Annie Gavin interview recording, 1993 January 26
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| Annie Gavin | You couldn't tell JT Barber from—You didn't never known him, did you? | 0:10 |
| Grace George | No, I've seen some old pictures. | 0:16 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. You couldn't tell him from White but his mother was Dark. Dark as— | 0:16 |
| Grace George | That was the wind? Oh, okay. | 0:32 |
| Annie Gavin | It blows through the trees. | 0:32 |
| Grace George | Okay. Just for the—I really don't have any questions but you always tell us about James City, how it used to look and how the people, more or less, survived or something about— | 0:34 |
| Annie Gavin | They really survived by farming and meals. There was always a meal in the area of James City, in my lifetime, and even before then, the men like George Brown, them walked the bridge across town, way across town, where there's still mills over in the area. Over in that Miller Ice Cream company. Over in that area. And they would walk that bridge mornings, even Bill Spivey's generation and walked back at night. They carried their lunch. And, for the most part, we lived in almost the same type of houses that they built for the slaves when they brought them here. Just some straight boards, framing, straight boards and, in some cases, wasn't no division. And the way they survived was, naturally, they had to work on the farm and whatever they were asked to do. | 0:47 |
| Annie Gavin | But some of them were lucky enough to work around the big house. The big house was the master's house, the owner, and whatever they learned, they carried back. Some of the younger people learned how to read, how to write, because little White children they played with taught them and they carried that back. But they had to hide the books. They had a slat in the floor, they hide the books. But, every night, come back with something else. And there were a lot of them had good education before they were free. And then, some of the White kids that they played with, they had to teach the little Black child in order to be able for her to know to play with them. And that was interesting to me. And then this man that was a fighter, he's a heavy fella, they call him Uncle Tom. He really wasn't Uncle Tom because he was a fighter from the beginning. But he had to do it secretly. | 1:52 |
| Grace George | Yes, yes, yes. | 2:59 |
| Annie Gavin | With Uncle Tom, you think of Uncle Tom as going back and telling the White man everything. | 3:00 |
| Grace George | Yeah, yeah. | 3:02 |
| Annie Gavin | But he learned everything he could from the White man to bring back to the Blacks. And Thurgood Marshall passed. He's descendant of a slave. And a lot that they picked up, the White man didn't know that they were intelligent enough to remember but then the White kids had to teach them what they knew and all to be able to play with them. And Ms. Hannah Smith, her daddy was a White man, was her slave owner, and her mother had children for him. But he made a special house for her. She had to work. And Ms. Hannah played with his children by his wife. And that was Stella Johnson's mother. I was a big girl when she— | 3:03 |
| Grace George | All these people lived in James City. | 4:00 |
| Annie Gavin | And so, everything that Ms. hannah would learn, she carried back to the other Black little children. They passed it on. You'd be surprised how people can grasp things that they want to know. | 4:04 |
| Grace George | Did we have a school, do you remember, or your mother or all of them? I know you remember the schools here but what were some of the first schools, if you remember, in your day, before we got— | 4:19 |
| Annie Gavin | The first school I remember was the little red schoolhouse right in there where the James City sign they dedicated to James—On the highway. | 4:31 |
| Grace George | The marker. | 4:36 |
| Annie Gavin | The marker, where the marker is. Just over a bit on the hill, just before you get to the railroad, was a little red schoolhouse. My mother went there but I didn't. I didn't. I was a little girl. I remember that, though. And, Ms. Fields, you know Mr. Fields? | 4:38 |
| Grace George | Right. | 4:56 |
| Annie Gavin | His wife's granddaddy was a teacher and he was half White. You could look at her and tell that he was almost White. But that's where most of them went to the school. Then the Baptist people built the building way down in there where Norca and them live, right back there. And they had a schoolhouse there and a dormitory set up. | 4:57 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 5:24 |
| Annie Gavin | Because the children that lived farther way, like Bryce's Creek and all, they could get rooms there all the week and go home. | 5:24 |
| Grace George | Oh. They stay over for the weekend. | 5:31 |
| Annie Gavin | The weekend. And the people that had some education, they pushed it. They really tried hard to get the Black ones educated. And some of those people were educated way before the end of slavery because the White ones taught them. | 5:36 |
| Grace George | Yeah. Was this the missionary? Some of them were missionary— | 5:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Missionaries, then. Yeah. They start sending missionaries and you know where Annie Stove used to live? That was— | 5:56 |
| Grace George | That's own there by that Ramada Inn area. | 6:05 |
| Annie Gavin | But it's on the other side of the road, going up. Even then, Annie Stove lived in there. You remember Annie Stove? | 6:11 |
| Grace George | Yeah, I remember. | 6:15 |
| Annie Gavin | They were the last people lived there and that was a school and they taught the girls how to sew and knit and all kind of craft. But they sent the missionaries from up north quite— | 6:17 |
| Grace George | Ms. Annie, let me ask you this. Have you ever heard why they picked James City when they captured—You know why did they set up the camp in James City? Have you any idea? | 6:31 |
| Annie Gavin | They set the camp in James City because they had good soil, good water. That's why they put the slaves down there. That's what my great-grandmother said. They didn't really tell the slaves that much but, wherever one worked in the house and whatever they heard, they carried back. They had mouth to mouth source of communication. And then, sometimes, the White kids, if they were close enough to that Black kid, they'd teach them what they knew. | 6:45 |
| Grace George | Right, right, right. | 7:22 |
| Annie Gavin | And they even let them have books. But when they carried back to the shanty, that's what they were. | 7:24 |
| Grace George | The housing. | 7:30 |
| Annie Gavin | But they sometimes didn't have any floors. Just some boards nailed up around and the dirt was the floor. | 7:34 |
| Grace George | Yeah, that's what my mom was saying. Dirt floors. | 7:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Dirt floors. | 7:41 |
| Grace George | The average house, I know that you was little girl, you just heard what your parents say, but they didn't have windows. They mostly had what? Shutters or— | 7:41 |
| Annie Gavin | They had boards for windows. Just a hole in a board. | 7:41 |
| Grace George | And from what I understand, they had churches and everything in that area of old James City? | 7:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. They had churches after they were freed. They had nice churches— | 8:06 |
| Grace George | Did you know much about Jones Chapel or heard much about Jones Chapel Methodist Church over here, before they brought it over here? | 8:11 |
| Annie Gavin | I know where it was and they had a nice wooden building, and just down from where Ms. Morrison lived, the next— | 8:24 |
| Grace George | They couldn't see the— | 8:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 8:32 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:08:33]. | 8:32 |
| Annie Gavin | And the only thing I remember about that church was that when I was a big sized girl and the church, they weren't using it as a church anymore, had dancing girls in there. | 8:35 |
| Grace George | Oh. | 8:45 |
| Annie Gavin | Let them music it for burlesque show. | 8:45 |
| Grace George | Oh, okay. | 8:50 |
| Annie Gavin | Dancing girls. | 8:52 |
| Grace George | That was before it turned into the Methodist Church? | 8:56 |
| Annie Gavin | That was after. | 8:57 |
| Grace George | Oh, afterwards. | 8:57 |
| Annie Gavin | After they moved over here. | 8:57 |
| Grace George | Oh. | 8:59 |
| Annie Gavin | See, the first church over here was a wooden church too. | 8:59 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 9:02 |
| Annie Gavin | And Reverend Thurston put bricks around us. And my Aunt Rosa was the first person to get married in Jones Chapel. She married George Bell. You remember George Bell? | 9:03 |
| Grace George | Yeah. I remember George Bell. | 9:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 9:15 |
| Grace George | He was a reverend. | 9:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, and Reverend Bell, our Presiding Elder at that time with his uncle. He was from down Newport but he was a preacher. But Aunt Rosa never liked to hear him preach. But he was a preacher and Francine and Emma, the twins, and Aunt Rosa had I think four children before him, but she was married two years to— | 9:21 |
| Grace George | George Washington. | 9:50 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, George Washington. | 9:53 |
| Grace George | Which was Washington Spivey's son. | 9:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Son. Yeah. And Washington Spivey was the one refused to pay the rent. | 9:54 |
| Grace George | Rent. And went to court. | 10:01 |
| Annie Gavin | And went to court. | 10:03 |
| Grace George | Because of that land. | 10:03 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. He started to fight. He started to fight. You could build it up. | 10:07 |
| Grace George | Pass it on today. | 10:09 |
| Annie Gavin | Another advantage I had, I was brought up around the store. My dad always go to the store and they say that Washington Spivey started it, then they got brick bats and sticks and boards and everything ran to blow overboard. | 10:21 |
| Grace George | Yeah. When they come to take your land. | 10:35 |
| Annie Gavin | When came to put them out. Because he refused to pay. He refused to pay for something that belonged to him. | 10:38 |
| Grace George | Right. | 10:47 |
| Annie Gavin | Which was good sense. But, as a whole, the James City people stood up for themselves. And even though we had a hard way to go, because, even in your time, when you started going to school and knew when y'all did, the children that were born and bred in New Bern tried to look down over you and they found out all of y'all were smarter than they were. But they were glad to come to James City to eat. | 10:47 |
| Grace George | Yes. Yes. Always. We always had plenty of food. | 11:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Plenty of food. | 11:16 |
| Grace George | From what I understand, James City used to support New Bern because this was a lot of open field and they used to farm. | 11:18 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. That's what, a lot of people, how they earned their living. Going over there, getting the White folks clothes, bring them over here, washing them, getting paid for that. Plus they pulled wagons of food every day. It had gardens and fields and stuff. And then the Laven houses settled over there. He was a farmer and he gave him a lot of work. But they still had a living through carrying, washing and ironing and Ms. Ida, Ms. Mae Lizzie, do you remember, used to carry them big old baskets on their head. And then the mills start growing and there were mills here. It was two mills, Mungum Bennett Mill and Cooper's Mill over on this side. And that was a source of income. And— | 11:29 |
| Grace George | Was there a plate factory? | 12:24 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, there was a plate factory. | 12:24 |
| Grace George | They made wooden plates in this area. | 12:24 |
| Annie Gavin | Probably some of the stones still down over there by where Ray Bell is. Maybe not now, though, because they made a lot of changes. But, when I was growing up, some of the type of stones they made then was still standing. And we didn't get a good road until 1922. And I remember that very well. That's the year they started the highway out there. It was mostly rock and stuff. And Edgar Grant came here from Georgia to work on that good road and never did go back. | 12:32 |
| Grace George | Never left James City. | 13:12 |
| Annie Gavin | And people started to come wherever there was work, that's where they would sell. Because my daddy, when he had his both feet, he worked on the railroad. He was a breakman, a cook. Because he lost— | 13:15 |
| Grace George | And James City, really, was almost like an industrial area. | 13:28 |
| Annie Gavin | Yes. | 13:31 |
| Grace George | They had a lot of factory, farm lands. Mostly factories. | 13:33 |
| Annie Gavin | And two mills, saw mills, and Mungum Bennett mills was over there on that side and Cooper's Mill was over on that side. Gave work to people in New Bern and all around the area. | 13:36 |
| Grace George | Also, we had a fertilizer factory. | 13:50 |
| Annie Gavin | Fertilizer. Yeah. Yeah. | 13:56 |
| Grace George | I remember Mr. Aaron telling me about that. | 13:56 |
| Annie Gavin | The fertilizer factory, at beginning, was in James City and then it moved over here and still got fertilizer factory. But that was the Meadows company and still some the Meadows offsprings around. | 13:56 |
| Grace George | But, what I hear, they sold this land when they told the people from James City they had to leave. They started selling land on this side. | 14:10 |
| Annie Gavin | Actually, you couldn't buy the land in James City because I know my daddy said, when he got—Because he went to work at Mungum Bennett Mill, he grew up down Havelock. But he was scared of—His daddy was a huntsman's guide and papa was scared to go into the woods, to the traps. And that was one of his duties to do. But he'd go out there and shoot the gun and daddy think of something, rather he'd shoot his gun, let him know he'd been there. After a while, he knew his daddy wasn't going to go by daddy anymore because if you go to look at the traps and find something in there dead, he know papa didn't go there. That's when he left home at 11 years old and went to New Bern and got a job. | 14:15 |
| Annie Gavin | And then he transferred from that mill over there and came over here. That's where he met Mama. And they got married about 16. I think he was 17, she was 16. And that's what most of the fellows did. Now, in your case, Newt's daddy and his brother, I think they were about the first people that had a store. And then Ms. Simon Phillips, they went from one—Then your granddaddy ran taxi too. Newt's daddy. And, just like everything else, some people ambitious and some not. | 15:10 |
| Grace George | She said that he used to drive the horse like a cart for a taxi. Like a wagon. | 15:49 |
| Annie Gavin | The first taxi was a cart. Not a cart but a big buggy. | 15:57 |
| Grace George | Buggy. | 16:00 |
| Annie Gavin | Buggy, with two seats. He had people who work, pick them up from work. And then his brother had a store down in James City. I didn't know him. But I knew Bud and I know Mr. West. | 16:01 |
| Grace George | He was a farmer. | 16:22 |
| Annie Gavin | But I didn't know the one that had the store. I didn't remember him. But my daddy worked for him. That's what inspired him in going into the store business. | 16:22 |
| Grace George | I think my mom said it was granddaddy Westford. You and your daddy. | 16:27 |
| Annie Gavin | Westford. Yeah. Your granddaddy. | 16:34 |
| Grace George | Right, right. | 16:34 |
| Annie Gavin | He had a taxi too. | 16:34 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 16:34 |
| Annie Gavin | Had a big house up on the hill. Right there. You don't remember nothing about that house. You should remember that house being there. | 16:42 |
| Grace George | I don't remember the big house but I remember— | 16:52 |
| Annie Gavin | He's the first one had a big two-story house. That's where Newt and Emmett were born because Emmett was my age. But, as a whole, the people that were here from the beginning, as to those slaves, because my mama was, and my daddy's daddy was from Edgecomb County, Rocky Mount, and they came down here looking a better life because they would hunt and stuff. And then they settled right in there where Cherry Point is now. And that still belongs to Black people never got the money for. | 16:57 |
