November 2007 Interview with Mary Thompson Sterrett Lipscomb By Isabelle Chewning: [Items enclosed in brackets [ ] are editorial notes inserted for clarification] [Tape 2, Side A] Isabelle Chewning: Okay, I think we're on the tape, now. Mary Lipscomb: So there's a different road that goes up to the houses where Camp Briar Hills was. Now, and it goes right up by the house that the Fishers lived in. And then just to the east of that was a house where the Shoultz's lived, and there was a mother in that family, and some sons, and I don't think-- I think one of the sons lived there in my lifetime, but-- Isabelle Chewning: Was his name Frank? Mary Lipscomb: No. This was Bill Shoultz, I guess who lived there. Frank, I think Bob was Frank's, maybe Frank's father. I'm not sure. Bill. Bill was the one who lived there, when-- what was her name? Her first name? I don't remember her first name. But all of the black houses, I guess this came with the period right after slavery, when the black people didn't particularly want to be seen. And they all, even the ones in the village, and the ones, those houses around, and that one particularly, had all kinds of shrubs around it. You didn't see the houses very much. They were, they'd go in there and be sort of behind all this shrubbery and stuff. Well this house had the most gorgeous old boxwoods that Bill Heffelfinger bought, they gave them to him or something. And they're the ones that line the Heffelfinger house [Level Loop at 567 Hays Creek Road] now, all the time. But you know, what did we know about gorgeous boxwoods? [Laughs] You'd go behind all those things, and-- what was her name? And she would be back there, and we'd visit with her, and she was very-- they were elegant black people, just really had wonderful stories and things of that kind. But the stories that I don't remember. But you would always find her back there behind all this beautiful shrubbery. But we would visit her, Mother and I would go down there to see her sometimes. But then next-- I don't know, that house that -- I don't know who lives in it now -- but the next, well there was another, there was another family, with-- Jim, who married Lucille, who worked for us. Isabelle Chewning: Brown. Mary Lipscomb: Brown. There was another house where the Browns lived, and they were, oh they were so poor, it was so sad. And her husband was Lum Brown. He was a big old strapping man. And I don't think I remember this much, but I've been told this, that he used to walk across that mountain, across the mountain to Craigsville, and worked in something at Craigsville. He'd walk over there. Well, it really isn't in Craigsville, just walked right over the mountain, I think there was a, maybe a lumber mill, or something like that. But he could walk over there. I don't know whether he did that every day or not. But his wife was never very well. She always limped, and she had to come across the road, and cross the fence, I think she had a stile, and went down to the creek, I guess there was a spring at the creek, in front of that house, to get water. And you'd see, Ethel was her name, and she would walk back up over that hill carrying that bucket of water. I was always so sorry for her. And she had these – Jim -- these drunken boys [laughs]. He and the other one had a nickname. Oh, I've forgotten what it was. Anyway, but they all, all those black people lived along in there. And then you'd go all the way down to the, where Mrs. McManama lives now [2580 Sterrett Road] there was a family named Berry who lived there. Isabelle Chewning: B-E-R-R-Y? Mary Lipscomb: B-E-R-R-Y. And I think your dad has -- the Berrys must have died, and there was a sale there or something. And that cupboard that's in your dad's kitchen came from that sale. And I somehow vaguely remember -- I don't think I went, I don't know, but I remember them talking about the sale, and that cupboard came from there. And that was our main cupboard for a long, long time. It stayed in the living room, I guess, and the living room was kind of a combination living room/dining room, for many, many years. Isabelle Chewning: Was there a fire, a fireplace? Mary Lipscomb: No, we had a stove, never had fire in the fireplace. That stove had to heat -- any kind of heat there was in the what is now the library, in the bedroom -- just opened the door at night and heated a little bit, but it was really cold as ice in there, as was the kitchen. [Laughs] That poor kitchen. But those were the people who lived, you know, up and down the road right next door to us. Isabelle Chewning: And were those three houses there [2597, 2613, and 2623 Sterrett Road]? Mary Lipscomb: Yes, those three houses were there, and in the big house, in the big house where the Andersons lived [Sleepy Hollow, 2645 Sterrett Road] were the Pattersons, Mr. Rufus, and Mrs. -- we call them “Cousin”. Cousin Et. She had been a Kinnear, and she was vaguely some kind of kin people -- lived there, and then their son built that first one where the [Phil] Lunsfords live now [2623 Sterrett Road]. Mr. John Patterson and his wife who taught school, Mrs. Rosenell. Those were a couple of Mother's and Daddy's good friends. Their friends we called Miss So-and-so and Mr. So-and-So. I called Anne's [Buchanan McCorkle’s] mother “Miss Marjorie” -- I believe I did. “Mr. Gene”. I did, I did. Mr. Bill was her uncle, and Fanny, we always called “Cousin Fanny”. And “Mr. John” and “Miss Rosenell”, and they were, they were all Democrats together. They were the-- it was a really strong democratic community at that time. Except the Whipples, The Whipples were always Republicans. The people who had money, you know who dealt with money, like store people, and those people were Republicans, I guess. And then all the Wades -- I don't know about the mill Wades, but the Pattersons were avid Democrats. And the parents, Mrs.-- I didn't know Miss Jen's and Mary Wade’s and Margaret, I didn't know their father, he was dead before I got there. But Mrs. Wade and all those girls were avid Democrats. And then the next of those three houses we were talking about, the Pattersons, and then Mr. Hugh Wade and his wife lived in the second one. And Mr. Dice, Mr. Charlie Dice was his name, lived in the third one, and his wife. Isabelle Chewning: And was he related to the Mrs. Dice who -- Mary Lipscomb: He was brother of Mrs. Dice's husband. I didn't know Mr.-- Her husband's name was Robert, and I didn't know him at all. But yeah, but they didn't seem to ever have much relation. And there was another brother who lived in the village where the Drivers live [22 Hays Creek Road]. Mr. Walter Dice was his name, and his wife. She taught me in Sunday School, I recited my catechism to her. Around on the back porch at one of those-- what did I just say? The Drivers have taken down those porches, haven't they? We'd have porches with cedar, they had up and down-- the up and down pieces were cedar, I remember. I remember I looked at it a lot when I was reciting my catechism [laughter] I guess, or something like that. But anyway, those three brothers, the Dice brothers, but they had, I think it, they'd lived in Dutch Hollow, they had a farm back in Dutch Hollow. I guess they sold that, and sort of moved into the village. They were pretty much-- I don't remember any of them ever working, those Dice men, but anyway. They'd go out to church all the time, and-- I don't remember Mr. Charlie Dice going to church, I don't know. But anyway, they lived in those three houses along there. And I suppose that – I don’t know who -- whether the McManamas bought that house from the -- from this family named Berry who first lived there, when-- maybe they did, because I don't remember anybody else living there, at all. But those are the folks who lived nearest to us on that road. But we would drive the three miles to church around like we go now [Sterrett Road to Brownsburg Turnpike]. Isabelle Chewning: Oh, rather than take the short cut [the back road to Goose Creek]? Mary Lipscomb: We didn't do-- seem to drive the car much over that back road. But Mrs. Dice always drove her buggy. Isabelle Chewning: Was it a state maintained road, or was it a-- just a private -- Mary Lipscomb: I think it was. I think they went through there now and then and did something to it. Very little, very little. But you know, after I was married, I don't think it was in your childhood was it? Isabelle Chewning: Uh-uh. Mary Lipscomb: And so, it just -- and then your dad took down the fences and made it all into one field. Or your grandfather or somebody did. But back to the church business, we had, we always went on Sunday, we went to Sunday School. And I don't know whether I remember, or whether -- this class, this Beginner's Sunday School class, I taught in that class, even when I was in late high school, and whenever I'd come home from college or teaching in Staunton or any of those places, I always taught in there. So I can't remember what I remember -- I can't divide what I remember as a four year old or five