July 5, 2007 
 
Interview  with Samuel Dock Stewart 
 
By Isabelle Chewning 
 
[Items enclosed in brackets [ ] are editorial notes inserted for clarification.] 
 
 
Chewning:  What’s your name? 
 
Stewart:  Sammy Dock Stewart.   
 
Chewning:  I think it’s alright now [referring to the tape recorder].   
 
Stewart:  All this stuff that was going on back there then, what we all had to go through with.  The poor whites, and the blacks.  The history that comes to mind – you all that is coming up; the generation that’s coming up now, to what the older generation had to go through with. 
 
Chewning:  Right. 
 
Stewart:  The living conditions.  The working conditions.  And everything we’ve got now is new modern.  Machinery.  Wood work.  Farm work.  All this is new to you all. 
 
Chewning:  Right.  
 
Stewart:  But it’s not – it’s new to me, too, because I never thought that I would live to see the day that all that would take place.  Understand? 
 
Chewning:  Um hmm.  
 
Stewart:  And it used to be, we had old cars, old Model A’s.  Older cars like sedans, very, very old.  Model T, very, very old.  That was back in ’26, ’and 27, and ’28.  All them old 
cars.  And you didn’t need to buy no sticker.  All they had to do was have one license plate.  You didn’t have to buy two license plates.  You just had your one on there.  Wasn’t no decal.  
Just had a license plate.  And I’m almost sure, back in time, that your daddy might have drove one of them old cars.  I don’t know.   
 
Chewning:  I’ll have to ask him. 
 
Stewart:  Ask him and see.  Model T, or the Model A.  Now Model T, what you did, you worked – you controlled everything with your foot:  your brake, shift gear, and all.  With your foot.  You didn’t have no gearshift.  Understand what I mean? 
 
Chewning:  Um hmm.  Right. 
 
Stewart:  So that – you wouldn’t know nothing about that.   
 
Chewning:  No! 
 
Stewart:  But that what you’re trying to learn. 
 
Chewning:  Right. 
 
Stewart:  And find out what was going on back in the old days. 
 
Chewning:  So, Mr. Stewart, can you say on the tape when you were born? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah.  I was born in 1931, March the ninth. 
 
Chewning:  And you were born in Brownsburg?   
 
Stewart:  I was born in Brownsburg on [Route] 729, the road that they called [Route] 729 back then.  They’ve done changed the number now.  And I lived in an old house – 
 
Chewning:  What’s the number now?  What’s it called? 
 
Stewart:  I don’t know what they call it now.  I’ll have to look and see on the sign.  But it was [Route] 729.  And the road would take you to Bustleburg, if you kept on that same road.  [Mr. Stewart is referring to Dry Hollow Road.]  But anyhow – 
 
Chewning:  So was it [Route] 252? 
 
Stewart:  Well, it come off – no, it come off [Route] 252.  You turn right there between the two old stores that used to be in Brownsburg.  Used to be Whipple’s store, and used to be – well, both of them were Whipple’s stores.  And they turned the one to the left into the Farm Bureau.  Used to be the Farm Bureau was in Brownsburg.  Years ago.  Well, we really had four stores in Brownsburg.  We had Mr. Whitesell’s, Miley Whitesell’s.  That’s John Layton Whitesell’s daddy.  He was the undertaker.  You don’t know nothing about that? 
 
Chewning:  Somebody’s told me that. 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, he was an undertaker.  Miley Whitesell.  Cause John Layton had to take over after he passed away.  But anyhow, we used to have Roy Huffman, used to run the service station in Brownsburg.  So we had four stores in Brownsburg at the present time.  But anyhow, this road, you’d get off [Route] 252, what I’m speaking about, where I was born at.  And go and hit [Route] 729.  Now, I think they’ve changed the number now, far as I know.  But I’ll look and see next time I go by.  And we lived in an old house.   
 
Chewning:  And were you born there at the house? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, born there at the old house, yeah.  We didn’t have no water.  We did have a cistern to catch water off the roof, but it wasn’t fit to drink.  Cause the old roof was old, you know what I mean?  And dirty.  And we had to carry water about a mile from the spring. 
 
Chewning:  Where was the spring?   
 
Stewart:  The spring was down there where the Gilmores used to own the house that had the spring on it [2613 Brownsburg Turnpike].  It was about a mile.  And we used to go to the spring with water buckets.  We’d take two water buckets, my brother and I.  Leroy and I.  And we used to carry water, and we had an old table we set it on in the kitchen.  You know how hot it would get in the summertime. 
 
Chewning:  Oh, yeah. 
 
Stewart:  It kept us two boys busy carrying the water.  What we’d do, when we’d come in from school in the evening, we’d go get a bucket of water for Mama.  Cause Dad was working on the farm up there at Walter Rees’.  The farm up there above Brownsburg.   
 
Chewning:  Oh, um hmm.  Yep.  I know that one.   
 
Stewart:  I’ll tell you who bought that farm:  Heslep.  Jack Heslep.  Them old women.   
 
Chewning:  Um hmm.  Cunninghams. 
 
Stewart:  Cunninghams, yeah.  And Jack was the supervisor.  Was the supervisor.  Well, I’d have to say, the manager.  He was the manager of the farm.  And my wife used to go up there and clean houses for them.  The two old women, when they were living up there.  Of course they’ve both done passed away now.   And Jack has, too. 
 
Chewning:  Right. 
 
Stewart:  But anyhow, they were awful good to my mother.  Whenever Mama would leave, Jack would bring her home, and come and get her.  Cause we didn’t have no car, and she couldn’t drive no way.  And that’s the only thing that kept the house going.  By her working, doing little odds and ends, day work.  See, there were ten of us in the family.   
 
Chewning:  Oh, there were ten? 
 
Stewart:  There were five boys and five girls [Mr. Stewart’s brothers included William (deceased), Eugene (deceased), and Leroy; sisters included Hattie Ann Stewart Porter (deceased), Catherine Sarah Stewart Brown (deceased), Pauline Stewart Stevenson, Gladys Mae Stewart Dickerson, and Alice Stewart Carter]. 
 
Chewning:  And were you one of the older ones? 
 
Stewart:  No, no.  No, no.  I got a brother in Brownsburg.  Leroy.  You know him.  You should know Leroy. 
 
Chewning:  I know him.  I know Leroy.   
 
Stewart:  Well, you should know where he lives at.   
 
Chewning:  Oh, that’s where you grew up?  That house where Leroy lives [Still Alley]? 
 
Stewart:  No, no, no, no, no, no.  I didn’t grow up there where Leroy lives at.  No, I grew up in back where I told you I was born at.  No.  Leroy – that’s my home place.  That’s where my mother used to live. 
 
Chewning:  Okay.  I see. 
 
Stewart:  Gladys Stewart.  That’s where Mama used to live.  My mother.  Leroy, he got the – he stayed in the home place where my mother used to live.  He stayed with my mother, and took care of her.   
 
Chewning:  I see. 
 
Stewart:  And Pauline, she lives right next door in the trailer.  Pauline Stevenson. 
 
Chewning:  I don’t think I know her. 
 
Stewart:  Oh, yes you do.   
 
Chewning:  Do I? 
 
Stewart:  Oh, yeah, you gotta know her. 
 
Chewning:  Who’s she married to? 
 
Stewart:  She was a Stevenson.  And her husband’s passed away, too.  Do you know that little guy that they call – he’s a Stevenson.  What do you call – he cleans the church there on Main Street in Lexington [Lexington Presbyterian].  For the white church up there. 
 
Chewning:  Oh, Doug. 
 
Stewart:  Doug.  Yeah!  I’m his uncle. 
 
Chewning:  Okay.   
 
Stewart:  I knew you knew her.   I knew you knew her! 
 
Chewning:  I’ve been gone too long!  
 
Stewart:  Well, you went away.  You kind of get out of hand when you leave the community.  People move in and move out.  Some pass away.  Different things happen.  Yeah, Stevenson, I’m his uncle.  Now, Pauline is his mother.  And Pauline works over to White’s Truck Stop [in Raphine]. 
   
You know where that’s at, don’t you? 
 
Chewning:  Is she older than you? 
 
Stewart:  No, no, no. 
 
Chewning:  She’s younger than you? 
 
Stewart:  No.  See, there were five girls and five boys.  See, Leroy is the oldest boy.  And Catherine [Brown] that lives on the hill over there where Isabel Sites lives at [2540 Sterrett Road] – she lives back behind Isabel in one of them Wise homes.  She’s the oldest sister.  She’s my oldest sister.  Pauline is my younger sister. 
 
Chewning:  I see. 
 
Stewart:  No, it ain’t.  No, no, no, no, I’m wrong.  Hattie Ann is my oldest sister.  She passed away about two years ago.  She lived in Norfolk. 
 
Chewning:  What was her name?   
 
Stewart:  Hattie Ann. 
 
Chewning:  Hattie Ann. 
 
Stewart:  Hattie Ann, yeah.  Now she passed away.  Her husband passed away, too.  They died six months apart.   
 
Chewning:  Oh.  Umm. 
 
Stewart:  Well, the good Lord knows the best. 
 
Chewning:  So how long did you live in Brownsburg? 
 
Stewart:  Well, I lived in Brownsburg just about all of my life.   
 
Chewning:  Until you went into the Military?   
 
Stewart:  Until I went into the Army.  I still came back to live in Brownsburg some. 
 
Chewning:  And can you tell me a little bit about the school that you went to?   
 
Stewart:  Oh, the school down there?  Well, it just was a one-room school, and Carrie Peters was our teacher.  And Chittum – well, he turned in to be the high Sheriff in Lexington.  On the Sheriff’s Department.  He used to cut our wood and bring it to us.  Kept us in wood.  Of course, he lives in Fairfield at the present time.  But anyhow, the school only had one little room in it.  And we had to carry water up there next to where Betty Pleasants lives – where Betty Brown lives at. 
 
Chewning:  So you carried water from there down to the school? 
 
Stewart:  We carried water, yeah, from up there clear down to the school in the water bucket.  And we didn’t have no water.  Had an outside john.  Of course we all had that, you know.  Most people who were poor had outside johns.  And we had to bring our lunch.  No kitchen to cook in.  Understand what I mean?  No kitchen.  And we went right by a white school – ya’ll’s school, where you went at, probably.  I don’t know. 
 
Chewning:  Yep. 
 
Stewart:  And I asked my daddy.  I said, “Daddy,” I said.  “Daddy, why we gotta walk three miles every day?”  In the snow, in the rain, cold – never got too cold to have school.  And the snow never got too deep for school.  They didn’t close school when there was just one flake fall.  Uh uh.  Uh uh.  Uh uh.  Uh uh.  I walked in snow up around my waist, almost.  Was an 
old wire fence, you could just step right over, the snow was so deep and so hard.  Didn’t give in, so you’d just go right over the fence.  And that’s how deep that snow was.  Anywhere four to five feet deep.  But you know, school never closed.  And of course we had to pack our lunch, what little bit we had.  We didn’t have much.  Many days, I went to school without lunch.  Didn’t have no lunch.  And when we came home, we got out of school at three o’clock.  When we’d walk home about four, Mama – my mother would have some brown gravy, no seasoning in it, just a little bit of flour and a little bit of grease, and made some gravy for us kids to eat.  And that’s what we lived on.  And anybody that – wherever my daddy worked at for the farming, they always gave my daddy food instead of money.  He took it in trade.  Now your daddy [Mc Sterrett] knows something about that now.  I know he does.  Cause he’s older than I am.  Me and him are just about the same age.  He may be a little bit older than I am. 
 