| Grace George | Most people came here because they weren't on plantations. They, more or less, was able to get jobs and to work. | 17:38 |
| Annie Gavin | Came here looking work. Farming and the mills. Mills were the attraction, really. But, in my daddy's daddy's case, they were in Rocky Mount, Edgecomb County and all that was up there was farming. And I guess they came down here to make more money. | 17:46 |
| Grace George | Right. I found a book that Mr. Ike Long had and he kept the record at the fertilizer factory. And, back in the thirties, they were making tweny-five cents a day at the fertilizer—I got with all different people that lived in James City going back as far as Vasalas Niel. | 18:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. But Vasalas Niel was always—He was a slicker or something. But he was a preacher too. He belonged to our church. | 18:30 |
| Grace George | Yeah. That's what they said. He was a— | 18:40 |
| Annie Gavin | But he was a wise man. | 18:41 |
| Grace George | Yes. But they called it a slicker [indistinct 00:18:44]. | 18:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Slicker. Yeah. Yeah. The reason they called him a slicker was because he could outtalk them out of money, I guess. But you learned a lot from Vasalas Niel and he was a jack legged preacher. And he had a lot—All those people helped each other. Yeah, they helped each other to survive because the women would make quilts and my grandmother, and I guess Willie Stalin's grandmother, George's grandmomma, all had quilt. And Gracie and Mae Zelamar wouldn't let me play with them because they were quilting. They kept away from me. | 18:43 |
| Grace George | Did you tell everything they didn't want you? | 19:37 |
| Annie Gavin | I had to sit around the old folks and I enjoyed hearing them talk about things that happened. That's why I knew as much as to do. | 19:43 |
| Grace George | That's why you know. Very good. | 19:49 |
| Annie Gavin | Because my grandmother, I was 12 years old when my mama's grandmother died. And so, I was a big girl. A lot of that stuff I heard from them that was interesting. And Ms. Anna, that was Stella Johnson's grandmother. Her daddy was her mother's owner, slave owner, and he didn't let her work. And he didn't let Ms. Anna be out with the slaves much. She played with his children by his wife in his house. Those White women went through a lot during slavery time. | 19:53 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 20:42 |
| Annie Gavin | You learn that from Roots because that woman was looking right at her husband going to Tissie. Those White women had to take a lot to because, say, if a slave owner found a woman that he choose, she didn't work. | 20:43 |
| Grace George | Even back then. | 21:03 |
| Annie Gavin | No, she didn't work. She took good care of her. And the wife couldn't do anything about it. Them White women had to go through a lot. And we heard a lot about Uncle Tom but, according to my grandmother and them people that I learned so much from, they call him Uncle Tom because he found out what was happening. He was a big man and he drove for the master and whatever he would hear in regard to what was going to be done, he would bring it back. They learned first hand. Eventually somebody killed him. | 21:03 |
| Grace George | Is there anything you'd like to ask Mrs. Annie? | 21:48 |
| Unknown Interviewer | Did any of your relatives or any of the people you've heard speaking ever mentioned Horace James? | 21:51 |
| Annie Gavin | Horace James? | 21:57 |
| Unknown Interviewer | Yeah. | 21:59 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Horace James—Wasn't Horace James Black? | 22:00 |
| Grace George | No. He founded—They named James City after him. | 22:04 |
| Unknown Interviewer | He was the chaplain. | 22:07 |
| Grace George | Chaplain. | 22:07 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, he was—Yeah. When they brought this group of slaves and put them down in James City, they picked that area because of the sand and the good water. And Horace James was a preacher from Boston and then he was over them, at Horace James—His mission was to teach them. He was a priest and then he had a school in that house that Annie used to live in that used to be the school, the mission school. Started teaching them how to read and write and sew and do craft. Taught them to be independent. And he would come and go from Boston. Then the missionaries used to stay with Reverend W. | 22:08 |
| Annie Gavin | Just turned that— | 23:12 |
| Grace George | They also struggled with the freed men. [indistinct 00:23:13]. | 23:12 |
| Annie Gavin | Hello, Anne. Come on in and let's join this slave party. | 23:12 |
| Anne (neighbor) | I'm just going to need three peppers. | 23:12 |
| Annie Gavin | Okay. Those that hadn't heard about James City and, by the time Grace get through working with this, they know all about it. | 23:12 |
| Grace George | Everybody going to know about James City. Maybe, do you have time to continue or you want to come back another time? | 23:12 |
| Unknown Interviewer | Can I come back another time? | 23:12 |
| Annie Gavin | There a special thing you want to know? | 23:12 |
| Grace George | Yeah. They went to school with [indistinct 00:24:00] James as well. That's good enough. We're going use your tools. | 23:21 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, that was the main thing. | 24:02 |
| Grace George | Yeah, yes. | 24:04 |
| Annie Gavin | That's what it's all about. | 24:06 |
| Unknown Interviewer | [indistinct 00:24:12] we were yesterday, I guess. | 24:07 |
| Grace George | She was talking about James City, the original, when it was first settled and what you heard about Horace James and— | 24:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. According to my knowledge and what I heard, they put them down here because of the good water and the sand they saw. That was one of the reasons. And then they built these makeshift houses for them, I guess they built them themselves. They got the material for them. And each family had their own little, I'll say hut. Then this was after Abraham Lincoln went to—My great-grandmother saw Abraham Lincoln. He came to the plantation where they were, because they lived like plantations, and he was not too well-dressed but they had some beautiful horses. | 24:24 |
| Annie Gavin | And then he asked questions, because the stable boy, they had young men to put up the horses on and hitch the people's stuff. And he questioned them and asked them did they like the way they lived. But he was a homely man, which we know from his picture, but he had some nice horses but they still didn't know he was the president. | 25:31 |
| Grace George | Oh, right. | 25:59 |
| Annie Gavin | Because he traveled alone. I don't reckon he had anything to fear back then. But, anyway, the boy told him what he knew and do they feed you good? Do they take good care of you? And he said yes, because I guess that—And my grandmother said that their owner was good to his slaves. Some of them were very mean. But Abraham Lincoln stayed there a day or two and a slave owner's wife was pregnant, and her baby was a girl but Abraham Lincoln didn't know what the baby would be. He left a name for the baby in the wall. And then, after he got—They didn't even know he was the president. Traveled alone. After he got back in Washington, he wrote back and told him where to look and find a letter he had written. | 26:00 |
| Annie Gavin | And I even remember what he named, if it were a girl, Saphronia, and that stuck with me because it was a—I'm surprised I didn't name one of mine Saphronia. But, anyway—And soon when he got back in Washington, then they start sending troops. And they started freeing the slaves and she said they didn't want to leave where they were because their master was good. Like everything else, some good, some bad. | 27:12 |
| Grace George | Right. | 27:49 |
| Annie Gavin | Said, just as far as—She was 12 years old, I think she said. And just as far as they could look back, they looked back because they didn't want to leave and said they were standing on the porch and they raved as far as they could see. Then they brought them to James City and put them over there and built makeshift houses for them. And the special reasons they settled in JC, that's why I guess all these hotels trying to get, for the good soil and good water. | 27:50 |
| Annie Gavin | Then, after he went back, it was so very long after then, the troops started coming in. The war started. And down on Battleground Parkway, used to have papers down there that the ships and stuff, the boats, used to come up there because they still got deep holes. Or did have, last time I was carrying papers down there. That's where one of the— | 28:26 |
| Grace George | That's on the other side of—By the Nissan building in that area? | 28:54 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 28:54 |
| Grace George | Way down. | 29:00 |
| Annie Gavin | Way down in the Thurman Light. And there were deep holes. Even when was carrying papers down there, there were deep holes where they'd dug to dig in. I guess— | 29:01 |
| Grace George | They bring the ships in. | 29:14 |
| Annie Gavin | And to hide while they were fighting because they had battles down there. That's why it's Battleground Park. That's what they called it. | 29:20 |
| Grace George | Okay. That's what they called it. | 29:25 |
| Annie Gavin | Battleground Park. And down by Monette's Place. And way back there, and I used to have go way around that, and they had deep holes, still had deep holes and stuff. But they had good and bad masters. Sometimes the master himself, the man was good and the woman was mean. I knew Ms. Hannah now. Her slave master was her father. Now, they select themselves a Black woman. They put her in a house. She didn't have to work either. Her children— And Ms. Hannah played with her half sisters and brother. Stayed in the big house. She played in the big house. Those slaves felt good. That's why there's such a mixture of Black people. They were fathered by them slave owners. | 29:27 |
| Annie Gavin | Because, originally, most nationally, those Africans weren't Black. But, after he went back to Washington, then the soldiers started coming and going to different plantations and stuff. And the war. Civil war, they called it. Start freeing the slaves. But some of those slaves didn't even know how to take care of themselves because they had been taken care by their masters and stuff. That's why I guess it's still some Black people that have given up enough to have a home of their own. | 30:46 |
| Grace George | Take care of themselves. Independent. | 31:30 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. And Ms. Martha's daddy Washington Spivey, he's the one that had the name in James City because he defied all of them. | 31:32 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 31:46 |
| Annie Gavin | This was after the war and they were coming over there collecting for those same huts that they had put them in and he decided he wasn't going to pay for them because it belonged to him. You got some of your stuff. You say Washington Spivey, he'd tell them off. He ain't going to pay no rent and say baby heads were sticking out the windows. But with him and the other man got together and they got sticks and bottles and everything else. That's the why James City got the name it had because—They got the name because the Washington Spivey led them into battle. | 31:48 |
| Grace George | That's right. | 32:34 |
| Annie Gavin | Led them into battle and use bottles, sticks, whatever. But they ran law overboard. Even until today, they're scared to come to James City. And we still got a lot of it in us because I can remember, come and ask where people live, we wouldn't tell them anything. Then one man said to me, you mean to tell me you live right here in the neighborhood and you don't know these people? I said you can't make me know them. | 32:34 |
| Grace George | He was taught that one. | 33:08 |
| Annie Gavin | But then he showed me, he was an insurance man and he had located a check that had been misplaced and he was trying to find a person. I said, when you come to James City, you better show these people something. We don't believe it. You got to show it to us. But, as a whole, James City people have been very outgoing people and very, very good people. They might fuss, they might fight this morning but nobody else better not come in there. | 33:12 |
| Grace George | Nobody else touch them. | 33:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 33:42 |
| Grace George | In reference to taking care of themselves, they were farmers, mills. They owned their own businesses. | 33:45 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 33:51 |
| Grace George | From what my mama said. They had stores, many of their old people in shops and and old things. | 33:52 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Like everything else, some people have ambition and some don't. Now, your mother's daddy and uncle, they've had the first stores over here. Because my daddy worked for your mother's uncle. I forgot his name. And then Papa got his foot cut off because papa used to be a brakeman on the train. And, when he got his foot cut off, that's when he went into the store business and he was a cook on the trains. Always half [indistinct 00:34:38]. | 34:01 |
| Grace George | Ms. Annie, do you think that's why a lot of people wanted, not only that they could be free once they come to James City, but it was like an industrial area compared to other places with plantations? | 34:38 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. And, for a long time, the only work that Black women could get was on the farm and the kitchen. And a lot of them walked that long bridge, Ms. Ida and Ms. Mae Lizzie, they got clothes on their head. Ms. Mae Lizzie and Ms. Ida wouldn't even have to hold it. Carry it right on the head. But I guess everybody had survived. And I'll tell you something else they used to do back then, didn't have linoleum for the floor. Scrub the floor and go down to the sand holes, get buckets of sand and put on the floor. | 34:50 |
| Grace George | In the sand? Why? | 35:48 |
| Annie Gavin | The sand itself was a cover for the floor. And, see, the sand helped to keep the floor clean. | 35:48 |
| Grace George | Say, for instance, they spill oil or anything that would catch it. | 35:54 |
| Annie Gavin | But I knew this happened. Mama never did that. She just scrubbed her floor. But Ms. Mae Lizzie and Ms. Ida, those people that were older than she was, everyone said that the children had to scrub the floor, especially the kitchen, and put sand on it. Pretty white sand. It's still pretty white sand down there in them holes. And then we had a plate factory here. | 36:00 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 36:26 |
| Annie Gavin | Across, over there. Near water where Rimbell used to live. For years— Just since I've been growing up, since I've been back home, they told us it was a plate factory. They'd made plates. | 36:26 |
| Grace George | What did they make the plates out of? | 36:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Sand and some kind of way they put it together. But they had unique ways of doing things. But it had to serve the purpose for the time. | 36:47 |
| Grace George | Now, is this what the government helped set up for the people? Helped for the community to survive? | 36:59 |
| Annie Gavin | I don't think it was so much for the community but it was good location where to get plenty of sand. Seemed like plates are made out of sand somewhere. But it wasn't an operation when I was growing up but the building, part of it, was still there. And I think the reason they located where they did was because there was a lot of sand there. | 37:08 |
| Annie Gavin | And then, beside farming, they started the mill and that's what people took care of themselves. Working at the mill. The Mungum Bennett Mill over there. Some of the pilings still there. And that's where most people lived. And then people from far and near would come and get rooms with people so they could work at the mill. For years and years. Then the war came, the first war. I can remember the end of it but I don't remember when—But I do know that my uncles and all went and then when the war came to the end, they start coming back home. I lived through about two wars, I guess, or three. | 37:34 |