year old, in the Beginner’s Sunday School class, or whether it's the years that I taught in there. But there was a teacher named Miss Sally Reid McClung, and she and her brother, Mr. Morton McClung, owned the property and farm that, where Jen and Bill Heffelfinger lived. Isabelle Chewning: Level Loop [567 Hays Creek Road]. Mary Lipscomb: Level Loop, that's it. And she was the Beginner's Sunday School class, and this is where you learned to pray. And you learned to pray for the missionaries. She always prayed for the missionaries. [laughs] And I don't remember a thing about who was in there, really, who was in the Sunday School class, but-- Then later we had, oh we had, mostly what I remember about though was Bible School. And we, we'd have two weeks of Bible School in the summer. And we had a cattle truck come around to pick us up, and it would drive [laughs] --I guess it would start about our house maybe, or maybe it started -- I don't think there was anybody in Brownsburg, other children much. And it probably started at our house, and go around through Goose Creek and all around through there, and pick up people for, a good many people. And by the time we got there, we had a pretty good [laughs] -- back of this truck load of people. And I remember -- Mr. Hanna was the first minister I remember there. And he and his wife lived in the big manse where-- Isabelle Chewning: Trenton Beard lives. [3882 Brownsburg Turnpike]. Mary Lipscomb: Trenton Beard lives now. And he [Mr. Hanna] was such a gregarious person. I remember he'd come out from the bottom of the church, from the basement, and greet us as we came on the truck. He was so glad to see us, and we'd have, I think I may have made this up, but I somehow had the notion that we had, you know, between 400 and 500 people who came to that Bible School. [laughs] Have you ever heard that, that there were that many? I can't believe that was true, but-- Isabelle Chewning: There were, I bet there were 200 when I went. Mary Lipscomb: Oh, really? Uh-huh. Well, it could have been, you know, 300 or 400, but it seemed like an awful lot of kids to me. And [laughs] of course there would be these same type buses that would be coming from Augusta County. From down about -- I don't think our church drew much as far as Middlebrook, but between Newport and Middlebrook, there would be people-- all the Hogsheads came from where Dr. Marsh lives [5814 Middlebrook Road], do you know where he lives? And everybody in Newport came to New Providence and-- and some of the, you know, outlying, people in Pisgah, the bus would run all around through the – all the Gordons came, and the Smileys and, you know, all those folks we'd get to know at Bible School [laughs] all the time. And so we'd -- I don't know whether there was still Sunday School. Yeah, there was still Sunday school at Pisgah, though. And there was a little chapel, you go up behind the Beard's, on the road that goes up by Castle Carberry [34 Beard Lane] and behind the Beard's barns, was a road that goes through there, comes out over on Spotswood Road, or somewhere in that neighborhood. And there was a chapel called McNutt up in there. And both of those [McNutt Chapel and Pisgah Chapel] were outposts of New Providence when I was a child. And I remember that there would be -- Isabelle Chewning: So does that mean the minister would preach three sermons? He'd preach three times? Mary Lipscomb: I don't know whether he went to those places every Sunday, but maybe, I'm not sure. I think he went to Pisgah a lot, because there were a whole lot of people out there. But I think-- but I think those kids all came to New Providence for Bible School. But I couldn't declare that was true. But that, that chapel was more active and the McNutt one closed, I think, earlier than the Pisgah one did. But we would have a really good time at all that Bible School business. And I think, you know, there you learned to play games, and I guess you did in school, too. But we did a lot of things in that-- seems to me that Bible School. Then-- Isabelle Chewning: Would it be half a day? You'd go in the morning and then-- Mary Lipscomb: Yeah, come home. Isabelle Chewning: -- go home for lunch. Mary Lipscomb: --we'd come home for lunch, it'd be half a day. It was always in August, because that was the time when farming sort of came to a little halt. That's when we ever-- that's when Mother and Daddy would go to Wilson Springs. I guess you'd finish with the hay, you didn't raise alfalfa at that time, that you had to cut three or four times a year. You just did one or two crops of hay or something like that. Grasses. And the wheat would be in the barn, or already threshed or something, but sometime in the middle of August, farming always came to a slight halt, things calmed down a little bit. I guess that was before the corn crop, you know, if you were growing corn. And I don't think anybody, as I said, it wasn't so intense as it is now, at all. And so the Bible School was always in August, when farming kind of came to-- None of this business of right after school. [laughs] And it was -- you hadn't seen all these people all summer, so you would, you know, it was kind of fun to go back to see all these people. [Laughs] But as I got older, and we had a very, as I said, a pretty active middle school group we called the Pioneer Group. And Elsie Wade and Miss Carrie Lucas, who lived in Newport -- Elsie was the oldest of Winston’s and Jimmy's [Wade] sisters, and she was a whole lot older than Jimmy, for instance. But they were the advisers for the Pioneer crowd, and we would -- we had a meeting every Sunday afternoon, a little devotional type meeting, and we had to take part, and we had to do all this stuff. And somebody had to take you, you know, your parents had to take you to the Pioneer meeting every Sunday afternoon. And Mr. Hanna, I suppose was still there at that time, Mr. and Mrs. Hanna. They had children our age. Charles was, I think Charles was Jim Wade's age. Jim was between Mc and me. Sidney Martin was that age. And Charles Hanna was that age. And they had a son named – I’ve forgotten what the next boy's name was. I'll think of it in a minute. He was a little bit younger than Mc, it seems to me. And then there was a girl named Betty, who was younger still. And there was another child named Margaret, and I don't believe Margaret was born until after they left us. But anyway, they had three children were there, the two boys were kind of the same age as we were generally. And they were always in these things. But there were two Martins, Sid and his sister, Frances Bell. There were a whole bunch of Wades, Frances-- Frances and Jimmy. And Winston was older, a little bit older. And then, oh there were, I don't know, Anne Buchanan and David McCorkle and-- and all these, a whole bunch of kids. Oh, the Slussers, George Slusser. Isabelle Chewning: The Beards. Mary Lipscomb: The Beards, yeah. And Richard, yes, all of those. There were a whole lot of people who just lived, you know, close around, and then, I don't know whether – there were Lucases who came from Newport, and I don’t know whether the Whitesells came, John Layton and Marjorie Ann came to the Pioneer Group? I don't remember their ever going to Massanetta with us. But-- but anyway, there were a whole bunch of us. And the church was just big, and there were a whole, you know -- we had 500 to 600 members in the church, whole-- whole lot of them didn't come. But the church was full every Sunday, with all the, you know, everybody. And that's when we had stoves in the church in the wintertime, with big pipes that went up [laughs] Isabelle Chewning: Where were they? Mary Lipscomb: There was one -- I think there were four of them -- Isabelle Chewning: In the back, where there used to be a gap in the pews? Mary Lipscomb: No. They were on the sides. One of them was where Mollie Sue's piano sits now. Pretty much in that area. There had to be chimneys, are there still chimneys out there? Isabelle Chewning: I don't know. Mary Lipscomb: Maybe they took the chimneys down. One of them was across the church in the same, just across there. And then there'd be one, I think there was another one in the back by those pews, right in the, between those, on the side where the pews-- Isabelle Chewning: Right. Mary Lipscomb: And the same thing is true on the other side. I think they were in those places. And Jess Lotts was the sexton and he lived in a house that they -- I guess they tore it down or something. We used to always go, when we went into the church, we went into that parking lot in front of the church, and we'd go in that upper driveway. Is that driveway still there? Isabelle Chewning: That goes through the cemetery now? Mary Lipscomb: No, I don't mean that. Before from the road, from the highway, from the [Route] 252, to come into the-- just-- Isabelle Chewning: It goes past the little mini-manse [3821 Brownsburg Turnpike]? Mary Lipscomb: Yeah, and it goes all the way out to the road, still? Does it? Isabelle Chewning: Mm-hm. Mary Lipscomb: Well just as you, just as you came into that road, there was a house up on the bank, where Jess Lotts lived. And he and his first wife lived there, then he and Mary Stuart lived there. And he always, he had to make all those fires in the morning. And in addition to that, fires in all the Sunday School rooms. [Laughs] In the wintertime. And all the Sunday School rooms had stoves. And it was a big job, I'm sure, getting wood in all those, you know, for all those stoves out there. Isabelle Chewning: It’s a wonder the place didn't burn down. Mary Lipscomb: It really is. It's a wonder all churches don't burn down, and some did, of course, in those times. But as I remember, we always went in the winter time. I don't remember not going. But it was, we'd go and it would, we'd have Christmas pageants and things where there'd be all this great snow across the front parking lot. I remember one time, I think we took some of those teachers from that house that I was mentioning. Must've been the Christmas pageant or something. And I remember one of them had on, Miss Thelma Leech had on heels, great heels, and I remember her clomping it down and stuff [laughs] in the snow to get from the parking lot into the church. [laughs] And you know, you remember all kinds of funny things! [laugh] But we would go, you know, and we had elegant Christmas pageants, with everybody in the world dressed up in their bathrobes. [laughs] Isabelle Chewning: [laughs] For shepherds! Mary Lipscomb: Oh, I remember years I had to be angels and hold my arms up forever. [laughs] And all those things. But you see how much more I remember about the church than I really did about school. And I remember being in plays and stuff in my high school years, but I don't remember a whole lot of things that we did in-- and certainly no social things -- in the school, in my elementary years, and things like that. But of course, by the time I got to high school, we had basketball teams and we did, you know, all that kind of stuff. We had girls' basketball, boys' basketball. We drove around over the county to other schools to play basketball, such as that. Isabelle Chewning: Did you play basketball? Mary Lipscomb: I was on the team, but I was never very good! [laughs] Isabelle Chewning: [laughs] Did you play basketball left handed or right handed? Mary Lipscomb: Left handed. [laughs] I do almost all those other things left handed. But in the schools with that basketball business, you know, girls' basketball in my day was divided into three courts. There was-- two people sat in, stood in one corner, a forward and the guard, and two people were in the center. And then two people were at the other end. And you didn't go from of this, one section to the other, you stayed in your own section. And I've forgotten, I think I played in the center. The forwards had to shoot, and the guards had to guard the person who was going to shoot on the other team. But the centers just passed it from the one end to the other all the time. [laughs] And so forth. But I did ride the bus to all these other schools, and you know, we were always fascinated by going to Effinger and Natural Bridge and all those-- Isabelle Chewning: Gosh, that's far away. Mary Lipscomb: That was far away, yeah. [laughs] And so forth. But I don't ever remember, you know, ever remember going to VMI or to Washington and Lee to see basketball games and things of that sort, because we didn't do that very much. But we did, in my early childhood, we rode the, maybe the Model T, even. I remember my mother wanted very much to see the movie "Disraeli." And I don't know why she was so particularly interested in that. But we-- we would pile in that Model T, and nearly freeze to death, I guess. Going at night, once, oh, I don't remember going to see but about one or two movies. I don't remember what the others were. But we'd come home, and the house would be cold, and then Mother would put irons on the stove, flatirons, that she used to iron with, you know. Wrap those up and put them in our beds. [laughs] Get the bed kind of warm. And it seems to me, we didn't take things like that. I remember, you know, before us, before my time in buggies and places, they always had heated things in the floor of the buggy, like hot irons and things of that kind. Hot bricks and stuff that you put your feet on. Trying to keep from freezing to death. Isabelle Chewning: Did she did drive the Model T? Mary Lipscomb: Yes, she did. Isabelle Chewning: Oh, she did? Mary Lipscomb: Oh, she did, yes. [laughs] That's how, you know, we'd go down to, we'd go around with her to visit people. I think she and Mc and I would go hither and yon to visit people. Isabelle Chewning: Did it break down very much? Or it was pretty dependable? Mary Lipscomb: No, I don’t know. They had flat tires a lot. But I really don't remember. No, the car itself didn't break down, I don't think, so much. But we did have flat tires. And I don't remember Daddy’s getting out and fixing tires very much. But I remember a story that he said Uncle Edwin, this is the Thompson, mother’s uncle who lived at Church Hill, spoke of going to Staunton one time in his Model T, and had 32 flat tires. [laughs] Isabelle Chewning: [laughs] Mary Lipscomb: On the way. But I'm sure we did, because that was the name of the game. But you, I just don't remember his being out fixing tires much at all. We always, we never went to Lexington by Route 11. We never went to Fairfield, and to Lexington that way. We always went to Brownsburg, because that really was paved, early on. And I think it was paved all the way, maybe, but that's the way we always went to Lexington. Of course, that's the way that Daddy knew, more, going by Uncle Stuart's. And that's the way we'd always go to Lexington. But I remember one time, one of those times we were going, maybe to a movie or something, but I think it was still, it was daylight, or we might've been going to see somebody. But it was snowing, and we got about, where Jim Alexander lived, Jim and Sarah, Cherry Grove [5239 Lee Highway]. And we had to stop, I suppose, for Daddy to clean the windshield more, or something, I believe, because it was snowing a lot. And there was this car in front of us from California, and Daddy [laughs] asked this man, I remember him saying, you know, “Why on earth are you traveling in Virginia at this time from California?” And I don't know what the conversation was, but I was just—I remember that was absolutely the strangest thing I'd ever heard of. And I suspect he was driving a better car than we were, a bigger, better car. But anyway, there he was in this coming down snow. But I doubt if we were -- maybe we were going to Lexington. We went to Lexington, I don't remember much, any kind of shopping 'til much later in Lexington. But I don't know, I'm sure he would go to sell those hams and things like that, to sell meat. And what did we-- we bought material in Brownsburg, at Whipple’s Store, and Mother sewed dresses for me, I think, mostly from them. Isabelle Chewning: And which one was Whipples? Mary Lipscomb: Where Dick Barnes’ house is. Isabelle Chewning: Okay. Mary Lipscomb: That store that was there. The remnants of it were in your lifetime, I think, weren't they? Yeah. That was Mr. Dave Whipple's store, that was Fred’s father. And they had a lot of things in that store; you could buy material and just most everything, or just kind of a general store. And I think about, who had the one where Dick Barnes is-- Isabelle Chewning: Supingers? Mary Lipscomb: Supinger did later, but seems to me before him there was somebody. I guess not. I suppose maybe he had that most of my lifetime. Mr. Supinger did. And Bud Wade's Barbershop was in the back of that. And that's where I got my hair cut, Bud Wade would cut my hair. Isabelle Chewning: Oh. [laughs] Mary Lipscomb: Straight around [laughs]. And I think most everybody, all the other girls' fathers cut their hair, or something, I don't know for sure. But I remember, he'd always put this white, white cloth around you, and nearly choked me every time. [laughs] Isabelle Chewning: So you had short hair. Mary Lipscomb: Yeah. I had short hair all-- just, it was straight around, just sort of straight around, I got-- Isabelle Chewning: Did a lot of girls have long hair? Mary Lipscomb: I don't remember. I really don't. Why don't I remember that? [laughs] Probably not. Maybe we all had kind of shortish hair. I believe we did. But you didn’t -- I'll have to ask Anne [Buchanan McCorkle]. [laughs] Isabelle Chewning: Can you talk a little bit about when Granddaddy [Madison McClung Sterrett Sr.] worked at CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps]? Mary Lipscomb: Yeah. Isabelle Chewning: What it was like being on the farm without him? Mary Lipscomb: That's right, yeah. Along with about, I guess, I was maybe in my -- maybe 32 or 33, somewhere along in there. I remember we rode with him over to Vesuvius, where there was one of the first of the CCC camps. And it was, you'd pass the, you