November 2007 Interview with Mary Thompson Sterrett Lipscomb By Isabelle Chewning: [Items enclosed in brackets [ ] are editorial notes inserted for clarification] Isabelle Chewning: Today is November 7, 2007 the day after Election Day. My name is Isabelle Chewning: and I’m in Harrisonburg, Virginia at Sunnyside [Retirement Community] in the Highlands. Mary Lipscomb: It really is the 8th. Isabelle Chewning: Today’s the 8th? Mary Lipscomb: Uh huh. Yesterday, the Election Day was the 8th, isn’t that right? Isabelle Chewning: I don’t know. Mary Lipscomb: I think that’s right. Isabelle Chewning: Today is either the 7th or the 8th and I’m in Harrisonburg at Sunnyside in the Highlands with Mary Lipscomb. And would you please tell us your full name? Mary Lipscomb: My full name is Mary Thompson Sterrett Lipscomb. Isabelle Chewning: I wanted to interview you because you spent your childhood and teenage years in Brownsburg, and I wanted to get some of your recollections of Brownsburg. And I will say for anybody who’s reading this in the future, Mary is my aunt and so it’s special for me to get all these recollections from her. [At the time of the interview, Isabelle Chewning lives at Mary Lipscomb’s childhood home, Mulberry Grove, near Brownsburg.] But when did you first move to Brownsburg? Mary Lipscomb: I was born outside of Lexington, just outside of Lexington, and my parents lived on Route 39 north from Lexington [Alms Croft Lane near Lazy Acres Lane]. It [Route 39] paralleled at one time Route 11. But my parents lived with my father’s uncle [Stuart Thompson] for several years after their marriage, and I was born when they were living there, as was my brother [Madison McClung Sterrett, Jr.]. And we moved to Brownsburg in, I think it was 1927. You can check that with Mc [Sterrett], my brother, and be sure that’s right. I think he was two years old and I was four years old when we moved to Brownsburg. Isabelle Chewning: Do you remember when you moved? Mary Lipscomb: No, I don’t remember that at all. My father [Madison McClung Sterrett, Sr..]used to talk about a couple of things in the move. One of them was that when he was coming down -- he was coming with a load of hay down through the village, and the village slants northward a bit. It’s a bit downhill as you move northward. And [he asked] one of the nice black men in the village to put the brake on the wagon as he came down through the village. He didn’t know who it was, but that’s the only thing I’ve ever heard about the move. He brought the load of hay from his farm near Lexington, where he farmed with the uncle, to Brownsburg. He was aware that there were helpful people around that would do things for you. But when we came to our home at Mulberry Grove [2249 Sterrett Road], we had a lady who came with us, Miss Willie, she was named. I think her last name was Hunt, Miss Willie Hunt, who lived with us because Mc and I, my brother and I were fairly young and my mother had been pretty ill when my brother was born and she was not ever very strong. So Miss Willie was a good part of the family for several years when we first lived at Brownsburg, at Mulberry Grove, which is one mile east of the village of Brownsburg. But I vaguely remember that there was very little furniture in the house. Some of these things maybe people have told me rather than I really do remember, but I think that we all slept in what you [Isabelle] and I both use as the library now. We had beds in there for all of us. We moved in March,, I think it was. Most everybody moved in March, it seemed to me, in those days because you prepared for the coming of the summer and the growing season. I guess I just sort of assumed it was March, but that I don’t remember; I was only four years old and I just really don’t remember. And I don’t remember anything about living with the uncle except one little thing. I remember that the uncle and I were out herding some sheep one time. And that field, that area, I know now, is right along the road as you come from Lexington to Brownsburg on [Route] 39. That is 39 still isn’t it? Isabelle Chewning: Right. Mary Lipscomb: Anyway, but I just have a vague recollection of that. But I don’t think I remember much at all about life at Mulberry Grove until almost the time I started to school when I was six years old in that time. Isabelle Chewning: What was the uncle’s name? Mary Lipscomb: Stuart Thompson. He was married to my dad’s aunt, Isabel Sterrett Thompson. She was my great aunt. My father’s father [Madison McClung Sterrett] died when [my dad] was less than two years old, and then there was one other child who was born after my grandfather died, and she [Grandmother, Anna Laura Smith Sterrett] was not at all well when he died. She just had a child, and she was going to have another [when Grandfather died]. And she sort of farmed her children out to her brothers and sisters, her sisters mostly, and her husband’s family, my grandfather’s family. This Isabel Sterrett Thompson was my grandfather’s sister and she took in my-- I don’t think it-- yes, it was pretty soon after his [my grandfather’s] death, I believe, that my dad moved to my Uncle Stuart’s farm and lived with him. Sometimes, though, during his childhood and his teenage years, he would live with her [his mother]. I think the children sort of took turns. There were eight children in my father’s family. He had seven siblings and they would live sometimes with an aunt, and then depending on my grandmother’s circumstance, they would go back and live with her. After a while she moved to Waynesboro which was closer to her home in Augusta County, where she grew up near Greenville, the village of Greenville in Augusta County. They were married – I was looking at something the other day about their marriage, but I think they were married at Greenville. But she [my grandmother] opened a home for – not tourists, but people to live with her, and she served meals, I think, in her home in Waynesboro. There were not many things that widows could do in those days. This was just after the turn of the century in 1906, 1907 along in there I suppose, or maybe even a little earlier. But she had a boarding house – that’s what you call it – in Waynesboro where she took in people and had meals, and I know my dad lived with her there some because I’ve heard him speak of going to school in Waynesboro when they were there. Then later she [my grandmother] got a job as what they called the Matron at Union Seminary in Richmond, the Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond. She was, I assume, the head housekeeper and managed the dining room, planned the meals. Of course, Union Seminary was not as big as it is now, and so she could do a number of things, probably. But in my childhood, in our teenage years, when I would go to Massanetta to camp and things, the ministers would all say, “Oh, your name is Sterrett, I knew your grandmother. She taught me manners, table manners when she was at Union Seminary.” So I know firsthand that she was the hostess in the dining room kind of thing. And my dad lived with her, I know, when he went to high school because he went to John Marshall High School in Richmond. And then I assume after high school he came back to live with Uncle Stuart and his aunt. He called her Aunt Belle, but she probably had died by that time. I don’t know exactly when Aunt Belle died but she had cancer, and I think this was very hard for him. He probably was maybe ten or 12 when she died, and he never did know his father, and this lady was as close to his mother as his mother was. The B&O Railroad ran through Uncle Stuart’s farm. I’ve heard him talk about – they would put her on a pallet and take her down, and the train would stop there on the tracks at the farm. They’d put her on it, and take her over to UVA, and I guess she died there, cancer of something. But then he and Uncle Stuart lived as bachelors together for quite a while, just these two guys living there, until he met Mother, [Edna Watkins Morton] until my dad met my mother and she came there to live with him. He met her when she was teaching at Rockbridge Baths. She came to Rockbridge Baths from Fredericksburg where she grew up, and taught in the high school. She taught high school math at the Rockbridge Baths High School and my dad had cousins in Rockbridge Baths and he would ride his horse over there. He met her there. And they lived there with my uncle until my dad decided it was time for him to buy something of his own, and he bought the farm at Brownsburg. Isabelle Chewning: Who did he buy the farm from? Mary Lipscomb: The farm was owned, well Mulberry Grove had been in our family, the Samuel Willson family, from about 1824 until about 1868 or ’66, along in there. The Willsons all died. When Samuel Willson died, he left it in trust to his daughter [Sallie Willson] who lived there a few years and then it was sold. The deed shows that it was sold to several different people, I believe -- I’m not really sure about this -- right at that time after her death. Or maybe those people were just the trustees when she owned it. This was Sallie Willson, his daughter, who had taken care of him when he was a widower. But a family soon bought it named Moore, John Moore and his wife Ellabell bought it from Sally Willson’s estate. They owned it until my dad bought it. Well that isn’t exactly right. It was sold at auction in ’25 maybe. Isabelle Chewning: 1925? Mary Lipscomb: Was it? 1925? And my two uncles-in-law, Alden Anderson and John Davidson bought it together at the sale, at the auction sale, and they had no intention of using it as a farm. This was an investment type thing, I think. One of them was a preacher and the other one was – I don’t know what Uncle John was doing. But anyway, he [my dad] bought it from them. The deed was never in their name. My dad bought it from, the deed is from Ellabell Moore to my father, to Madison McClung Sterrett. That, I think, was in ’25. But that’s the year my brother was born, and I know they didn’t move then. I’m not too sure. I’ve forgotten about exactly when those deeds were, but it was along in that time. Isabelle Chewning: Do you know how much he paid? Mary Lipscomb: Twelve thousand dollars. I know, too, that when he died -- there was some discussion when my father died, Mc Sterrett, Madison McClung Sterrett. There was some discussion whether Mother was a part of this, whether my mother was a part of this purchase, the money. And Mother remembered that she had $2,000 saved from her teaching money, and therefore, she was a part of it. They took her word for this. The IRS took her word for this that she was a part of the purchase. But it was years and years before that [the farm] was paid [for] because he had a loan from the Federal Land Bank, I remember, which is now called Farm Credit, I believe. There was just no money after 1927. He bought it just at the beginning of the worst part of the Depression, and there just simply was no money to pay for anything. You took eggs to the store and bought things, sugar and bread and things of this sort. But I remember when they finished paying for it, when my dad was working for-- he worked later for the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps]. But I think it was even after he had stopped that in the late ‘30s, or maybe even early ‘40s, or just about ’40, I expect, when he finished paying for it. That $12,000 took a long time to pay for. Isabelle Chewning: I wonder if they used her $2,000 for the down payment. Mary Lipscomb: I think it probably was. I think that possibly was what she was saying, but yes I can imagine so, and the rest of it. That’s about exactly what it was. Isabelle Chewning: Was he able to pay at all during the Depression? Mary Lipscomb: They had to pay the interest, but I don’t think he ever paid much on the principal. Maybe a little of it was principal, but I’m sure he had to pay the interest the whole time. I have no idea what the interest rate was at that time, but it couldn’t have been more than about two percent or maybe less. I’m not sure what it was. When you think about $12,000 in 2007 like it is now, it’s just difficult to think it would take that long to pay $12,000. Isabelle Chewning: What was included in the farm at that point, do you have any idea? Mary Lipscomb: There were 250 acres and that’s all. It was the part that was right around-- it did not include the part that he later bought from Mrs. Dice [to the northeast of Mulberry Grove, 2081 Sterrett Road], nor what used to be the Patterson farm [2645 Sterrett Road in Brownsburg], and the original farm I know was 250 acres. Isabelle Chewning: But it was on both sides of Sterrett Road? Mary Lipscomb: It was on both sides of Sterrett Road. It went all the way back to the [Henry] Jones’ farm [955 Goose Creek Road] like it does now. I believe maybe, though, he purchased a field back closer to the Jones’ farm that was not a part of that. I’m not really sure about that, whether it was a part of the original farm or not. But the Dice farm had at one time belonged to the [John] Moores or to the [Samuel] Willsons. I think it went out during the Willson period but some of that had belonged to the original farm. The Willsons bought it from -- I’ve even forgotten it, the one who’s on the first deed. Isabelle Chewning: Joseph Skeen? Mary Lipscomb: Skeen, yes, and I think it was John Skeen. I’ve forgotten. One was the father and one was the son. But we can look that up later, whatever. We’ll see. I still don’t remember much about that earliest time. I’ve heard a lot of things about the time when we first moved there, but I vaguely remember that we lived in what is now the living room, and what is now the library of the house. The house itself was -- What you [Isabelle] and I both, and then in all of my childhood used