Chewning:  He is. 
 
Stewart:  He remembers all that stuff. 
 
Chewning:  He was born in 1925. 
 
Stewart:  Yeah.  And it was an old colored fellow that used to work for Mr. Sterrett.  I’m talking about your daddy’s daddy. 
 
Chewning:  Mr. [William] Haliburton? 
 
Stewart:  Mr. Haliburton. 
 
Chewning:  I remember him. 
 
Stewart:  He was poor, too.  And I remember one day he told us that he asked your granddaddy, Mr. Sterrett, your daddy’s daddy.  He needed a pair of shoes, and Mr. Sterrett told him, he said, “Dude, I got fifty cents in my pocket.  So, I’ll give you that, if you want it.  
If that will help you to get you a pair of shoes.”  And Dude Haliburton say, “No, Mr. Sterrett, that’s all you got, so you keep it.”  He say, “I’ll make out.”  He went home, and took some old gunney sacks and made him a pair of shoes. 
 
Chewning:  Oh. 
 
Stewart:  Now, that’s how we had to live!  That’s how we lived.  And how I lived.   
 
Chewning:  That’s a hard life. 
 
Stewart:  That was a misery life.  But don’t you know, we enjoyed ourselves.  We didn’t have all that killing going on.  We loved one another.  Even though we were black and white, we weren’t segregated.  Where I lived, I had white people lived right beside me.  And we were never segregated.  We played together, ate together.  It was just for them governments in whatever states, like North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee.  Well, Tennessee wasn’t too much segregated.  West Virginia, they wasn’t too much segregated.  They lived with Black people.  Most of them were West Virginia coal miners anyhow.  You can’t tell them from Black no way, once they work in that coal mine.  [Laugh]  That stuff will get in their skin and never come out.  But now, you really want to know about our school now.  We were happy with what we had.   
 
Chewning:  And Miss Peters was a good teacher, wasn’t she? 
 
Stewart:  Carrie Peters was a wonderful teacher.  And when she learned you, you were taught.  Cause she would stay right with you until you get that pat and can do on your own and don’t have to ask no questions. 
 
Chewning:  How many people do you think were in the school? 
 
Stewart:  Well, now I’m going to tell you.  I’m just going give you a rough guess.  There were more Black in Brownsburg at that time.  I would say we averaged about anywhere to 30 or 35 kids. 
 
Chewning:  Oh, really.  In a one-room school.  She taught everybody. 
 
Stewart:  Yes!  In a one-room school.  It was crowded.  You didn’t have nowhere to turn around, hardly.  And sometimes we had to stand up.  Just depend on what was going on, you know, we had to stand.  Somebody had to stand up.   
 
Chewning:  Did it go through the eighth grade?  Or seventh grade? 
 
Stewart:  Well, it went to the eighth grade.  To the seventh grade.  After that, you had to go to Fairfield.  Over there on [Route] 11, down below the Moose Lodge.  Up above the Moose Lodge.  Used to be the Black school over there. 
 
Chewning:  Oh, I didn’t know that. 
 
Stewart:  Yeah.  And that’s when they closed.  I ended up going to school over there, cause I got to the fourth grade, they closed the Brownsburg school.   
 
Chewning:  Oh, they did? 
 
Stewart:  The first school I was telling you about.  We had to go to Fairfield to finish the sixth grade.  
 
Chewning:  And how did you get there? 
 
Stewart:  John – we had a school bus.  They finally put a school bus on.  After they closed Brownsburg school.  John Layton Whitesell drove a school bus for many years.  John Layton!  Yeah.  And he drove our school bus, and the guy over at Raphine that used to sell 
cars, Fulwider, his daddy used to sell cars over there.  They’ve still got right there where the Fire Department in Raphine.  That used to be the garage in there.  They used to sell cars there.  That was back in 19 – 19 – see what would that be?  That would be 19 – it would be in the 40’s.  1945, ’46, somewhere in there.  That’s what that would be, yeah.  Cause I know my boss that worked on the highway, that worked for the State up in Brownsburg, he bought a new car over there.  I believe it was 1940, ’41 he bought.  Chevrolet.  I remember that.  Yeah.  But anyhow, anyhow, we had a tough time down there.  But we enjoyed ourselves.  We played marbles, and played horseshoes, and fight once in a while among ourselves. 
 
Chewning:  [Laugh] 
 
Stewart:  And we had a bunch of girls go down there.  At that time, you had to wear the long dresses, you couldn’t wear no short dresses.  Well, it wasn’t no short dresses, then.  Everybody had them long dresses on, down to your shoe tops.  And they didn’t have no problem about that.  Cause you couldn’t nothing, you’d know nothing.  [Laugh] 
 
Chewning:  [Laugh] 
 
Stewart:  Course I wasn’t looking for nothing no way!  [Laugh]  Ain’t like today.  They got them short dresses on, they can’t sit down, they gotta try to get it down before they can sit down!  But most women wear long overalls now.  I agree with that.  I like that.  I agree with doing that.  I thank the Lord they do that.  Cause that’s what caused a lot of temptation and a lot of rape.  Women walking around there half naked.  Only reason I say that, we have so much crime.  So much crime.  Everybody sell their self, or show their self.  And, if you touch them, you’re in trouble.  Keep your hand where it belong at. 
 
Chewning:  Yeah.  Yeah. 
 
Stewart:  Keep your hand where it belong. 
 
Chewning:  So Mr. Whitesell drove you – 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, he drove a school bus.  Yeah, I mean he drove our school bus. 
 
Chewning:  And how many years did you go to school in Fairfield? 
 
Stewart:  Oh, I had to go to the eighth grade.  I had to go two years.  I left fourth grade, and I had two more years to go. 
 
Chewning:  Did Miss Peters teach in Fairfield? 
 
Stewart:  No, no, no, no.  We had a teacher come from Lexington. 
 
Chewning:  What happened to Miss Peters? 
 
Stewart:  Miss Peters, when they closed, she retired.  When they closed her school on her, she retired.  She didn’t teach any more. 
 
Chewning:  Was she old enough to retire? 
 
Stewart:  Oh yeah, she was old enough to retire, yeah.  And her home, she was born and raised in New York.  She wasn’t from around here.  So when they closed the school, she retired and went back to New York. 
 
Chewning:  I wonder how she got here.  How did she get to Brownsburg? 
 
Stewart:  How’d she get to Brownsburg?  Well, she bought the place what I told you where Swisher’s daughter bought [1486 Dry Hollow Road].  That used to be her house there.  That’s how she got to Brownsburg.  She got to Brownsburg cause some of her kin folks were living in Brownsburg.  
 
Chewning:  Oh, I see. 
 
Stewart:  Oh, she had – who was that who used live in Brownsburg?  It was her aunt.  I’ll tell you who it was.  Annie Laura?  No, it wasn’t Annie Laura.  Peters was a – she was a Gilmore before she got married.  She married a – she was a Gilmore before she got married.  She married a Peters.    
 
Chewning:  Oh, she was married?  Okay.  
 
Stewart:  She married a Peters.  And her husband come from New York. 
 
Chewning:  And did he live here, too? 
 
Stewart:  He come here and stayed a while, but he was working in New York.  And he went to New York and stayed.  He’d just come home on weekends.  Just like some people do today, you know.   
 
Chewning:  So how many generations has your family lived in Brownsburg?  Were your grandparents living in Brownsburg? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah.  I had my great-great-grandfather living in Brownsburg. 
 
Chewning:  Do you remember your grandparents? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, I remember him, cause I had the measles.  And we lived back in that old house I told you about.  And my mother carried me on her back and took me to Dr. Bailey.  Used to be the doctor in Brownsburg they called Dr. Bailey.  And that’s where she carried me, clear from that old house where we used to live, clear to Brownsburg. 
 
Chewning:  Was he a Black doctor? 
 
Stewart:  He was a white doctor.  White doctor. 
 
Chewning:  And what was his name? 
 
Stewart:  Dr. Bailey.  He used to have an airplane.  He used to fly it around a whole lot.  He had of them little small – you know, just a little small airplane he used to fly around. 
 
Chewning:  An airplane in Brownsburg? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, he used to have an airplane.  Yeah, he used to fly it around a whole lot.  I bet your daddy could remember that.  Yeah.  And my – I remember I just was a little old thing.  But I do remember my Paw Paw, my great-grandpa say, “Gladys,” that’s my mother’s name.  He say, “Can you carry him the rest of the way, or do you want me to carry him?”  And Mama say, “I’m getting awful tired.  I’ve come a long ways.  I’ve come about three miles carrying him.”  He say, “Well, I’ll take him to Brownsburg then.”  So we walked, come down by the school.  Come down that way to Bosworth’s field there.  Tommy Bosworth.  The old man.  Old man Bosworth.  Cause Tommy owns the field, I think.  We come through there.  We had a path through there.  Well that’s how we walked to school that way.  [The path apparently went from Dry Hollow Road, over the hill past Brownsburg School, and down into Brownsburg.]  Come through the field down there.   
 
Chewning:  Along the creek? 
 
Stewart:  No, no, no.  No, no.  Come right through the field.  It wasn’t no creek there.  Come right through the field by – it’s a house there we used to live in before one time, after we left that old house that fell down on us.  It belonged to Herb Gilmore.  We walked right through the fields through his property cause we were living at Herb Gilmore’s place at the present time.  And that’s how we walked to school.  And it dad take – took you about an hour or two hours to walk.  It was good weather, but in bad weather, it took you longer.  Cause you couldn’t walk too fast in the snow.  But Mama carried me from the old house, by-passed the rest of the houses, and carried me clear to my grandpa.  And my grandpa lived right there – let me tell you.  It’s some people bought that thing.  Bud Hill used to own that place we used 
to live in.  And how lived there now, I think they work with some Forest Ranger.  I think some Forest Ranger lives there [Stewart may be referring to the Kirks at 1254 Dry Hollow Road.]  Heslep bought that place at one time.  Jack Heslep.  He bought it and remodeled the old house and sold it to Campbell [??].  Then Campbell got in trouble, I think he killed a woman.  He got in trouble.  And he had to serve a little time, I think.  And he got out and he had an accident and killed that Toman woman right there up above the bridge in Brownsburg.  Was a wreck there.  And killed her.  And I think he had to go back and serve some more time for killing her.  Then he died.  Oh, there’s a lot of stuff went on in Brownsburg. 
 
Chewning:  So you remember having the measles when you were really little? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, I remember that.  I was about two years old.  I can remember having the measles.   
 
Chewning:  Did your whole family get them at the same time? 
 
Stewart:  No no, no no no no no.  No.  Didn’t the whole family get them.  I was quarantined in, but – we were quarantined about two weeks.  We couldn’t go out nowhere.   
 
Chewning:  Oh, really. 
 