| Grace George | Okay, okay. | 38:39 |
| Annie Gavin | But White people were—The church was the center of everybody's life then. They sometimes didn't get to see each other, those that lived far away apart, until they went to church and they prayed. Oh, they couldn't pray loud. As slaves. Had to turn the pots down and I always heard them say, turn the pots down. They have big old iron pots. The pots supposed to have caught the sound. | 38:43 |
| Grace George | What? | 39:18 |
| Annie Gavin | If they get happy or something. | 39:18 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 39:18 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Isn't that something? | 39:18 |
| Grace George | That's why they holler so loud now. | 39:24 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. They pray. | 39:24 |
| Grace George | They let it out. | 39:24 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, they let it out now. And they had this Uncle Tom, dad explained to me about by an older person, had an old guy to call Uncle Tom. And now, when we think of Uncle Tom, we think of somebody who tells everything. | 39:30 |
| Grace George | Right, right. | 39:51 |
| Annie Gavin | But Uncle Tom wasn't a person that told everything. He gathered everything he could then they had to take them out to bring back to the slaves and to sneak out books. And the master's children by Black women, she had all the privileges. Now, Ms. Hannah, which was Stella Johnson's Grandmomma, she played with her sisters and brothers in the big house. | 39:52 |
| Grace George | Now, is that [indistinct 00:40:23]? Were they related to— | 40:21 |
| Annie Gavin | No. Ms. Hannah is your relative. This Hannah, Stella Johnson's grandma, she came late years. I was a big girl when she came here. But she looked White. | 40:30 |
| Grace George | I heard mama talk about it. | 40:40 |
| Annie Gavin | Like Ms. Mary Sawyer, you couldn't tell them from White. | 40:43 |
| Grace George | That's right. | 40:45 |
| Annie Gavin | And then she didn't like White folk. | 40:47 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 40:48 |
| Annie Gavin | She didn't. | 40:48 |
| Grace George | It was close. | 40:48 |
| Annie Gavin | But it's the funniest thing. Those that had the most White blood dislike White people. | 40:53 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 40:56 |
| Annie Gavin | Because nowadays there's no difference. People are people. And I guess that's what they were working toward. | 40:57 |
| Grace George | Ms. Annie, did you ever hear much about Paul Williams when you were growing up as a girl? | 41:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Who? | 41:08 |
| Grace George | Paul Williams? | 41:10 |
| Annie Gavin | No. | 41:12 |
| Grace George | He was supposed to be one of the committee of 12 leaders. He and Davis. | 41:20 |
| Annie Gavin | He was one of the leaders? | 41:21 |
| Grace George | One of the leaders in 1898. | 41:21 |
| Annie Gavin | What was his first name? | 41:21 |
| Grace George | Paul. Paul Lewis. I guess it's Paul Lewis. | 41:21 |
| Annie Gavin | Paul Lewis? Yeah. Old man Amos Williams and old man Arnold, they were some of the outstanding—The Elliots. And, of course, Ms. Francis. I think she was half White. My mother's grandmother, mama said you couldn't tell her from White. And she hated White people. She wouldn't hang a calendar on her wall. Turned the face around. But mama say she had long black hair she could sit on. Said couldn't tell from White. But her mother was half White and her daddy was White. That's how she— | 41:38 |
| Annie Gavin | Now, I saw mama's aunt, they lived in Boston and she was very light. And she came to visit us a couple of times, I remember, as a child, and mama would go shopping with her. She'd say drugstore. The drugstore would be right down there on the corner. See? And, naturally, having lived in Boston, she had the accent and everything and she was White looking and something she wanted, the man, the druggist, couldn't understand what she's talking about. Told her to come around there and say if she could find it behind his counter. Mama said no one ever ask her. And my mother say her grandfather was half Indian. He came from the Florida Everglades. | 42:20 |
| Annie Gavin | But it was a general mixture of people. And you heard a lot of different stories. But, regardless to what happened, there were always somebody that was good because—My great-grandmother said that her master's wife was very good to them. A lot of things she did for them that she didn't want her husband to know. They had to work in the fields and everything. But some of them had some—And that Uncle Tom, we think of Uncle Tom as a tattletale. | 43:19 |
| Grace George | Right, right. | 44:03 |
| Annie Gavin | But that Uncle Tom was a person that drove for the master and his wife and stuff. He got to hear and learned. Everything he learned, he'd bring it back. He was tattletaling that way. | 44:04 |
| Grace George | Reverse of what they called him. | 44:16 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. And, finally, they killed him. But some of those people, they fared so good as slaves until they didn't want to be free because my mom, she already knew, said that, when the soldiers put them out, leading them to freedom, she was one of them they settled down in James City. She said they kept looking back. As far as they could look, they looked and the master, his family, were on the porch and they felt so bad. They hated to be leaving them because they were good to them. | 44:18 |
| Grace George | They were good. And they didn't know what they were going to be facing. | 45:02 |
| Annie Gavin | That's right. And then, you find in any situation, there's some good. No matter how bad people are, there's some good among them. Because there was a time, the James City people, I guess that was their set up, they didn't let no strangers come over here and start anything because, if it start with one, you got all of them to fight. That's when JC got a reputation for being bad. | 45:04 |
| Grace George | He's heard that story. No, they didn't take no jump. | 45:34 |
| Annie Gavin | They didn't take no jump. No way. | 45:38 |
| Grace George | I can understand that because when you went free, you had to protect yourself. You didn't have your master or anybody in that way. | 45:42 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. | 45:50 |
| Grace George | So you had to come together as a family. | 45:50 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, as a unit. | 45:52 |
| Grace George | Unity. | 45:53 |
| Annie Gavin | They could be mad at each other but nobody else better not come in there bother them. | 45:55 |
| Grace George | And they would share whatever they had. | 45:59 |
| Annie Gavin | They'd share whatever they had. Yeah, because, when I was growing up, there wasn't any such thing as welfare. And those people that didn't have children to feed them after they got old, they had to depend on whatever somebody would give them. Now, Reverend Dudley, you knew Reverend Dudley, he fed a lot of people. And my daddy fed a lot of people because, by this time, he had a little cafe down by the bridge and Ms. Jenny Roxanne, little kin to Bobby, would go down there and he'd let him scrub the floor— | 46:01 |
| Annie Gavin | —wash the dishes and he made meals for the men at the factory. There used to be a—The fertilizer factory that's over here now was down there on the railroad. You remember when that was there though, don't you? | 0:06 |
| Grace George | No. | 0:18 |
| Annie Gavin | If so, you were very little. | 0:19 |
| Grace George | Is that the same one that Mr. Ike Long was the overseer? I have his book record showing the men of James City that worked there. | 0:22 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, that's the same. They eventually moved it all the way over here. We just cross the road, they still operate. | 0:32 |
| Grace George | That's the Meadows Company? | 0:40 |
| Annie Gavin | Meadows Company. And the Meadows Company, I guess at one time they owned slaves, but they always were outstanding in the Black community. Whatever went wrong, the Meadows always came to the rescue. | 0:42 |
| Grace George | Well, is it true that when they were told to leave Old James City, Meadows Company owned a lot of properties in the area? | 0:58 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. And came over here | 1:08 |
| Grace George | And bought the land from them? | 1:11 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 1:13 |
| Grace George | Now there's a man, Mr. Brooks, that was a Black man from the area that had so much land over there. | 1:14 |
| Annie Gavin | That was was Emma Hicks and them's grandfather, the Brooks's and the Browns owned this area. The Brooks's on one side of Emma and them's granddaddy and the Browns on the other, which is Brownsville. And they used to live—You remember the house [indistinct 00:01:47] lived in? | 1:23 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. | 1:47 |
| Annie Gavin | That used to be their house. They used to live right— | 1:48 |
| Grace George | Right behind Shiloh church? | 1:50 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. And the Brooks's on this side of the track. | 1:51 |
| Grace George | Where we are. | 2:05 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. They had land they sold after the fellows—My daddy bought his place, I think, from the Brooks's when we— | 2:05 |
| Grace George | Apparently, they were free before. How did they come about so much money from property? Just like everybody owned property back there. How did they come into—? | 2:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, not everybody. | 2:23 |
| Grace George | well— | 2:24 |
| Annie Gavin | Some people don't want anything anyway. They going depend on somebody else. But they inherited it from somebody. | 2:26 |
| Grace George | Yeah. [indistinct 00:02:36] I don't know. Because for the short period of time, they owned so much land in this area. We know that over on the other side of this area— | 2:35 |
| Annie Gavin | You couldn't own it. That's the reason they had to come over here. | 2:44 |
| Grace George | Yeah. So they came over here and they were the ones selling it. | 2:47 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. Now, actually, according to my grandmother and those other people that knew, James City was given to the slaves, but they never had a deed to it. They gave it to them to use maybe because that's what they did— | 2:52 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:03:10] | 3:09 |
| Annie Gavin | Then after a while, I guess government maybe took it over and they had to pay rent. That's where your granddad came in and started that revolution. He told them he wasn't—My—what they used to say, young ones' heads was sticking out all of them windows. | 3:12 |
| Grace George | Yeah, just looking. | 3:35 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. I said, Mr. Washington Spivey said, "I ain't paying no more rent because it belongs to me." | 3:41 |
| Grace George | Well, they went to court years ago in the 1800—About a hundred years ago. So finally they had to go and that's when they thought purchasing land over the [indistinct 00:03:57] But Ms. Anna, the strange thing is that apparently they said it didn't belong to the people. But for so many years, they never did anything with that land, over there in James City. | 3:43 |
| Annie Gavin | Maybe the number of years they had to let it lay before the government could take it because it was given to them. It's like Old Man Washington Spivey said, he wasn't going to pay for what belonged to him. But they had lived that thing— | 4:12 |
| Grace George | It was more like a reparation for their enslavement and helping them during the war. Whereas a lot of countries, they have been paid, like the Chinese, Japanese, all these other people for wartimes. So I would say that seems, with a little research, that was given to the people, turned over. Instead of money, the land was turned over to them. [indistinct 00:04:54] | 4:31 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, I think one thing was when the government freed them, they had to make arrangement, some place for them to live. | 4:54 |
| Grace George | Right. | 5:04 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, I guess it was about the same thing all over. But these people that were brought to James City, they understood that these makeshift houses belonged to them. | 5:10 |
| Grace George | Right. | 5:20 |
| Annie Gavin | But yet one real estate man got greedy and started making them pay. Well, I— | 5:21 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:05:34] | 5:33 |
| Annie Gavin | That's where Washington Spivey and his followers rebelled. "We ain't going to pay for what belong to us." | 5:33 |
| Grace George | I understand they had post offices over here. Hospital— | 5:42 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 5:42 |
| Grace George | —that the Union left. | 5:42 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, after they put the slaves down, Washington—What's his name? James something. | 5:44 |
| Grace George | Horace? | 5:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Huh? | 5:53 |
| Grace George | Horace James. | 5:55 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, they sent a priest here, Catholic. Then the house that Annie Stove used to live in. You remember that two-story house? | 5:56 |
| Grace George | Yep, that house. Yeah. I remember. | 6:07 |
| Annie Gavin | When I was growing up, that was kind of a school. The missionaries had a school there and I wasn't old enough to go, but I used to go there and they taught the girls how to sew, how make clothes and crochet and knit and stuff like that. Then some of the missionaries stayed with Reverend Dudley and those missionaries stayed in touch. They used to come and go, and they had brought Goldie. You know Goldie? Ms. Marula Goldie? | 6:09 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. | 6:44 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, the missionaries brought her here. Then those families that didn't have children and wanted children, they would bring them for them. | 6:45 |
| Grace George | That's what happened to my Grandma Becca. She was brought here with the missionaries | 6:52 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 6:57 |
| Grace George | Some of the people he adopted her, Mrs. Katherine Midgette. | 6:58 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, the Midgets. | 7:04 |
| Grace George | She raised grandma because her mother died at the time. She was a missionary from Boston. And she died. So the missionaries were going to take her back to Boston when they leave. But some of the people said they would take care of her. So they left her with Ms. Katherine Midgette. | 7:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. And she raised her. But the thing about it, your grandma was more White than she was Black. Let's face it. But you couldn't tell her from White. | 7:27 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 7:41 |
| Annie Gavin | I guess it was not too many people, she was too White to be Black— | 7:45 |
| Grace George | And too Black— | 7:51 |
| Annie Gavin | And she had some Black, so she had to be Black. | 7:53 |
| Grace George | Right, right, right. I think that's why they were going to take her back to Boston. But Ms. Catherine, [indistinct 00:08:05] take her in and raise her. | 7:56 |
| Annie Gavin | I guess that's when she met Wes Foye. | 8:09 |
| Grace George | Right. | 8:11 |
| Annie Gavin | Married him. | 8:13 |
| Grace George | She was just a little girl. | 8:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Yeah. She fared good though because he was smart. He had a big house and Newt and them, and Alma, were kind of considered rich. | 8:14 |
| Grace George | With ponies and everything else, she said. | 8:30 |
| Annie Gavin | Huh? | 8:31 |
| Grace George | They used to have a pony in there. | 8:31 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh yeah. My daddy worked with one of the brothers, Wes Foye's brother. That's how he started in the store business. Those people that would work could have something. | 8:33 |
| Grace George | Could have something. | 8:47 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 8:48 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:08:49] | 8:48 |
| Annie Gavin | Because my daddy had a horse and cows, and all that stuff. | 8:50 |