for the kitchen, had just been obviously not too many years priors to our moving there in ’27 made into a kitchen from a porch. It had been the back porch for a number of years obviously, and it was not enclosed under it at all in my childhood. I think maybe not until about the time I was married possibly. It was pretty much like a porch. The kitchen was cold all the time, and it had no chimney and therefore it was not heated. Mother had an oil cooking stove. I remember distinctly it had three burners and an oven. And it was always cold as the mischief out there in the morning! She would go out there, and hopefully this oil stove would lend some heat to this kitchen, which had no enclosure under it at all. And, of course, we had no water in the house. We had no pumped water into the house at that time, so you didn’t have to be fearful of pipes freezing and things like you do now. But there was this very open kitchen type thing. She cooked in there and she was a very good cook, made bread and cooked it in this oil stove oven. And then we ate in what is now the living room. We had a table in there. We never ate in that cold kitchen. In the summertime we ate on the back porch right much, and I guess we could eat in the kitchen in the summertime in particular. But I don’t remember ever eating in the kitchen, I don’t think, until much later. Isabelle Chewning: So you really used only those two big rooms on the main floor to live in at first. Mary Lipscomb: That’s pretty much right, uh huh, although strange as it may seem, the telephone was in what is now the dining room. Isabelle Chewning: So you had a telephone? Mary Lipscomb: We had a telephone. Isabelle Chewning: You always remember having it? Mary Lipscomb: I always remember having a telephone, but it’s possible that we didn’t have it when I was four years old. But in my first memory we had this telephone. But we always had to go down to that cold room. Of course I never talked on the telephone. The telephone calls were very important. There weren’t any just social calls at all. But the neighbors would call about this, that and the other, and you’d have to go down in that cold room in the wintertime and talk on the telephone. So therefore, nobody talked on the telephone much. By the time I was in, oh, maybe the second grade, I moved upstairs to the upstairs hall and had a bedroom. That was my bedroom. But it was just run up there in the wintertime and get in the bed. Isabelle Chewning: You mean there on the landing? Mary Lipscomb: There on the landing, yes. I don’t know how old I was when I moved up there, but I remember sleeping up there for a good while. We’re skipping forward to where I was already in school I’m sure. Isabelle Chewning: I forgot to even ask when you were born. Mary Lipscomb: Oh, I was born on December 26, 1923 and I was born in the hospital in Lexington. Isabelle Chewning: Oh, you were? Mary Lipscomb: Uh huh, right, both Mc and I were born in the hospital. The father of the doctor who delivered my children delivered me, Hunter McClung. He had been a doctor in Fairfield, and by the time I was born he had moved to Lexington and was most everybody’s family doctor, and delivered children, and took care of people and all sorts of things. I had a little book that he had given my mother on raising children, I think it was, on childcare, infant care or something. I forgot what I did with that book. I don’t know whether I gave it to his son. I believe I did, his son, my doctor who delivered my children. But anyway, Mother was all right when I was born and I have some pictures of me as a baby at Uncle Stuart’s. But when Mc was born, mother had phlebitis very badly. She stayed in the hospital for a long time and I stayed with my great aunt and uncle, Horatio and Edna Thompson who lived at Timber Ridge. These were mother’s kin people in that area, and they took me in, and I stayed with them. So forever after that, I visited the Thompsons at Timber Ridge a lot, and stayed over there right much because Mother was not very strong for a good while, I think, after that, but that was all back to my brother’s birth time. That was when I was two years old. I must have been with them for quite a while. And they’d tell stories about that. I called Mrs. Thompson Biggie. She was my great aunt Edna, for whom my mother was named. She would tell the story about my dad’s coming at night sometime and putting-- no, I think Uncle Edwin really told this story, because it was his story. About putting me in his [Uncle Edwin’s] arms and he [my dad] said, “Here’s this child. Can you take care of her?” And this was when my brother was being born. And so I seem to have stayed with them a good while. They were great caregivers and wonderful. It was wonderful fun being with them, and I would visit them a lot in the summertime when I was five and six years old. Isabelle Chewning: And did you have cousins your age? Mary Lipscomb: In that family? Isabelle Chewning: In that family? Mary Lipscomb: Their children were my mother’s age. They were her first cousins because this was my mother’s aunt, and my great aunt. Then their grandchildren are some younger than I am, Davenport and Ann Thompson, Ann Thompson Montgomery, and they were my second cousins, whatever people call them, first cousins once removed or something, my second cousins these were. Ann was in my wedding but I never-- these were the Thompson’s grandchildren. Davenport and then one named Skipper -- his name was Charles Edwin -- are my second cousins and so forth. But I never knew them really well at all because after my teenage years and college years I didn’t go back as much to see them. I kept up with them, and we’ve always visited them, and also my birthday is the day after Christmas and I remember for years we celebrated my birthday there. We always went there on the day after Christmas for a long time. When my mother’s first cousin and the son of one of these was married -- Horatio was his name -- they moved in there. This is at Church Hill [78 Sam Houston Way]. It’s the pretty old brick house right behind the Timber Ridge Presbyterian Church. When Horatio married Mildred Thompson -- Mildred Goodman she was -- they lived there at Church Hill with my -- she was my great aunt [Edna], and I called her Biggie [short for Big Edna]-- with Biggie and Uncle Edwin. Mildred became the housekeeper and she was a fantastic cook and we always looked forward to going to Timber Ridge for my birthday -- the Christmas celebration with them like it is with you [Isabelle] now. And so we went over there every year on the day after Christmas. I remember one year it snowed and we always traveled the road -- I don’t know whether we always did or not, but we were in the Model A, I guess it was, and we were traveling the road from Bustleburg that comes out at the Alexander’s Orchard [Decatur Road]. And we met a car as we were coming down a little hill and I suppose my dad stepped on the brake and our car went zoom, and turned around in the road on this trip to Timber Ridge for my birthday. I don’t know why I remember that. Anyway, those are some of the things I remember probably prior to my starting school. When we first moved to Brownsburg we had a Model T and it had curtains. I guess maybe the second car we had was a Model A and I think it also had curtains, but I remember Mother at the sewing machine. The curtains were made out of-- they had some kind of heavy material but then the part that you could see out of was something called Isinglass and I have no idea what Isinglass was. But it would break and Mother, I guess she would buy additional this-- it looked like hard plastic. She would have to put it in the sewing machine, and sew it into those curtains every year to change the part that you could see out of. It just looked like a piece of plastic but it was very hard and if you folded them or anything it would break. But anyway, Mother would sew those curtains so that they would be ready for winter. And where we went, I’m not too sure. I don’t know whether we ever went to Lexington. I guess we did, in the Model T, because I know there were some trips to Lexington. The Model A, I think, had the same type curtains. And then eventually we had one that had roll-up windows, a Model A. Isabelle Chewning: You always remember having a car then? Mary Lipscomb: Right. We always had a car by the time we were in Brownsburg, right. At Uncle Stuart’s we have lots of pictures of my dad on horseback, and I think maybe they maybe didn’t have a car. I think he had a car when he was married. They were married in 1922. They went to Baltimore on their honeymoon in a car. I remember that, and I think he had a car at that time, probably the same one we had when we moved to Brownsburg in ’27. Isabelle Chewning: How old were they when they got married? Mary Lipscomb: Mother was three years older than my father and in ’22 he would have been 22 and she would have been-- he was born in ’99, 1899, and she was born in ’96, so she would have been about 25, and he was about 22, I guess, when they were married. She had taught in King George County. She grew up in Fredericksburg and she taught in King George County and then she came to Rockbridge Baths to teach. Isabelle Chewning: Can you talk a little bit about her life? Mary Lipscomb: Yeah. Isabelle Chewning: It’s such an interesting life. Mary Lipscomb: Yes, it is. Isabelle Chewning: Not directly related to Brownsburg, but -- Mary Lipscomb: Yeah, very interesting. Her parents were Charles Read Morton and Mary Thompson who was from Timber Ridge. Well, I’ll go back a little further about how they met. He was from, Charles Read Morton was from Charlotte County, and his family lived near Charlotte Courthouse in Charlotte County. He went to Union Seminary and he had a sister named Suzanne -- we always called her Aunt Sue -- I think it was Suzanne. Suzanne Morton who married a man named John Davis, and John Davis was the pastor at the Timber Ridge Church when Charles Read, his brother-in-law, was at Union Seminary. I guess Union Seminary was in Hampden-Sydney at that time because it was at Hampden Sydney for a long time. John Davis invited Charles Read Morton to come to Timber Ridge to do summer work with him at Timber Ridge. And he met Mary Thompson, who was living-- she wasn’t the daughter of the man who owned Church Hill. She was a niece of the man who lived -- the Thompson man who owned Church Hill at that time. Mary Thompson’s mother had died. Her mother was an Adams and she died in childbirth when Mary Thompson was quite young. And he moved back, [Mary’s widower father] Samuel Thompson moved back from Rockbridge Baths, where they were living, to Church Hill where his brother lived. He obviously owned maybe a part of Church Hill. Those kids -- he had four children: Mary, and Edna and two boys [William and Lewis]. They grew up pretty much at Church Hill with their uncle and aunt, but their father lived there also. Samuel Givens Thompson was his name. Well anyway, Charles Read Morton came to Timber Ridge for a summer intern pastorship and met Mary Thompson, who lived just behind the church. And they were married -- not that year, I guess, but the next year when he finished in, I think it was ’95. In 1895 he finished seminary. They were married in the library at Church Hill and they went off almost immediately, I think maybe right from the wedding, to New York to board a ship that took him to Brazil where he was a missionary for the Southern Presbyterian Church, the Southern Presbyterian Church U.S. at that time. Mother was born in a little village called Araguari in Brazil. It’s sort of in the north central part of Brazil itself. Her mother was -- Mary was pretty young. I don’t think she was 20 years old when they were married. Most all the missionaries had great difficulty -- and there were a lot of Presbyterian missionaries in Brazil. It was a big mission area for the Southern Presbyterian Church. And they all had difficulty with the climate, and the tropical diseases, and things of that sort, particularly tuberculosis. Grandmother, Mary Thompson, became very ill about the time Mother was two years old. She was so sick, and they decided they’d better bring her back to this country and they did. She was very ill on the boat, but finally got here. And I’ve never been sure where they docked. They must have either docked at Norfolk or somewhere like that instead of New York because the first place they went was Fredericksburg, where Charles Read Morton’s sister lived. Her name was Nannie Morton Howison. She married a man named Samuel Howison. No, that’s not right. Samuel Graham Howison, but he was known as Graham. So they came there to his home in Fredericksburg named Braehead, with this very ill lady, my grandmother, and this 2-year-old daughter, and the father, the husband Charles Read Morton, of course, came to try to get her home. I remember -- Mother grew up there, and I remember one of her first cousins, whom I called aunt, because she [my mother] lived there her whole growing up life said, “I have been told”-- this is my Aunt Nannie, who was the youngest daughter of the Howisons -- said, “I remember standing by the big doors in the hallway thinking, I wonder what this little Brazilian cousin is going to look like.” She was four years old and my mother was two. She had no idea who this cousin was, what this cousin was like. She thought she was going to look like a Portuguese, or an Italian or something of this sort, because she had heard about Brazil. But she wondered what this little cousin was going to be like, and she had no idea they were going to grow up together, and be like sisters from then on. But anyway, my grandmother died at Braehead, and they brought her back to Timber Ridge and she’s buried at the Timber Ridge Cemetery. But