Stewart:  Yeah.  No of the family could go nowhere.  My daddy, he went on to work, though.  We needed the money.  He couldn’t stay in.  He had to get out. 
 
Chewning:  So he was a farmer all of his life? 
 
Stewart:  He worked on a farm all his life, my daddy did.  He worked in different farms.  Walter Rees, and Zack Franklin, he used to go out there and help him some.  He was a Black fellow. 
 
Chewning:  Where was that? 
 
Stewart:  Right there at the forks of the road where you turn to go to Raphine.  There’s a little house, that little house where John Swisher lives at [3569 Brownsburg Turnpike].  I used to live there at one time. 
 
Chewning:  Oh, did you? 
 
Stewart:  Oh, yeah, when me and my wife first got married I lived there.   
 
[Phone rings.  Tape stops momentarily.] 
 
Stewart:  Where we left off at? 
 
Chewning:  You were talking about the measles.  Your family was quarantined. 
 
Stewart:  Oh.  Oh.  Yeah.  We were quarantined for nearly a week, yeah.  And my daddy had to go to work, though.  He couldn’t stay in.  And he just worked different around.  And I’m not sure that he didn’t work some for Mr. Stewart.  He did work some. 
 
Chewning:  And what was his name?   
 
Stewart:  Roy Stewart.   
 
Chewning:  Roy Stewart. 
 
Stewart:  R – O – Y, Roy Stewart.   
 
Chewning:  And was your grandfather a farmer, too? 
 
Stewart:  My grandfather used to work in Goshen at the cement plant.  There was a cement plant in Goshen my grandpa used to work in. 
 
Chewning:  Oh.  And this is your father’s father? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, my father’s father.  And my daddy worked at the cement plant sometime.  See my dad and my mother come from Goshen.   
 
Chewning:  Oh they did? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah.  My mother come from Fordwick right there below Craigsville.  My mother come from Fordwick.  Just down below Craigsville.  My daddy was at the cement plant over there.  They used to work over there.   
 
Chewning:  But your grandfather – well –  
 
Stewart:  My grandfather worked over there, too.  My grandfather had a Model T.  He drove a Model T back and forth. 
 
Chewning:  So, were your parents the first people that you’re related to who lived in Brownsburg?  Who actually – or did your great, great-grandfather live in Brownsburg?   
 
Stewart:  We all lived in Brownsburg.   
 
Chewning:  Okay. 
 
Stewart:  We all lived in Brownsburg. 
 
Chewning:  So they lived in Brownsburg but worked out in Goshen? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah.  They worked in Goshen.  They drove back and forth to till the cement plants closed. 
 
Chewning:  That’s a pretty long drive. 
 
Stewart:  Yes.  Uh huh.  When it closed.  Yeah, they had a Model T, used to drive the Model T back and forth until it closed.  And when it closed, well they didn’t have no work to do.  So they had to come back and go back to farming. 
 
Chewning:  Oh, I see. 
 
Stewart:  Work on the farm. 
 
Chewning:  When did the cement plant close? 
 
Stewart:  I don’t know what date, or what year it closed, but I knew it closed.  And they had to come back and work on the farms.  And they worked for – they lost a lot of money.  I mean, cause they had to come back and work for two dollars on the farm.  That was ten hours. 
 
Chewning:  Had they made a lot of money – 
 
Stewart:  They made a lot of money up there at the plant.  They made right good money up there.  See they paid – 
 
Chewning:  Two dollars a day is hard when you have ten kids. 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, it is that.  Yeah.  See, we lost a lot of money.  Cause I think they were making anywhere from five to six dollars a day up there, and they had to come back and work for two dollars a day.  Ten hours.  They only worked eight hours at the cement plant.   
 
Chewning:  Was this during the Depression? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, it was right after the Depression.  Right after the Depression.  See, the Depression was back in the ‘20’s and the ‘30’s.   
 
Chewning:  Right.  And this was right after that? 
 
Stewart:  Right after the Depression, yeah.  Well, I’m happy.  I went through a whole lot, but I’m happy. 
 
Chewning:  Did you like your school?  Did you like going to school? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, I liked going to school.  I mean, I wasn’t classified with the rest of the kids cause I didn’t have no clothes to wear.  My shoes – I had to wear pasteboard.  Take an old box and cut the pasteboard out and put it in the bottom of my tennis shoe.  At that time all we could afford to get was little old tennis shoes.  We weren’t classified with the rest of the kids, but they were kind of neat and well dressed.  You know what I mean.  They brought their lunch and had plenty to eat.  We didn’t have that, but I’m still happy.  The Lord took care of me.  I’m still happy.  And just like here today.  We take things for granted sometime.  Sometime we really want stuff we don’t need. 
 
Chewning:  That’s right. 
 
Stewart:  It’s not beneficial to us.  I’ll tell you the fact.  You want stuff sometimes you really don’t need, you don’t use it.  And most of the time, it’s a waste of money.  And what I do, anything anybody gives me that I can’t use, if it’s in good condition, I pass it on to somebody else.  I never let nothing go to waste. 
 
Chewning:  That’s a good way to be. 
 
Stewart:  And I think there’s nobody like my community.  I got a good community.  Mary Lou Gordon, she lives in the next house [6370 Middlebrook Road].  My sister-in-law lives right here.  That’s my sister-in-law.  Mary Lou lives right up there.  That’s where I told you 
C.H. [Gordon] used to live.  He passed away.  But anyhow, I have good friends.  They all think a lot of me.  And if I’m in need, we’re all in need.  We help one another.  We’re not selfish, we love one another.  Regardless of what race they be.  And I’m always willing to sacrifice myself to help somebody else.  Don’t many people think about that now.  Long as they get what they want, they would say, “Heck with you.”  You understand what I mean?  “Heck with you.”  Long as they get what they want.  And most people get it anyway they can.  Steal it.  Or lying, or cheating.  I don’t believe in that.  I believe in being honest with every little thing. 
 
Chewning:  That’s what I think is good about living here.  I think most people are like that. 
 
Stewart:  Uh huh.  Yeah, we’re like that in the community.  But now we’ve got crime that’s come in our community because people are moving out of them cities and bringing the crime with them.  Understand?  Kids bring that with them.  I don’t say everybody does.  But we’ve got people that have moved out of towns like D.C., Maryland, and New York.  They’re coming to the country.  It used to be the city.  We didn’t have all that.  But we got it right at home right now.  So we don’t have to go to the city.  To buy.  But we don’t have no problem with crime.  We have the police go through there once in a while to check.  I’m a night watchman.  I’m a night watchman.  I’ve got a block that I’ve got to take care of, too.  My block is down here about a mile.  Each one of us got a mile.  My sister-in-law’s got a mile; I’ve got a mile.  Different ones in the community got a mile.  We watch for your house.  We go by your walk, or drive by, and if we see any cars setting there we think not supposed to be there, you know, we can take their license number and call the Sheriff’s Department.  But we don’t make no arrests.  We just call the Sheriff’s Department.  We don’t take the law into our hands.   
 
Chewning:  Did you go to Asbury Church when you were growing up? 
 
Stewart:  When I was growing up, yeah.  I’ll tell you who my Sunday School teacher was.  She was a Potter.  Esther Potter.  Better know her.  Esther Potter was my Sunday School teacher.  She was white. 
 
Chewning:  Did she live in Brownsburg? 
 
Stewart:  She lived right over from where [2610 Brownsburg Turnpike] -- 
 
Chewning:  And she was white? 
 
Stewart:  She was white, yeah.  Esther Potter.  I remember when I was little, she used to bring me a cracker every Sunday morning.  To eat.  With peanut butter on it.  Every morning, she’d pack me some crackers.  And bring it just for me.  With peanut butter.  I’ll never forget. 
 
Chewning:  [Laugh]  You must have been good in Sunday School then! 
 
Stewart:  Yeah!  I was good to her.  I didn’t make no racket.  I didn’t jump up.  I didn’t make no fuss.  I stayed quiet.  And when she teached us Sunday School, you didn’t have to tell me to sit down or nothing like that cause I – all the time she teached Sunday School, she had her arm around me. 
 
Chewning:  Aah. 
 
Stewart:  Yeah!   
 
Chewning:  You were her favorite? 
 
Stewart:  I was her favorite, that’s right!  [Laugh]  I sure was.  She lived right beside Louis Brown right across the road there where them people living in now.  Yeah.  She taught Sunday School for us every Sunday.  Ask Betty – no, Betty wouldn’t know, cause she wouldn’t be old enough.  Betty wouldn’t know.  She wouldn’t be old enough.  And at that time, we had a lot of Black people in the church up there.  The older people that some I knew, some I didn’t know, but mostly they were Franklins and Haliburtons and Browns and 
Moore – Piz Moore’s family.  Shoultz.  Why Lord, there was a big bunch of Black people in Brownsburg then.  We had a church full.  And I remember back there then, them old women used to wear a black dress.  Long black dress, and they had high shoes like them here [points to his ankle boots].  [Cough]  But they come up to about here.  I don’t know what you would call them in this day now, but they were kind of like them shoes there [points to his boots again].   
 
Chewning:  Did they lace up? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, they laced up.  Yes ma’am.  They laced up.  And I’ll tell you, them people could sing.  And they could pray, they could sing, they’d give good testimony.  And that was a wonderful Lord.  I’ll tell you, the Lord was in that church! 
 
Chewning:  I loved – I used to love to hear Dan Franklin sing. 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, and Dan Franklin’s the one that did my house right here.   
 
Chewning:  Oh, he did? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah.  Dan, yeah.  Of course he had to get some help, but Dan Franklin’s the one that built this house right here.  This is the first house he ever built in his life.   
 
Chewning:  He did a good job, it looks like. 
 
Stewart:  This was the first house he ever laid a foundation and took charge of himself.  He always had a man that done all of that, he helped the other fellow.  But he built this house on his own.   
 
Chewning:  How old is it? 
 
Stewart:  This house was ’89.  It was built in 1989.  When we had that big flood there, back there [referring, most likely, to Hurricane Camille in 1969]. 
 
Chewning:  Oh, right. 
 
Stewart:  And I had a foundation.  The foundation was up, and I remember water got inside of the foundation.  They had blocks up, you know ready to lay the joists for the floor.  And water got – about three foot of water got in there.  I had to get a pump and pump it out.  That’s where the water run in off the ground surface, you know.  Run in, you know.  And I had to get a pump.  Got me a water pump and pumped it out.  Yeah, Dan built that house.  Him and two more men built it. 
 
Chewning:  So you only lived here for a year before your wife died [in 1990]? 
 
Stewart:  Oh, I lived here – no, honey, I lived here – I reckon my wife died in 1990.  We lived here about 20 years. 
 
Chewning:  So what year did he build it?  ’69? 
 
Stewart:  ’89.  ’89.  ’89.  I worked for the Highway Department when we built it.  Dan built it in ’89.  And then she died the next year in 1990? 
 
Chewning:  That’s only a year that she lived in this house then? 
 