remember where the Whitesides lived, the big old brick house just beyond the main village of Vesuvius [on South River Road]. You passed that, and you went just down the road a little bit, and there were all these little barracks type buildings, along the road. And their main job at that time being there, was to work on the road to Irish Creek, up Irish Creek, and to do something about the St. Mary's Creek, I believe it was. And to work maybe on that road from Vesuvius down, just down to wherever, back there. I've forgotten. I often wonder about what was their main reason for being there, and I'm not really sure. Anyway, this was before the Skyline Drive and all that. This was the very first. And there lots of the CCC camps around that had nothing to do with the Skyline Drive. And they continued to be in operation during the time that Skyline Drive was being built and all that business. But anyway. Isabelle Chewning: Why did he take the job there? Mary Lipscomb: Because he needed the money. And you know, it was just less and less of the money to pay the, what, you know, what we owed for the farm itself, and to make a living, in general. And he, I remember, we – the first man we saw was this young man, and Daddy asked him if he was the Superintendent, he said, "No, I'm not, I'm the clerk," or something like that. And then he went into this other building and talked to Mr. Gallier, who was the Superintendent. And Mr. Gallier had been in the Army, I think. He wore an Army uniform with one of those round World War I hats all the time. But he was the superintendent. And I know there was great writing to Willis Robertson, who was our Senator. And Daddy knew him, grew up with him, I think. He lived in Lexington -- they used to go swimming together. He'd come out to do this, that, and the other. He was our Senator. And Daddy had to write to him about this job, possible job at the CCC camp. And so anyway, he got the job, at Vesuvius. And he, for about -- I don't know how long, maybe two years, I guess he drove over there every day. And he would -- I've forgotten which direction he went. He came out where, you know, at the Kooglers, where Linda Koogler lives now [314 Oakland Circle]. He came out there somewhere. And that was -- I guess he went up to the Ridge Road, and went across somehow, and that was the closest way. I don't know what, he'd get up early and go over there every morning. And of course I was self-centered with my school at that point. And I don't know whether I was maybe in the fourth or fifth grade when he started that. And-- but he was home, and we had the-- when I talked about the Stricklers, I don't believe they came, because that family named Buchanan was there, and maybe just he and Dude [Haliburton] did the farming together for a long time. And then the Stricklers didn't come 'til -- they were there the whole time he was in the CCC work, I'm pretty sure. But I think they were there when he went to Vesuvius first. But anyway -- or maybe they came just when he went. But he realized he was going to have to have some more help on the farm if he was going to keep it going at all. But anyway, they probably came about that time, and this family named Buchanan with the gal that I went to school with, and there are a whole bunch of them still around. They would, so-- Isabelle Chewning: Did they pay rent for the house? The Buchanans? Mary Lipscomb: I guess they did. He [Mr. Buchanan] worked on the road, on the highway, and I suppose they paid rent. There are a whole bunch of their descendents there. Mrs.—well, we used to all -- all these kids and I-- Mc and I used to go swimming in the creek, every afternoon. [laughs] Build dams. It was fun when they lived there, I’d about forgotten about that [laugh]. Anyway. But he worked there in Vesuvius for, as I say, maybe – I don’t know if it was as much as two years. And then the Skyline Drive was to be built, or was being built. And this camp was moved to near Luray. It was about, I've forgotten how far it was from Luray. But he had to go if he was going to stay with it. So, he managed the boys that went out -- he was a foreman -- that went out to work on whatever the projects were they were doing. He was not a part of the military. It was sort of a military place. The boys all were regimented in a way that they had to get up and make their beds, and get up and come to reveille, and go to bed by “Taps” and a few things like that. And this Superintendent was a part of the Army. And it actually was not Army, but it was run like an Army installation. That type thing, more. And that's, now have you ever been to Big Meadows? Isabelle Chewning: Mm-hm. Mary Lipscomb: Have you been recently? Isabelle Chewning: No. Mary Lipscomb: Have you ever seen that movie? Isabelle Chewning: No. Mary Lipscomb: We will have to go, you will have to go. Because it’s the best explanation about what the CCC boys did. And what he did with them, they planted trees, hundreds and hundreds and thousands of trees. The mountains in this area had no trees along the road. They'd been denuded by people who lived there, you know, and used them for wood and all these kinds of things. They planted shrubbery. You can't believe, you know, now that such a woodsy area, with all these big old trees, that a lot of these, these boys, but they planted big old trees. And a lot of this I learned from this movie, that I, you know, I really didn't know, from his work. But anyway, he moved down there, and he would come home every weekend-- Isabelle Chewning: And how old were you? Mary Lipscomb: I know I was in the sixth grade some of that time. But it was all during the time I was in high school, too. But I was in the sixth grade, seventh grade, and then we had first of year high school, along in there. So-- maybe from about the -- I would judge that I was probably in the fourth grade or third grade when he went to Vesuvius. And then I remember the sixth grade business, seventh grade, when he, after he'd gone to Luray. He rode -- we would take him often down to Vesuvius -- and he’d get on the Norfolk and Western [Railroad], and then they had to make a special stop. The train master at Vesuvius would get out with his lantern and wave the train down if he wanted. [Laughs] And it was an uphill grade coming into Vesuvius, so they weren't going very fast [laughs] to start with. But they never did really like to stop there too much because it was this uphill grade. But we would take him down there, Mother would drive sometimes, and then this one named, this younger one of the Stricklers, Ollie Strickler, would drive our car sometimes, and he would go with us and drive down there. And we'd put him [Daddy] on the train. And then he would come home on, that would be Sunday night. He'd come home on Friday night, and he rode with this guy in, who lived down near Vesuvius, who worked at the CCC camp, too. And he, I don't know what he did, but he wasn't regimented like the boys. He was older and he had a car. I think he had a little Model A Ford or something. But we'd take him to Steele's Tavern, and Mr. Lawhorn [ph?] would come up from Vesuvius and he’d get in the car with Mr. Lawhorn and they'd go that way. Somebody had to meet him all the time, when they went on the Norfolk and Western. I don't know how he worked that out. But maybe other boys or other people would be places and they'd meet this train in Luray. And I think they were about ten miles from Luray, up the mountain. But the road wasn't very good. They had nothing -- I don't think the CCCs did anything with the big road building. They did a lot of moving of rocks and building all these walls along the-- and planting and planting and-- more things of that kind. But I've seen pictures of them, using wheelbarrows, wheeling dirt hither and yon. We don't have any pictures of, you know -- On the back porch at Mulberry Grove, while I was married, sometime I was over there. And I found a picture of some of these guys all dressed in their uniforms, the people who ran the camp, and the other Foreman and the Army people and those folks, and Mother had torn it in half. And I don't know why I didn't rescue it. You know, I don't know. Somehow I had this notion that this was important, but I, you know, I didn't take it and put it together or anything. But I figure -- I don't know whether I thought there would be other pictures or what, but we just, we don't have any pictures, I don't know of anything, unless your dad knows of anything in the way of pictures of the time that he was there. But when he’d come home on Friday afternoon, I don't remember whether he’d get there at night or drive -- it ought to be night, I would've thought. And I don't remember going over there to meet him on Friday, but I guess we did. Oh, no. Lots of time he hitchhiked, he would hitchhike home on Friday. And you did that in those days, that was very-- Isabelle Chewning: From Vesuvius? Mary Lipscomb: No, this was from Luray. Isabelle Chewning: So he hitchhiked all the way from Luray? Mary Lipscomb: All the way from Luray, he'd get rides down [Route] 11. I guess we'd have to meet him in Fairfield or something like that, he'd get rides to Fairfield very often. And I suppose Mr. Lawhorn came, and sometimes he'd ride with him. But I can't-- But he always came home, I don't remember his not coming home on the weekend at all. And whether he'd hitchhiked home, I know we had to take him back to the train. That would probably be -- maybe Mr. Lawhorn wouldn't be -- maybe he had to work every other weekend or-- I just don't know why. But sometimes it would be one, and sometimes the other. And I remember one time he came home, and it was snowing, and we couldn’t get to Fairfield. And I think Mc got on a horse and when he got to Fairfield, they met about where Roosevelt Staton lives [984 Sterrett Road]. I remember something, and Daddy had walked that far. And Mc had gotten two horses, one for him and one-- But we must've known he was coming or something, and rode the horse up. That's a very vague memory, but I think that had to do with his coming home from there. But Mother was pretty much involved with the farming at that point. And I think it sort of fell to her to tell the Stricklers and Dude what to do, you know, some of the times. But he would pretty much plan, I think, the week's work for them. Isabelle Chewning: And so would he work Saturday and Sunday when he was home, or did he take Sunday off? Mary Lipscomb: Oh, he took Sunday off. We never did anything on Sunday, ever. Nobody ever worked on Sunday like we do now. And [laughs] he would always try to take a nap and, on Sunday afternoon, and Mary would dress up in these clothes, in somebody's high heels and come clomping down the steps. [laughs] He'd get so mad at me, waking him up from his nap, clomping down the steps in high heels. But I must've been fifth grade or so, doing all of that. [laughs] Anyway. But, yeah, he was always there, we always went to church on Sunday, when he was there. And-- but he would work on Saturday. And as I said, you know, during the wintertime, well I don't know what we did about those sheep, because lambs always came in the wintertime. But during that time, we had people staying with us. Mother didn't like to stay by herself, just with us. And the first time that we had, I suppose, was this gal from Vesuvius named Josephine Whiteside. And she was the, as I said, mother was not a great cook. She could cook if she wanted to, and we had plenty to eat and things were fine, most of the time. But Josephine was such a good cook, and we'd never had a good cook like this before [laughs]. All these, the scrambled eggs were even different when Josephine was there. But we would get, we'd get her, I guess, when -- I don't think we had anybody living with us when he worked at Vesuvius, because he came home. But as long as we had just a girl, another girl in the house, Mother was perfectly happy, but she didn't like to stay just with us, by herself. Isabelle Chewning: Did she have to pay Josephine? Mary Lipscomb: Oh, yeah. Mm-hm, she paid her, mm-hm. And, well, by that time there was some money coming in, which was pretty unusual. From, Daddy had, every two weeks I expect he got a check or maybe, I’ve forgotten whether it was every week or whatever. But-- what else? So, what in the world Josephine did all day, I don't know, because there wasn't that much to do. You stayed in the house and you did all this, but by that time, some of the Wades had moved from Castle Carberry into Mr. Hugh Wade’s house where they lived, Mary, and Margaret, and Eleanor, and all of them lived there. And Jen. Jen wasn't married. And Mother would, most every afternoon, seems to me, when we would come home from school, she'd be gone, and Mother'd be gone, and-- Isabelle Chewning: [laughs] Mary Lipscomb: And she would be down visiting the Wades, and that was her-- that's how she survived, really, with those friends, during those years when Daddy was gone, visiting them, just most every afternoon, it seems to me. But maybe not every afternoon. She'd have a Circle meeting, she'd have this, that and the other. And visit Miss Faye Thompson, who lived, you know who she was, who lived where D.W. [Whipple] lived [1790 Sterrett Road]. And she was D.W.’s aunt. And they were good friends. But mostly, and I don't know whether the Wades had moved in there, when Daddy first went to the-- they were, their mother was still living at Castle Carbury. And I remember her, and I don't know when she died, exactly, and it was after that that these, all these sisters then moved. They had one sister named Kate, who was, who had heart valve leakage, I guess it was, and she was pretty much an invalid, she stayed on the bed. And somebody was always there, at the house in Brownsburg. And so you could always go visit there [laughs] and see somebody. And they had a cook, Virginia Bell Franklin cooked for them all the time. She was always -- Kate planned all the meals, and Virginia Bell cooked it. Jen worked in the bank and Eleanor wasn't there much, because she taught school away. And Margaret was at Montreat [North Carolina] where she taught. And Mary was pretty much the housekeeper, and Jen worked in the bank and those are the only three, really, who lived there all the time - winter and summer. But, Margaret would be there in the summertime when she wasn’t teaching and so would Eleanor be there in the summertime. That was always a great fun place to go because they were so entertaining. But after Josephine - Josephine stayed a while. I believe she got married, and then we had somebody named Virginia Blackwell who was the-- You went to school with some of the Blackwells, I’m sure. One of my contemporaries was named Rebecca Blackwell. I don’t know who would have been your contemporary. Isabelle Chewning: David [Blackwell]. Mary Lipscomb: David? Isabelle Chewning: David was in our class [Rockbridge High School, 1970]. Mary Lipscomb: He was probably a nephew of this Virginia, who was a young woman. She was in her 20s, I suppose or something like that. But we had to go over to Timber Ridge every Sunday afternoon to get her. She lived on Mount Atlas, and she lived with her grandparents. Her parents must have been David’s grandparents, I expect, and there were a whole bunch of them because this Virginia had a number of brothers and sisters. The youngest one was my contemporary named Rebecca. So she [Virginia] was kind of farmed out to her grandparents and they lived almost to the Timber Ridge village. And so we had to go get her on the years that we- and she would come and spend the day -- the week with us. Isabelle Chewning: Where did they stay in the house? Mary Lipscomb: Upstairs somewhere. Maybe in the little room upstairs. I bet that was their room. I think it was. I’m not really sure. Isabelle Chewning: And you had moved upstairs by that point - your room was upstairs? Mary Lipscomb: Yes. I had what is your bedroom now for a long time [the room above the dining room]. After I graduated from the hall upstairs, I moved into that room. Mc was in the little room [above the current office], I guess, before we put up-- Isabelle Chewning: Oh, before the dormers? Mary Lipscomb: Before the dormers. I was a freshman in high school, I believe, when we did that - probably in the seventh grade or so when we started it. About that time, at that time, we had the back room. Mc and I had those two rooms -- his room at the back and mine at the front. But yes, I was in that room, what I used as a guest room, and which we later used as a guest room. I used that room. I remember it had a stove in there. I don’t know whether Mother came up there and started the fire -- I’ve forgotten. I think I pretty much went downstairs and dressed a lot of the time, in the wintertime. I just don’t remember, but I don’t ever remember dressing in the cold up there so much. But anyway, but there was a stove in there, I know. It had had that register in it, which you may or may not remember. That was there in your day. Did you all close that this time around? But it was supposed to get heat from down below, but there never was any heat down below [in the dining room] unless you were having Christmas or something. We had a stove in the dining room. It was only used for Christmas, and that’s about the only time during the wintertime. We used that dining room in the summertime. But I remember being in there more in the summertime. I just couldn’t have spent a lot of time, I don’t think, in that room in the wintertime. But she stayed with us a long time, and I know Mc would get up and milk in the morning, and sometimes -- but we had another girl later. I guess I was too small to milk for a while. I’m not sure. But we had somebody - what was that other girl’s name? She was a Mason, and she came from Fairfield, and she and I would milk in the afternoon. We each had to milk about two cows, I think. About two cows all this time. But I must have been in high school or something by that time because I remember that pretty much. Mc, I think, would