my grandfather then left Mother at the Howisons, at this home named Braehead near Fredericksburg, and went back to the Seminary, I think, for some refresher courses and he was around-- there are some letters from him at the Seminary to his sister about the care of my mother. It always said something to the effect that as soon as he got back to Brazil he wanted to get my mother to come back to Brazil with him. After about a year, I think, he went back to Brazil and he did not take Mother with him because he didn’t know what his living conditions were going to be like there. But she continued to-- later he married again, and always meant to have her go to Brazil to live with him. He had two other children and he died, and I’m not really sure which year he died. He died shortly after this second child was born. He married a lady named Lucy Hall, whose parents had moved to Brazil with those people who went right after the Civil War and established something called Americana Villa, because their farms were so devastated during the Civil War. There was a great colony of these people who had moved, and all the daughters married missionaries, I think. Anyway, Lucy was my grandfather’s second wife. They had these two children, and after he died, the little boy in the family -- he was the second child -- became very ill, and they came back because of his health, and they came again to her husband’s sister’s home, the Braehead home in Fredericksburg. The boy died there and he’s buried in the Howison’s plot in Fredericksburg. The Howisons just had a-- they had a big old house, and they just sort of took in everybody, even into the cemetery plot. This child is buried there. And then when his mother died many years later, she’s buried there, too. She wanted to be buried with her son in Fredericksburg and she’s buried in the Howison’s plot. And none of them had any – well, the boy was some kin to Mrs. Howison. He was her nephew, of course, but the wife was not kin to the Howisons at all. It’s very interesting what a wonderful family the Howisons were. Isabelle Chewning: And where is Charles Read Morton buried? Mary Lipscomb: He’s buried in Brazil, and I must give you that writing that there is about him. I keep hoping Alexander [Mary’s grandson Bruce Alexander Lipscomb III who is a Foreign Service Officer] will go to Brazil sometime and we can find the grave. It’s in Casa Branca [Sao Paulo], I believe it’s called. That’s not right. I know this writing has the name of the village where he’s buried. I think he had a church there, and it’s a churchyard. There was a picture. I’ve seen a picture of all these flowers bedecking his grave. But Mother then, grew up in this family of Howisons. There were three girls, and two of the older ones were two years apart. Then there was a skip and then there was this third one and her name was Nannie, Nannie Howison, and she was just two years older than Mother, so she and Mother became a pair and then the two older ones were a pair and the two older ones were named Margaret and Mary Graham. Mother was such a part of that family. She called Mrs. Howison, her aunt, she called her “Mother”. And she called Mr. Howison “Father” just as if they were her real parents, and I called them Grandma and Grandpa, and I called all those three first cousins, I called them “Aunt”. I have letters that Grandma, Mother’s real aunt, had written her after she was married to my dad and you could not tell that she was not her daughter. Absolutely she was her real mother and, of course, she didn’t remember her mother at all. But she named me after her mother and she had a happy, very happy life at Braehead. And had her father wanted her to come to Brazil, I think she would not have wanted to come, not wanted to leave her family in Fredericksburg by that time. But she and Aunt Nannie were very close, and there were a couple of maiden aunts who lived with the Howisons, Mr. Howison’s sisters, and one of them was the housekeeper. Her name was Helen, but they used the Scots pronunciation and called her Heel’-in [phonetic spelling], Helen Howison. And one of them was named Mary and they called her Mamie, and I called them “Aunt”. I didn’t know Aunt Helen. She’d died before I was born. But Aunt Helen was the housekeeper. Aunt Mamie taught the girls. She was the teacher. There wasn’t any public school for girls at that point I suppose. This was in the early 1900s. Grandmother, Grandma as I called her, Mother’s aunt really, did the sewing and kept everybody in clothes. And the house was huge and they had some help, but I’m not too sure how much. But I know they had-- they always sent the laundry out, because they talked about that sometimes. I’m sure they must have had some additional household help. But Grandfather was a farmer, but not a very good farmer. He was an educated man, and I guess he didn’t like it much, and they had some farmland outside of Fredericksburg. But I think he was, maybe he was similar to our county agents, or something of that kind, too, because I know he went around and talked to people about this, that, and the other. And I’m not too sure where those programs were in the government at that time, whether they were anything similar to what we have today. He inherited that farm from [Note - information on tape has been corrected to read as follows: his father, Robert Howison, who had taken it over when his brother, John Howison, lost it because of debt. This Uncle John had built the house, “Braehead”, but the Battle of Fredericksburg was fought in this area, and things were just hard after the war.] Anyway, Mother’s life there was very, very happy and then, well she went two years, I suppose, just to the Fredericksburg Normal School. She and Aunt Nannie drove a buggy into town to go to school. She used to show me where they hitched the buggy, somewhere almost close to Sunken Road, I think, and that was the hitching post along there. They hitched the buggy there in the morning and took classes. When she finished the two years, then she was eligible to teach school. And she went down on the Rappahannock -- is it the Rappahannock that comes right there in Fredericksburg? The Rappahannock River, and it’s hard to believe this is true, and took a boat down the river. When you look at the Rappahannock now it doesn’t have enough water in it for a boat. But she took a boat down to King George County where she taught in the village of King George, and I guess it was just for the one year that she taught there. But she had these cousins, these Adams cousins who were-- her grandmother was an Adams, my mother’s grandmother was an Adams -- from Rockbridge Baths, and so some of the-- and also her Thompson aunt lived at Church Hill, and they all encouraged her to come to Rockbridge County to teach. And she and Aunt Nannie, I know, would visit the Thompsons periodically at Timber Ridge. The Howisons made some effort to have her know her mother’s kin people, and I know that Mother and Aunt Nannie together would come sometimes and spend some time at Church Hill [78 Sam Houston Way] with the Thompsons. Once upon a time, she visited her uncles. One of them -- I have to think about this -- was named Lewis and one of them was named-- I’ve forgotten what the other one’s name was. The uncles lived in the Memphis area. And while she was visiting one of them she got typhoid fever and lost her hair. She talked about that. So I know that she kept up with some of these Thompsons and visited them sometimes. So she came to Rockbridge Baths, and lived with her great aunt, I guess she was. She was a Wilson. She called her Aunt Lizzie, and she had married an Adams. Then her daughter married a Gibson and then her daughter married a cousin of my dad. Her daughter married a Sterrett. It was Aunt Lizzie Adams. She was a Wilson, Elizabeth Wilson married Hugh Adams and they owned the house where the Lewises live now [32 McCurdy Lane]. Her daughter, Mary Adams, had married a Gibson and I think Mary and Cousin John [Gibson] were really the housekeepers, keepers of the home by that time, and I think mother’s great aunt, Elizabeth -- she called her Aunt Lizzie -- Adams, her husband had died and she was older when Mother came there to teach. But Cousin Mary and Cousin John were the housekeepers, the owners of the house, or whatever. And mother lived upstairs. You know that house has sort of a double back porch, and upstairs there were two bedrooms off that, and I think she had one of those bedrooms. I don’t know how my dad really met her, but I know there are pictures of them riding horseback together. I think he must have had several horses. Or maybe this is a possibility: she would come over to visit her aunt at Church Hill, at Timber Ridge, and he and his uncle [Stuart Thompson] -- whether the aunt was still living at that point, I don’t think so -- came to Timber Ridge to church, and I expect he met her there at Church Hill and so forth, something like that. But the Thompsons were Associate Presbyterians, not the mainline, not the Assembly Presbyterians. They always went to ARP churches. My uncle Thompson, Uncle Edwin Thompson’s grandfather was one of the first, one of the early ministers of the Associate Presbyterian Church. And anyway that’s another whole part of my ancestry, but this is not very Brownsburg. Isabelle Chewning: Well we’re laying the foundation. Mary Lipscomb: You’re laying a big foundation here, a large foundation! Isabelle Chewning: So we laid the foundation. Mary Lipscomb: Right. Isabelle Chewning: And then they got married in Fredericksburg. Mary Lipscomb: And lived with the uncle for a while. They got married in Fredericksburg, and we have pictures in the yard at Braehead where they were taken. They were married in the church in Fredericksburg. She was the only one of those three daughters of the Fredericksburg family who was married in the church. One of them was married in the Great Hall at Braehead and one of them eloped because she married a Yankee, terrible, terrible. [Laugh] Isabelle Chewning: That was Aunt Nannie? Mary Lipscomb: That was Aunt Nannie, yes that’s right. So back to Brownsburg. So they were married and they honeymooned in Baltimore, I remember, and then they came back to Uncle Stuart’s and lived for -- they were married, what did I say, in ’22? So they lived there for four or five years, five years or so I guess. Mother had some recollections of living there, but both of us [Mary and her brother, Mc] were born when they were living there. And then they moved to Brownsburg in about ’27. I think that’s about right. Isabelle Chewning: Which buildings were there on the farm when you moved there? Mary Lipscomb: Oh, yeah, I remember quite distinctly. There was the big barn that we kept horses in, which is the typical horse barn. Isabelle Chewning: The log barn? Mary Lipscomb: No, the one with the hay mow and all that. Isabelle Chewning: Closest to your garden? Mary Lipscomb: Yes close to the garden, right, uh huh. Isabelle Chewning: It was the calf barn in my lifetime. Mary Lipscomb: Right but all those stables, all those stalls were [for] horses. And then on the left, as you look at the barn from your house, on the left was a sheep place. Sheep stayed in that section on the left. I don’t remember a thing about calves. There was a section with a low roof, just a one story part at the back where we milked the cows and drove in the cows. I don’t know what that was used for in your day. But anyway, that barn was there, and the one we called the old barn which was the log barn. And then the granary that burned in the years in the years while I lived there, in the ‘80s sometime, 1980s. And then out there where the dairy barn is now, there was a chicken house. I think we have some pictures. I have some childhood pictures that show that. That was just a small building. And then a lot of that was fenced in where the sheep came out and ate in troughs outside. I don’t remember much about cows at all. I remember those sheep, and I remember the horses because, well after we were older, Mc and I did particular things with the horses. I don’t know how many horses. I would guess you had to have at least six. You had four for everything almost, and then -- I don’t know whether we had that many or not. Maybe only four at first. Isabelle Chewning: Do you think your dad brought horses from Uncle Stuart’s farm? Mary Lipscomb: He seemed to have, yes. He seemed to have. I guess by that time he owned some things of his own, and I’m sure he brought two, as many as two, and maybe he bought some others or maybe he brought four. I really don’t know. But I feel sure he must have. Uncle Stuart was older by that time, and I really don’t know how much farming he was doing. And he lived a lot of the time with his daughters after that. He died when I was maybe in the fifth or sixth grade, somewhere along in that neighborhood, I think, and I expect he wasn’t very well, probably. Isabelle Chewning: So we’re back on the tape now and we were talking about-- Mary Lipscomb: I needed to take a little rest. We were talking about whether he had horses that had come from Uncle Stuart’s farm, and I’m sure he must have. He must have owned a good many things by that time, himself. He always loved riding horses, and he had riding horses, but I don’t remember any riding horses at Mulberry Grove until later, until much later because we had a car and I guess he’d given up with the riding horses by that time. But he always loved horses and your brother did not love horses, I mean your father, my brother [Mc Sterrett] didn’t care about horses too much. They were always a big nuisance for farming. It was so nice when tractors came along and you didn’t have to-- the first thing you had to do in the morning was round up the horses and that was always a big nuisance. Isabelle