Stewart:  Let me see.  I might be wrong there.  My wife died in 1990.  We built that house in --  no, no, we had another house.   We lived in the old house down there that we tore down.  That’s where we lived!  We didn’t live in here, we lived in there!  This house was built in 1989, and we lived in an old two-room house down there.  No lights, no water.  I had an old cream can – milk can.  I used to haul water from Cold Spring up there.  When in the evening I came from the Highway Department – I had an old ’56 Ford pickup truck.  Your daddy [Madison McClung Sterrett, Jr.] knows about it.  He see me every morning go by.  ‘Cause he 
told me one morning, he said, “You’re the time clock.”  Say “You right on time every morning.”  He used to run a dairy farm.  He was milking.  I’d go by there in the morning about 7:30.  Cause I had to be to work by 8:30.  And say, “You the time clock.  You’re never late.  Always on time.”  Say “I could go to bed by you – get up by you.”  [Laugh] 
 
[Phone rings.  Tape stops for phone conversation.] 
 
Chewning:  Who do you remember?  What people stand out in your memory from Brownsburg? 
 
Stewart:  What people stand out in my memory of Brownsburg?  Well, all the Franklins, the Franklin family.  The Shoultz family.   
 
Chewning:  Where did the Shoultz’s live? 
 
Stewart:  They lived – they moved out of Brownsburg.  They don’t live in Brownsburg. 
 
Chewning:  Where did they use to live when you were there? 
 
Stewart:  When they used to live there?  They used to live around there up above Lewis Swisher [1501 Dry Hollow Road].   
 
Chewning:  Oh, okay, where you said the Black – 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, yeah, where all the Black people used to live there.  Yeah, they lived in a house around there.  John Runkle bought their place [1054 Dry Hollow Road].  The one I told you ran the garage in Brownsburg?  He bought their place.  We all Black up on that road – on [Route] 729 [Dry Hollow Road].  Where Lewis Swisher built that house [1501 Dry Hollow Road] , that used to belong to Black people.  I’ve told you that.  That used to belong to the Shoultz’s.  There were some Blacks in Brownsburg.  Right in the community of 
Brownsburg.  There was Piz Moore, Ag Moore .  Ag Moore way up the road there where they got that sign that says “Ruritan” [just south of 2610 Brownsburg Turnpike]. 
 
Chewning:  Oh, the Ruritan Club? 
 
Stewart:  There were two houses there.  There was a Harris place there, and it was a Moore place there.  Ag Moore’s house was there.  And it was Rupert Harris.  And both houses were torn down.  I think Mr. Heslep tore them down.  Or the Ruritan Club tore them down.  I think that was the houses.  And they got the land also.  Far as I know, they got the land.  Well they were right down below Glasgow Craney.  Now there was a Craney in Brownsburg, too.  Glasgow Craney.  I know you knew Frances Craney. 
 
Chewning:  Right. 
 
Stewart:  She was a Porterfield. 
 
Chewning:  Um hmm.  Mrs. Porterfield.   
 
Stewart:  But they were separated.  Charles still lives up in the pastor’s house [29 Academy Alley].  But she lived in the home – down there where her daddy and mother used to live [2650 Brownsburg Turnpike].   
 
Chewning:  That was the pastor’s house for the church? 
 
Stewart:  That’s the pastor’s house for the church.  And I don’t know how Charles – I think he bought it off the church.  I think he did.  I don’t know if he ever got a deed for it or not.  Somebody told me back there some time ago he drilled a well, but he never did have no deed for the house.  They wouldn’t give him no deed.  That was the pastor’s house there, where the preacher used to live for the church in Brownsburg. 
 
Chewning:  Do you remember what the preachers’ names were?    
 
Stewart:  Well there were so many that were there and gone, I don’t know, ma’am.  I do remember one.  I believe he was a – what was his name now?  I used to play with his son all the time on Sunday morning.  What was his name?  I believe he was a – I believe he was a Brown, I believe he was.  I’m almost sure he was.  I was kind of small.  It’s hard for me to remember way back there then.  I used to play with his son all the time.   His son’s name was Rufus [??].  I remember that.  But I can’t think what his daddy’s name was.  What the last name was.  But I knew three or four have been in there since I came away from Brownsburg.  Well, I’ve been to three or four churches since I lived in Brownsburg.  I go to church down here now:  Oak Hill Baptist Church.  We lost our pastor, too.  He’s been dead about two years now.  But his son married my daughter, now he preaches up there.   
 
Chewning:  Oh, which daughter? 
 
Stewart:  Reba.  She lives right up the road there. 
 
Chewning:  And she’s named after your wife? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah.  She’s named Reba, yeah.  She lives right up the road on the [Hogshead ??] farm.  It’s a big farm up there before you get to the bridge.  You come right by it.  It’s a big white house sits on the right-hand going back.  It’s a little house right behind the big white house, she used to live right there.  But she got married.  She don’t stay up there half the time.  She come up there to clean the house for Mrs. – I can’t think of her name.  But she comes up there to clean the house and mow the grass.  And she lives up there.  She hasn’t moved yet.  She stays with her husband most of the time in Cedar Green.   
 
Chewning:  What do you remember about World War II?  What it was like. 
 
Stewart:  Well ma’am, World War II, everything was book stamps.  You had so much gas; I believe it was five gallons a week.  All the gasoline you could get.  And automobile tires for an old Model A, you couldn’t get them.  Everything – they gave you a book.  A stamp book.  
And they had a date, the day that you could go get that stuff, gasoline.  I believe they would sell you a tire, but you had to have that book to get them. 
 
Chewning:  Were you about 12 or 13 years old? 
 
Stewart:  I was about – back in that day, I would say I was about 12.  Ten or 12, somewhere along there. 
 
Chewning:  Did you know anybody who was in the Military?  Who fought in World War II?  Any of your relatives? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah!  Yeah!  Lum [??] Brown’s son, the one they called Glasgow Brown.  Both of them, Gene Brown and Glasgow Brown, both of them are dead now.  Yeah, they fought in World War II.  And his daddy used to work for Mr. Sterrett.  Helped Mr. Sterrett on the farm up there.  His name was Glasgow Brown.  He was in World War II.  As far as I know, he was in transportation, he was overseas.  And that’s back when Germany – in World War II, that’s when everybody was fighting.  Germans, Russians, United States, Philippines and all.  And I understand he drove a truck hauling ammunition and supplies to the front line.  Course his daddy worked for Mr. Sterrett.  Glasgow Brown.  And after he come home, he lived right in a little house; they’ve torn the old house down now.  Cash, Dick Cash bought that.  Bought the land, I think.  He’s dead, too.  Dick Cash is dead.  Now, I know you know Dick Cash, now. 
 
Chewning:  Um hmm. 
 
Stewart:  And he bought the land and tore the old house down.  All that used to be Black people down along there.  Wasn’t no whites there.  Well, there was one white.  It was a Snider who used to live there at one time or another.  And the house that Snider – Cash tore it down, too.  So all Black were living down there then.  It was a lot of people that I knew went to World War II.  Some come back, and some didn’t come back.  I used to work for Will East, down on the creek down there [Breezy Hill at 1223 Hays Creek Road].  They were the ones that had that great, big old nice house.  Will East.  East Place.  But anyhow, I used to 
help her some on the lawn.  I was about 12 or 13.  She used to come and get me.  I was living in Brownsburg.  Yeah.  And they used to come and get me.  And I used to go out there and mop the floor, and sweep the floor.  You had to take your shoes off.  They had a little back porch.  They didn’t allow you to wear your shoes in the house.  You had to take them off and set them on the pavement, and just wear your socks – just leave your socks on.  That was for all people, not only for the Blacks.  That was for everybody that worked down there.  Even her husband.  He couldn’t wear his shoes.  Now she had a son that was sunk in the Marines.  I forgot his name.   
 
Chewning:  I think it was George. 
 
Stewart:  George was his name? 
 
Chewning:  Does that sound right? 
 
Stewart:  That could be right.  I don’t know what his name was, but I know it was a submarine.  The Germans sunk the submarine, and they lost him.  And she was going to church out there at New Providence, and she quit going to church.  She said the Lord should not have took her son.  And she quit going to church, got mad at the good Lord and I don’t know if she moved her membership, what she did.  But she quit going to church.  That was that.  Him and her both.  Cause they lost their son, and the Lord didn’t protect.  Why, I’ve told many people, I said, “The Lord took a whole lot down with him, not only him.”  I say, “Everyone on that submarine was lost.”  That was back in the late – ’39 or ’40, somewhere along in there.   
 
Chewning:  So you did some work for her? 
 
Stewart:  I done some work for his mother.  I done some work for her, yeah. 
 
Chewning:  And you said you were living in Brownsburg then? 
 
Stewart:  I was living in Brownsburg. 
 
Chewning:  When did you move into Brownsburg from the house on [Route] 729 [Dry Hollow Road]? 
 
Stewart:  When did I move in there?  After my daddy died in 1945.  I just was a young fellow then.  1945 I moved in down there.   Where my sister lives at. 
 
Chewning:  How old was he when he died?  
 
Stewart:  My daddy was a young man.  He wasn’t nothing but 59.   
 
Chewning:  Oh, that is young. 
 
Stewart:  He died with the TB. 
 
Chewning:  Oh, really? 
 
Stewart:  Back there then, there was so much TB going on.  You don’t remember that, cause you weren’t old enough. 
 
Chewning:  I remember a little about – 
 
Stewart:  They used to call it “two double buffalo” what they used to call it.  TB. 
 
Chewning:  Two double – 
 
Stewart:  Two double buffalo, what they used to call it.  TB.  It wasn’t nothing but TB, that’s all it was, it’s the name they called it.  You know what that is?  That gets in your lungs.  Eats your lungs up.  Just like smoking.  Yeah. 
 
Chewning:  59, that was young.  How did your mother support herself after he died? 
 
Stewart:  We did!  The kids.  I was 16 – I went to work for the State when I was 16.   
 
Chewning:  What did you do? 
 
Stewart:  Done man’s work!  Done a man’s job.  I was just as big as I am now, just about.  What I did?  Leroy, wasn’t but four of us.  Leroy and myself and Mr. [Lyle] Norcross – I followed the motor grader.  At that time they scraped them old dirt roads, you’d go around there behind the motor grader and pick the rocks out.  They cleaned the pipes – the ends of the pipes out. They don’t do that anymore.  It’s a different thing.  Clean ditches.  With an old scoop.  They used to call it turtleback [??].  Had an old scoop.  That’s all you had.  And we used to clean ditches from Brownsburg clear to Lexington on both sides of the highway.  [Route] 39.  That was one of the main roads, back there then was [Route] 39 and [Route] 252.  Cause we did not have interstates.  Now all our money is going to repair interstates.  That’s why we don’t have too good primary roads.  Or secondary roads.  We don’t have that good anymore because they spend too much money on them interstates.  
 
Chewning:  You worked for Mr. Norcross? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, worked there for about twenty-some years.                            
 
Chewning:  Then when did you go in the Military? 
 
Stewart:  1949.  I was working for the State when I went to the Military. 
 
Chewning:  Were you drafted, or did you sign up? 
 
Stewart:  I enlisted.  I enlisted.  I’ll tell you the woman that used to be on the Board there in Lexington.  I had a friend of mine – me and him went in at the same time.  I said, “We ain’t making no money.  Thirteen dollars a week.  We could make more than that in the Army.  
Let’s go in the Army.”   He said, “Well, how we going to get there?”  I was 18.  I said, “We’ll go up there and volunteer.”   We went up to Lexington, up there at the Board up there and volunteered.  And in a week or two, they called us to come to Roanoke.   
 