| Grace George | That's what amazes me when I look back at all the things that those people had and tried so much and were successful. Today when I look around and I don't see those things, it alarms me. | 8:56 |
| Annie Gavin | That's right. That's right. Different things happened that broke everything up. Then I think the younger generations, they got along so good. They wasn't as ambitious. They weren't as ambitious. | 9:08 |
| Grace George | It was already laid out for them. | 9:28 |
| Annie Gavin | Already laid out for them. Sweat had already been sweated for them to have it and they didn't value it too much. | 9:30 |
| Grace George | That's why I feel it's important for us to preserve this history, so that they can go back and look and see some of the struggles that these people went through to— | 9:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. | 9:49 |
| Grace George | —have where they are today, which they should be farther because of the struggle. | 9:51 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. | 9:54 |
| Grace George | Even with the '60s, they don't understand what took place, a lot of them, the struggles. | 9:54 |
| Annie Gavin | You're right. Well, some people have ambition and move on anyway and some have inherited it. But West Far, I don't know what happened with all the stuff that he did have. But something happened and some of it was with him because I think the reason he and Ms. Becca didn't get along, he was a courter. | 10:04 |
| Grace George | He loved women. | 10:36 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 10:37 |
| Grace George | That's usually the [indistinct 00:10:40] does it every time. | 10:37 |
| Annie Gavin | But Ms. Becca always was smart. She was a smart woman. She always had a garden. She sold the vegetables and she kind of kept her little flock together. | 10:45 |
| Grace George | My mom would say they'd had to get up early in the morning to go to New Bern to sell the— | 10:58 |
| Annie Gavin | Sell vegetables. | 11:03 |
| Grace George | —to sell vegetables before they'd go to school. | 11:03 |
| Annie Gavin | Before they went to school. | 11:08 |
| Grace George | Then in the evening, they'd go back and collect who was interested in more vegetables for the next day. | 11:08 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. But that was good in a sense, to be taught, because my uncle Ben and I had to get up before daylight. He worked at the railroad, had lost his foot. And we'd have to go out there to the shop and Ben would build a fire. I'd put on the coffee pot and put on rice. Then I had to make biscuits. I wasn't probably had a little counter thing. I wasn't tall enough, he had a block there. And I made breakfast for those men at the factory when I was about 12. | 11:15 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 11:52 |
| Annie Gavin | I hated it so bad. But it put something in you. | 11:54 |
| Grace George | Yes, it does. | 11:59 |
| Annie Gavin | It makes you know that if you want something, work for it. | 11:59 |
| Grace George | You have to work for it. That's important today. | 12:02 |
| Annie Gavin | That's important. | 12:05 |
| Grace George | They want it to fall out of the sky. | 12:07 |
| Annie Gavin | That's right. | 12:08 |
| Grace George | If it don't make a million dollars on the first day's work, they don't want to work. | 12:11 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. But it gives you ambition. You got it double from Washington Spivey and Wes Foye. | 12:13 |
| Grace George | He's about to kill me [indistinct 00:12:24] trying to feed both— | 12:26 |
| Annie Gavin | Both sides. Mm-hmm. Then there's some people that don't have any ambition. It makes you kind of glad and proud that you were made to do things and— | 12:27 |
| Grace George | And you want to give it to them. Why? What's the matter? It's out there. Go for it. | 12:38 |
| Annie Gavin | Right, right. | 12:41 |
| Grace George | I have two sons and I think I drove them crazy telling them how they do it. You can't do this, and you can. They even look at me sometime, "Please, Mama, give me a chance to let me complete this first and then I'll try that." | 12:50 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, yeah, yeah. | 13:04 |
| Grace George | I think about three or four things at one time. | 13:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. | 13:09 |
| Grace George | And they're all happening. That's how I see it. | 13:10 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. | 13:11 |
| Grace George | And when it's all done, it's all done. | 13:11 |
| Annie Gavin | It's done. Right. | 13:11 |
| Grace George | I need to concentrate on one thing. | 13:11 |
| Annie Gavin | But I think that ambition goes on down through the line. Some of them, somebody will grab it after a while. | 13:19 |
| Grace George | Sometimes it takes a lot of generations. | 13:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, a lot of generations. Uh-huh. | 13:29 |
| Grace George | That's why I say don't believe in giving up hope because somewhere along the way, somewhere, somebody's going to pick it up. | 13:32 |
| Annie Gavin | Going to pick it up. | 13:37 |
| Grace George | Right. | 13:40 |
| Annie Gavin | True. Right now, Ruth Anne's daughter is very ambitious. She sews. | 13:42 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 13:55 |
| Annie Gavin | She makes hats and suits. | 13:55 |
| Grace George | Designer. | 13:58 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, she took economics in school, but she makes a living sewing now. She's still in school though, in Richmond. | 13:58 |
| Grace George | It comes out. | 14:09 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 14:10 |
| Grace George | Let me ask you, like you say, most of the social activities centered around the churches. | 14:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 14:19 |
| Grace George | I remember hearing people talk about excursions, going on excursions. Did you ever [indistinct 00:14:26] | 14:20 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, yeah. | 14:25 |
| Grace George | —about the church, going on excursions. | 14:27 |
| Annie Gavin | The church. Then they went by train and get on the track up there by James— Well, I still call all of that James City for as I'm concerned. | 14:28 |
| Grace George | Right. | 14:42 |
| Annie Gavin | There where the Ramada Inn and all that, it's still James City because that's the center of James City. | 14:42 |
| Grace George | That's it. Forever. | 14:47 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. And get on the train and go to Morehead to the beach and the churches would run excursions, for a way of making money for the church. | 14:51 |
| Grace George | Your mom said everybody would be standing out when you come back to see who was on the train. | 15:05 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 15:11 |
| Grace George | It was a big thing to do. | 15:11 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. They would— | 15:11 |
| Grace George | Let me open the door. | 15:15 |
| Annie Gavin | No, I don't think there's anybody there. Wait a minute. Let me see. | 15:15 |
| Grace George | Sometimes the wind— | 15:15 |
| Unknown Interviewer | [indistinct 00:15:26] | 15:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Nobody. | 15:15 |
| Unknown Interviewer | [indistinct 00:15:28] | 15:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. But I tell you about James City, there was a time, there were just Black businesses and Black people. Then the Whites start to moving in, all out there. Well, you remember Mungum business, you remember the mill, part about the mill. | 15:34 |
| Grace George | I remember the mill, one mill that was there when I was little girl. | 15:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 15:53 |
| Grace George | That was the last one. You can still see some of the equipment still over there. | 16:00 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 16:01 |
| Grace George | I remember that one. | 16:01 |
| Annie Gavin | There were two mills. | 16:01 |
| Grace George | They say there was a lot of them on the water. | 16:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 16:07 |
| Grace George | By Ms. Lucy's [indistinct 00:16:09] | 16:08 |
| Annie Gavin | The mills over on that side. And mills on this side and out that side, that's where Ms. Dorcas lived. Y'all lived right to the end of that street though. | 16:09 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 16:19 |
| Annie Gavin | But those people, they got along, except as I remember growing up, seemed like some of them people had too many fusses over children. | 16:23 |
| Grace George | Yeah, yeah, because watching over each other's children. | 16:31 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. See, Hill's grandmama and Niecy Beasley and them, they used to have fussing spells every week. | 16:40 |
| Grace George | I understand that there was always one or two in the community that kept something going. | 16:47 |
| Annie Gavin | And ended up in the courthouse. | 16:49 |
| Grace George | Yeah, yeah. My mama say every Monday morning, and I think that courthouse downtown New Bern, they would fuss and fight on the weekend and they'd all had to wind up in the courthouse Monday morning. | 16:55 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. Then they come back almost holding hands. | 17:07 |
| Grace George | Holding hands. But they'd have to go to court to have [indistinct 00:17:24] | 17:19 |
| Annie Gavin | Have to pay the money out. | 17:24 |
| Grace George | Pay the money out. | 17:24 |
| Annie Gavin | Fussing mostly over children fighting. | 17:24 |
| Grace George | Now I'd like to say that there is a place that nobody else knows, but in New Bern, where they would go for the hearing and it wouldn't be right in the courthouse. It's a building downtown. My mom pointed out on Raven Street. | 17:25 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. | 17:37 |
| Grace George | There was a lady that would sit there and they'd just come tell her what they did over the weekend and pay the money. | 17:37 |
| Annie Gavin | Pay the money. They satisfied, going home till next time. But I'll tell you what, they could fight among themselves, but nobody else better not bother them. Do them sides that were mad, jump off side, jump on over. They almost clannish. That's what they were. James City people were clannish. They could be ever so mad— | 17:46 |
| Grace George | With each other. | 18:11 |
| Annie Gavin | —with each other. Don't no outsider come in their mess, because they used to run Blacks back to New Bern. And the Blacks come over here to get food. | 18:13 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 18:20 |
| Annie Gavin | Because we always have food. | 18:21 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 18:22 |
| Annie Gavin | Even when y'all going to school— | 18:23 |
| Grace George | There was plenty of food because everybody had a garden. They always had some food. | 18:23 |
| Annie Gavin | I often think about that girl—Daisy. Daisy, Marian's Daisy was talking about what she had for breakfast. Collard green. And this girl made fun of it. She should've had some collard green because she got so skinny— | 18:32 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:18:55] | 18:54 |
| Annie Gavin | [indistinct 00:18:55] and she had plenty. But we ate what we had. | 18:54 |
| Grace George | That's it. You were— | 19:00 |
| Annie Gavin | Warm up them collard greens and dumplings and that fat meat. | 19:01 |
| Grace George | You know what— | 19:05 |
| Annie Gavin | When you come from school. | 19:05 |
| Grace George | We didn't have a special bacon and eggs— | 19:05 |
| Annie Gavin | No. | 19:05 |
| Grace George | —for breakfast. Whatever was available, they ate it. | 19:05 |
| Annie Gavin | We ate it. | 19:05 |
| Grace George | If you had it in the evening and it was left over, I remember my grandma. It wasn't like—When I came along, we started to have to have a separate breakfast, something different. | 19:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. But— | 19:22 |
| Grace George | But whatever you had— | 19:23 |
| Annie Gavin | If you had some collard greens for supper and some leftover, warm them up and eat them. | 19:25 |
| Grace George | Warm them up. Make those—What was— | 19:28 |
| Annie Gavin | That dumpling. | 19:29 |
| Grace George | —that flapjacks. | 19:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, cutting the dumpling in half and turn it down into grease. It would stay healthy too. | 19:30 |
| Grace George | Maybe that's why we live long. We live a long time because they— | 19:40 |
| Annie Gavin | And they made soup. My mother and my daddy used to make big old pots of soup, and everybody ate. Well, even during my time, when y'all came around, there was always a biscuit. | 19:44 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:19:57] pot. | 19:56 |
| Annie Gavin | Always something. | 19:57 |
| Grace George | Ms. Annie, those big black pots. I have found one. They used to cook out, hang it, this is going way back a little bit longer, over the fire place. | 19:58 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 20:11 |
| Grace George | You don't remember any of that. But my mom said that. I used to say, "Well, how did they bake their biscuits or their bread?" And she said they would push it— | 20:12 |
| Annie Gavin | Put it in the ashes. | 20:19 |
| Grace George | In the ashes. | 20:19 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 20:19 |
| Grace George | Cover it up. | 20:19 |
| Annie Gavin | I experienced that. | 20:23 |
| Grace George | Oh, you did? | 20:26 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. And they'd had the pot. They had it so the thing—Tryon Palace got all that kind of stuff. | 20:26 |
| Grace George | Yeah. Okay. | 20:33 |
| Annie Gavin | You could push the pot over the flame because you keep the fire under, it was fireplace. They didn't have stoves. The first stoves I know about was a cook stove. They push it over there and then they could have a way of pulling it out and stirring it up, pushing it back. And take potatoes and put it in the ashes, cook them and bake them in the ashes. Baked potatoes in the ashes. But the fireplace was the main heat. | 20:34 |
| Grace George | Heat. | 21:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Then after a while, they had cook stoves where you could bake inside the stove. | 21:09 |
| Grace George | For their beds. Oh, she was telling us they had—Most of the furniture back there, right after the war, they had was handmade. | 21:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Handmade. Handmade baby beds. But always some some carpenters because that's what your granddaddy was, a carpenter. George Washington. Which of them was Martha's brother— | 21:23 |
| Grace George | And Washington— | 21:39 |
| Annie Gavin | And May Washington, Washington Spivey. Yeah. | 21:40 |
| Grace George | He was a carpenter? | 21:42 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. I say you and Burton, all them came in because George Washington was Burt's granddaddy. My Aunt Rosie married George Bill. Me and them came on. [indistinct 00:22:00] | 21:50 |
| Grace George | I have a picture of—[indistinct 00:22:02] let me share, of her grandma which was Mariah. | 21:59 |
| Annie Gavin | Maya, we call her Maya. | 22:08 |
| Grace George | I'm going try to put that on exhibit. We have Robert's father when he was an infant. How old would Robert be if he was alive now? | 22:11 |
| Annie Gavin | Robert would be old now because I'm going on 82. | 22:22 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 22:28 |
| Annie Gavin | Robert would've been, I guess— | 22:31 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:22:34] | 22:33 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, he was older than I was. | 22:37 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:22:38] So if he was a little baby in her lap. | 22:37 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. He was a baby in—That was Mama's and Aunt Rosie's mother. | 22:40 |
| Grace George | Yeah. So that's your grandmother— | 22:46 |
| Annie Gavin | My grandmother. | 22:46 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 22:48 |
| Annie Gavin | I didn't know her. She died before I was born. | 22:48 |
| Grace George | You seen the picture? | 22:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, I've seen the picture. | 22:54 |
| Grace George | But I told her I would take—Sherry should take good care and put it back to the family until we get a real museum. | 22:55 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I didn't know that grandmother. | 23:06 |