Chewning: So they didn’t stay in the stable. They were out in the pasture. Mary Lipscomb: I guess they did at night pretty much in the summertime anyway, because it was cooler and better for them, and they grazed, I guess, some but they mostly slept. But I suppose in the winter they stayed in the stable pretty much. I remember I didn’t dare walk in there. They were big old horses when I was little, and you’d get kicked or something. When you walked behind them you had to be really careful. But I don’t remember a lot about those very earliest times. Isabelle Chewning: Were there other outbuildings around the house at that point? Mary Lipscomb: There was the smokehouse, but that’s still there, and I don’t remember any-- Isabelle Chewning: What about that thing called the office? Mary Lipscomb: Oh, that was never in my day at all. We used to see the foundation of that which is in your front yard, but after Alex [Mary’s husband] and I moved there we undid the front yard. When it got really dry, and the grass would die, it would dry in this little rectangular space as if there had been a little building there, in what’s your front yard. But we didn’t see anything at all in the way of foundation when we redid the driveway when we moved there. So why the grass would die around it, really I don’t know. Isabelle Chewning: Why do we call it the office? Mary Lipscomb: Somebody in our ancestry had said – you know that was the back yard until about the later 1800s I guess -- that there had been a building there but, I don’t know. Lots of people would tell my dad and Mother things that I’ve forgotten about or never knew about -- their ancestry. But one of the persons who told us more about it was Tate and Jim Alexander’s grandmother, Ida Willson Fultz, who had lived there with her grandparents a good deal, because her father was Robert Tate Willson. And I don’t know why she seemed to-- I don’t know whether he didn’t have a farm, or what it was. Or maybe he lived there, too, with his father for some years and she kind of grew up I think, Ida Willson Fultz, at Mulberry Grove with her grandparents. And she could tell -- she lived into my lifetime. In fact, I was teaching school when she died. But she could tell us some things, and I expect she’s one of the ones that did tell us. She’s the one I remember who told us about the servants coming across your back yard, I mean what’s now your front porch, to the room where Sallie Willson handed out the daily supplies and things of that sort. Isabelle Chewning: And she’s [Ida Willson Fultz] the one who had the memory of the soldiers camping in the meadow. Mary Lipscomb: Yes, that’s right. She’s that one, uh huh. She was a little child at that time. Isabelle Chewning: Can you tell that story? Mary Lipscomb: Is it time? It’s not in chronological order here, but that would be earlier on in the history of Mulberry Grove. We’re going to talk about that. You were asking me about, originally, about buildings around the house. And also one other thing about that is that I remember very vaguely, that there was a falling down dairy attached to what we now call the old kitchen. It was stone. I do remember that there were troughs in it and we’ve all dug up pieces of this clay piping that had been used to pipe water into this dairy. And Samuel Willson had evidently done that and piped water from up at the Martin farm up on the hill up there [1913 Sterrett Road] somewhere all the way down. It had to be piped by gravity, of course, to this dairy that was attached to the house and you -- can’t you still see a little line on the old kitchen wall on the outside where there was-- ya’ll have taken down that wall, so you won’t see it now. But in all of my day, there was a slight line on the old kitchen outside wall where you could see that this building was attached. The stones were, it was sort of falling down-ish in most of my childhood, and it had no water in it. Nothing was piped into it by that time. But Samuel Willson was quite an entrepreneur and did a lot of things of that sort. What did you ask me about? Isabelle Chewning: Can I ask you a question about the stones from the dairy? Mary Lipscomb: Yeah. Isabelle Chewning: Did they get sold to somebody else? Mary Lipscomb: Yeah, they sold them to Camp Briar Hills and they built a wall with them down there. I was always kind of angry about that. I think Mother was upset about that too. I don’t know. I think everybody was kind of glad to see that stone building gone because somebody was scared it was going to fall on somebody someday. I wish we could have restored it because it was such a-- to me it was sort of a romantic kind of thing. I don’t know why as a child I felt like this was the better day of living and all that stuff. Well you asked me to talk about Mulberry Grove during the Civil War. During the time, I guess it was about ’64 wasn’t it, 1864 when Hunter, General Hunter decided -- well the Valley was just about to be overrun by the Yankees by that time in ’64. And this general named Hunter was assigned to move to Lexington from the upper Valley, from Harrisonburg, Winchester, that area, to Lexington to burn VMI because they had been supplying soldiers for the war forever. And so Hunter and his armies came through the lower Valley -- I guess that’s what we called it. I always get mixed up about which is upper and which is lower -- anyway, through the Rockridge area moving toward Lexington. And they came in three columns, and one of them came on what is now Route 11. One of them came on what is now [Route] 252 going through Brownsburg, and one of them came closer to the mountain, like the Walker’s Creek Road. They all were to converge on Lexington to burn VMI and take care of Lexington. There was a general named Crook who came through Brownsburg and he -- they always were looking for places that were flat where they could encamp near water. And they camped down near Bellevue [952 Hays Creek Road] which is on the western side of the village of Brownsburg, and they camped, some of them, in the meadow across from the house at Mulberry Grove. One of our cousins named Ida Willson, and she married a Fultz, lived there with her grandfather, and she and a lot of little cousins who seemed to be there, lots of little-- she had some brothers and sisters too. I don’t know whether they were cousins or brothers and sisters really. They were little children when the Yankees were camped across the creek. Whether there was one division or more, I don’t know what it was. But anyway, General Crook himself, I think, was there with some part of his army. What is now the back of the house was at that time the front of the house and this Cousin Ida, Ida Willson would tell us and her grandchildren, Jim and Tate and Jack Alexander, she’d tell them all this story. She would say, “When we were little children, we were hanging over the front porch railings yelling, “Ray rah for Jeff Davis!” at the Yankees who were camped across the creek from the house. And when Alex and I, my husband and I lived there, Alex said there was no way they would have done that. There was no way they could have been heard or anything. No, that’s wrong. I said “I wonder if that’s a true story”, because I know that they hid the horses up what we call the back road. I heard tales about hiding all the horses in that direction, trying to be away from where these Yankees were. And I said, “I bet that story’s not true.” And my husband would say, “Oh, but you don’t know anything about the noise of an army encampment. There would have been so much noise that they couldn’t have heard these kids.” I don’t know whether they were telling the truth or not. They probably were telling the truth. I said-- [End of Tape 1, Side A] Isabelle Chewning: Did your father have help on the farm or did he do everything himself? Mary Lipscomb: Oh, no, he had help. There was a black man named William Halliburton, who was there when we got there who had worked for the Moores. And I think he was -- we called him Dude, and everybody else called him Dude. He didn’t have any children. He had a wife and they lived about a quarter of a mile, I suppose, from the farm up the road [Haliburton house no longer exists, but it was located across from 1981 Sterrett Road]. And he had a car forever, as I remember, and always drove down to the barn every morning. My dad always said that Dude was of great help to him about knowing who was who in the community, and with whom to deal, and with whom not to deal, and things of that sort. And he died when I -- My dad went from general farming into the dairy business in the late ‘40s and Dude was always very much a part of the dairy. I expect he lived into the ‘50s. He died after I was married because I came to the funeral. Alex and I came to his funeral after -- in the ‘50s I would say. He probably lived -- I don’t think it was the early ‘60s, probably in the late ‘50s he died. I don’t know when. There was a family named Strickler who moved into the house where the Thornes now live [2166 Sterrett Road], the one closest to the barn, that house. I always remember them, but I somehow don’t believe they were there when we came there. But I don’t remember anybody else who lived in that house. And there was a mother and a father and two sons, and I don’t know how those sons, how old they were, but they both got married. I remember them both marrying after I was maybe 12 or 13 years old, something like that or maybe ten or 12 along in there. So they must have been pretty young these two sons. One of them was named Ollie and the other one was John, I believe, John Strickler and Ollie Strickler. Isabelle Chewning: And did they work on the farm? Mary Lipscomb: And they worked on the farm, uh huh. And I don’t know how we afforded all those people. I guess it was sharecropping, maybe some of that kind of thing. I suppose that’s what it was at that point. But I don’t know what about Dude. As far as I know, Dude was always paid something. I don’t think he ever was in the sharecropping business, but I can’t imagine there was any money to pay these people, so I really don’t know what the arrangements were. But it took a lot of people to make hay because it was such a labor intensive thing. You had to cut it. We had a mower, a horse-drawn mower. Or to thresh and cut the wheat. We had a binder drawn by horses. Everything was drawn by horses, and it took people to stack all this stuff. You had to stack it. A binder would put out sheaves of wheat or whatever, and you had to go along behind it and put the wheat in little stacks. And then you cut corn by hand, and that’s what general farming was all about in those days. We had some hay, some wheat, some corn and you fed it to the animals, or you took the-- I remember going with, I guess with sacks of wheat, to the mill. One of the most exciting things all summer would be the threshing of the wheat. Sometimes the wheat would be-- well, you cut the wheat in later June or early July and stack it in little stacks in the field. Then it would dry there I suppose and sometimes you would put it-- sometimes the threshing machine would come, and we didn’t have a threshing machine. Nobody owned a threshing machine, but there was a man named [Porter] Beard in the Brownsburg neighborhood who was the neighborhood thresher. How do you spell that word, is it thrasher? I always say “thrasher” and I’m not too sure what that is. Anyway, he had a steam engine and pulled this threshing machine and it would come either to the field and the horses and, I guess your neighbors, would help with this. They’d bring their wagons and some horses and they would go around in the field and stack the wheat sheaves on the wagon and pull it up to the threshing machine and thresh it in the field and you’d have a straw stack in the field. But I remember more it seemed to me we did this much more: they brought it, I guess after it dried some, they brought it into the barns and put it in the mows down in that old barn. And there were two large mows on each side of it. That barn had just mows on each side and a driveway between, and they would put all the wheat in there. We also raised barley, and I don’t know when they did that, whether they threshed it, or put it all in there at the same time, and rye, too. So we had all three of these grains. But I don’t remember that -- when we threshed, we always had wheat grain, it seemed to me. I don’t remember barley grain, but maybe we did. I’ve just forgotten. But anyway, the threshing machine would come pulled by this-- Mr. Beard would come -- pulled by this steam engine. And he’d come in by that lane that goes right down by your house, between your house and the dairy barn now, and that was the driveway to the barn. And he would blow the whistle of this steam engine and that was so exciting to go down to the barn, and then he’d drive around back of the old barn and put the threshing machine in that driveway. The steam engine had a belt between it that ran the threshing machine and fire up that thing and the next day-- Isabelle Chewning: With coal? Mary Lipscomb: Wood, no wood. This thing was fired with wood and you had to be constantly poking wood into the steam engine. Then the straw stack would be, there would be a fenced area around in front of that barn. In front of the old barn there was a fenced area where you blew the straw that made a straw stack. In the wintertime, I guess a lot of the cattle, cows, we didn’t have any cattle per se. We had some milk cows and that was about it. I don’t remember ever having -- for quite a long time -- having beef cows but I guess we did. We must have sold some, had cows and calves or something of that sort. But anyway, lots of the black people in Brownsburg would come and help and some of the other white people. I don’t know who came, but