Chewning:  When then did you go to training? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, yeah.  I went to training.  I went there in Roanoke and processed.  And went to training in Camp Breckenridge [??] Kentucky.  It used to be the old 1st Airborne.  Camp Breckenridge, Kentucky.  It used to be the old 1st Airborne. 
 
Chewning:  And was the Army segregated? 
 
Stewart:  Yes!  Now you’re hitting it on a nail, now. 
 
Chewning:  Uh oh.    
 
Stewart:  Now you’ve done hit it right on a nail, now.  All Blacks. 
 
Chewning:  So everybody – 
 
Stewart:  Everybody was Black in your quarters, in your camp.  Everybody was Black.  The Sergeant was Black.  The Training Officer was Black.  Everybody was Black.  Now desegregation in the Army – they started mixing them up in 1952.   
 
Chewning:  Were you still – 
 
Stewart:  I was overseas, I was in the Army.  I was overseas in Korea.  I was over there then, in Japan.  I was in Transportation, and they started mixing them up.  They decided the whites to mix with us in 1952 or somewhere along in there.  And after that, they started mixing them up all the way around through the world.  Each camp was started mixing.  And before I came out, they really were mixed.  You had half white and half Black.  See, you only stayed over 
there if you got three points a month over there.  If you were on the battlefield, you got three points a month.  Back behind the rear echelon, you only got two points a month.  And I got three points a month because I was hauling ammunitions to the front lines.  And I hauled ammunition for 18 months, and they ran short of military police.  And they sent me to a RTC school to train to be a Military Police.  So I went to school for eight weeks, and came out as a Military Police.  And what I did then, I got clear out of Transportation, I went into another branch of the service.  And all I done then was check the checkpoints.  They called it a checkpoint where the trucks are coming in and going out.  And you had to check them out, in and out.  You had a book there, and it had each number of the truck on your pad – on your book, just like you’ve got.  And you had to read that number on the license plate and make sure didn’t no spy come in on you.  Cause see, we had ammo dumps.  We had a lot of ammo dumps.  And that’s the first thing that they were looking for:  large supply lines, ammo dumps, and clothes [??], and gasoline.  Now that’s what the enemy was looking for to blow up.  So we had to be very particular about who was going in and who was going out.  It’s what you called a “checkpoint.”  You checked them, you checked them out.  And you had to do that seven days a week.  Wasn’t no Saturday – well, it was Saturday and Sunday, but you didn’t get them off.  You worked a 12-hour shift.  You worked one week night-shift and somebody else would replace you.  And you worked one week day-shift.  While you were working on day-shift, somebody else would work on night-shift.  And when you’d get off day-shift – just like police officer – like a State Trooper does.  They’ve got three shifts on State Troopers.  You’ve got a – I think you’ve got three – how is that now?  You’ve got seven to three, I think.  And three to twelve.  And I think you’ve got twelve to seven in the morning.  I think that’s what you’ve got.   
 
Chewning:  That sounds about right. 
 
Stewart:  I hit pretty close to it.  That’s what you’ve got for a State Trooper.  And the Sheriff’s Department, they’re a little bit different.  I think they work eight hours, but they’ve gotta work night shifts sometimes.  Swinging around and work night-shifts sometimes.  And the Sheriff can live in his community and be a Sheriff – and work for the Sheriff’s 
Department.  But a State Trooper cannot live in a community – unless they’ve done changed it – and be a Trooper.  He’s got to get out of his community where he was born at.  See? 
 
Chewning:  I see. 
 
Stewart:  See, now, my son was born in Augusta County.  He cannot work in Augusta County.  He can work in Augusta County, but he can’t live in Augusta County.  He’s got to live in Rockingham County, or Rockbridge County, or Alleghany County, or Bath County.  Understand what I mean?   
 
Chewning:  Um hmm. 
 
Stewart:  Cannot live in the same county.  But the Sheriff can.  Now what else you asking me something about? 
 
Chewning:  You were talking about Military Police.  About your time being in the Military Police.   
 
Stewart:  Oh, yeah.  I liked it, yeah.  You had the [laugh] you couldn’t go to sleep.  I mean, how can I put that now?  You had to pay attention to what you were doing, and believe what you were doing, and you couldn’t trust anybody.  You couldn’t trust anybody.  You had to make sure that you’re doing what the book called for.  You couldn’t not obey.  You had to obey your orders.  Let’s put it that way.  Cause they always – they’d give us an order not to do that, then nobody would do that.  We had pride about it.  We had to obey them.  And if you can’t take orders, you can’t give orders.  And that’s what I had to do.  I had to obey all orders that come in for the checkpoint.  Cause we always got somebody over top of you.  You ain’t the boss! 
 
Chewning:  Not in the Military! 
 
Stewart:  You’re not the boss.  You’re not no boss.  The only way you’re going to be the boss is if they make you the boss over something.  But if you work under somebody, you shouldn’t cry about what he say.  If you do what he say, if he wrong in checkout, you’d say, “Well, I thought you were wrong in checkout, I’ll have to check on that.  I think you’re wrong about that.”  I’d straighten that out. 
 
[End of Tape 1, Side A.] 
 
Stewart:  But you know, even though we had segregation and all that, didn’t none of that go on in Brownsburg.  We were good to one another.  We got along good.  You might have had a few people who might call you a name or something like, but you still get there.  So we didn’t have no problem. 
 
Chewning:  It just, you know, it’s just hard for me to understand how you lived together, you lived next to each other, and then you had to go to different schools – 
 
Stewart:  Well ma’am, let me tell you something.  It wasn’t – it wasn’t the people that lived in your community wanted that.  But they had to do that, cause their own color wouldn’t fool with them if they didn’t do it.  Understand what I mean?  Say you’re white.  Okay, you got a next-door neighbor.  Okay?  I’m Black, right?  If I come eat with you, if your next-door neighbor see that, they’re going to get angry at you.  Get mad at you.  They probably wouldn’t speak to you.  Understand what I mean?  I wasn’t all the people, the white people or the Black people doing that.  It’s cause they had to do it to keep their own color together with one another.  Understand what I mean?  They couldn’t get out of their place.  They had to stay in their place.  It wasn’t the whites.  They didn’t want to do it no more than the Blacks wanted to do it.   
 
Chewning:  What do you think made it change? 
 
Stewart:  What made it change, honey?  Only way we ever got that changed, it was blood shed by the Black people.  They had to shed blood and let the whites know we weren’t going 
to be pushed around.  We were human beings.  And not the color of our skin didn’t make no difference.  The Lord made us all.  And I think we should have just as much rights as the whites had.  And they’ve taken all our rights.  And when the President, they shot him cause he freed the slaves.  We used to be slaves for the whites.  They used to sell us.  Buy us and sell us.  Not me, but other generations.  Older people.  They bought them and sold them.  They brought them over here – we didn’t come over here on our own.  The white people brought us over on a ship.  Smuggled us over in there, just like they do dope today, smuggle dope over here.  They smuggled us over here.  And they brought us here.  They didn’t allow us to go to school.  We couldn’t go to school.  They didn’t allow us to go to school.  The whites didn’t allow no school for the Blacks.  Understand what I mean?  We didn’t have no freedom.  The whites had taken all our freedom from us. 
 
Chewning:  Did your grandparents remember that? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah!  Yeah!  My great-grandparent was a slave.  My great-grandpa was a slave.  The slaves – would take all the Black men that were strong and healthy and buy them.  They sold them on a stump or block.  A big block of wood.  A big tree they cut down with a – you know where they cut and leave a stump there?  They sold them on the stump for twenty-five cents apiece, or fifty cents a pair.  That means two, a pair.  Just like they do horses, right today.  They sold them for twenty-five cents.  And when they buy them, they worked them on a farm, plantation, whatever they had.  Picked fruit.  The wife would have to go clean the house for the whites.  I mean, after they buy you, you belong to them.  You didn’t have no say-so.  Once they’d buy you, you couldn’t go work for nobody else.  You had to work for them.  You didn’t have no freedom.  There wasn’t no freedom.  Alright.  What set that off was the Martin Luther King march.  Now I know you know something about that. 
 
Chewning:  Oh yeah. 
 
Stewart:  That was back in the sixties.  It was some blood shed.  I know some people lost their lives.  Martin Luther King lost his.  And the only reason they killed him, they didn’t want no changes made.  They wanted it to stay like it was.  Let the Blacks be last.  Not 
second, not first, not second, not third.  Be last.  And he marched peacefully.  He didn’t go with no gun.  He didn’t go with no knife.  The good Lord protected him, and let him get everything free for his people, for your people, too.  Not all my people, your people, too.  Both sides.  And the whites, all the time they were marching, they brought the State Troopers in there.  Cause the bridge they were going to march across – I know you know all about that now, don’t tell me you don’t.  They blocked the bridge to keep from going into [cough] Alabama.  I believe it was Alabama they were going in to.  Excuse me.  And at that time, you couldn’t vote.  See, Black people couldn’t go to the polls and vote.  And what the Blacks wanted to do was go to the courthouse and get the Governor to sign it so they could vote, just like the white can.  And they had to fight to get that done.  Understand what I mean?  They burned churches.  The Black churches, the Ku Klux Klan.  I don’t know if you know anything about them or not.  They called it the Klan.  The Ku Klux Klan.  The white people wore them old things over their heads.  Doing anything to the Blacks.  Back there then, I couldn’t touch you.  I couldn’t touch you.  I couldn’t even look.  If I see you coming down the street, I couldn’t look at you.  I had to turn my head.  If someone white see me look at you, they would take me up, and not only public would have done – the Sheriff’s Department would come and get me and hang me up on a pole.  And kill me.  Break my neck.  Put a rope around my neck and hang me.  And every time – we had to call Prince Albert Tobacco – [unintelligible] we had to call – I smoked a pipe then.  When I wanted a box of Prince Albert Tobacco, I’d go down to Alabama, Georgia, down around there anywhere.  Anywhere in the United States, I had to call it Mister Prince Albert.  Only way I could get a box of tobacco is Mister Prince Albert.  You know the reason why?   
 
Chewning:  Why? 
 
Stewart:  Because it had a white man on the box.  It had a white man on the box.  The design on the box was white.  You think I’m lying, ask your dad, he’ll tell you.  He remembers that.  We had to call it Mister Prince Albert Tobacco.  You’d come in the front door there [points], my door was over here.  They had a water fountain for whites only.  Whites.  On the sign, you’d better be able to read:  “Whites Only.”  “Negro Only.”  I had my own water fountain, 
you had your own water fountain.  That was at the parks, anywhere you’d go.  [??], parks, you were segregated completely. 
 