get up and milk in the morning before he went to school with one of the Strickler guys, I’m guessing. Then in the afternoon -- I don’t remember getting those cows in there from the field, but I remember milking them. I remember exactly what they looked like - the two I had to milk. But I don’t remember a thing about getting them in there. They were Guernseys, and they didn’t give a whole lot of milk. Well, back to my childhood more, and this may have been still going on when I was in high school -- I expect it was. We had, on the lower back porch, there was a separator, and this was before my dad went off to CCC camp. We had a separator and Daddy would milk and bring the milk to the house, and we would separate it, and it had a big bowl on top. Have you ever seen one of these things? Isabelle Chewning: No. Mary Lipscomb: Sometimes you see them; you know those antique places. It used to be Rocky’s would have things of this kind. You poured the milk into this big bowl and the workings of the things had a whole lot of little cups that fitted on top of each other. You turned the handle and the milk would come out cream on one side and milk on the other. I don’t know what made this thing work. But anyway, you separated it into the milk and the cream and we’d feed the milk to the hogs and we sold the cream to McCrum’s Creamery. Once a week, a truck would come by and we’d have to set this-- It would be sour cream by that time, of course. We’d try -- I guess, kept it in the basement. It would stay some cool, but not very. In the wintertime it was no problem. In the summertime it would be. I suppose you had to keep it from freezing in the wintertime. But you would set this -- you had asked me about out buildings, and there was a garage right out there, right at the road in my childhood where we just drove the car into the garage from the road. We’d set the cream out there by the garage, and this guy from the creamery would come by and pick it up. You’d get a check for-- I remember those things were five or six dollars -- it was a lot of money - or maybe ten dollars a week for -- it wouldn’t be that much. Must be for the month, maybe -- for this cream. McCrums would make butter out of it when they‘d get it. But later, how did we sell this milk? Some of that time when I was milking the cows, we had a sort of a trough in the backyard. We’d put the whole milk in cans in there and maybe Augusta Dairy came by and got that. I believe they did. But that was just cooled with cold water, and by this time, we had electricity and mother would take some ice cubes out there and dump in it every now and then. But I don’t know how often that was picked up. It wasn’t every day. I suppose it would be pretty much on the sour side by the time they’d get it and make what -- I don’t know – out of it. I guess there would be-- It seems to me there were ten gallon cans and there would be about two or three of them, but we used a lot of milk. We drank it like water when I was a child most all the time, just always had it on the table, a pitcher of milk- - always. So those three ladies, those three people stayed with us all those years. And then after the -- in about the – about the time the war began, I don’t know whether it was late as ’41? I believe it was before ’41, we were beginning to do defense kinds of things. Maybe in ‘39 and ‘40, the whole CCC work came to an end. There was no more funding for it. Everything went to war preparation. Daddy went to work for construction companies, and they built -- I don’t know how he got these jobs – in Newport News. Back when I was going to Longwood, he was working in Newport News. They were building zillions of houses for people who came to work at the shipyard. I think Dolly and Herman [Straub] lived in some of those houses that he was responsible for. He worked for some contractor. But by that time, he’d learned to manage people, you know, and all this work was-- Then later, he went somewhere else. It seems to me he went to Cleveland or somewhere else. Maybe this company moved to Cleveland. But about that time, I think he stopped and came home. But what was I doing? He had been home a while. Before they -- not too long before they built the dairy barn. And they built the dairy barn -- he must have been home during most of the war. No, he was still working in Newport News during part of that time. Maybe he came home in forty-- But the war [was] from ‘42 to ‘45 and he probably came home in 1943 or 1944. He didn’t work away from home anymore after that. But he was living at home when I graduated, because they came to my graduation. He went with me when I went to college, too, but I don’t think -- he wasn’t living there then, I don’t believe. I don’t think he finished that. I remember one time, I know I had come home for a weekend and he rode with me on the bus when he was going back to Hampton or Newport News or wherever it was, when we went by Farmville. So I know that may have been even just when I was a freshman, but it could have been when I was a sophomore. I don’t remember. I remember that I had gone home for some special reason; some cousin or somebody was going to be there. Tom Bosworth was at Hampden-Sydney when I was in Longwood, and I remember I got a ride home with him on this weekend. And he must have been -- Tom probably was going off to be in the Navy. He was in the Navy about that time, I expect, because he didn’t come back. That’s why Daddy rode the bus with me. I came back on the bus with Daddy, and we had both been there because somebody special was visiting us, and I can’t remember who that was. Anyway, so that would have been, and I expect Tom had to go in the Navy; it was probably the fall of ‘42 or something like that. I’ve forgotten which. I also remember that I had to get back at a certain time on that Sunday because I was in the choir and we had some kind of choir practice. It might have been in – I don’t know what time – I was trying to figure out what time of year that would have been. We did all these things at Christmas time in the choir and it probably was in the fall. But that would have been in the fall of ‘42 probably, maybe I was a sophomore. I wasn’t in the choir my freshman year, so it would have been the fall of ‘42 probably and that would have been about the time everybody, all the college guys had to go into the Service and that’s probably about the time Tom was going in the service, all that time. But those are the things I remember mostly about his being away. What else? Isabelle Chewning: How about childhood diseases? What did you have? Mary Lipscomb: I had chicken pox. I wasn’t going to school, I don’t think. I remember this awful sore throat with chicken pox. I know we had the measles, but I can’t remember when. I never did have the mumps, I don’t think. I thought once when I was in college that I had the mumps. I remember I spent almost a week in the infirmary, trying to decide what it was and it may have been because Mc had had the mumps at home. I had been there and I thought surely this was the mumps, but it never did swell up much then. I never did have the mumps after that, so maybe I never did. Maybe that was it. Isabelle Chewning: Did you worry a lot about polio and things like that? Mary Lipscomb: Yes, we did. Yes, we did. We had at least two big scares about polio. I remember one summer, we couldn’t go to Sunday School. None of the other children went to church, nor Sunday School. We didn’t have Bible School. Daddy went to town and bought us a croquet set. [Laugh] I thought this was so much fun. I think there were maybe a couple of summers like that. But it seems to me that wasn’t the only one. We just had to stay at home, but I never did know anybody who had polio until the year before I was married. The year that Alec was a year old, the McGuffin kids had polio. One day, Alec Junior had this terrible temperature. Dr. McClung came out there in 15 minutes - five minutes almost. He was afraid maybe that’s what it was because our neighbor’s children, Susan and Beverly, had polio the year that Alec was a year old, and Beverly was pretty sick. I don’t think Susan ever had it very badly, but Beverly was in the hospital, I think. I don’t remember anybody else, and I don’t remember anybody in our neighborhood in Brownsburg having it when I was a child. Isabelle Chewning: How about small pox? Did anybody have that? Mary Lipscomb: We were all vaccinated. You had to be. By the time I started school, we had to be vaccinated. We didn’t have small pox. Isabelle Chewning: Scarlet fever, rheumatic fever? Mary Lipscomb: One year, we went to-- I don’t know what age I was at all. It must have been when I started school, but we had planned to go to Fredericksburg for Christmas. And this was, to me, the most romantic and wonderful thing. I’d heard mother talk about they had a black man who would bring in the plum pudding. It was all lit and all this stuff for Christmas dinner, and that this was the most wonderful thing. And Mother got this horrible sore