you’d have to go around and scurry up all this help for the day you were going to thresh. And the poor black people, no wonder they had every kind of disease, always had to build the straw stacks, and they would be out there in this horrible dust. As you built the straw stack it had to be done correctly, so it would be a cone shape when you got through and then it would stay there. It would blow over if it weren’t built right, and these people knew how to do it to build it, wide and heavy at the bottom and smaller and smaller and smaller until you got toward the top. In those days in the wintertime, well some people would stay-- Back to the threshing itself, some people would stay in the mows and throw the sheaves of wheat that had been put into the mows earlier into the threshing machine. Some people would build the straw stack. And some people had to catch the grain, put the sacks around the area where the grain came out, and load them onto wagons, I suppose and we’d take that to the mill or whatever. But anyway we always had to have all these guys who were doing all this work stay to dinner and that was a big deal. Of course, the black people didn’t eat with the white people. I remember once in a long time Mother used the old kitchen, would fire up a stove down there. And very often Dude’s wife, Maggie, would help, and his sister, Edna Pleasants, would help, and you had to have a number of people helping to cook dinner for all these people. You always, of course, had what was in the garden, potatoes and green beans and some kind of-- I remember Mother would cook either shoulder, ham, shoulder meat or some kind of fried meat and lots of it, I guess, lots of biscuits and things of this sort. I don’t remember much about dessert but I remember-- Mother’s meals may have been not as good as lots of people’s wives around there. [Laugh] I think she just wanted to do it and get it over with! Isabelle Chewning: How many days did it take? Mary Lipscomb: I only remember one. Isabelle Chewning: It was a one day operation? Mary Lipscomb: Just a one day operation, I think, but it may have been more than one sometimes, but I don’t believe it was. I don’t remember many more days than that. That was the story mostly with wheat. And, as I said, I don’t know about the barley grain and whether that was threshed at the same time. I know we raised rye. But you must ask your dad [Mc Sterrett] about those things. I’m sure he’ll remember more about that. But I do remember, now this would be when we were maybe 12 and 10 or in that area -- the way they did hay, I guess you’d cut it with a hay mower, which was drawn by horses, and let it lie there on the ground until it dried. And then I guess they had some people who sort of put it in little stacks, just little round stacks around the field. And then we’d use grapevine, I remember, and Mc and I could do this. They would have a horse with a single tree. That’s one little round thing hooked behind a harness of the horse, and they would hitch that to maybe a little rope or chain or something, and this grapevine would go around this little stack, and we would ride the horses and pull that little stack up to where a man would put it on a bigger stack, and make a haystack in the field. And I don’t know whether this -- I don’t remember the cattle being out there in the wintertime eating. You had haystacks out in the field where cattle could come up to it and eat from that and we didn’t have to-- there wasn’t any baling thing and putting it all together in little bales at all. You stacked it. That’s what preserved both straw and hay. Isabelle Chewning: You didn’t put any of the loose hay in the barn? Mary Lipscomb: Oh, yeah we had loose hay in the barn, too, and that was in the barn that was the horse barn more. And there was a great big fork. They would drive up to the barn with a load of hay on a wagon, loose. Maybe we put those little stacks on the wagon and brought them to the barn. I’m really not very clear about that. This big fork was on a rope, and Daddy would let it down into the hay that was on the wagon and they would push it down into the hay and lock it in some way. It was pulled by a rope that went up to the hay mow and across the top of the barn and then he had-- whoever was in the barn had a rope they’d pull it with, but this fork would let it loose and drop it into the barn. Well that had to be pulled up by a rope that went down on the back of the barn and hooked to a horse at the back, down in the barnyard. And Mc and I would often lead that horse when the time came to pull, lead that horse down through the barnyard to pull this fork of hay up. Oh, and that was very exciting. We had a big old horse named Bill and he was the one that they used to use to pull up the hay into the mow. And it seems to me that Daddy would always be the person in the mow because we would hear his voice yell when he meant for us to stop with the horse. I don’t know who, maybe one of these Stricklers or I don’t know whether Dude or somebody would be on the wagon. But that hay in the barn would be used to feed the horses in the wintertime, and I suppose the sheep too stayed in that same barn. Do they eat hay? I’ve forgotten. I guess they do. Isabelle Chewning: Were the sheep just for the wool? Mary Lipscomb: No, we had lambs that we sold. We had wool. We had lambs. Oh that was another whole story. When you’re dealing with sheep and lambs you always have ones that their mother’s don’t have any milk, won’t take them, mothers die, so that you always had lambs on bottles. It seems to me I remember lambs in the kitchen in boxes being nursed sometimes and that didn’t last forever. They got big enough to take back outside, we would take them outside. But you always had to bring them in. Some of them would be so weak when they were born, or something like that you’d have to bring them in, give them brandy, and feed them with a bottle for a while. And then I don’t remember this much at home. I remember this more when I was first married. Alex’s Aunt Midge had lambs – sheep. Feeding a lot of them when they got bigger on bottles. But I’m sure if you had sheep, you had to feed them on bottles, I think, and sometimes you’d have to feed them forever almost if their mother had died or something. Yes, and the wool, we sold the wool. Isabelle Chewning: Did somebody come and shear the sheep? Mary Lipscomb: Yes. Somebody came and sheared. I think some of the Swishers in the Brownsburg area were the sheep shearers, Mr. Hen Swisher, maybe. I don’t remember really much about that, who did it but I remember they set up a table of some sort out beside the barn, and had to catch the sheep and put them up there, and shear the wool. Isabelle Chewning: Did you eat lamb? Mary Lipscomb: We did not eat lamb. The most I remember about lamb and mutton was after I was married and I cooked it then more, and we ate it more. Alex liked it. I remember when I was pregnant, I cooked some lamb in the pressure cooker and it was the worst -- I shouldn’t have ever cooked it in the pressure cooker. It smelled up the whole place, made me so sick. When Alec [Mary’s son, Bruce Alexander Lipscomb, Jr.] was born in the hospital in Lexington, for Sunday dinner they had lamb. I could really eat it. It was very good. But we never did have lamb. We had hogs and pigs, a good many of those. I forgot to mention that. That’s what, as I said, general farming is all about. Isabelle Chewning: Where did the pigs stay? Mary Lipscomb: You know I’ve really forgotten. It seems to me in those-- there were some little pig sty things, just little coop type things almost, not very big, down behind where your smokehouse is, somewhere between there and the granary, somewhere in that area. And then we had a building out to the-- all this is so taken up now by the silos right in that place where the silos are next to the big barn, to the dairy barn in that section. It seems to me there were some hog pens right in that neighborhood, somewhere along in there. I don’t remember. Isabelle Chewning: That’s where there used to be a lot of apple trees too, weren’t there some apple trees in there? Mary Lipscomb: I don’t remember apple trees out there, maybe one or two very old ones. I don’t remember apple trees. The apple trees were behind the old barn in that field where Larry [Swisher] has his pumpkins. Isabelle Chewning: Okay, right, right. Mary Lipscomb: And that had a whole lot of apple trees in it when I was a child. You could still see where it really had been a big orchard but we used those apples all the time, from those trees. There were probably two good rows all the way across that field and I don’t remember any other apple trees, I don’t think. Isabelle Chewning: Did you have the pear trees then? Mary Lipscomb: Yes, we had the pear trees then, and Mother used those a lot. She canned them, and there were more than there were when I lived there the second time [from 1984 to 2002]. There were at least two [pear] trees between the smokehouse and the gate that goes out, the first little gate that goes out into that field. And then there were probably three from the gate out toward the road. But out toward the road, of course, along that fence row at the end of it was where the icehouse had been, and you remember that probably, a hole in the ground right in there, no? We filled that in when we moved there in the ‘80s. It was still a hole in the ground but we used it for a dump place, always dumped the tin cans and stuff in there and so forth but it was a pretty big hole. It had been an icehouse and it was a good-sized hole in my childhood. I guess my daddy put some dirt over it or something, but it was still an indentation at least, quite a little hole when we moved there. We filled it in. That’s why it’s so bad. I think it was not topsoil or something. It’s bad gardening out there toward the road and all that stuff. Isabelle Chewning: Maybe that was outside. Was that outside the fence before you straightened up the fence? Wasn’t there like a-- Mary Lipscomb: That’s right. It was out there in that driveway part. It was, uh huh. It wasn’t a part of the yard until we did that. Isabelle Chewning: Straightened out the fence, right. Mary Lipscomb: Worked on it, changed that fence row. I don’t think about that much because I never lived there as an adult until we moved back there. You don’t remember. I remember how things were vaguely as a child, but you don’t catch onto those things until you’re out there mowing the grass and digging in the dirt, and things like that. Isabelle Chewning: So your father was a general farmer. Mary Lipscomb: And also one of the things we did, it was very important that we had hog killing in the fall, in the winter. You had to wait until the weather got cold enough -- because you had no refrigeration for any of this stuff -- to kill hogs. I remember lots of people who did public works, worked on the road, the highway and things of that sort always butchered on Thanksgiving Day, because it was usually cold enough at that time. But I don’t remember ours ever being done on Thanksgiving Day, but they did it on-- I don’t know, they maybe butchered five or six hogs. I think they had, I don’t know whether they had other people, but I remember the Stricklers and Dude were there at that time, and that may have been all the help we had to do that. They would kill the hogs down in the barnyard and then they would hang them up and had to scrape the hair off. Then they would cut them up. Then they would bring all these cut up pieces up to the old kitchen, and there was a big table in the old kitchen. They would continue to cut them up and cut the fat off and put it in a big pot and make lard in the big pot in the old kitchen. They’d have to stir that for a long time. I don’t know which they made. They made sausage. Isabelle Chewning: How did you preserve the sausage? Was it canned? Mary Lipscomb: I think we canned it. I remember later we canned it. I can’t remember if we did anything different with it. Lots of people made sausage cakes, and fried them, and then put them into cans. I’ve eaten at other people’s houses and out of cans come sausage cakes already fried. But my dad always just put them in tin cans raw and then we put them in a big pot of water and cooked them. And I don’t know which came first the cooking of the sausage or the making of the lard. Isabelle Chewning: But how did you seal those tin cans? Mary Lipscomb: They had a little sealer. Isabelle Chewning: So you’d go to the store and buy the cans? Mary Lipscomb: You’d go to the store and buy the cans. But, as I said, there wasn’t much going to the store and buying cans in my very early childhood, and I don’t remember what we did with the sausage. Maybe we had to eat it all early. I’m just not real sure. We had tenderloin, and maybe Mother canned it in glass jars for a long time. That’s a possibility, that there was all this great canning in glass jars sometimes. And I guess you could boil those. They must have been unbreakable or something and you could boil them. But one of our favorite Sunday dinners was to open one of these cans of tenderloin and that would be, I guess, in lieu of pork chops. They would cut out what they call the loin and it would be-- it would come out in a long piece, a strip like a pork roast, that sort of thing, and slice it and put it in the cans. Anyway, it would come out. Mother would take these pieces -- they’d be kind of small at that time -- and roll them in flour and fry them, and that was so good, canned tenderloin. I’ve eaten that somewhere recently, people canned tenderloin. I believe there’s a place in Stuarts Draft, I believe that does it now. It’s almost like Mother’s was. We always had rice for Sunday dinner because it was easy to cook after church. Tenderloin, tenderloin