Chewning:  When the Army first started integrating, did it go smoothly?  Was it smooth, or – 
 
Stewart:  Yeah.  It helped us considerably.  It went – we didn’t have no riots.  I’ll tell you, it was just like brothers and sisters to me.  They were nice.  They didn’t come in there to hate us.  It wasn’t the young people that were doing it noway.  It was the older people that set them up, that were pushing them to do it.  Maybe their daddies, and their mothers, and their grandmas and their grandfathers.  They’re the ones that put the hate in their kids.  They’d say, “That’s a Black family over there.  I don’t want to catch you over there playing with their kids.”  Now they’d put it that way:  “Them niggers over there, I don’t want you over there playing with them nigger kids.”  I’m going to put it that way.  That’s just the very word they’d say.   “Don’t go over there and mess with them niggers.”  I heard them say it too many times.  Understand?  It wasn’t the kids that were coming up.  It was the people that learned them to have that hate.  I don’t know whether your mother ever learned you to do that or not.  To have hate for the Black people. 
 
Chewning:  No.   
 
Stewart:  Okay.  Okay then.  It wasn’t the kids.  It wasn’t the kids.  I can’t hold the kids responsible for that.  I have to hold the grown people that were teaching that stuff.  Not to associate.  I can’t get mad at you.  I can’t get mad at you, no.  You didn’t do nothing to me.  I don’t know nothing about you.  You don’t do nothing to me.  I can’t get mad at you.  What’s done been done, has done been done.  The old people done it.   They the ones gotta pay for it, not me.  They gotta answer for what wrong they done.  Not me.  I don’t worry nothing about it.   
 
Chewning:  What else do I need to ask you?  You mentioned a little bit about some of the businesses that you remembered in Brownsburg.        
 
Stewart:  Oh yeah!  Yeah!  I remember that. 
 
Chewning:  Could you tell me a little bit more about those? 
 
Stewart:  I remember real well about that, now. 
 
Chewning:  If you were going to go to a store, where did you go? 
 
Stewart:  I went to Mr. Bob Supinger’s.  That’s where I used to deal at.  Mr. Whipple, Fred Whipple’s daddy, used to own a store right there where Bob Supinger rented the store right there.  Right across from where they’ve got the antique shop at [8 Hays Creek Road].  That’s where I dealed at.  And we used to get it on time.  And back there then, they only had the machine that – adding machine, I’ll call it.  They didn’t have no computer, nothing like that.  And what they did, whenever you’d get something on time, they had a book.  A big book and he’d write in there how much you, how much you owed him.  After he’d count up, he’d tell you how much you owed him, and he’d put it on that book there, if you wanted to charge.  And that’s where I dealed at. 
 
Chewning:  Then you’d come back in later and pay for it, when you had the money? 
 
Stewart:  You’d pay for it – you could pay for it once every month.  The first of the month, you’d pay the whole bill off, and you could start on a new bill, if you wanted.  You could keep adding on to the bill just as long as he’d let you have the stuff, what you wanted.  You could get it how you wanted.  A hundred dollars, or two hundred.  John Layton [Whitesell] was the same way.  Hundred dollars, or fifty dollars.  You’d just buy what you wanted, and the end of the month come, you’d go in there and pay up.  Then you could start over again.  He never did push me, but I never were late.  When the first of the month comes – I’d pay up sometimes before the first of the month.  I kept him paid up so I’d have some where to go to get what I needed.   If you don’t pay your bill, you don’t get nothing most of the time now.  That’s just like anything you buy.  Now take that new car out there.  I know you gotta pay for 
yours though.  But if you get three hundred – three payments behind on that new car, they’re going to be calling you.  Huh? 
 
Chewning:  Right. 
 
Stewart:  They’re going to want to know when you’re going to make that payment.  That ain’t only the car, too.  Ain’t like it used to be.  People don’t take a lien on you any more.   
 
Chewning:  Did you ever trade things for food? 
 
Stewart:  Yes, yes ma’am.  We used to trade eggs.  Chickens 
 
Chewning:  So you used to have chickens? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, we had chickens.  Eggs.  We had chickens in Brownsburg.  Down there below where John Layton [Whitesell] lives at, down behind him where we used to live there [Still Alley].  That’s before I got married.  Yeah, I had a lot of chickens.  I had about 200 down there.  I built me a chicken house down there.  
 
Chewning:  Oh, two hundred! 
 
Stewart:  And I had – you could trade chickens, you could sell chickens.  That’s what the farmer used to do.  I would raise – work on the farm for Miss Annie Rees [at 2315 Brownsburg Turnpike].  That was Walter Rees’ wife.  She was James [??] Buchanan’s sister.  That’s who she was.  She was Jim Buchanan’s sister and Walter Rees married her.  And I used to stay up there as a boy, and went to school – walked to school sometimes from up there down to our school we were telling you about.  Down there at the lower end of Brownsburg [in the vicinity of Old School Lane]?  And she used to bring me to school sometimes.  And I used to stay up there at night and milk the cow in the morning.  Get up in the morning before I get ready for school.  She got me ready for school.  And I’d milk the cow.  They had two milk cows.  What was that cow’s name?  Sue?  And Ginny [??] , I 
believe it was.  I milked the two cows.   And I had to churn the milk before I went to school that morning.  And I done all that errands before I went to school.  Get the wood in and put it on the porch for Mrs. Rees.  Mrs. Annie Rees, so she could – she had an old cookstove.  But anyhow, you could sell eggs.  You could sell chickens.  And back there then, they had two mills; they had Wade’s Mill out at Raphine, and they had Wade’s Mill down on the creek [803 Hays Creek Road].  It used to be Harold Wade’s mill.  They had a lot of mills all around.  And they used to trade.  Take the wheat after threshing, they’d take in trade and make flour out of it.  You could trade your wheat at the mill for so much a bushel, and they would make you so much flour.  Whatever you wanted; a hundred pounds, or fifty pounds, you could trade it.  But you don’t have nothing to trade anymore on the farm.  And the only thing you’ve got now is a few cattle and a few sheep.  You don’t have no wheat grown anymore around through here.  They’ve got wheat growing in other places but not around here.  You don’t have any barley.  You don’t have – can’t sell that anymore.  Don’t have that.  All you’ve got around through this location is corn and hay.  Yeah.  You couldn’t make a living – see, back there then, most farmers had a big family.  They didn’t have no one or two kids.  They had anywhere from ten to twelve. 
 
Chewning:  So they had a workforce. 
 
Stewart:  They had to work.  Yeah, they had to work.  Yeah.  And they had old horses.  Most poor people they worked their farm with horse and mule.  Now, I know you’ve heard your daddy talk about that! 
 
Chewning:  I remember we had a horse.  His name was Jack.  I remember plowing the garden with him. 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, right!  And when was up at Walter Rees’, I was about 12, 10 or 12, somewhere along there, I used to mow.  Had them old scythe mowers that had a seat you sat on.  Had a foot pedal where you raised the bar up or down with the handle there.  And I used to help mow the pasture field. 
 
Chewning:  With a horse? 
 
Stewart:  With the horses.  Two horses.  And Tuck Smiley used to be the hand up there.  Used to work up there at Walter Rees’.  He worked for Frank Rees.  That was Walter Rees’ brother, right across the road [[52 West Airslie Lane].  Now Heslep’s got all that now, on both sides of the road.  And I used to – when I was a boy up there, I used to – when I got off from school, I used to go up there and stay.  Cause my daddy couldn’t take care of me, there were too many of us.  We tried to get Welfare, and couldn’t get it.   
 
Chewning:  So did you live at that house? 
 
Stewart:  I told you.  I used to help Mr. Rees.  Mr. Walter Rees.  Four years somewhere along there.  Till I got old enough to go to the Highway Department.  Then I went to the State and got me a job.  Wasn’t nothing [unintelligible].  See, the State garage used to be right up above that farm.   
 
Chewning:  Oh, it did? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, right across the road there.  You know where all them old big trees are at? 
 
Chewning:  Uh huh. 
 
Stewart:  Yeah.  We used to park right along the road there.  That used to be the State garage.  It was down at the lower end of Brownsburg, down at old man Fin Patterson’s – Frank Patterson [Old School Lane].  Then they moved it on the upper end of Brownsburg.  That’s where I used to come – that was the Headquarters I used to work out of.  That was back there in the ‘40’s.  I went to work for the State in 1947.   
 
Chewning:  How long did your mother live? 
 
Stewart:  My mother lived down near – John Layton Whitesell and Mrs. Whitesell were awful good to my mother.  I’ll tell you they were.  They were wonderful people to Mama.  She lived down there – I’ll say Mama lived down there about twenty-some years.  Down there where Leroy lives right now [Still Alley].  
 
Chewning:  When did she die? 
 
Stewart:  Back in ’88.  She died in ’86 or ’88 somewhere along there I think was when she passed away.  Her name was Gladys Stewart.  The man who used to stay with her that I think was boyfriend used to be Rufus Harris.  She used to look after him, he got all crippled up with the rheumatism and bursitis.  And she had to carry him around and took care of him, you know.  And that kind of knocked her back, too.  But anyhow, Mama was eighty-some years old, 82 when she died.  I believe she was. 
 
Chewning:  How old is Leroy? 
 
Stewart:  Leroy is getting pretty close to 80 – Leroy has got to be getting close to 82 or 83.  Cause Catherine’s the same age that John Layton [Whitesell] is.  My oldest sister, Cathy, is about eighty-some, 85 or 86, something like that. 
 
Chewning:  Do you remember when the blacksmith’s shop was in Brownsburg? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, that’s gotta be back in the ‘30’s, in the ‘20’s, in the ‘40’s.  Gotta be back in the ‘40’s, cause I used to take the handsaw up there [to 2610 Brownsburg Turnpike] and get Mr. Walter Potter – his name was Walter Potter.  Get him to sharpen my handsaw for me.   
 
Chewning:  He did that for you? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah.  He’d shoe horses, too.  It was a blacksmith’s shop, you called it.  He’d shoe horses, and he’d sharpen handsaws, and he’d make stuff for you.   
 
Chewning:  He was pretty good at it? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, pretty good at it.  He was a good old gentleman, I liked him.  He had a wonderful wife, she was a good woman.    
 
Chewning:  What was her name? 
 
Stewart:  Esther.  Esther.  They called her Esther.  But I think she was a – before she married him – 
 
Chewning:  And they lived in the house where Mrs. Beverage lives now? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah right, that was the home place.  That’s where they raised a family at.  That’s where Esther Potter used to live that taught me in Sunday School.  That’s before they were married. 
 
Chewning:  I see.  Uh huh. 
 
Stewart:  That’s before they married.  Esther, Theodore, Albert, Caroline, there’s one more.  I can’t tell you her name.  After they got old enough, they moved away.  Different places.  But that’s where they were raised at.  Yeah, they done, old man Potter, that’s where he made his living at.  Off of that little shop up there.  He’d make stuff, and shoe horses.  There were a lot horses in Brownsburg then to be shoed.  Mules – he’d shoe mules.  Horses.   
 
Chewning:  Did you like working with the horses? 
 
Stewart:  Well, I never did work with the horses, but I used to watch him shoe them.  What he’d do, he had to beat iron.  He had a big wooden post in the ground, and he’d take a horse and he had a bridle, you know, a lead line you’d wrap around there and get behind them, you know.  Rear their feet up, ever which one they’re going to shoe first.  And he had a pair of pliers, long pliers that had a clipper on the end of them.  And he’d cut them old nails off, and 
the whole shoe would fall off.  Some didn’t have shoes on it, but some of them shoes on them.  And the ones that didn’t have shoes on them, their feet would get pretty [??].  Their hind and front feet would get like this.  [Demonstrates.]  And you had to take a knife and trim it.  Around like this.  [Demonstrates.]  And take the clipper and clip their nail – the hoof they called it.  Trim that old stuff off, then scrape it in the middle of the hoof, you know.  [Demonstrates.]  Scrape it.  And get all the old rough stuff, the dirt out of it before they put new shoes on. 
 