| Grace George | She said she was born back in the 1830s. | 23:09 |
| Annie Gavin | But I— | 23:13 |
| Grace George | She was a slave. | 23:14 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Well, I don't know about her being a slave. I didn't hear about—I think she was born after the war. I think she was born here in James City. | 23:14 |
| Grace George | Ms. Mary, your grandma? | 23:31 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 23:34 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 23:36 |
| Annie Gavin | Maya. Yeah, she was Maya's daughter. | 23:36 |
| Grace George | Go ahead. I'll get it out the car and let you look at it. | 23:38 |
| Annie Gavin | I know, I've seen it. | 23:39 |
| Grace George | So you know what we're talking about? | 23:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. Rob was sitting on the lap. | 23:42 |
| Grace George | Yeah. Yeah. And who's that other one [indistinct 00:24:00] her daughter. | 23:56 |
| Annie Gavin | Had to be Sarah. | 23:59 |
| Grace George | Sarah, Sarah. | 23:59 |
| Annie Gavin | Sarah. Because I didn't know Mama's mother. She was already dead when I came along. | 24:01 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 24:04 |
| Annie Gavin | But I know Mama said that her daddy was a woman chaser. | 24:06 |
| Grace George | Okay. They all were. I tell you, I ain't been taught this, but my mom say that's why James City is so close-knit. | 24:17 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 24:26 |
| Grace George | Everybody was a chaser. | 24:27 |
| Annie Gavin | Chaser. | 24:28 |
| Grace George | They had a family here and a family there. | 24:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Yeah. | 24:32 |
| Grace George | It was one of those, like the kings and queens over there, they'd keep the money in the family. They kept everything else. | 24:34 |
| Annie Gavin | Everything in the family. | 24:37 |
| Grace George | Yeah, it is true, there's very few families here that are not connected— | 24:43 |
| Annie Gavin | Interrelated. | 24:48 |
| Grace George | —families. | 24:55 |
| Annie Gavin | Connected either by birth or friendship, but they could be married. That came up through all of us. | 24:55 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 25:04 |
| Annie Gavin | Because I remember when I was down on the corner and Lucy Spencer checked down Cherry Point had been misplaced and they had to put it in FBI, I guess it was. But he came there asking me where Lucy Spencer lived. I said, "Why?" Still right here. Just from where I moved from down there because I knew Net sold whiskey. I didn't know, I wasn't going to send him over there and maybe catch Net selling whiskey. | 25:05 |
| Grace George | Whiskey. That bootleg. | 25:46 |
| Annie Gavin | That bootleg. And he said, "Do you know Lucy Spencer? Where she live?" I said, "I don't know." | 25:47 |
| Grace George | That's right. | 25:52 |
| Annie Gavin | Then he looked at me so strange. I was supposed to know because I was keeping store. And that's when it was down on Compton. Then I reckon he say, "She ain't going to tell me nothing." So he showed me her check. She was working at Cherry Point and her check had been misplaced, and he showed me the check. I said, "Why didn't you tell me that to start with?" | 25:55 |
| Grace George | That's right. | 26:14 |
| Annie Gavin | I said, "She lives right—" I had to laugh. It took a minute too. But I knew Net sold whiskey. | 26:14 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 26:23 |
| Annie Gavin | And I wasn't sitting that White man over there and catching Net selling. We was clannish though. | 26:24 |
| Grace George | Yeah, they were— | 26:32 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, we were clannish. | 26:32 |
| Grace George | Yeah. When you come asking questions, you have to know the inside story. | 26:34 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. The children, people could fight among themselves in James City, but nobody else better not come in. | 26:38 |
| Grace George | Now they got that reputation. I remember some research that I did that they were saying that they would come over when they were talking about running them off the land and they sent the sheriff over here. | 26:45 |
| Annie Gavin | They ran him [indistinct 00:26:59] | 26:58 |
| Grace George | They ran him in the water, had to swim back. So he sit with the governor and said, "Look, if you want—you have to come over here, because these people were not— | 26:59 |
| Annie Gavin | That was the time they called the military. | 27:09 |
| Grace George | Yeah. They sent the— | 27:10 |
| Annie Gavin | National Guard, we call it now. They came to James City and James Daniels' granddaddy had a place up James City, had a flat farm. Well, I don't remember this. Mama say she was a child still. They made lemonade and the National Guard came and they called it the militia, which is what it was, and they all came and had a big party. James City people were pacified then. | 27:11 |
| Grace George | Yeah, yeah. | 27:40 |
| Annie Gavin | But they raised themselves some hell with sticks and bricks and bottles. | 27:41 |
| Grace George | They had sticks and everything, waiting for the—Well, we call it the National Guard. | 27:42 |
| Annie Gavin | National Guard | 27:42 |
| Grace George | For the military to come in, so that's when some of those attorneys and lawyers that they sent to Congress. Like George White. | 27:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 27:59 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:28:00] O'Hara. | 28:00 |
| Annie Gavin | O'Hara. | 28:01 |
| Grace George | Stepped in and [indistinct 00:28:03] into a settlement— | 28:02 |
| Annie Gavin | That's when they— | 28:04 |
| Grace George | —rather than have bloodshed during that period of time. | 28:04 |
| Annie Gavin | They had to show us something because they didn't mind dying. They didn't mind it because it felt like their rights were taken. | 28:13 |
| Grace George | Now my Grandma Martha stayed in that old house. That's why she refused to leave there, up until the— | 28:19 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 28:22 |
| Grace George | We had to take her, literally pick her up and bring her out there because she couldn't take care of herself. And Old James City was speaking about that they loved that land, they loved that area so much to them. To them it was the promised land. | 28:26 |
| Annie Gavin | That's where they were brought up. | 28:38 |
| Grace George | Called it promised land. | 28:39 |
| Annie Gavin | The promised land. | 28:40 |
| Grace George | She said she would die there. And that was Washington Spivey's daughter. She was some of the last ones other than them Bill Spivey. | 28:42 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, right. | 28:51 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:28:52] So they still—that was like everything to them. [indistinct 00:28:58] | 28:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, one thing, Ms. Martha was a pusher. | 28:59 |
| Grace George | Strong. | 29:04 |
| Annie Gavin | When we used to raise money for the church, she played part of a bishop, had on the hat and the coat. She had a gross voice, and we would raise all them pennies and stuff. | 29:05 |
| Grace George | Raise a lot of— | 29:20 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 29:21 |
| Grace George | I tried to mention some of those things in there, that these are things you should go back. People enjoyed them. | 29:23 |
| Annie Gavin | Right, right. | 29:31 |
| Grace George | It was fun. It was fun. | 29:32 |
| Annie Gavin | The Far graveyard that's where the slaves were buried. | 29:38 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 29:43 |
| Annie Gavin | Lot of slaves are buried there. That's one thing Jojo did right. He fought for that graveyard because they were digging that up for the airport and would've got away with it. | 29:43 |
| Grace George | We're not quite clear on it because now they have fenced it in. I don't know what they're going to do. It is a part of the airport. We're speaking about the Far Slave Cemetery out here on Howard Road. We used to call it— | 29:54 |
| Annie Gavin | Howell Road. | 30:11 |
| Grace George | Howell Road, but I used to call it Old Airport Road, but now— | 30:11 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, to me it's still Airport. | 30:11 |
| Grace George | Airport running through the Old James City. | 30:11 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 30:11 |
| Grace George | So he did fight for that. He brought attention to it that they were [indistinct 00:30:23] | 30:19 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 30:23 |
| Grace George | What amazes me about James City, Sandy, is the cemeteries, how they're located. Now my mom says, not only that was the slave— | 30:24 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, the road came across the cemetery. | 30:34 |
| Grace George | Right. | 30:36 |
| Annie Gavin | Because of the cemetery on that side of the road. | 30:37 |
| Grace George | By Ramada, on the other side? | 30:39 |
| Annie Gavin | On the other side of the Ramada Inn. | 30:40 |
| Grace George | She said that's where her grandma is buried. Mama's— | 30:43 |
| Annie Gavin | I think Aden Howell was the last person buried in there. And you could see his grave clearly because people put all his—them watches and clocks and stuff, on top of his grave is a lot of that. | 30:48 |
| Grace George | So a lot of things are still in that area because from what I understand, as you said, way back there, how you lived, whatever things you did, you sort of put those pieces on your grave. | 30:59 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 31:10 |
| Grace George | So he worked on clocks. | 31:10 |
| Annie Gavin | All working on clocks and watches. | 31:12 |
| Grace George | So [indistinct 00:31:15] whatever he needed. So it's such a shame how they have disturbed those areas, historical areas. | 31:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. | 31:20 |
| Grace George | You would find a lot of old artifacts and things in areas like that. | 31:21 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, sure would because he had a whole lot of different clocks and stuff. He didn't, but the people put his stuff on his grave. | 31:26 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:31:34] | 31:33 |
| Annie Gavin | Because that's the way we used to have to come from James City over here. Unless we came down the railroad. | 31:35 |
| Grace George | Railroad. | 31:41 |
| Annie Gavin | I remember the Little Red Schoolhouse too. | 31:42 |
| Grace George | You do? | 31:47 |
| Annie Gavin | Set on that hill. I wasn't old—I must have been four or five. | 31:48 |
| Grace George | That was the first schoolhouse? | 31:55 |
| Annie Gavin | I didn't go to school there. | 31:55 |
| Grace George | But one of— | 31:56 |
| Annie Gavin | But I remember it. It was still there. And Frisell, Ada Davis' daddy, he looked like a White man. Well, you know they did because she did. He was the principal of the school. I think my mama said she went to school there. But we had the school down here because I didn't go to school in James City too much. I went Sutton School. | 31:58 |
| Grace George | But let me just say keep on with the schools. Now the Sutton School was in New Bern? | 32:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 32:37 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 32:37 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, [indistinct 00:32:38] | 32:37 |
| Grace George | Okay. I want to come back to that too. But James City School. You were a big girl when that school was put up, or you were a little girl. My mother said she was some of the first ones that went to that school. | 32:38 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. But she and Addie in that group went to that school. The brick school that they burnt down not long ago, the school. You went to that school. | 32:51 |
| Grace George | Right here. | 33:03 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. | 33:03 |
| Grace George | Yeah, before this automobile dealership. | 33:03 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, yeah. | 33:08 |
| Grace George | Okay. They burnt the old school down? | 33:09 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, they burnt the old school down. | 33:09 |
| Grace George | So I was on the [indistinct 00:33:14] | 33:12 |
| Annie Gavin | You went to the brick school. | 33:16 |
| Grace George | The brick school I went to. | 33:17 |
| Annie Gavin | I know. All my children went to the brick school. But we didn't have a brick school. In fact, I don't know why my dad always sent me to school in New Bern. I had to had the best. | 33:19 |
| Grace George | Was it at Barber's school that you went to? | 33:33 |
| Annie Gavin | I went to Sutton School. The AME Zion Church School. | 33:35 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 33:38 |
| Annie Gavin | AME Zion Church had a school. | 33:38 |
| Grace George | Barber's school came along. | 33:40 |
| Annie Gavin | JT Barber was a public school. West Street. | 33:43 |
| Grace George | All right. | 33:46 |
| Annie Gavin | West Street. | 33:47 |
| Grace George | Because I received some calls from ECU. They have a lot of photographs. | 33:48 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh yeah? | 33:52 |
| Grace George | Old West Street. I mean West Street, JT Barber. And Barber was the principal. | 33:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Because you went to West Street too? | 33:58 |
| Grace George | Oh yeah. I did. | 34:01 |
| Annie Gavin | All of my children, and you did too. But they got a lot of photographs? | 34:02 |
| Grace George | Well, he asked me could I use them on the exhibit? And I told him yes, because I'm not turning anything down. | 34:07 |
| Annie Gavin | Right, right. | 34:15 |
| Grace George | I feel that eventually we will use all this. | 34:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. | 34:17 |
| Grace George | So that's what we're planning. We got a lot of little good pieces people are sending in. | 34:18 |
| Annie Gavin | That's good. | 34:19 |
| Grace George | Because people from James City did attend that school. | 34:24 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, so that was the high school y'all went to. Y'all had to walk. Didn't have bus. Did they have bus when y'all went— | 34:28 |
| Grace George | Oh yeah. | 34:34 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Later, yeah. | 34:34 |
| Grace George | It had a wooden bridge that I had nightmares many years after leaving here, of that bus going into that water. | 34:37 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 34:44 |
| Grace George | But the planks, my mom said first they used to go over—She don't remember, but her mom told her that it would go over on barges to New Bern. Then they put this bridge with the planks that you could look in the water. | 34:45 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, the plank bridge. | 34:59 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 35:00 |
| Annie Gavin | I remember when they had didn't have a bridge. | 35:05 |
| Grace George | Okay, okay. | 35:08 |
| Annie Gavin | And the people used to walk on the railroad trestle to town. But you had to pick the time between when the train running. Some people, I reckon, walk that old bridge. | 35:09 |
| Grace George | Oh, yeah? I've seen them standing out there [indistinct 00:35:27] | 35:27 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 35:27 |
| Grace George | Boy, I would've died trying to cross that. You can't say— | 35:27 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, it wasn't too bad because the big cross ties and they were sort of close. Then it was a factory down there on that same creek. | 35:31 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 35:56 |
| Annie Gavin | Same railroad. | 35:56 |
| Grace George | Is that the one that you said preserved different fruits and things? I thought was later, because I remember on this side of the old bridge, there was a factory that they— | 35:56 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, that's the one. | 35:57 |
| Grace George | —preserved peaches and tomatoes and [indistinct 00:36:00] | 35:58 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh no, that was Mac Lipton's factory. | 36:00 |