gravy, and rice, the best thing in the world! And somehow maybe those were glass cans to start with but then I remember the tins cans later. And then my dad would cure the hams. He would use salt and pepper -- I don’t remember these curing things that you bought from the store later -- and sugar, brown sugar that he put on the hams, and hang them in the smokehouse. He also cured the shoulder part of the meat too and hung them in the smokehouse and they would have to stay for I don’t know how long to be cured, to really absorb all this curing stuff. I remember that mostly in my early childhood we’d sell the hams because that’s how you got some money. We took them. There was a fellow named McCoy who had a grocery store in Lexington. I remember it’s where Alvin-Dennis [102 West Washington Street] is now. And he would take the hams in there, and Mr. McCoy would buy them, and that was one of the money making things. You had lambs. You sold the lambs in the spring. You had wool. We had some cream that we sold, and I can tell you about that, and a few things like that, and maybe some eggs. And then most everything else, I’ve forgotten what else brought in money, but not many things brought in money. That’s why money was so scarce all the time. It was difficult to come up with money. Isabelle Chewning: Was there a barter system where you traded things? Mary Lipscomb: We took things to Mr. Whipple’s store, I think, eggs. The only thing was the eggs. But you made your own butter. You bought sugar, I’m sure, and we didn’t buy flour because he would take the wheat to the mill and have flour made, and come back with some flour. And I don’t remember barrels of flour. I’ve heard people talk about barrels of flour, but I don’t think we got it back in barrels. I don’t know what. You didn’t buy much at the stores. For breakfast we’d have eggs, and batter bread, and apples. Mother was a genius with an apple. Apples were the fruit, you know, winter and summer pretty much. We didn’t buy oranges. We had oranges at Christmastime, and that was about it. And you didn’t buy grapes and all these things that we buy now. Some people raised celery, very few people that I knew, really. In the spring you’d eat greens that came from the fields, like cress. And Mother would go out and gather poke when it was really young and little. Oh, in the summertime we’d walk out the back road which was the road that goes by your dad’s house [2244 Sterrett Road] and it was a road. It had fairly high banks in my childhood. Somehow all through that area, on that road, there was more fruit! We’d go most every afternoon and pick strawberries, and then we’d pick dewberries. Do you even know what a dewberry is? Isabelle Chewning: No. Mary Lipscomb: It looks like a blackberry but it grows -- when there was no fertilizer much for fields, weeds would grow. And this dewberry thing would grow on the ground, sort of flat on the ground and the berry itself was like a blackberry, but it was sweeter and it would come earlier than the blackberries. I remember more of those. We didn’t have blueberries at all. They’re not native to your area. We didn’t have raspberries on that farm. A lot of people did have raspberries. But we’d have strawberries and dewberries and blackberries and we’d have those for supper every night practically all summer long. But that meant -- every afternoon Mother would take a nap, and then after that we’d get up and go in the summertime, berry picking every day, practically. And, oh, we had cherries. We had -- in the springtime there’d be cherries, and she’d can those, and there were cherry trees on the farm. Isabelle Chewning: They were wild cherry trees? Mary Lipscomb: They were not what you’d call the wild cherry trees that are poison. They were black cherries and red cherries, and they’re quite edible. There are a good many of those still on the farm at Timber Ridge at Joe and Alec’s [Mary is speaking of her sons’ dairy farm, Timber Ridge Dairy on Route 11]. Sometimes they have -- the birds, there are so many more birds than there used to be at that point. The birds eat them so badly now, you can hardly get to them before the birds do. But we used those a lot for fruit, and mother would can those. And then she’d can peaches but I don’t remember where the peaches-- we must have bought the peaches. There would be guys that would go by from Nelson County, who would come over and drive by in their cars and trucks or something and stop and sell you peaches. I don’t remember much of anything except peaches that we bought, and she would can those and we would have peaches in the wintertime. I think we’re just now more into what we grew, and what we ate and those things, and where it comes in my period of life, I really don’t remember. This was – I would be ten. I started school when I was six, and I pretty much remember things from then on, but prior to that I’m not real clear about a lot of it. One of the things I wanted to talk about is the year that the Stephens came and lived with us. My dad -- this was, let me see, I started school in ’30, and the worst of the Depression struck about ’29 and ’30. This Aunt Nannie, about whom I’ve talked, was Mother’s -- like her sister, but really her first cousin with whom she grew up at Braehead in Fredericksburg. She married this guy she met during the First World War. Quantico was really pretty close to Fredericksburg, and there was a Marine station there and these Marines would come into Fredericksburg to church, and Grandmother would have them out to Braehead to dinner and things of that sort. And Mother had a lot of pictures of her and Aunt Nannie, and I think Aunt Mary Graham, and Aunt Margaret, too, maybe. Pictures with these Marine guys who were stationed at Quantico. Aunt Nannie married Uncle Steve [Wallace Stephens] who was one of those. He was from Michigan. I don’t know whether-- he’d been around a good while, and knew Grandma and Grandpa, but whether Aunt Nannie just felt like they wouldn’t approve of her marriage, but anyway they eloped and got married. And they went off to live in Michigan. I know Grandma went up there when Graham was born I think, when her [Nannie’s] first child was born; maybe Bruce, too, her second child. And I don’t know for whom he [Uncle Steve] worked, whether it was one of the automobile-- he’d been to Michigan State, her husband. This was Wallace, his name was Wallace Stephens, and he had been a Marine and met Aunt Nannie, and they were married, and went back to Flint, Michigan to live. What he worked for, I don’t know but the things that were most horribly affected by the Depression were the automobile companies that were in Michigan. Whether he worked for one of them, I don’t know, because as a child I didn’t know these things. But he lost his job. He moved back. They moved back to Virginia with no job, and they came in the early part of the summer. I expect I’d finished the first grade, and was probably going to the second grade, so it would have been about ’31 or maybe ’32. I know I was going into the second grade. But, anyway, they spent the whole summer with us, and it was just like one big house party. [Laugh] We had a wonderful time. Graham and Bruce were, they were just little things. Graham remembers a lot about this, I’m surprised. I must have been seven, and Mc would have been about five, and Graham is two years younger than Mc. Maybe they’re just one year apart. They [Graham and Bruce] could have been just three and two or maybe they were four and three or something like that. But we would make up all these stories about these funny people that we-- Graham remembers. We called them the Dogeys -- that’s this family that we knew, and we’d go out the back road and walk out there. I remember walking out there with Graham and Bruce and Mc, and all the four of us, and of all of our funny stories that we had made up. We had the best time playing. Uncle Steve had a big old automobile called a Hupmobile, and it had a front seat and a back seat, and two little jump seats on each side in front of the back seat. Aunt Nannie and mother worked hard fixing --I guess we had dinner in the middle of the day basically. But very often they would-- farming wasn’t quite so intense as it was during my married life and your childhood, but they would finish by maybe five o’clock or something like that, and we’d pack that Hupmobile, and go to Wilson Springs. We went to Rockbridge Alum Springs a lot, and had picnics for supper. That was to get us all out of the house, I’m sure. It was more fun at Rockbridge Alum, because that was before anybody had done anything since it had fallen out of favor during the heydays of-- what were those days? The spas were, were they after the Civil War? They were before the Civil War, weren’t they? But Rockbridge Alum Springs was one of those wonderful places where -- and I guess that would be in the 1830s and ‘40s, more in that time. Rockbridge Alum Springs had a spur of the railroad that went through Goshen, and all these fancy people from Richmond would come up to spend the summer, and get out of the hot weather. That’s what all those spas were, so many of them in southwestern and western Virginia, West Virginia and all those places. Anyway, we’d go out there and where the swimming pool had been was all overgrown. There was a family named Paxton [who] owned the whole thing at that time, and they were some kin of Jim Alexander. His mother was a Paxton, the orchard Jim. This Mr. Paxton was living there in a big, old brick house, and there was what had been the dance hall, or big main building, or something had VMI colors hanging down over the balcony, but it wasn’t totally falling down. There was enough of it for us to see that it was a wonderful era. It would have been in the early 1900s I guess that it was still being used. That was the heyday of the spas. It was more in the 1920s [after] the First World War. Maybe that was it, along in that time. I’m not sure. But anyway, there were some little cottages still surviving, and there were a couple of really nice old homes, but nobody lived there but Mr. Paxton himself. And we’d have our picnic and we would all have to go around and look at all these interesting old places that were wonderful. A lot of times we went to Wilson Springs or somewhere along the [Maury] river and had picnics, but I just remember that as being such a fun summer. Uncle Steve was not-- he didn’t know anything about horses or anything and one of the horses kicked him in the ribs. He helped Daddy on the farm all the time. I guess we didn’t pay him anything but we kept them. I’m sure that was the way it worked. Then it came time to go to school, and I was the only one that had to go to school. [Laugh] The reason I know I was in the second grade is because I walked to school that year in the middle of the day. I only went to school half a day in the first grade and second grade. In the first grade, you went to school until the middle of the day, and you came home if you lived close enough to come home. Or you had to sit around and wait until the bus went or something. I used to declare that there wasn’t any bus when I was in the first and second grade and Mc, my brother, tells me that’s not the truth. I rode to school in the first grade, when I first went on the bus, but I walked home in the middle of the day. I guess if the weather got really cold I guess I stayed and rode the bus. But I remember when the Stephens were there and Uncle Steve made up this song about Mary who had to go to school. He was the cutest thing! Uncle Steve was so much fun, and he was just really a delightful person. He always was, and I just was so fond of Uncle Steve. But anyway, I was the only girl in this whole crowd, of course, and all this stuff, But I had to trudge off to school. At that time – well now I remember. Now it’s coming back to me. There was a family named Buchanan who lived in that house [2166 Sterrett Road] where the-- and the Stricklers probably didn’t come until after. But the Buchanans had a whole bunch of children, and one of them was my age. She and I would walk all the time to school. We’d either walk home -- I remember walking home, and I remember walking to. And so I think Mc is right. I probably walked, when the weather was good, but didn’t go until the middle of the day and then I would ride the bus home. And that’s what I remember doing when I had to go off and leave Mc and the two Stephens boys, and walk to school. It was horrible. [Laugh] But he [Uncle Steve] got a job that fall with the Park Service. The Park Service had just begun, the National Park Service in Yorktown, and he was the head ranger in Yorktown. When they did all that work with the Yorktown Battlefield, that was his job. And Aunt Nannie and the boys went back to Braehead and lived there, and they lived there for a long time, because there wasn’t any kind of housing in Yorktown, I suppose. She got a job. She worked for the-- she was in the Clerk of the Court’s office in Fredericksburg for a long time. When we used to visit them, you would go to see Aunt Nannie at the Clerk’s office. And somebody else, Aunt Mary Graham or somebody would be keeping the boys at Braehead. No, that’s not true either. Where on earth did all this other happen? It must have been after that, that Grandma and Grandpa moved into Fredericksburg and lived next door to Kenmore. There was a little house that Kenmore owned. Anyway, back to Uncle Steve and Aunt Nannie leaving us; he went to Yorktown, and she went back to Braehead to live. Shortly after the Yorktown business, the Skyline Drive was begun, and he was transferred to Luray. I guess that was pretty soon -- I don’t guess he stayed in Yorktown too long, but the whole family then moved to Luray, where he was the Chief Park Ranger on the Skyline Drive. I