community to live in.. ....I have to plug that because I've been here now from 63 to now that'll be what almost 27 years..cause we built that house over here      _____.

B: What do you....what do you think of the condition of the community now uh.....do you think it's going to be getting better?

MW: Oh...you mean uh...in that area...Matewan in general... well I have high hopes for Matewan if they would just come on we've waited 12 years...wasting money for study. If they would have put the thing in then...you know...the flood wall we'd been (great shape?)      _____ to think it's going to take 3 years for acquisition of the land...I believe it could be a lot faster if they'd work a little faster and I'd like to see everything move a faster cause...I told      _____ Moore that too one time and he just laughed at me.

B:      _____?

MW:      _____see I'm a Senator Ward from Mingo County      _____ ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Matewan Oral History Project Collection