throat, and she was pretty sick and we couldn’t go. I guess we had the doctor. I don’t think it was scarlet fever, but everybody was pretty concerned it might be. But no, I never had scarlet fever, neither one of us ever did. Isabelle Chewning: Who did you call for the doctor? Mary Lipscomb: We had a doctor in Brownsburg. All the time that I remember, there was a Dr. Green when I was little. One time, I got a straw stuck in my throat, and his office was up above the bank. We had to go up there and he just took something and reached in there and got the straw out of my throat [laugh]. Then there was a man named -- I bet Anne [McCorkle] could tell you what his name was. It wasn’t Pinkerton, but it was something like that. I don’t ever remember anything about him. I don’t know whether they all, at that time, lived where the Pattersons live now [2744 Brownsburg Turnpike]. The first one I really remember much about was one named Bailey, and he lived there. I don’t know when he came, but he was there when I was in high school. I don’t remember— [End of Tape 2, Side A] Mary Lipscomb: How long do these things [the tapes] last? Do they last 15 minutes? Isabelle Chewning: I’ll just try to stop in 15 minutes. Mary Lipscomb: Well, anyway, Dr. Bailey was sort of an enigma. Nobody quite knew anything about him. He had a wife that maybe really wasn’t his wife. [Laugh] We were all kind of -- Nobody really ever knew exactly. There seemed to be some wife when he first came, and then there was another wife later. Isabelle Chewning: And he’s the one with the airplane, right? Mary Lipscomb: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I’d forgotten about that. Isabelle Chewning: That shocked me. Mary Lipscomb: Where did he keep this airplane? Isabelle Chewning: He landed it in the flat out there along Hays Creek, one turn before you get to Level Loop [567 Hays Creek Road]. Mary Lipscomb: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I remember sort of an airplane show or something out there one time, but it wasn’t Dr. Bailey and his airplane. I’d forgotten all about that. I know some of your people whom you’ve interviewed must have mentioned that, but I don’t remember anything about that. Isabelle Chewning: Can you tell the tonsil story? Mary Lipscomb: Oh, horrors! [Laugh] Have you interviewed your dad? Isabelle Chewning: No. I think Dick Anderson is going to interview him. Mary Lipscomb: Oh, I see. How did you learn the tonsil story at all? Isabelle Chewning: I guess from him, because he tells it pretty well. Mary Lipscomb: Well, I know that I was seven years old, I think. I don’t know whether I had been to school one year, maybe. And there was something about there wasn’t any money to have our tonsils taken out. And all of a sudden, somebody gave Mother fifty dollars, I think. Who was that? I’ll maybe remember that someday, but there was a decision made that we would have the tonsils taken out at the same time that Davidsons -- this is Jack and Cornelia, who were-- Frank was younger than we are. These were my first cousins. They lived in Lexington. There was a doctor; I guess this was Dr. Mitchell, at that time, and he lasted a pretty long time as an ear, nose and throat guy in Lexington. So we all had to go to the hospital, which was where the [Stonewall] Jackson house is now. We were all in a big room -- which I think, is now the [Stonewall Jackson House] living room to the left -- at the hospital. I don’t remember a whole lot about this except I think Cornelia-- Maybe Cornelia was the youngest, and she was taken first, and she must have come back and looked pretty sad. Still not much out of the anesthesia, and Jack probably went next, and then it was Mc’s turn. And here I was. As the oldest, I had to wait until all this was over, and I don’t remember that I was terribly undone. But Mc had a -- just a fit when the time came for him to go. I remember him screaming and yelling and hanging onto the bottom of the bed before they took him. [Laugh] Then I had to go next, and I don’t remember much about my going at all. I do remember that we got ice cream afterwards, after we were well enough to swallow anything. But hardly before I was out of the anesthesia, I remember Aunt Margaret, one of my mother’s first cousins and I called her “aunt,” came to the hospital and they were moving that day from Roanoke, where they had lived, to Baltimore, where they were going to live. They were passing through, and Aunt Margaret spoke to me when I was semiconscious, I think. I just remember her being there and saying she was there, giving her my love and so forth and so forth. I don’t remember a thing about coming home or how long it took us to get well. All this was in the summertime. I know that, you know. We weren’t in school, but I had probably been to school one year at that point. That’s mostly what I remember about it. But when I go to the Jackson House, I can almost look at that room, and think about the four of us in that room, each in a separate bed. It was kind of a little ward, and going off to have our tonsils taken out. Is that the story he tells? Isabelle Chewning: Oh, yes. I think he says he was last, though! Mary Lipscomb: Oh, he did? I’m sure he was not last because I remember his going. I don’t think he was last. [Laugh] Because I was the oldest, I had to be last. I could be wrong. I don’t have any idea-- What else special? What other things have been brought to mind? Isabelle Chewning: Can you talk a little bit about the politics? Mary Lipscomb: Oh, yes! That’s very exciting. We did all these fun things, politically. As I told you, everybody was a Democrat. I remember, once there was a rally, a Democratic Rally in Williamsburg – that’s not right. What is that place in Bath County? Oh, fiddlesticks. That’s not its name. It’s Williamsville. Williamsville, I believe it is. It’s somewhere between - anyway. I’ve been through it. It’s before you get to – what’s in Bath County? Monterey’s in Highland County. Isabelle Chewning: Millboro or Millboro Springs or Warm Springs? Mary Lipscomb: Yeah. I guess it’s between Millboro Springs, probably, and getting into Highland County, and Monterey and that area. Somewhere in that area. It was a wonderful sort of a picnic ground or something. But I know the Buchanans went. I remember Anne [Buchanan McCorkle] went with us. Anne doesn’t remember a thing about this, but I do. Because this was the Democratic group and it was a rally, I don’t know who was running for what. I have no idea. But this was just a wonderful outing, and a great picnic. There were these marvelous grapevines, and we had the best time swinging on the grapevines at this picnic. [Laugh] I do remember this, you know, but this was a whole day. We went for the day, and I suppose there were speeches in the morning, speeches in the afternoon, la-de-dah. It could have been for our cousin Tate Sterrett, who was in the House of Delegates, and he lived in -- Isabelle Chewning: Fassifern. Mary Lipscomb: Hot Springs. Fassifern [get address]. You know, in back of Hot Springs, more like Warm Springs. And maybe because it was in the Bath County area, it could have been a rally for him, and maybe that’s why we were all there particularly, but he was in the House of Delegates. Isabelle Chewning: Do you remember people campaigning in Brownsburg? Someone mentioned to me that, because there was really no TV, no other way to campaign, that people actually got out and did stump speeches in these little villages. Mary Lipscomb: I don’t remember anybody doing-- I remember people coming to the stores and greeting you if you happened to be in a store. They’d come and stop at the stores and speak to whoever was there -- that sort of thing. I don’t remember anybody ever stopping by our house. I know my parents would go to Democratic fundraisers, I guess they were -- dinners in Lexington and things like that. They belonged to a group called the Young Democrats. I remember that. I hadn’t thought of that, and all these people were-- my dad was in his early 30s. The Buchanan guys [Gene and Bill] were some older than he was, but not a whole lot, I suppose. And Mr. John Patterson was probably not a whole lot older, but a little bit older than he. And who would be the other people? I can’t remember. But anyway, those were the people I remember mainly who were in this Young Democrat group. But not until later did Daddy work at the polls all the time. You know about a wonderful story about-- I guess I was teaching then, and he must have been the Chief Judge at the polls or something, and we had a primary. In the summertime this was. The Republicans were having the primary at the same time and the voting place was in the back of the bank, and they couldn’t find anybody to be a Republican judge. Have you not heard this story? He conned me into being a Republican judge at a polls because they were scared they were going to throw out the Democratic primary because it was supposed to be both Democratic and Republican. So I think I was teaching -- not a college