don’t know whether the part that came down here to Waynesboro. Well, it wasn’t finished, when he started there, because when my dad worked there, it was not finished. I think Uncle Steve and Aunt Nannie had been there a little while in Luray when he got there. But I’m not really sure about all those years. But the boys basically grew up in Luray when he was at the Park Service there. But I remember visiting in Fredericksburg, as I said, and Aunt Nannie working at the Clerk’s office in Fredericksburg. But Aunt Nannie had been to Dunsmore [Business School], I guess, or maybe some part of Mary Washington and taken some business courses I guess after they had gone to-- after she and mother went to Fredericksburg Normal. Aunt Nannie never taught. She always did secretarial type work, stuff of that sort. But that was our story of our life at Mulberry Grove during the summer of 1931, I suppose it was. Great fun in those days. [Laugh] Isabelle Chewning: What do you remember about starting school? Do you remember your teachers? Mary Lipscomb: Oh, yes. I had the same teacher in first grade as I had in second grade, and we were in the brick building that was the academy, had been the Brownsburg Academy. It was still in use when I started and, in fact, it stayed in use until I was almost a freshman in high school, I guess, maybe a little further. I’ve forgotten. Anyway, the first grade room was at the back of the-- I think it originally had been just a perfectly square building with no attachments, and this thing where the first grade was, was obviously a little addition, sort of a one-story little lean-to type thing and it was at the back of the building. It was kind of a long little room and my teacher was Isabel Leech and she married a man named Huffman. Mostly what I remember is, she made me write with my right hand. My mother had asked her to please teach me to write with my right hand, because I was mostly left-handed. Mother didn’t want me to be a left-handed writer. It was very mortifying. If I would go to the blackboard -- she had us go to the blackboard to do things -- and start it with my left hand, and she’d have to tell me to use my right hand, and I did that. I hated it at that point. I do remember that, but that’s mostly what I remember about the first grade. [Laugh] And I don’t remember anything about the second grade, except by that time, I guess, I wrote with my right hand. But when I went to college, I was ever more thankful that I could write with my right hand because none of the desks were ever fixed for left-handed people, and the poor left-handed girls were having to write upside down and all kinds of awful things all the time. I’ve really been very thankful that I can write with my right hand. It’s supposed to do awful things to your personality and all that. [Laugh] Isabel Leech taught both the first and the second grade. She’d teach the first grade for half the day and then the second grade for the next half of the day. I guess the children who rode the bus just sat around in there until the afternoon to come home if they were in the first grade, or in the morning when they first got there. A whole lot of people lived near enough to walk. There were people, I guess, the Buchanan girls all rode the busses [from 763 Hays Creek Road]. I don’t remember anything about Anne [Buchanan McCorkle] talking about walking. Isabelle Chewning: She talked about riding in a horse and buggy sometimes. Mary Lipscomb: Oh, really? Isabelle Chewning: Mag would drive the horse, and chauffeur them all to school. Mary Lipscomb: Oh, I see. I remember the Fauber boys, Benny and his brother Ralph, rode or drove a buggy -- or the horse was attached to something, a wagon or a buggy, I believe, because there was a little barn, you know where the-- I don’t know who lives in that house now, but as you turn into the school it’s the white house where the Whipples used to live a long time ago on the left [2685 Brownsburg Turnpike] as you go up the lane. And right at the back of that lot, the very back, bordering on the road that’s right in front of the school, was a stable. And I remember the Fauber boys would put their horse in there, but they’re the only ones I remember that had horses that they drove to school, or a buggy. In my little childhood before I started school, like when I was three and four, five years old maybe, a whole bunch of people drove by our house. The Ervine girls, Ellen Ervine and Hope Ervine. They lived up the road from us [1913 Sterrett Road]. Oh, and there were a couple of Browns, Margaret Brown, Margaret and John Brown. I guess they were -- their half brother was a whole lot older than they were, well not that much I guess. But some of them would all drive. Margaret Dice who lived next door to us [2081 Sterrett Road]. I think they all went in horse and buggy. I guess that bus business must have started about the time I started school, because I do remember their going by with the horse and buggy to go to school. Isabelle Chewning: Who drove the bus? Mary Lipscomb: I don’t remember at first. I remember Hugh McNutt drove it later, but I don’t remember it all. I don’t remember a thing about that bus early on. That’s why I kept declaring to Mc that I didn’t ride a bus, but he kept declaring that I did. But I don’t remember going out there by myself to get on it. I remember when he and I together would go and get on it. I just blocked that out of my mind entirely for some reason. [Laugh] Where are we now? Oh, what the first and second grade was like. I think Margaret Brown’s mother [Mrs. Ida Brown], Margaret and John’s mother, taught school and I think she maybe was my third grade teacher. She was a really good teacher. So was Isabel, Isabel Leech. Isabel married Hugh McNutt, and she lived with the McNutts. The McNutts lived where Alice and Pat Patterson live now [3334 Brownsburg Turnpike]. Isabelle Chewning: Did you say she married -- Mary Lipscomb: Hugh McNutt, Isabel did, and they were divorced later. He was a terrible alcoholic. Then he married later Mrs. Whitesell. You probably remember that and that era of stuff. He got better of the alcoholism and he built our little early dairy barn for instance. He was doing building work by that time. Then Isabel married a man named Huffman and they lived just outside of Lexington, the Airport Acres neighborhood, and belonged to the Collierstown Church probably. And she lived until a few years ago. She would come to our class reunions maybe as much as four years ago, I went and she was there. She’s only been dead about four or five years. Isabelle Chewning: She was probably just a really young teacher. Mary Lipscomb: Yes, I imagine that was her first year. I think it was, probably. She was probably 18 years old when she started teaching. And then in the fourth grade there was a gal -- she was Leech. She was either a Leech or a Hotinger. I think she was a Leech from the Oxford neighborhood and she played the piano. She and Mollie Sue [Whipple] -- maybe Mollie Sue had gotten there by that time. Mollie Sue didn’t come for a little while when I started school. But anyway, this gal named Thelma Leech her name was, and she married somebody. I think she was a Jones in the neighborhood, lived somewhere in the neighborhood. Then there was another one named Miss Wade and I think she was from Staunton. She was my fifth grade teacher. Isabelle Chewning: Did they board somewhere in Brownsburg? Mary Lipscomb: Lots of them boarded with Mrs. McNutt. She took teachers. There was one -- Mollie Sue lived with Mrs. McNutt. Mollie Sue Hull when she first came to Brownsburg. There was a Miss Montgomery who taught in the high school when I was in high school. She lived there. Some of the teachers lived in that house, the blue house just as you turn from Sterrett Road into Brownsburg [2766 Brownsburg Turnpike]. What’s that gal’s name who lives there? Isabelle Chewning: Gwyn Campbell. Mary Lipscomb: Campbell, right. Later, there was a family who lived there and they must have moved to Staunton, and what was their name? Anyway, they must have rented that house to Miss Trimmer who was the principal of the high school, of the whole school and a Miss Amole that taught me in the sixth grade, I think, and maybe a couple others, maybe four of them, I think, rented that house and lived there. Isabelle Chewning: So Miss Trimmer lived there with some of the teachers who were working for her? Mary Lipscomb: Yeah, right. Isabelle Chewning: I wonder how that got along? Mary Lipscomb: I think it worked very well. I never did hear. I didn’t know much about it, but they all came to church, and they all sat together at church and stuff like that. They sat right behind us maybe, at church, this group of teachers. It seemed to work very well, but what do I know about this! I maybe was in high school. I guess I was in high school when they were living probably there. I don’t even know. It seems to me, I don’t remember having very good friends, really good friends in the Brownsburg School. More of our entertainment, it seemed to me, involved around the [New Providence Presbyterian] church, because we had a Pioneer Society when I was -- I guess middle school age would have been when that was. And that was a pretty active group. We had a large group and we’d come to Massanetta in the summertime together. That’s where it seems to me where you saw people, and did things with the other people in the community. And besides that, we got that whole new group of friends who went to Middlebrook to high school -- in the church. The people who live north of New Providence. And we haven’t yet talked at all about my going to Sunday School, and our going to church, nor who our neighbors were, and things of that sort, but we might do that now. Isabelle Chewning: Okay. Mary Lipscomb: Our closest neighbor was Mrs. Dice who lived where Mc owns the house [2081 Sterrett Road] . Daddy bought Mrs. Dice’s farm when she died, or when she had to move away or something. It’s the house that he has always used for men on the farm, just a little bit east of Mulberry Grove. And, as I said, once I think it belonged to Mulberry Grove sometime back in the Willson’s day or some of those days. But anyway, Mrs. Dice was a widow and she had a farm. It was a small farm. I’ve forgotten how many acres, about 140 maybe, or something like that but Daddy bought it. Maybe it wasn’t that big. But that’s one of the things I think about that telephone, way down at the other end of the house. Mrs. Dice would call with this-- Mother would get so upset about it-- with this terribly sad voice. “Is Mr. Sterrett there?” [Laugh] She’d have a cow that was having a calf. She needed him to come, you know. And he would have to go up there and deliver lambs and deliver calves and do all this stuff all the time, [laugh] or go chase the bull, or something. That was all a part of being telephoned, would be Mrs. Dice calling to need help or something. But he spent a lot of time having to go up there and help her, get the ox out of the ditch kind of thing. [Laugh] Mrs. Dice drove a horse and buggy all of her life. She never had a car, I guess. She would drive to church and she would go out that back road to church, going down that road came out on the Goose Creek Road just east of the McNutt’s house. And once in a while we got to ride with Mrs. Dice to church and, oh, that was great fun! We enjoyed that very, very much. She had chickens, lots of chickens, and she had a daughter who was one of those that was still in high school. She graduated from high school I remember before I started school. Mother said Margaret had invited her to the graduation and she wanted to go, and I can’t remember the rest of that story. She had to find somebody to baby sit with us. Only she was going. For some reason Daddy wasn’t going. But anyway, I think she finally got there but there was some kind of a struggle. But anyway, Margaret graduated and she went to UVA and took nursing and she lived in Charlottesville and married a Charlottesville man the rest of her life. She nursed at UVA from then on, I think. People would go over there. They’d always see Margaret. Margaret Updike was her last name when she married. She [Mrs. Dice] lived in that house. And then you went up the hill to where the Ervines lived [1913 Sterrett Road] and there was Mr. Ervine and Mrs. Ervine. Adelaide -- I don’t know whether Adelaide was the oldest one -- and there was one named Ellen, and one named Hope, and a boy named something. You’ll have to ask Lou [Martin Sterrett]. They were her uncles. And one named Bill, who was maybe a year older, or two years older, probably two years older than I. And they lived up there on the top of the hill. Mrs. Ervine we never knew about Mrs. Ervine. She had great depression and mental illness, and spent a lot of time in a Western State [Hospital] and I just didn’t know any-- I don’t remember what she looked like. I think once in a while she came home, but all these girls kind of raised themselves, I think. They may have been older when she had to leave, but I never knew her at all. And then across the road in the house where -- the log house -- I don’t know who lives there, where the Herrs have recently lived [1926 Sterrett Road]. There was a family who came -- he taught at Smith College -- named Powell, and they came every summer and that was always very exciting, because they were such interesting people. She wore these wonderful long pongee dresses, and they walked every afternoon, they’d come walking down. And he was very stately looking, and wore these knickers, and you know, really looked like a professor. He taught English at Smith College. They were always there in the summertime, and they had a really good friend who boarded with Mrs. Dice every summer, Mrs. Davidge. Mrs. Dice gave her three meals a day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And every evening after dinner, Mrs. Davidge would walk up the hill, up Ervine’s hill to the Powells, and visit with them. We’d be sitting on the porch or something, and every evening when she walked back to Mrs. Dice’s -- there wasn’t that much traffic on the road, you didn’t have to worry about that -- you’d hear this call. Mrs. Davidge had gotten safely back to Mrs. Dice’s. [Laugh] It was always so funny, but it was so typical of how few people there were around, and the road was dirt. It wasn’t paved at all. Mc would go up there and work for Mr. Powell in the summertime, he and Hugh Grimm [?]