Chewning:  I still find a lot of horseshoes around in the yard. 
 
Stewart:  Yeah.  Yeah.  Uh huh.  Do you sure enough?   
 
Chewning:  Um hmm. 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, out there at your place where you live at.  See, back there then, all we had were horses.  There weren’t all them machines.  I think your grandpa only had one tractor.  It was a Ford Ferguson, I believe it was.  One little tractor I think is all your grandpa had back there then.  See, your grandpa had to go to CC [Civilian Conservation Corps] camp to help pay for that farm. 
 
Chewning:  Right. 
 
Stewart:  And that old Black guy, Dude [William] Haliburton, ran the farm while he was gone.  Cause Little Mc [Madison McClung Sterrett, Jr.] was going to school.  Your daddy was going to school, yeah.  Right up in Brownsburg.  And Mr. Sterrett had to go to – they called it CC Camp.  And a lot of Black people had to go to CC Camp.  What they done, they built fencing, and work on the highway – dirt roads, to build roads and set fencing back and built it on the right-of-way.  Off the right-of-way.  You understand what I mean.  See, your grandpa [Madison McClung Sterrett, Sr.], your daddy – not your daddy, but your grandpa.  Cause your daddy was just like I am, he was going to school at the time, too.  Me and your daddy are about the same age.  Ain’t too much difference. 
 
Chewning:  He’s a little older than you.   
 
Stewart:  Not too much! 
 
Chewning:  He was born in ’25. 
 
Stewart:  Well, he’s just about – he’s right smart older.  He’s about ten years older than I am. 
 
Chewning:  Five or six years older, I think.  He’s 81. 
 
Stewart: Yeah, he’s older than I am.  I was born in ’31.  I’m 76, ain’t I?  76, or 75?  Going on 75 or 76?  1931.   
 
Chewning:  When’s your birthday, March?  You’re 76, I think.   
 
Stewart:  Huh? 
 
Chewning:  76, I think. 
 
Stewart:  76.  Yeah, I’m 76.  I can’t even remember my own age.  I don’t need to take time to find out my own age.  See this place here [referring to his house] used to have an old mill on it, too. 
 
Chewning:  Oh it did? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, I got a mill hanging right here [referring to a picture].  I give that mill to a woman.   
 
Chewning:  Oh, I see that picture. 
 
Stewart:  I give that mill to a woman to build a house out of.  I told you I don’t keep stuff setting around.  If I’ve got something to give somebody – 
 
Chewning:  That’s a pretty picture. 
 
Stewart:  And right here’s Helen Hartt back in Pisgah?  [Shows another picture.] 
 
Chewning:  Oh yeah, uh hmm. 
 
Stewart:  That’s the colt that I raised for her.  She broke her leg and couldn’t get out of the house, and I had to go take care of her and the farm [unintelligible].   
 
Chewning:  Oh really! 
 
Stewart:  That’s the colt.  That’s the one they called Sam.  Me and her took a picture of him back there last summer.  That’s me holding the colt there, she took a picture of me and the colt.   
 
Chewning:  So you raised that colt for her? 
 
Stewart:  I raised that thing, yeah.  And she named it after me! 
 
Chewning:  [Laugh] 
 
Stewart:  She named it after me.  That’s some of my family right there.  [Shows photograph.]  That’s my older daughter, Josephine.  That’s the one that worked down at Woodrow Wilson.  She teaches school. 
 
Chewning:  This one? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah.  That’s Josephine.  That’s me.  And this is my friend right there.  That’s her friend, she comes with her.  That’s her friend that works with her.  And this is my son-in-law that married Josephine.  And I’ve got some more pictures in there some where or other.  [Leaves room to get photo album.] 
 
[Tape stops while Stewart is looking through photo album.] 
 
Chewning:  What happened if you got sick?  Did you see a doctor?  Were there home remedies that your mother used? 
 
Stewart:  Home remedies.  We used – we’d get as much medication as we could. 
 
Chewning:  Like what: 
 
Stewart:  Like coal oil.  We’d catch a cold, Mama used to take coal oil and grease and rub our chests to break up a cold.  And it did help. 
 
Chewning:  Did it work? 
 
Stewart:  It worked.  Okay.  If we got cut real bad, we’d go to the old stove and get some ash and put on the wound.   
 
Chewning:  Oh.  Did that work? 
 
Stewart:  That worked.  That helped.  Yessir.  I’m not here to tell you no stories.  That really worked.  And if we’d get sick on the stomach [cough], Mama used to take turpentine.  Go to the pine tree and get the turpentine that runs out of the tree and make a pill out of it.  Ball it up, you know?  Make a little pill out of it.  And if we’d get very sick, we had to go to the doctor. 
 
Chewning:  Um hmm.  And you saw a doctor in Brownsburg? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, Dr. Bailey.  He used to be the doctor.  Then Dr. Williams came into Brownsburg.  Dr. Bailey.  Dr. Williams.  And Dr. Taylor was the last doctor we had in Brownsburg.  His wife got killed.  He got – you know they had a wreck up there at Kenny Beard’s.  They had a wreck up there, and his wife got killed.  Up there on [Route] 726.  Well up above the road there, 726, up above the church.  Not at the church, but the dirt road that goes by their barn back there.  Right there’s where they had an accident that killed his wife.  Way back there.  But anyhow, we had to go to the doctor, some way or another.  We couldn’t put it off.  But anyhow, we done all the treatment – my mama and daddy done all they could themselves to keep us away from the doctor.  Cause they didn’t have no money to pay no doctor with.  And it helped.  What they did to us, it helped.  If the old people right today were living, they wouldn’t have to have all that medication that they’re trying to buy.  You know, experiment on.  They wouldn’t need all that medication.  Cause back there then, the old people didn’t have diseases that they used to have.  Most time they had like a heart attack that would kill them right away.  You didn’t live no time.  Once they had a heart attack, nobody knew what to do for them.  I will have to give the association of doctors and all for communicating and incorporating how to treat heart disease.  I have to say that much.  But they can stop that now.  You can live longer.  But back there then, nobody know what to do for a heart attack.  When you had a heart attack, wasn’t no – 
 
Chewning:  You just died. 
 
Stewart:  You died.  Wasn’t no way you could live.  Cause didn’t nobody know what to treat for it.  And most time we had were heart attacks and paralyzed. 
 
Chewning:  Strokes? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah, stroke, “two buffalo,” TB and measles and smallpox and chickenpox.  That’s something very dangerous. 
 
Chewning:  Do you remember people having smallpox? 
 
Stewart:  Oh yeah, I knew when they had smallpox. 
 
Chewning:  Did people have Scarlet Fever then? 
 
Stewart:  Scarlet Fever, yeah.  You had to quarantine in when you had that.  You couldn’t go out.  Yeah.  We never did have any, but I can remember a family that did have that we couldn’t go around their house.  We had to stay at home.  If you ever got one in school, you had to quarantine in, you couldn’t go to school, nothing like that.  You’d have to get off the street. 
 
Chewning:  And polio? 
 
Stewart:  Well, that was something we had a lot of too, back then.  You don’t hear it much anymore.  Of course they have a – I think people back there at that time didn’t know what to do for all that.  They kind of made up their own mind what they were going to do, you know, and it didn’t help too much.  But now, they’ve got treatment for all of that now.  If they can’t kill it, it can calm it. 
 
Chewning:  At least control it a little. 
 
Stewart:  Control it.  Keep it under control.  Just like a heart attack now.  If I had a heart attack, not a massive heart attack, you could rush me to the hospital somewhere, and they can revive me.  Maybe my tubes might be stopped back or something needs to be opened.  Or I might need a tube or something.  Understand what I mean?  And now they can do all that now.  And back in your grandpa’s time, they couldn’t do that.  They didn’t know how to do it, didn’t know what to do.  So it has been a big improvement on all things in some ways.  But we’ve still got a long way to go yet.  There’s some diseases coming up now we don’t know nothing about.  Cause it’s coming from across the water.  Other nations got it and we catch it, and we’re carrying it back to the United States.  Understand what I mean? 
 
Chewning:  Exactly right.  Um hmm. 
 
Stewart:  And we don’t know what to do about it.  Cause we never did have a case of it – or that much case of it.  But now we’re trying to experiment on what other people have got across the water, and find out how we can help them with it, too.  See, I would have to say that about the United States.  They will go to foreign nations and help them people that – a doctor, you know.  Learning how to be doctors with their people across the water.  And it helps considerably.  The homeless people.  Learn some people how to cook.  See back over in there, all they know is wild life.  They don’t know nothing about cooking.  Everything they done is outdoors.  They don’t have houses to live in like we do.  Understand?  So they don’t have a school like we have.  Nobody ever taught them.  Don’t have money to have school over there.  They don’t have money to run the country over there.  If it wasn’t for the United States and other nations, they’d be lost.  They’re over there right now trying to help them people.  They’re building houses.  Send doctors over there.  Taking their people learning them how to be a doctor.  They’re building hospitals over there.  But there’s got to be a fund to help to do that with.  [Cough]  They don’t have money.  [Cough]  What the United States do can’t help them nations’ people.  I have to give the United States credit for that.  They’re not selfish. 
 
Chewning:  What else do you remember about Brownsburg that I haven’t asked you?  Anything else? 
 
Stewart:  No, I don’t know anything else.  Unless – we used to have ball games on Saturday. 
 
Chewning:  Oh, you did?  What kind of ball game? 
 
Stewart:  Well, we were just old farmers.  [Unintelligible] Vesuvius, Rockbridge Baths would have a team. 
 
Chewning:  Baseball? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah!  Vesuvius would have a team.  Raphine would have a team.  Rockbridge Baths would have a team. 
 
Chewning:  Where did you play? 
 
Stewart:  Out there in your daddy’s field [behind Mulberry Grove at 2249 Sterrett Road]!   
 
Chewning:  Did you?  Did you? 
 
Stewart:  That was the ball diamond. 
 
Chewning:  Was it Blacks and whites together playing? 
 
Stewart:  It ain’t no Blacks.  No.  Just the whites.  All white. 
 
Chewning:  But you would go and watch? 
 
Stewart:  We watched.  All the Black people would go up there and sit on the bank up there in the field and watch.  Yeah, right there.  We used to play – that’s where I learned to drive a car.  Right there below your daddy’s – your grandpa’s house in that field’s where I learned to drive my car.Error! Bookmark not defined. 
 
Chewning:  Did you? 
 
Stewart:  Charles Porterfield learned me to drive a car.  You know Charles PorterfieldError! Bookmark not defined.? 
 
Chewning:  [Laugh]  I do.   
 
Stewart:  He’s the one that learned me to drive a car.  I had an old ’33 Ford.  The door was off ass-back – the door opened – it didn’t open like the way you do.  Like ours is.  It all opened backwards.   
 