| Grace George | That was later years. | 36:04 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, that was later years. That was like, you're going to this bridge we still got. Mac Lipton had that and a lot of people got work down there. But then it was a fertilizer factory on that other bridge. | 36:05 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 36:22 |
| Annie Gavin | The train could drive up there and load the bags of fertilizer and the White family, some of that family still lives—I used to go down there and play with a girl about my same age. We used to play under the house. It was so high up, Papa had had this café down there. All I had to do was walk down the railroad and be there. But so many changes took place. As far as integration goes, White and Black have been integrated among themselves for years, even before. But to be in friendship or have a Black friend, a White friend, they had to hide it. | 36:23 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 37:13 |
| Annie Gavin | But White people and Colored people always loved each other. The biggest trouble came was when other people got mingled up in it, because my daddy had a car and I forgot what the name, but the family there, two of the girls were teachers. My daddy carried them to the school every day because their daddy didn't have a car. | 37:14 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 37:39 |
| Annie Gavin | But my daddy had the car because he lost his foot on the train and he was getting a pension and had a café. So he was kind of progressing. But your granddaddy's uncle, West Far's brother had the first Black business in James City that I know about. | 37:41 |
| Grace George | My mom said he used have a taxi and they would ride—Before the cars came along, he would chauffer people around on the horse and buggy. | 38:05 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. He had a, what you call it? Surrey with the fringe on the top. | 38:13 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 38:19 |
| Annie Gavin | Against the front one seat and another seat. Sam Benson had one and Wes Foye had one, because Wes was always Bud's boss. | 38:19 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 38:29 |
| Annie Gavin | They was brothers but Wes was ambitious. Had a big house, got burnt down. His house got burnt down. Somebody set his house afire, I think. But then before his house, all the houses on the other side burned too. | 38:29 |
| Grace George | Oh. I think what happened there, my mom said before his house caught on, the sparks from her house— | 38:49 |
| Annie Gavin | House, stopped the big house. | 38:54 |
| Grace George | Stopped the big house. | 38:54 |
| Annie Gavin | Because his house was kind of on a hill. | 38:56 |
| Grace George | On the hill. She left the stove on or something, that burned a hole. | 39:00 |
| Annie Gavin | And what they had the habit of doing is they wouldn't take time and cut the wood short enough and you could put the wood in at the end of the stove and it burned down. Then that other piece going to fall. | 39:03 |
| Grace George | Right, right. | 39:16 |
| Annie Gavin | —and be out in the street talking, like they burned up James City. | 39:17 |
| Grace George | Like they burned Old James City up. | 39:22 |
| Annie Gavin | Sure did. But it's interesting to let your mind— | 39:22 |
| Grace George | It's amazing when you speak about things, they sort of connect. | 39:32 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 39:32 |
| Grace George | You start connecting. | 39:32 |
| Annie Gavin | Now Bea used to drink her liquor. | 39:36 |
| Grace George | Liquor. | 39:38 |
| Annie Gavin | But you didn't go hungry around her. | 39:39 |
| Grace George | No. Sure [indistinct 00:39:42] | 39:40 |
| Annie Gavin | She'd feed you. She always had something to give somebody. | 39:41 |
| Grace George | She was something like Boocher. | 39:45 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Boocher's just as good. She going to ready to raise a whole lot of hell. | 39:48 |
| Grace George | Raise hell and feed you at the same time. | 39:51 |
| Annie Gavin | Same time. Sure would. Well, one thing James City, people would fight among themselves and they could be mad with you, but wouldn't let nobody else bother you. Boocher was one of them. | 39:55 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 40:11 |
| Annie Gavin | It's clannish. That's what we were. | 40:15 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 40:16 |
| Annie Gavin | Clannish. | 40:16 |
| Grace George | Had your little clan. | 40:16 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, clannish. | 40:16 |
| Grace George | I think there's still—the young people have that but they don't understand what it is. | 40:24 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, they have it. | 40:26 |
| Grace George | They have it. | 40:26 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, they have it. | 40:26 |
| Grace George | Because you can try to reach them, get into them. | 40:26 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 40:26 |
| Grace George | But they will stand off, but once you in there, they sort of protect you. Don't let anybody else [indistinct 00:40:41] | 40:33 |
| Annie Gavin | All right, let me— | 40:41 |
| Grace George | Give it to you. | 40:43 |
| Annie Gavin | But nobody else better not. | 40:44 |
| Grace George | They stand on the sideline and watch. | 40:44 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. | 40:44 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:40:49] way back there. The people showed how he expressed it. But today they sort of like, "I'll wait and see." | 40:50 |
| Annie Gavin | I'll wait and see what's going to happen. Yeah, because the boys used to— James City boys get together, as Black boys come over from town and start courting the girls, they run them back. | 40:57 |
| Grace George | Don't bother with the ladies. | 41:11 |
| Annie Gavin | Don't bother with they women. But now, after they started going to school together, they were most mixing. Because I used to have a house full of boys and girls all the time. I had a record player and piano. | 41:12 |
| Grace George | Always was free to let them enjoy themselves. | 41:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, bicycle. | 41:31 |
| Grace George | She always had a store. Ms. Annie always had a shop. We were young children then and I grew up with her children. We would always, after church, we'd come to Ms. Annie's house and we'd just have a good time. We played in the piano, we sing. | 41:39 |
| Annie Gavin | Played records. | 41:52 |
| Grace George | We'd dance, we'd have our little boyfriends to come and sit down [indistinct 00:41:58] the parlor, because most of the parents still wasn't too [indistinct 00:42:01] about little boys talking to you. So we would have that little freedom to come and sit down and talk and everybody just have a good time. | 41:54 |
| Annie Gavin | Sure would. | 42:09 |
| Grace George | That was our afternoon, if it wasn't any church in the evening. | 42:11 |
| Annie Gavin | After church. Well, they had to go to church and Sunday school. | 42:14 |
| Grace George | I think that has made us strong. | 42:19 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, it did. | 42:21 |
| Grace George | They don't get that atmosphere. Something today is just tough. | 42:21 |
| Annie Gavin | But you know what happened? It follows you. Because when Gwen's children were little, growing up, and I'd go there to visit, they always had a lot of younguns all over the steps, all over the porch. So the man said, "Mama, go out there and look out that door. And see what it remind you of?" I said, "My house is full of everybody [indistinct 00:42:48]." | 42:29 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:42:48] | 42:46 |
| Annie Gavin | Sometime I come home, one day in particular, Bill Ryder was in the kitchen and had him some molasses and biscuits, because I'd make a lot of biscuits and food. We always had food. James City people always had food. | 42:50 |
| Grace George | Yes, yes. | 43:06 |
| Annie Gavin | That's one thing, we always had food. | 43:07 |
| Grace George | I think that's why you don't see a lot of them out there when things are being handed out. You don't hear of them running to grab. They have that— | 43:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Instinct of getting their own. | 43:21 |
| Grace George | Getting their own. | 43:22 |
| Annie Gavin | We were kind of clownish. We could be mad with you, but nobody else better not bother you. Yeah, we were clannish. Forget about being mad if somebody else bother you. | 43:27 |
| Grace George | Is there anything that you wanted to ask [indistinct 00:43:51] | 43:42 |
| Unknown Interviewer | I'm just curious, did you ever hear any stories of people who either fought with the Union as part of the Africa Brigade or perhaps worked as laborers, putting together Fort Totten or any of the other forts around here? | 43:51 |
| Annie Gavin | I mean, I didn't quite understand particularly. | 43:59 |
| Unknown Interviewer | Do you know of any stories of people who fought with the Union in the Civil War as part of the Africa Brigade perhaps, or [indistinct 00:44:14] their work as laborers, putting up the forts. I think some of the laborers came from here in James City to put up Fort Totten. | 44:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Well, I don't know. I probably know them but I wouldn't be able to pinpoint them because wherever they could get work, they worked. That's one thing about James City people, they would work. | 44:22 |
| Grace George | They would work. You can rest assured that many things that were built in that time in this area were probably built by—We can't, like you say, say right up front names, but— | 44:36 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh no. Because they weren't— | 44:47 |
| Grace George | —they in those areas, because back then most of the Whites, we had to work for them. So I'm almost positive that you could name some right up, but we don't have that. I don't. | 44:49 |
| Annie Gavin | No. Well, whatever work there was was to be done, they did it. | 45:03 |
| Unknown Interviewer | Well, not so much names, did you ever hear anybody talking about fighting with the Union or building those forts? | 45:11 |
| Annie Gavin | No. | 45:17 |
| Unknown Interviewer | No? | 45:19 |
| Annie Gavin | When you think about it, there's always been sort of a good relationship between Whites and Blacks in our area. | 45:19 |
| Grace George | This area, they didn't— | 45:30 |
| Annie Gavin | The Whites would fight for the Blacks, especially those that grew up on the farms and stuff together. | 45:31 |
| Grace George | We didn't have a lot of plantations in this area. | 45:38 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-mm. No, just farms. | 45:42 |
| Grace George | So I think you had an independent—When they became free people, they sort of came to this area almost free, even before emancipation, from my research. So most of the people in the settlement, she said they gave them the little shanties and they had so many acreage of land around that that they were able to farm on. My mom also said about the fishing, that they could go take a pole and put a little pin on it and go and catch all the fish the family could eat and the rest they could sell. So with their little farms, they became—go over and they would sell it to the area— | 45:44 |
| Annie Gavin | Pull wagons. | 46:23 |
| Grace George | They had independence. | 46:23 |
| Annie Gavin | Sell vegetables. | 46:23 |
| Grace George | And you had carpenters in the area that, understand the Elliots and the Davis. | 46:31 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. They were carpenters. | 46:35 |
| Grace George | They a lot of carpentry work, like buildings. I think— | 46:36 |
| Grace George | People enjoyed that. | 0:05 |
| Annie Gavin | Right, right, right. | 0:12 |
| Grace George | It was kind of— | 0:12 |
| Annie Gavin | The Far Graveyard, that's where the slaves were buried. | 0:13 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 0:17 |
| Annie Gavin | That's where slaves were buried in. That's one thing JoJo did right, he fought for that graveyard because they were digging that up for the airport, and would have got away with it. | 0:17 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:00:27] not quite clear on it, because now they have fenced it in. I don't know what they're going to do with it, but part of the airport we were speaking about before, slave cemetery out here on Howard Road, they used to call it— | 0:27 |
| Annie Gavin | Howell Road. | 0:42 |
| Grace George | Howell Road. But I used to call it Old Airport Road, but now— | 0:42 |
| Annie Gavin | To me, it's still Airport. | 0:45 |
| Grace George | Airport running through Old James City. | 0:45 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 0:46 |
| Grace George | So he did fight for that. | 0:50 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. | 0:55 |
| Grace George | He used to go up [indistinct 00:00:57] the airplane. | 0:56 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 0:57 |
| Grace George | What amazes me about James City, Ms. Annie, is the cemeteries, how they're located. My mom said not only that was the slave— | 0:58 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, the road came across the cemetery. | 1:08 |
| Grace George | Right. | 1:09 |
| Annie Gavin | Because it was a cemetery on that side of the road. | 1:09 |
| Grace George | Okay, by Ramada? On the other side of— | 1:10 |
| Annie Gavin | Other side of Ramada Inn. | 1:14 |
| Grace George | She said that's where her grandma was buried. | 1:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. | 1:16 |
| Grace George | Mama's— | 1:16 |
| Annie Gavin | I think Aden Howell was the last person buried in there. And you could see his grave clearly because people put all his—you know, them watches and clocks and stuff? On top of his grave was a lot of that. | 1:20 |
| Grace George | So a lot of things are still in that area because from what I understand, like you said, way back there, how you lived, whatever things you did, you sort of put those pieces on your grave. | 1:33 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, yeah. | 1:44 |
| Grace George | And he worked on clocks. | 1:44 |
| Annie Gavin | Howell working on clocks and watches. | 1:46 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:01:48] Such a shame how they have disturbed those areas, historical areas. | 1:49 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. | 1:52 |
| Grace George | You can find a lot of old artifacts and things in areas like that. | 1:58 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, sure would because he had a lot of different clocks and stuff. He didn't, but the people put his stuff on his grave. Because that's the way we used to have to come from James City over here, unless we came down the railroad. I remember the little red schoolhouse too, sitting on a hill. I must have been four or five. | 1:59 |
| Grace George | That was the first schoolhouse? | 2:25 |
| Annie Gavin | I didn't go to school there. | 2:25 |
| Grace George | But [indistinct 00:02:31] | 2:25 |
| Annie Gavin | But I remember, it was still there. And Friselle Ada Davis daddy, he looked like a White man. But you know he did because she did. He was the principal. I think my mama said she went to school there. But we had the school down here because I didn't go to school in James City too much. I went to Sutton School. | 2:30 |
| Grace George | Let me just keep on with school. Now the Sutton School's in New Bern? | 3:10 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 3:10 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 3:10 |
| Annie Gavin | [indistinct 00:03:11] | 3:10 |
| Grace George | Okay. I'm going to come back to that. But James City School, you were a big girl when that school was [indistinct 00:03:21] My mother said she was one of the first ones that went to that school? | 3:10 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, but she and Addie and that group went to that school. Brick school that they burnt down not long ago. You went to that school. | 3:49 |
| Grace George | Right. Yeah, before they built the automobile dealership. | 3:49 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, yeah, | 3:49 |
| Grace George | They burnt the old school down? | 3:49 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, they burnt the old school down. | 3:49 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:03:50] | 3:49 |