. He was the nephew of Mrs. Wade who lived up in that house that faces Goose Creek [1727 Sterrett Road], anyway both of them. This guy was about Mc’s age, and they would go up, and I don’t know what they did for Mr. Powell, but he’ll tell you. They worked for him, made some money in the summertime. Isabelle Chewning: I think they dug out his basement. Mary Lipscomb: I remember their being under the house, something about it. Is that it? Isabelle Chewning: I think they dug him a cellar or something. Mary Lipscomb: Well it could be, yes, sure enough. But then down toward Brownsburg there were mostly the black people who lived along the road. Isabelle Chewning: Did you know them at all? Mary Lipscomb: Oh, there was one named Mariah Fisher who baby sat with us sometimes when we were really little. Mother and Daddy had friends. They’d go out and play bridge with them and stuff like that sometimes, the Buchanans and Mr. Bill Buchanan and Cousin Fanny. Who else? Oh, there were a whole bunch of people in that group. They’d go to Wilson Springs in the summertime for a whole week. They would hire a black man in Brownsburg to cook for them, and these couples would rent a cottage in Wilson Springs and spend the whole week and who they were I can’t-- maybe the Easts. Isabelle Chewning: Did you go? Mary Lipscomb: No, we stayed. We always had this wonderful time because we stayed with the Walkers out on Walkers Creek and they were Mary Moore Mason’s uncle and aunt. They were not married. They were a bachelor and a maiden lady. And they wanted us to call them “Cousin” and we were no more cousins than anything, but they thought that was a lovely way, and so I called them “Cousin Maggie” and “Cousin Tom” Walker and we’d go back there. I don’t know how Mc ever endured this, but I loved it. They had an older black woman who cooked dinner and she had a daughter named Charlotte, and Charlotte was probably not a whole lot older than I was. I guess I wasn’t in school. I don’t know, whether I was six or something. Charlotte would entertain us and sort of take care of us, and she was probably maybe in her lower teens, maybe 15 or so and I’d be, I don’t know how old Charlotte was. Anyway, she could crochet, and she would crochet little caps for my dolls, and play with us, and oh, more fun! And we would spend the whole week with them. And their beautiful niece, Mary Moore Mason, who was Mary Moore Montgomery would come sometimes when we were there, and she would ride horseback, and I thought she was the most elegant thing I’d ever seen in my life. And Mary Moore would have been an upper teenager probably, maybe a college student. She was 97 when she died. The first year I was here I was 79 when I came here [to Sunnyside], so she was almost 18 years older than I. She was just old enough to be this beautiful teenager that could do everything, and I thought she was absolutely the most! Well I was talking about, so what Mother and Daddy would also go play cards, I guess, or something with some of these friends too, during the wintertime, and Mariah Fisher who lived in one of those houses down along there would come and stay with us. I was pretty little I guess, pretty much at that time, because one of the stories was that one night I wanted to kiss Mariah goodnight. We called her “Aunt Mariah”. We always called the black people “aunt” -- well some of them, not all of them. I never called anybody “aunt” but her, I think. I remember her saying “You can’t kiss me goodnight. You don’t kiss me” or something like that. She had a husband but I forgot what his name was. [End of Tape 1, Side B] Mary Thompson Sterrett Lipscomb Index A Adams Family · 12 Adams, Elizabeth "Aunt Lizzie" Wilson · 12 Adams, Hugh · 12 Alexander, Bobby Tate · 57 Alexander, Jack · 78 Alexander, James "Jim" · 26, 77, 78 Alexander, Libby · 104 Alexander, Pat · 78 Alexander, Sarah · 77 Alexander, Tate · 78, 104 Americana Villa · 10 Anderson, Alden · 4 Anderson, Annie Laurie · 77 Arehart, Johnny · 74 Arehart, Ted · 74 Associate Presbyterian Church · 12 Automobile Hupmobile · 26 Model A · 8 Model T · 8, 41 B Bailey, Dr. · 52 Barnett, Scott · 78 Beard, Porter Threshing Machine · 18 Beard, Richard · 39 Benton, Brookie · 78 Biggs, Tom New Providence Minister · 100 Black school Rockbridge Baths · 59 Blackwell, Rebecca · 48 Blackwell, Virginia · 48 Bosworth, Fannie · 91 Bosworth, Tom · 51, 63, 91 Braehead · 10, 12, 13 Brown, Ethel · 34, 58 Brown, Ida Third Grade Teacher · 29 Brown, Jim · 34 Brown, John · 29 Brown, Lucille · 34 Brown, Lum · 34 Brown, Margaret · 29 Brownsburg Barbershop · 43 Black School · 60 Cannery · 60, 61 Doctors · 52 Huffman's Store · 94 Move to, in 1927 · 2 Paved roads · 42 Whipple's Store · 24, 42 Brownsburg School · 84 Academy Building · 28, 85 Basketball · 40 Bus · 27 National Youth Association · 88 New Building · 87 Buchanan Family · 27 Buchanan, Anne · See McCorkle, Anne Buchanan Buchanan, Eugenia · 94 Buchanan, Fanny · 32 Buchanan, Gene · 35, 55, 94 Buchanan, Marjorie · 35 Buchanan, William "Bill" · 32, 55 Byrd, Harry · 56 C Camp As You Like It · 67 Camp Briar Hills · 69 Cannery · 61 Chittum, Marjorie Ann Whitesell · 39 Christmas · 8, 52, 101 Cistern · 75 Civil War · 10 Battle of Fredericksburg · 12 General Crook · 17 Hunter's Raid · 16 Civilian Conservation Corps · 4, 43 Vesuvius Camp · 44 Cox, Eugene · 84 Cox, Harvey · 84 Curry, Gay · 69 D Davidge, Mrs. · 32 Davidson, Cornelia · 54, 77 Davidson, Frank · 54 Davidson, Jack · 54 Davidson, John · 4 Davis, John Pastor at Timber Ridge · 9 Davis, Suzanne Morton · 9 Democrats · 35, 54 Byrd Democrats · 56 Young Democrats Group · 55 Depression · 4, 25, 26 National Youth Association · 88 Dice, Charlie · 35 Dice, Margaret · See Updike, Margaret Dice Dice, Mrs. · 31 Dice, Robert · 35 Dice, Walter · 35 Diseases · 51 Dousing · 57 E East, George · 70 Electricity · 71 Ervine, Adelaide · 31 Ervine, Bill · 31 Ervine, Ellen · 29, 31 Ervine, Hope · 29, 31 Ervine, Mr. · 31 F Farming August slow-down · 38 Butchering · 23 Canning · 23 Dairy · 74, 104 Hay Making · 18 Horses · 15 Lambs · 21 Mulberry Grove Barns · 14 Separating cream · 50 Sharecropping · 18 Threshing wheat · 18 Fauber, Benny · 29 Fauber, Ralph · 29 Federal Land Bank · 4 Firebaugh, Don · 83 Fisher, Mariah · 32 Flick, Dr. W&L Professor · 87 Fox, Dr. Kurt · 104 Fox, Trudy · 104 Franklin, Dan · 58 Franklin, John · 93 Franklin, Virginia Bell · 48, 58 Franklin, Zack · 58 Fultz, Ida Willson · 15, 17, 99 G Gaines, Dr. W&L President · 87 Gallier, Mr. CCC Superintendent · 44 Gibson, John · 12 Gibson, Mary Adams · 12 Gilliam, Mary Stuart · 106 Godwin, Mills Governor of Virginia · 56 Goodman, Mildred · See Thompson, Mildred Goodman Green Hills Garden Club · 100 Green, Dr. · 52 Grimm, Hugh · 32 H Haliburton, Maggie · 19, 72 Haliburton, William "Dude" · 17, 44, 58 Hall, Lucy · 10 Hanna, Betty · 38 Hanna, Charles · 38 Hanna, Margaret · 38 Hanna, Rev. C. Morton New Providence Minister · 37 Heffelfinger, Bill · 36, 90 Heffelfinger, Grace · 90 Heffelfinger, Jen · 36, 78, 90, 94 Heffelfinger, Pudge · 91 Heffelfinger, Steve · 90, 92 Hickman, Troy · 69, 83 Hickman, Virginia · 70 Howison, Helen · 11 Howison, John · 12 Howison, Mary "Mamie" · 11 Howison, Mary Graham · 11, 25, 84 Howison, Nannie · See Stephens, Nannie Howison Howison, Nannie Morton · 10 Howison, Robert · 12 Howison, Samuel Graham · 10 Huffman, Elmer · 94 Huffman, Isabel Leech · 29 First Grade Teacher · 28 Huffman’s Store · 94 Hunt, Willie · 2 I Integration · 57 L Lanford, Sarah · 101 Lawhorn, Mr. CCC · 46 Leech, Thelma · 30, 40 Level Loop · 36 Lipscomb, Alex · 68, 77, 100, 104, 105 Low Moor · 78 Lipscomb, Bruce Alexander III · 11, 102 Lipscomb, Elizabeth · 104 Lipscomb, Mary Thompson Sterrett Birth · 7 Gatlinburg honeymoon · 80 High School Valedictorian · 87 Longwood College · 50, 58, 63 Marriage · 77 Move back to Brownsburg in 1984 · 100 Move to Brownsburg in 1927 · 13 Piano Lessons · 83 Riding teacher in North Carolina · 66 School · 28 Second Grade · 27 Tonsilectomy · 54 Lipscomb, Robert · 102 Lipscomb, Will · 104 Lotts, Jess New Providence Sexton · 39 Lotts, Mary Stuart · 40 Low Moor Iron Company · 78 Lucas, Austin · 94 Lucas, Carrie · 38, 95 M MacCorkle, Tork · 78 Mackey, Jane · 104 Mackey, Jeannette · 105 Martin, Frances Bell · 38 Martin, Sidney · 38 Martin, W.L. "Bud" · 58, 86 Mason, Mary Moore · 33 Massanetta · 31 McClung, Andrew · 79 McClung, Brainard · 79 McClung, Dr. Hunter · 7, 105 McClung, Mary Frances · 79 McClung, Morton · 36, 90 McClung, Sally Reid · 36, 90 McClung, Sonora · 79 McCorkle, Anne Buchanan · 28, 39, 55, 87 McCorkle, David · 39 McCutchen, Bud · 94 McLaughlin, Dr. Henry · 88 McLaughlin, Henry · 69 McLaughlin, Sam · 69 McNutt, Hugh School Bus Driver · 29 McSwain, Isabel · 78 McSwain, Mac · 78 Milk separator · 50 Mish Antique Shop · 80 Mitchell, Dr. · 54 Montgomery, Ann Thompson · 8 Montgomery, Miss Biology and History Teacher · 85 Moore, Ellabell Gibbs · 4 Moore, John · 4 Morton, Charles Read · 9 Burial in Brazil · 11 Marriage · 10 Missionary · 10 Morton, Mary Thompson · 9 Death at Braehead · 10 Morton, Suzanne · See Davis, Suzanne Morton Movies · 41 Mulberry Grove · 2 Barns · 13 Christmas Tour · 101 Dairy · 16 Dormer windows · 49 Furniture · 80 Garden · 63 Garden Week · 101 Icehouse · 22 Indoor Plumbing · 73 National Register Nomination · 100 Office · 15 Orchard · 22 Purchase by Madison McClung Sterrett, Sr. · 4 Renovation in 1983 · 98 Slave Quarters · 100 Smokehouse · 15 N National Youth Association · 88 New Providence Presbyterian Church Bible School · 37 Choir · 92 Christmas Pagents · 40, 95 Chrysanthemum Show · 96 Junior Choir · 95 McNutt Chapel · 37 Pioneer Group · 38 Pioneer Society · 31 Pisgah Chapel Sunday School · 37 Pump Organ · 93 Weddings · 94 P Patterson, Ag · 79 Patterson, Ellen · 79 Patterson, John · 35, 55 Patterson, Rosenell · 35, 85 Patterson, Rufus · 35 Patteson, Pauline · 84 Penick, Mary Monroe · 93 Peters, Carrie Teacher at Black School · 60 Pleasants, Clarence · 58 Pleasants, Edna Haliburton · 19, 59 Pleasants, Leo · 61 Pleasants, Willie Howard · 58 Polio scares · 52 Powell, Mr. Professor at Smith College · 32 R Rees, Walter · 72 Robertson, Willis · 44 Rockbridge Alum Springs · 26 Rockbridge Baths Black School · 59 S Scott, Mary Powell · 83 Shepherd, Anna · 78 Shoultz, Bill · 34 Shoultz, Bob · 34 Shoultz, Frank · 34 Simpson, Adelaide · 106 Skeen, Joseph · 5 Skyline Drive · 27 Slusser, George · 39, 69, 94 Smiley, Della · 72 Smiley, Tuck · 72 Smith, Margaret Howison · 11, 25, 54 Snider, Stella · 92 Stephens, Bruce · 25 Stephens, Graham · 25 Stephens, Nannie Howison · 10, 25 Dunsmore Business School · 27 Fredericksburg Clerk of Court's Office · 27 Stephens, Wallace "Steve" · 25 Chief Park Ranger Skyline Drive · 27 Park Service · 27 Sterrett, Aggie · 81 Sterrett, Anna · 78 Sterrett, Anna Laura Smith · 3 Matron at Union Seminary · 3 Sterrett, Bill · 80 Sterrett, Edna Watkins Morton · 3 Birth in Brazil · 10 Fredericksburg Normal School · 12 Marriage · 9, 13 Teacher at Rockbridge Baths · 3 Teacher in King George, VA · 12 Typhoid Fever · 12 Sterrett, John D. · 75 Sterrett, Madison McClung · 2 Sterrett, Madison McClung, Jr. · 2, 70, 78, 85 Birth · 7 Teeth · 69 Sterrett, Madison McClung, Sr. · 2 Civilian Conservation Corps · 43 Construction work in Newport News · 50 John Marshall High School · 3 Marriage · 8, 13 School Board · 56 Sterrett, Tate House of Delegates · 55 Strickler, John · 18 Strickler, Ollie · 18 Supinger's Store · 43 Swisher, Bessie · 92 Swisher, Buford · 92 Swisher, Hen Sheep Shearing · 21 T Telephone service · 6 Thompson, Ann · See Montgomery, Ann Thompson Thompson, Charles Edwin · 8 Thompson, Davenport · 8 Thompson, Edna · 7, 9, 79 Thompson, Edwin · 7, 79 Thompson, Faye · 48, 84 Thompson, Horatio · 7 Thompson, Isabel Sterrett · 2, 3 Thompson, Lewis · 9 Thompson, Mary · See Morton, Mary Thompson Thompson, Mildred Goodman · 8, 105 Thompson, Samuel Givens · 9 Thompson, Stuart · 1, 2, 80 Death · 14 Thompson, William · 9 Timber Ridge Dairy · 25 Trimmer, Osie · 84 School Principal · 30 U Updike, Margaret Dice · 29, 31 Nurse at UVA · 31 W Wade Jen · See Heffelfinger, Jen Wade, Bud · 43, 89 Wade, Eleanor · 48, 90 Wade, Elsie · 38, 93, 95 Wade, Frances · 38, 72, 80 Wade, Hamilton · 89, 94 Wade, Harold · 89 Wade, Hugh · 35, 48 Banker · 88 Wade, Jim · 38, 94 Wade, John · 90 Wade, Kate · 48, 90 Wade, Kite · 89 Wade, Margaret · 48, 67, 90 Wade, Mary · 48, 90 Wade, Walter · 89 Wade, Winston · 38 Walker, Maggie · 33 Walker, Tom · 33 Whipple, D.W. · 48, 84 Whipple, David · 43 Whipple, Fred · 56, 69, 100, 104 Whipple, Mollie Sue · 30, 56, 85, 93 Whipple’s Store · 24, 42 Whipples Republicans · 35 White, Dr. Locke New Providence Minister · 79 Whitesell, John Layton · 39 Whitesell, John Miley · 57 Whitesell, Marjorie Ann · See Chittum, Marjorie Ann Whitesell Whiteside, Josephine · 47 Willson, Robert Tate · 15 Willson, Sallie · 4, 15, 99 Willson, Samuel · 4, 16, 99 Wilson Springs · 26 Wilson, Ellen · 95 Wilson, Goodrich · 95 Withrow, Earl · 73 Withrow, Jim · 73 Woltz, Frances · 78 World War I · 63 World War II · 61 Blackouts · 65 Casualties · 69 Civilian watch program · 66 Rationing · 66 Special Services · 64 USO · 64 V-12 Program · 64 Victory Gardens · 62