Chewning:  Oh, I see.  Yeah.  Yeah. 
 
Stewart:  The door come this way.  [Demonstrates.]  Instead of coming this way, it come this way.  “Ass-backwards” I call it.  [Laugh] 
 
Chewning:  [Laugh]  
 
Stewart:   I had an old ’33 Ford.  Yeah, we used to go out there every Saturday.  When we had a home game, we’d go out there and watch them play ball. 
 
Chewning:  Do you remember who any of the players were? 
 
Stewart:  Yeah.  Carl Reese.  The Snider.  And Blackwell.  And Carwell was the pitcher – Herb Carwell.  I don’t know if old man Pete Carwell played any or not.  I don’t remember seeing him on the field playing.  Slusser, used to own the place right up there.  Was a bunch of them!  Most of them come from up in Pisgah that played on the team. 
 
Chewning:  Were they pretty good? 
 
Stewart:  Daggone right.  Brownsburg had a good team.  Had a good team.  I don’t know if your daddy ever play on it or not.  I don’t remember seeing – he might have played ball on that team.  You ask him this evening.  If he ever played ball on Brownsburg’s team.  Cause we played different teams.  We played Rockbridge Baths had a team.  And Vesuvius had a team.  Fairfield had a team.  I think Middlebrook had a team.  Each team would play one another.  We had a good team.  We were the top! 
 
Chewning:  Good!  Good.  Glad to hear it. 
 
Stewart:  I tell you, Carl Reese could really play ball!  You don’t remember him? 
 
Chewning:  I remember him.   
 
Stewart:  I just called him “Big Eye.” 
 
Chewning:  And of course, Weasel [Ralph Wayne Reese] is his son.  Weasel was a – you know Weasel?   
 
Stewart:  Oh, yeah, I see him most any time! 
 
Chewning:  He was a big ball player, too.  
 
Stewart:  Yeah, he might have played, too, I don’t know. 
 
Chewning:  When I was in high school, he was a big athlete.   
 
Stewart:  Yeah, and I just talked to his [Carl Reese’s] daughter [Janet Reese Moneymaker] yesterday.  Over at my daughter’s.  Day before yesterday I talked to her.  She drives a school bus.  She was driving.  I reckon she’s still driving. And I talked to her son.  She’s got two boys, too, you know.  What do you call that girl now?  Carl Reese’s daughter?  What’s her name?  [Cough] 
 
Chewning:  Janet. 
 
Stewart:  She’s got two boys, too, you know.  They run the farm.  One of them does. 
 
Chewning:  Right.  Donnie and Jerry [Moneymaker]. 
 
Stewart:  I don’t know where the other one’s at.  They all built new houses back in there.  I talk to him any time over at MacDonald’s.  Me and him eat together.  Anyhow, at that time, if you’d go anywhere, you went on the horse.  You had an old horse you’d jump on and ride that you’d want to go somewhere. 
 
Chewning:  Did you have a horse?  Did your family have a horse? 
 
Stewart:  No.  We an old Model T one time.  We used to ride an old Model T.  We never did have none.  I worked around horses all my life, but we never did own any. 
 
Chewning:  Well, I think that’s about all my questions unless you have something you can think of to tell me. 
 
Stewart:  Well, I don’t know nothing to tell you.  The only thing I could tell you is I have to say Brownsburg was right good – very nice to the Black people.  I couldn’t find no fault with them.  Well, there was a lot of killing in Brownsburg. 
 
Chewning:  Oh, there was? 
 
Stewart:  Oh yeah.  I think two or three got killed right there below the store I used to go to.  Bob Supinger’s store.  Right down there where used to be the gas pump right down below there.  As you come off the Post Office [2741 Brownsburg Turnpike] down the sidewalk?   
 
Chewning:  Do you remember when that happened? 
 
Stewart:  I don’t remember when that happened.  I remember there was some killing up in the school, ya’ll’s school up there.  I think it was two or three got killed up there.  They were having court one day, I think.  A couple of them got killed up in there.  I don’t know who.  I can’t remember that.  Only thing I know is some people got killed up in there.  I know some got killed down in Brownsburg, down in the street down there.  Two or three, in a fight. 
 
Chewning:  Who was that? 
 
Stewart:  I do not know.  I don’t remember.  I do not remember, ma’am.  All I know was a fight down there, and two men got killed down there.  And I know when they had court up in the school up there – at ya’ll’s school – that’s before they built all that other part to it.  And I think was two got killed up there, I think.  They were having court that morning.  But who they were, I do not know, cause I can’t remember now.    That’s about all I know to tell you.  Brownsburg was a rough place one time.  But it was a good place to live in, too.  I mean, people were good to you.  They would help one another.  They would sacrifice.  They’d help you.  [Cough]   They had to sacrifice to help you.   
 
Chewning:  Well, I sure do appreciate you talking to me.  I’ve enjoyed hearing your stories.   
 
Stewart:  Yeah, we had a lot more, but I just can’t remember to tell you, ma’am. 
 
Chewning:  Well, if you think of anything you want me to come back for – 
 
Stewart:  If I think of anything.  I don’t remember nothing.  Only thing I knew was that Frances Porterfield – that house, that land down behind there, between my mother and the house that she used to live in – Frances.  That used to be the – Bill Wade used to own that property down there.  That one field, I think.  And I think was a still.  They used to make a bootleg liquor down there one time. 
 
Chewning:  Oh, they did? 
 
Stewart:  Now that’s before my time.  Now, I don’t know. 
 
Chewning:  [Laugh] 
 
Stewart:  I heard a rumor they used to make bootleg liquor down there. 
 
Chewning:  Who did that? 
 
Stewart:  Bill Wade.  Was a Bill Wade.  Bill Wade used to own that, and they say there used to be a still down there.  And they used to make bootleg liquor down there.  Now don’t put that down, cause I do not know. 
 
Chewning:  Isn’t it called “Stillhouse [Still] Alley?”   
 
Stewart:  [Laugh]  Yeah, you’re right!  You’re right!  You’re definitely right!  And they tell me they used to make bootleg liquor down in there.  But that was before my time.  I don’t know nothing about it! 
 
Chewning:  [Laugh] 
 
Stewart:  I don’t know how much truth there is.  They say they used to bootleg and make liquor down in there.  And I don’t know what they did with it.  They might have sold it, or drank it themselves.  I do not know.  But I know – we bought that place off of a Black fellow that they used to call Pitt Pleasants.  We bought that off of Pleasants.  Old man Pitt used to drive a cream truck for Lexington.  Up there at the creamery up at Lexington.  That’s how we got that place.  He moved to Lexington and the old house fell down and we fixed it up and built more rooms to it and bought it off of him.  I think we only paid $700 for that thing.   
 
Chewning:  Boy, you couldn’t get a house for that these days, could you? 
 
Stewart:  Man, you can’t buy but four  two-by-fours cost you $700!  At $2 apiece.  Time you pays tax, it be $2.10.  Can’t get nothing now for nothing.  Lord have mercy.  It’s terrible.   
 
[End of Tape 1, Side B] 
 
End of Interview 
Samuel Dock Stewart Oral History Index 
 
A 
Asbury Church · 21 
pastors · 27 
B 
Bailey, Dr. · 14, 15, 49 
baseball · 53–54 
Blackwell · 53 
Bosworth, Tommy · 15 
Brown · 22 
Brown, Betty Pleasants · 8 
Brown, Catherine · See Stewart, Catherine 
Brown, Gene · 28 
Brown, Glasgow · 28 
Brown, Leroy · 5 
Brownsburg 
black families · 22 
black school · 8 
blacksmith · 43 
doctors · 48 
Farm Bureau · 3 
farming · 41–42 
killings · 55–56 
mills · 41 
service station · 3 
Still Alley · 56 
stores · 3, 39–40 
undertaker · 3 
Buchanan, James · 40 
C 
Campbell · 16 
Carter, Alice · See Stewart, Alice 
Carwell, Herb · 53 
Carwell, Pete · 53 
Cash, Dick · 28 
Chittum · 8 
Craney, Frances · 26 
Cunninghams · 4 
D 
Dickerson, Gladys · See Stewart, Gladys 
diseases · 49–50 
E 
East, George · 29 
East, Will · 28 
F 
Franklin · 22, 25 
Franklin, Dan · 23 
Franklin, Zack · 16 
Fulwider · 12 
G 
Gordon, C. H. · 21 
Gordon, Mary Lou · 20 
Goshen 
cement plant · 17 
H 
Haliburton · 22 
Haliburton, William (Dude) · 9, 45 
Harris · 26 
Harris, Rufus · 43 
Hartt, Helen · 47 
Heslep · 42 
Heslep, Jack · 4, 16 
Hill, Bud · 15 
home remedies · 48 
Huffman, Roy · 3 
M 
Moneymaker, Donnie · 54 
Moneymaker, Janet Reese · 54 
Moneymaker, Jerry · 54 
Moore, Ag · 26 
Moore, Piz · 23, 26 
N 
Norcross, Lyle. · 31 
P 
pastor’s house · 26 
Patterson, Frank · 42 
Peters, Carrie · 8, 10, 13 
Pleasants, Pitt · 57 
Porter, Hattie Ann · See  Stewart, Hattie Ann 
Porterfield · 26 
Porterfield, Charles · 26, 52 
Porterfield, Frances · 56 
Potter family · 44 
Potter, Esther · 21, 22, 44 
Potter, Walter · 43 
R 
race relations · 35–38 
Raphine 
car dealer · 12 
Rees, Annie · 40, 41 
Rees, Frank · 42 
Rees, Walter · 4, 16, 40, 41, 42 
Reese, Carl · 53 
Reese, Ralph Wayne (Weasel) · 54 
Runkle, John · 25 
S 
segregation 
Army · 32 
Shoultz · 23 
Shoultz family · 25 
Sites, Isabel · 7 
Slusser · 53 
Smiley, Tuck · 42 
Snider · 28, 53 
Sterrett 
farm · 52 
Sterrett, Madison McClung, Jr. · 24, 45 
Sterrett, Madison McClung, Sr. · 9, 28, 45, 52 
Stevenson, Doug · 6 
Stevenson, Pauline · See Stewart, Pauline 
Stewart, Alice · 5 
Stewart, Catherine · 5, 7, 43 
Stewart, Eugene · 5 
Stewart, Gladys · 5, 42, 43 
Stewart, Hattie Ann · 5, 7 
Stewart, Josephine · 47 
Stewart, Leroy · 4, 5, 31, 43 
Stewart, Pauline · 5, 6 
Stewart, Reba · 27 
Stewart, Roy · 17 
Stewart, Samuel Dock 
Army service · 31–35 
birth · 2 
death of father · 30 
family · 4, 14, 27 
working for state · 31, 42 
Stewart, William · 5 
Supinger store · 39 
Supinger, Bob · 39 
Swisher, John · 17 
Swisher, Lewis · 25 
T 
Taylor, Dr. · 49 
TB · 30 
Toman · 16 
W 
Wade, Bill · 56, 57 
Wade’s Mill · 41 
Whipple store · 39 
Whitesell, John Layton · 3, 11, 40, 43 
store · 39 
Whitesell, Miley · 3 
Williams, Dr. · 49 
World War II · 27–29