| Annie Gavin | The one you went to, brick school. | 3:49 |
| Grace George | The brick school. | 3:49 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, all my children went to the brick school. But we didn't have a brick school. In fact, I don't know why my daddy always sent me to school in New Bern, but I had to have the best. | 3:58 |
| Grace George | Well, did they offer school [indistinct 00:04:06] | 4:00 |
| Annie Gavin | I went to Sutton School, the AME Zion Church school. | 4:07 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 4:10 |
| Annie Gavin | AME Zion Church had a school. | 4:11 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:04:13] | 4:12 |
| Annie Gavin | J.T. Barber was a public school, West Street. | 4:14 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:04:20] | 4:19 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh yeah? | 4:24 |
| Grace George | West Street. I mean, old West Street, J.T. Barber. And Barber was the principal. | 4:26 |
| Annie Gavin | Because you went to West Street too. All of my children, you did too. But they got a lot of photographs? | 4:30 |
| Grace George | He asked me did I want to use them on the exhibit. I told him yes, I'm not turning anything down. | 4:39 |
| Annie Gavin | Right, right. | 4:41 |
| Grace George | I feel that eventually we will use all of it. | 4:48 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. | 4:49 |
| Grace George | That's what we were planning. | 4:57 |
| Annie Gavin | [indistinct 00:04:59] | 4:58 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:04:59] | 4:58 |
| Annie Gavin | That's good. | 4:58 |
| Grace George | People from James City did attend that school? | 4:58 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, because that was the high school you all went to. Y'all had to walk, didn't have a bus. Did they have a bus when y'all went— | 4:59 |
| Grace George | Oh, yeah. | 5:05 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, later years. | 5:05 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:05:07] a wooden bridge that I had nightmares many years after leaving here of that bus going into that water. | 5:09 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. Yeah. | 5:16 |
| Grace George | But the planks, my mom said they first used to go over. She don't remember, but her mom told her, that it would go over on barges in [indistinct 00:05:24] Then they put this bridge, the planks that you could look in the water. | 5:18 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, the plank bridge. | 5:30 |
| Grace George | Yeah, and then— | 5:32 |
| Annie Gavin | I remember when they didn't have a bridge and people used to walk on the railroad trestle to town, but you had to pick the time between when the train running. Some people, I reckon, still walk that bridge. | 5:34 |
| Grace George | I know, I've seen them standing out there. | 5:52 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 5:52 |
| Grace George | Boy, I would have died trying to cross that. | 5:52 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, it wasn't too bad because there were big cross ties and they were sort of close. Then it was a factory down there on that same creek, same railroad. | 6:01 |
| Grace George | Was that the one that was the preserves? Different fruits and things? Or this was later? Because I remember on the side of the old bridge, there was a factory that— | 6:26 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, that's one. | 6:27 |
| Grace George | —preserved peaches and tomatoes and [indistinct 00:06:30] | 6:27 |
| Annie Gavin | No, that was Mac Lipton's factory. | 6:30 |
| Grace George | That was [indistinct 00:06:38] | 6:37 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. That was later years. That was like you're going to this bridge we still got. Mac Lipton had that and a lot of people got work down there. But then it was a fertilizer factory on that other bridge and the train could drive up there and load the bags of fertilizer. The White family—some of that family still lives—I used to go down there and play with the girl about my same age, and we used to play under the house. It was so high up. That's when Poppa had his café down there. All I had to do walk down the railroad and be there. But so many changes took place. As far as integration goes, White and Black have been integrated among themselves for years, even before. But to be in friendship or have a Black friend or White friend, they had to hide it. | 6:37 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 7:42 |
| Annie Gavin | But White people and Colored people always loved each other. The biggest trouble came was when other people got mingled up in it because my daddy had a car and I forgot what the name, but the family there, two of the girls were teachers. And my daddy carried them to the school every day because their daddy didn't have a car. But my daddy had the car because he lost his foot on the train and he was in the pension and had the café, so he was kind of progressive. But your granddaddy's uncle, Wes Foye's brother, had the first Black business in James City that I know about. | 7:43 |
| Grace George | My mama say he used to have taxi and before the cars came along, he would chauffeur people around in a horse and buggy. | 8:33 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, he had what they call a surrey with the fringe on the top. | 8:42 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 8:48 |
| Annie Gavin | Against the front one seat and another seat. Sam Benson had one and Wes Foye had one, because Wes was always Bud's boss. They was brothers, but they— | 8:57 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:08:59] | 8:58 |
| Annie Gavin | But Wes was ambitious. He had a big house, it got burnt down. His house got burnt. Somebody set his house afire, I think. But then before his house, all the house on the other side burned too. | 8:59 |
| Grace George | Oh, I think what happened there, my mom said, before his house caught, the sparks from her house— | 9:16 |
| Annie Gavin | House, stopped the big house. | 9:22 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:09:23] | 9:23 |
| Annie Gavin | Because his house was kind of on a hill. | 9:23 |
| Grace George | On a hill. Because she'd left a stove on or something that burned the whole— | 9:28 |
| Annie Gavin | What they had the habit of doing is they wouldn't take time and cut the wood short enough, and that you could put the wood in at the end of the stove. And it burned down, then that other piece going to fall. | 9:30 |
| Grace George | Right. | 9:44 |
| Annie Gavin | Bee out in the street talking, like they burned up James City. | 9:45 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:09:49] like they burnt Old James City. | 9:49 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Sure did. But it's interesting to let your mind— | 9:50 |
| Grace George | It's amazing when you think about things, they sort of connect. | 9:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 9:55 |
| Grace George | Because it's [indistinct 00:10:03] | 9:55 |
| Annie Gavin | Bea used to drink her liquor. | 10:03 |
| Grace George | Liquor. | 10:04 |
| Annie Gavin | But you didn't go hungry around her. | 10:05 |
| Grace George | No sure [indistinct 00:10:08] | 10:07 |
| Annie Gavin | She'd feed you. She always had something to give somebody. | 10:08 |
| Grace George | She was sort of like Boocher. | 10:10 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, Boocher gives as good, as she going to ready to raise a whole lot of hell. | 10:11 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:10:16] Raise hell and feed you at the same time. | 10:18 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, same time. Sure would. Well, one thing, James City people would fight among themselves. And they could be mad with you, but wouldn't let nobody else bother you. Boochie was one of them. Clannish, that's what we were. | 10:26 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 10:46 |
| Annie Gavin | Clannish. | 10:46 |
| Grace George | Had your own little clan. | 10:46 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, clannish. | 10:46 |
| Grace George | I think they're still—the young people have that, but they don't understand what it is. | 10:48 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, they have it. | 10:52 |
| Grace George | They have it. | 10:52 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, they have it. | 10:52 |
| Grace George | We've been trying to reach them, penetrate, get into to them. But they're standoffish. But once you're in there, they sort of protect you. Don't let anybody else [indistinct 00:11:07] | 10:55 |
| Annie Gavin | Right, let me— | 11:07 |
| Grace George | Give it to you. | 11:07 |
| Annie Gavin | But nobody else better not. | 11:07 |
| Grace George | They stand on the sideline and watch. | 11:07 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. | 11:07 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:11:15] way back that people showed how, expressed it, but today, it's sort of like, "I'll wait and see." | 11:15 |
| Annie Gavin | I'll wait and see what's going to happen. Yeah, because the James City boys used to get together, as Black boys come over from town, if they start courting the girls, they'd run them back. | 11:21 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:11:38] bother with the ladies. | 11:36 |
| Annie Gavin | Bother with their women. But now, well, after they started going to school together, they were more mixing. Because I used to have house full of boys and girls all the time. I had a record player and piano. | 11:38 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:11:54] free, let them be children. | 11:54 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, bicycle. | 11:56 |
| Grace George | She always had a store. Ms. Annie always had a shop. We were young children then. I grew up with her children. We would always, after church, we'd come to Ms. Annie's house and we'd just have a good time. We'd play the piano, we'd sing— | 11:59 |
| Annie Gavin | Play records. | 12:16 |
| Grace George | We'd dance. We'd have our little boyfriends to come and [indistinct 00:12:21] the parlor because most of the parents still wasn't too [indistinct 00:12:25] about little boys talking to you. So we would have that little freedom to come and sit down and talk, and everybody just had a good time. | 12:18 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. Sure would. | 12:34 |
| Grace George | That was our afternoon if there wasn't any church. | 12:35 |
| Annie Gavin | After church. Well, they had to go to church and Sunday school. | 12:37 |
| Grace George | I think it's what has made us strong. | 12:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, it did. | 12:45 |
| Grace George | They don't get that, that atmosphere. Something today just [indistinct 00:12:51] | 12:45 |
| Annie Gavin | But you know what happened? It follows you because when Gwen's children were little, growing up, and I'd go there to visit, they always had a lot of younguns all over the steps, all over the porch. So Gwen said, "Mama, go out there and look out that door. And see what is remind you of?" I said, "My house." | 12:55 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:13:10] | 13:09 |
| Annie Gavin | I went and sometimes I come home, one day in particular, Bill Ryder was in the kitchen and had him some molasses and biscuits, because I'd make a lot of biscuits and food. We always had food. James City people always had food. | 13:13 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 13:31 |
| Annie Gavin | That's one thing, we always had food. | 13:31 |
| Grace George | I think that's why you don't see a lot of them out there when things are being handed out. You don't hear of them running to grab. They have that— | 13:36 |
| Annie Gavin | Instinct of getting their own. | 13:45 |
| Grace George | Getting their own. | 13:45 |
| Annie Gavin | We were kind of clannish. We could be mad with you, but nobody else better not bother you. Yeah, we were clannish. But forget about being mad if somebody else bother you. | 13:50 |
| Grace George | Did it— | 14:05 |
| Unknown Interviewer | I'm curious, did you ever hear any stories of people who either fought with the Union as part of African Brigade or perhaps worked as laborers out at Fort Totten or any of the other forts around here? | 14:08 |
| Annie Gavin | I didn't quite understand what you— | 14:26 |
| Unknown Interviewer | Do you know of any stories of people who fought with the Union in the Civil War as part of the African Brigade perhaps or [indistinct 00:14:36] work as laborers for the forts? I know some of the laborers came here in James City to build Fort Totten. | 14:31 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Well, I don't know. I probably know them, but I wasn't able to pinpoint them because we don't have where they could get work, they worked. That's one thing about James City people, they would work. | 14:44 |
| Grace George | You can rest assured that many things that were built in that time in this area were probably built by—You can't, like I say, say upfront names, but— | 14:59 |
| Annie Gavin | No, but they worked. | 15:08 |
| Grace George | But they did work in those areas because fact is, most of the Whites, we had to work for them. So I'm almost positive that you could name some [indistinct 00:15:29] but we don't have that. I don't— | 15:09 |
| Annie Gavin | No, well, whatever work there was to be done— | 15:28 |
| Grace George | They did it. | 15:29 |
| Annie Gavin | —they did it. | 15:30 |
| Unknown Interviewer | Also [indistinct 00:15:32] did you ever hear anybody talking about fighting with the Union or building those forts? | 15:32 |
| Annie Gavin | No. When you think about it, there's always been sort of like a good relationship between Whites and Blacks in our area. | 15:36 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:15:51] | 15:50 |
| Annie Gavin | The Whites would fight for the Blacks. Especially those that grew up on the farms and stuff together. | 15:52 |
| Grace George | Well, we didn't have a lot of plantations in this area. | 15:59 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-uh. No, just farms. | 16:12 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:16:13] you had a independent, when they became free people. They sort of came to this area almost free, before [indistinct 00:16:15] So most of the people [indistinct 00:16:15] They had so many acres of land around that they were able to farm on. My mom also said about the fishing, that they could go take a pole and put a little pin on it. | 16:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 16:32 |
| Grace George | They'd go and catch all the fish the family could eat and the rest they would sell. So with their little farms, they [indistinct 00:16:40] go over and sell it to the area— | 16:35 |
| Annie Gavin | Pull wagons. | 16:35 |
| Grace George | Independent. | 16:35 |
| Annie Gavin | Sell vegetables. | 16:35 |
| Grace George | They had [indistinct 00:16:48] in this area that, understand, they are the Elliott and the [indistinct 00:16:54] | 16:35 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, they were farmer. | 16:35 |
| Grace George | They did a lot of carpentry work, like buildings. I think the people trace back to some of their ancestors [indistinct 00:17:05] | 16:35 |
| Annie Gavin | Right, right, right. | 16:35 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:17:07] I think some of them did a lot of building the houses in New Bern. | 17:12 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, yeah. | 17:14 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:17:15] | 17:14 |
| Annie Gavin | [indistinct 00:17:16] did. | 17:16 |
| Grace George | A few houses over— | 17:16 |
| Annie Gavin | Reverend Elliott. | 17:16 |
| Grace George | Some of the houses over here, like Ms. Davis's home, they still own, they [indistinct 00:17:24] like the houses downtown. There's still one or two of them around. But they [indistinct 00:17:24] the carpenters over this area. | 17:16 |
| Annie Gavin | [indistinct 00:17:24] particulars about the same. | 17:16 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:17:24] | 17:16 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, they worked whatever work they could get. | 17:16 |
| Grace George | The railroad tracks. | 17:16 |