student. I might have been a college student, but I couldn’t vote. I couldn’t vote until I was teaching. So I was 21, the first year I was teaching there, so I must have been teaching. Anyway, I was upstairs and that morning, he got up. I remember he was yelling upstairs, “Come on you damn Republican. You have to get up and go to the polls.” [Laugh] I went off. I think I had Mrs. Whipple, and I don’t know whether anybody else voted in that primary. [Laugh] Mrs. Whipple always came to anything Republican, anything that opened up. Isabelle Chewning: This was Fred’s mother? Mary Lipscomb: Yes, Fred’s mother, right, but she was about the only Republican. I’m sure that Fred and Mollie Sue voted Republican, but I don’t think they were as careful – you know, let everybody know all the time. I don’t remember Fred’s coming to vote that day. Everybody was kidding me about my one voter or two voters. [Laugh] Isabelle Chewning: So that area was really predominately Democratic. Mary Lipscomb: Predominantly Democratic until when? I don’t know. I guess it’s been the last 40 years, probably, it’s changed or sometime. We’ve gotten a lot more. Well, at the time of integration, when the South all began to -- all the Democrats, like the Byrd Democrats, and all these people all changed to the Republican party. Mills Godwin was the Democratic governor once upon a time, and then the next time he ran he was a Republican. He was governor twice. Nobody in that group liked the Byrds. My dad was avidly opposed to Harry Byrd, who never did like President Roosevelt or anything he did. Although he was a great camper, you know, and loved the mountains and all this stuff, he never did like-- He was against everything that Roosevelt did. Of course, that’s moved into this Valley where I am now, in Harrisonburg. The paper is owned by the Byrd Group. Every newspaper from here north is owned by the Byrd Consortium. “The Northern Virginia Daily” -- is that what it’s called? It goes to Front Royal and that area. And I think there’s one in Winchester, and then there’s -- I don’t know whether there’s anything between that and Harrisonburg or not, but this is called the “Daily Record” here, and it’s in this Byrd Group, but it is so horribly conservative and oh, they still like Mr. Bush! Isabelle Chewning: Well, was Granddaddy [Madison McClung Sterrett Sr.] on the School Board at the time of integration? Mary Lipscomb: No. He had been retired from it, or was he? Because he was on the School Board during the time they built the high school that you went to [currently Rockbridge Middle School]. Isabelle Chewning: He has told me that he took the dousing rod out, and figured out where the well should be at the high school. Mary Lipscomb: He did, yeah. Isabelle Chewning: And that he picked the well at the barn. Mary Lipscomb: He probably did. Isabelle Chewning: But Daddy doesn’t have any recollection of that at all. Mary Lipscomb: No, I remember his telling us that, and I’m pretty sure he did the one at the high school. I didn’t know about the one at the barn. If he was capable of doing that, he could have done it. I don’t know how you do this, but I’ve heard him say that, that he did. Yep. So anyway, did integration come – it didn’t come for a while. Isabelle Chewning: It was the eighth grade for me [1965]. Mary Lipscomb: That’s right, yes. Isabelle Chewning: So I was 14, so 1966 [Note: correct year is 1965]. Mary Lipscomb: You all were in that school, you went to eighth grade in that school, didn’t you? Isabelle Chewning: Right, and that was the first year of integration – 1966 [1965]. Mary Lipscomb: Well, he may not have been, you see, because that school was built in 1960. Bobby Alexander was in the first graduating class, and I think that was 1960 or 1961. John Miley [Whitesell] was in the first graduating class. He probably was not on the School Board at that time at the time of integration, but that wasn’t a big problem in Rockbridge County. We’d been through all that mess of schools closing like the one in Front Royal, and the one in Farmville, and all that stuff. That was in the – those were in the early ‘60s, weren’t they? Or late ‘50s. I’ve forgotten exactly when they were. That awful -- what was it called -- the law that if a black child comes to your school, the school would close. You don’t know about that? Isabelle Chewning: I’ve read -- in Farmville, wasn’t it? Mary Lipscomb: Farmville was the worst one. They just didn’t have any public schools for five years in Farmville for the black kids at all. Everybody went to that academy, and there was no public school. The white kids all went to the private academy there was no school at all for blacks. But you’ve read more recently about those black kids who went to live with their cousins and uncles in hundreds of different places, and tried to get an education. Some of the Hampden-Sydney boys -- those are the years that I stopped giving to the Alumni Association at Longwood. I said, “If you all can’t do any better than this.” There was one professor at Longwood, who really stood for doing something about it. All the rest of them, they were State paid and they were this, that and the other, and they were scared to death, I guess. Isabelle Chewning: Were you conscious of it when you were growing up? That’s just the way it was. Mary Lipscomb: Well, I was some conscious of it. You know, I watched all those little kids while I rode the bus to school, to walk down there, to school all the time. Like Willie Howard [Pleasants] and his brother Clarence, and who else lived up there on the hill north of us – I mean east of us. But no, it was -- I’ve heard you say that Bud Martin said that this concerned him a great deal. I don’t think I thought that much about it. It was just the way it was, sort of. I do remember what I told you about Ethel Brown and how their health situations weren’t good. And I do know, but there was a whole family named Franklin who lived right as you go into Castle Carbury [34 Beard Lane]. Have you ever been out there where the Wades lived? You have to drive to the back of the house and turn? Well, just as you got to the back of the house, there was a little long brick building down there, and what was his name? Isabelle Chewning: Zack. Mary Lipscomb: Zack Franklin lived in that house and he had a whole bunch of children - Dan, Dan Franklin, and Virginia Bell, and on and on and on. And they were all swarming outside the buildings and things like-- Outside that teeny little place. No wonder they swarmed outside. But I think I was aware, I know that I was aware there were health problems. Their teeth never looked good, and stuff like that. But I really didn’t know them very well at all. I knew Willie Howard. We used to ride bicycles together or something I think. He and Mc were fairly good friends, I think. Isabelle Chewning: Would he have been Dude’s [Haliburton] nephew? Mary Lipscomb: Yeah. His mother was named Edna and her last name was Pleasants, but she had been a Haliburton. Isabelle Chewning: Who lived with Dude and Maggie? Mary Lipscomb: They had no children. They lived by themselves. Isabelle Chewning: But wasn’t there--? Mary Lipscomb: Oh, they had somebody named Pinky. Isabelle Chewning: Wasn’t there Annie Laurie or Aunt Laura? Mary Lipscomb: Yes. Maggie had an aunt, I suppose she was, who lived with them some, but not forever. They had raised a child who was gone, and I think maybe she’s the one that still owns that property. I’ve heard your dad say something about he had -- maybe 10 or 15 years ago she came by and he saw her or something. But I don’t know who these children-- I think there were two of these children -- a boy and a girl -- maybe that they’d sort of raised. By that time, they’d gone off to Washington or somewhere and gotten married. I don’t ever remember her living with Dude and Maggie. But this aunt-- Isabelle Chewning: Who was Pinky? Mary Lipscomb: She was a girl who lived with Dude and Maggie, and she must have been a niece, or Maggie’s niece maybe. But this Aunt Laura, I believe that was her name, was Maggie’s -- and Mother had some kind of connection with her. I believe she may have been the one who taught in a black school in Rockbridge Baths when mother was teaching. There was somebody in that family who taught in a black school. I remember Mother saying they’d meet her every morning. She’d be going one way and they were going the other, you know. They were going to that little school, that square school, and the black school was-- you had to go almost where you start climbing Jump Mountain. If you pass the Bethesda [Presbyterian Church] manse [49 Walkers Creek Road], and go out that road, then I think the school was off to the left, sort of in that neighborhood. I didn’t know any of the Rockbridge Baths black people at all. It must have been a good many people for a school. Isabelle Chewning: Is it time to quit? Mary Lipscomb: We better quit, yes. Isabelle Chewning: Thank you. [End of Tape 2, 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