| Annie Gavin | But we had a lot of fishermen, type of boats, go out there and fish. Like Simon and them could go out and catch fish and sell. Ms. Ida and them put them basket of clothes on their head and walk across that bridge with the basket and [indistinct 00:18:06] holding it. I don't know how they kept it on. | 17:23 |
| Grace George | I got pictures of people carrying baskets on their heads. Now the railroad track, did you know anybody other than your father that worked on the railroad track? From when you were a child, [indistinct 00:18:21] | 18:08 |
| Annie Gavin | No. My daddy worked mostly away from—because he got his foot cut off at Morehead. He was a brakeman and that's how his foot got cut off. He put his foot to pull back whatever it was and the thing rolled over it. | 18:23 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:18:34] We are collecting a few artifacts [indistinct 00:18:48] There's a lady that does have some honorable discharge that was dated [indistinct 00:18:57] There's a good possibility that name might be on there. Because during that time, there was fighting and then it stopped. So she's from Philadelphia, but this dates back and I think we have thatat the exhibit I'm not sure. I have to make sure [indistinct 00:19:25] But that might be interesting because [indistinct 00:19:31] | 18:33 |
| Unknown Interviewer | [indistinct 00:19:31] collect war stories of former residents [indistinct 00:19:39] | 19:30 |
| Annie Gavin | We had a lot of fellows that went to war. Sherman went, he was in battle. My Uncle Jimmie, Robert went. | 19:44 |
| Grace George | Sammy Randolph went with that [indistinct 00:20:05] | 20:05 |
| Annie Gavin | Sammy Randolph. | 20:05 |
| Grace George | That was the— | 20:05 |
| Annie Gavin | World War I. | 20:05 |
| Grace George | One. But I see there's a Bryant, or Colonel Bryant. | 20:07 |
| Annie Gavin | Hm? | 20:09 |
| Grace George | I think there's—[indistinct 00:20:15] I heard of a Bryant that was fighting in the war. | 20:09 |
| Annie Gavin | Pip fought. | 20:09 |
| Grace George | Okay. So it could have been his father who was in the Civil War. [indistinct 00:20:21] father could have been in the Civil War. | 20:21 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, but— | 20:28 |
| Grace George | Pip must be about 100 and some years old by now. | 20:28 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Maybe. But I do know he went in the service. Sherman went in the service too. | 20:31 |
| Grace George | Sherman went in— | 20:42 |
| Annie Gavin | World War II. | 20:43 |
| Grace George | World War II because Pip's probably went in— | 20:44 |
| Annie Gavin | World War I. And my Uncle Jimmie and my Uncle Wilbur, World War I. | 20:50 |
| Grace George | Because most of [indistinct 00:20:53] in wars that time, that was a way of getting away and learning. | 20:52 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, they were drafted. They had to be drafted even then. I know when the Armistice Day, my grandmother's son that was married to Mama Lou, they had brought him from Norfolk. Somebody had killed him and they still had them small houses and had him under the tree, and had brought him back here. John Washington shot him [indistinct 00:21:31] his sons. | 20:58 |
| Grace George | John Washington? | 21:31 |
| Annie Gavin | John Washington. Lloyd Leroy's boy And he's the one that sent the telegram and he's the one came home with the body. | 21:33 |
| Grace George | After killing him? | 21:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. | 21:41 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:21:44] | 21:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Killing [indistinct 00:21:46] Ms. [indistinct 00:21:47] Roy's sister. Yeah. | 21:45 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:21:51] | 21:50 |
| Annie Gavin | Then he stayed here, but he hung around Poppa all the time. I think he caught himself trying—because he and Poppa were friends. That was Marlene's and them's father. He was from, I forgot where he was from. But anyway, he came here to work. But he worked at the mill, used to bring—Poppa would wake up mornings and they could bring so much material from the mill. They'd allow you to carry as much as you could carry and not have to pay for it, because my daddy was working at the mill when he built this house. As much as he could carry on his shoulder, he could have. | 21:51 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 22:41 |
| Annie Gavin | He would bring so much every night and his mama would go over there and lay it on the wall. Mama would hold his lamp. I was a year old at the time. [indistinct 00:23:00] building their house. Course, the house been made over since then. 81 years. | 22:41 |
| Grace George | That's when the lawyers [indistinct 00:23:11] right? | 23:09 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. [indistinct 00:23:13] | 23:10 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:23:16] | 23:10 |
| Speaker 5 | How you doing? How you doing? | 23:10 |
| Annie Gavin | How are you? | 23:10 |
| Speaker 5 | Cold hearted, cold [indistinct 00:23:26] | 23:25 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, yeah. | 23:26 |
| Speaker 5 | [indistinct 00:23:26] you all the time. | 23:26 |
| Annie Gavin | You see me all the time? | 23:26 |
| Speaker 5 | [indistinct 00:23:27] | 23:26 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, yeah, that's right. I know I knew your face. | 23:26 |
| Speaker 5 | Yeah. What y'all were saying? | 23:35 |
| Annie Gavin | No, we weren't saying—We talking about the war. | 23:37 |
| Grace George | The old times. | 24:00 |
| Annie Gavin | The old times. This is a reporter and he's putting us on the news. | 24:01 |
| Speaker 5 | Oh, yeah. | 24:01 |
| Annie Gavin | I was telling him about Old James City. Y'all got a history too, haven't you? | 24:01 |
| Speaker 5 | Yeah, yeah. | 24:01 |
| Annie Gavin | Down there. | 24:01 |
| Speaker 5 | Yep. | 24:01 |
| Grace George | Did you know anybody from James City years and years ago? | 24:01 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, because— | 24:01 |
| Speaker 5 | Just JoJo. | 24:01 |
| Annie Gavin | [indistinct 00:24:03] JoJo. | 24:01 |
| Grace George | JoJo, that was the modern times. | 24:01 |
| Speaker 5 | [indistinct 00:24:07] | 24:01 |
| Grace George | JoJo in the modern times. [indistinct 00:24:10] | 24:01 |
| Annie Gavin | Because Cove City— | 24:01 |
| Speaker 5 | [indistinct 00:24:12] he was living in that block house on the corner. What was his last name? | 24:21 |
| Annie Gavin | Lived in a block house? | 24:22 |
| Speaker 5 | Yeah, used to work at Cherry Point. | 24:22 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:24:26] | 24:22 |
| Speaker 5 | Yeah. | 24:22 |
| Annie Gavin | I don't know. [indistinct 00:24:30] everybody in James City worked at Cherry Point when they got there, that could work. One of my sisters worked at Cherry Point, Addie. That's what— | 24:31 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:24:46] good for the area when the Cherry Point opened up. | 24:45 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, because people got to know each other. Like— | 24:46 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:24:48] | 24:48 |
| Annie Gavin | Down the hollow and all around the little places, people got to know each other. Some of us knew each other by the churches. | 24:49 |
| Speaker 5 | Yeah, we did. [indistinct 00:24:59] long time through, ain't he? | 24:56 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, he was. He not with us anymore. | 25:00 |
| Speaker 5 | No? That right? | 25:01 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-mm. | 25:01 |
| Speaker 5 | Where he live now? | 25:01 |
| Annie Gavin | He's out—where is he, Grace? | 25:04 |
| Grace George | Rocky Mount or [indistinct 00:25:09] | 25:06 |
| Annie Gavin | No. It's not Rocky Mount. He's out that way though. | 25:09 |
| Speaker 5 | Out towards Rocky Mount? | 25:11 |
| Annie Gavin | No. | 25:11 |
| Grace George | No, further out. | 25:11 |
| Annie Gavin | Further out. | 25:11 |
| Speaker 5 | In Belgrade? | 25:11 |
| Grace George | Maysville? | 25:11 |
| Annie Gavin | Maysville. He lives in Maysville. | 25:24 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 25:24 |
| Annie Gavin | But he— | 25:24 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:25:27] | 25:24 |
| Speaker 5 | [indistinct 00:25:29] | 25:24 |
| Annie Gavin | [indistinct 00:25:31] Maysville, yes. | 25:33 |
| Speaker 5 | Yeah. | 25:33 |
| Annie Gavin | [indistinct 00:25:38] is—can't even think of nobody name. | 25:33 |
| Speaker 5 | Belgrade? | 25:33 |
| Annie Gavin | That way. It's the same direction, they're not too far from home. | 25:45 |
| Speaker 5 | It must be Belgrade or [indistinct 00:25:52] | 25:49 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. | 25:49 |
| Speaker 5 | It ain't Jacksonsville [indistinct 00:25:59] | 25:58 |
| Annie Gavin | Hm? | 25:58 |
| Speaker 5 | It ain't Jacksonville? | 25:58 |
| Annie Gavin | No, it's not Jacksonville. [indistinct 00:26:04] | 26:02 |
| Speaker 5 | Well, it got to be somewhere there. Yeah [indistinct 00:26:11] | 26:02 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:26:11] | 26:02 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, he wasn't the first, but he was Presiding Elder at first. But he's the one put the bricks on [indistinct 00:26:20] | 26:12 |
| Grace George | Because he moved over here, there was a wooden church. | 26:19 |
| Annie Gavin | There was a wooden church. | 26:19 |
| Grace George | And he bricked it up over here. | 26:30 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. Well, it was just a small church in James City. But he brought us over here. | 26:30 |
| Speaker 5 | [indistinct 00:26:37] putting you on TV? | 26:36 |
| Annie Gavin | No, he's a reporter, history stuff. | 26:39 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:26:48] the community college, public university. | 26:51 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, yeah? | 26:51 |
| Grace George | He's from the college. | 26:52 |
| Annie Gavin | He records things for— | 26:55 |
| Grace George | People enjoyed them. | 0:00 |
| Annie Gavin | Right, right, right. | 0:02 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:00:04]. | 0:03 |
| Annie Gavin | And the fall graveyard, that's where the slaves were buried. | 0:05 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:00:14]. | 0:14 |
| Annie Gavin | Why the slaves are— | 0:14 |
| Annie Gavin | You couldn't tell JT Barber from—You didn't never known him, did you? | 0:10 |
| Grace George | No, I've seen some old pictures of him. | 0:14 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. You couldn't tell him from White. But his mother was dark, dark as I. | 0:16 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. What's that? The wind? | 0:19 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. | 0:19 |
| Grace George | Oh, okay. | 0:19 |
| Annie Gavin | It blows through the trees. | 0:19 |
| Grace George | Okay. I'm just saying, just whatever. I really don't have any questions, but you always tell us about James City, how it used to look and how the people more or less survived. Or something about your home. I guess you wouldn't know. | 0:34 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, they really survived by farming and mills. It was always a meal in the area of James City, in my lifetime. | 0:47 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 1:00 |
| Annie Gavin | Even before then, the men like George Brown, them walked the bridge across town, right across town where the mills. There's still mills over in the area. Over there, the Miller Ice Cream Company over in that area. And they would walk that bridge mornings, even Bill Spivey's generation, and walked back at night. They carried their lunch. | 1:00 |
| Annie Gavin | For the most part, we lived in almost the same type houses that they built for the slaves when they brought them here. With just some straight boards, framing straight boards, and in some cases, wasn't no division. The way they survived was naturally they had to work on the farm and whatever they were asked to do. But some of them were lucky enough to work around the big house. The big house was the master's house, the owner. Whatever they learned, they carried back. | 1:26 |
| Grace George | To their community? | 2:06 |
| Annie Gavin | They learned, some of the younger people, learned how to read, how to write because little White children they played with taught them. They carried that back but they had to hide the books. They had a slat in the floor and they'd hide the books. But every night, come back with something else. There were a lot of them had good education before they were free. Then, some of the White kids that they played with, they had to teach the little Black child in order to be able for her to know to play with them. That was interesting to me. | 2:07 |
| Annie Gavin | Then, this man that was a fighter, he's a heavy fella. They called him Uncle Tom. He really wasn't Uncle Tom because he was a fighter from the beginning, but he had to do it secretly. | 2:49 |
| Grace George | Yes, yes, yes. | 3:04 |
| Annie Gavin | Whereas Uncle Tom, you think of Uncle Tom as going back and telling the White man everything. | 3:05 |
| Grace George | Yes, yes. | 3:08 |
| Annie Gavin | But he learned everything he could from the White man to bring back to the Blacks. | 3:09 |
| Grace George | To bring back. Yeah. | 3:12 |
| Annie Gavin | Thurgood Marshall passed, you know? | 3:19 |
| Grace George | Yeah, I know. | 3:20 |
| Annie Gavin | He's descendant of a slave. A lot that they picked up, the White man didn't know that they were intelligent enough to remember. But then those little White kids had to teach them what they knew in order— | 3:21 |
| Grace George | To be able to play. | 3:38 |
| Annie Gavin | Be able to play with them. Ms. Hannah Smith, her daddy was a White man, was a slave owner. Her mother had children for him, but he made a special house for her. She ain't had to work. Ms. Hannah played with his children by his wife. That was Stella Johnson's mother. I was a big girl when she— | 3:40 |
| Grace George | All these people lived in James City? | 4:08 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. So, everything that Ms. Hannah would learn, she carried back to the other Black little children, so they passed it on. You'd be surprised how people can grasp things that they want to know. | 4:10 |
| Grace George | Did we have a school, you remember? Or your mother or all of them, I know you remember the schools here, but what were some of the first schools? If you remember in your day, before we got [indistinct 00:04:38]? | 4:27 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, the first school I remember was the little red schoolhouse right in there where the James City sign they dedicated to James City, you know, on the highway? | 4:37 |
| Grace George | The marker. Where the marker? | 4:45 |
| Annie Gavin | The marker. Yeah, where the marker is. Just over bit on the hill, just before you get to the railroad, it was a little red schoolhouse. My mother went there but I didn't. I was a little girl. I remember that, though. Ms. Fields, you know Mr. Fields? | 4:49 |
| Grace George | Right. | 5:05 |
| Annie Gavin | His wife's granddaddy was a teacher and he was half White. You could look at her and tell that he was almost White. That's when most of them went to the school. Then, the Baptist people built the building way down in there where Norca and them lived, right back there. They had a schoolhouse there and a dormitory set up. Because the children that lived farther away like Bryce's Creek and all, they could get rooms there all the week and go home. | 5:06 |
| Grace George | Oh, they stayed over on the weekend? | 5:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm, weekend. | 5:42 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 5:42 |
| Annie Gavin | The people that had some education, they pushed it, and they really tried hard to get the Black ones educated. Some of those people were educated way before the end of slavery because the White ones taught. | 5:47 |
| Grace George | Yeah, well was this the missionaries? Some of them were missionaries? | 6:04 |
| Annie Gavin | Missionary. Yeah, they start sending missionaries. And you know where Annie Stubb used to live? | 6:12 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 6:14 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, that was— | 6:14 |
| Grace George | That's down there by that Ramada Inn area? | 6:14 |
| Annie Gavin | But it's on the other side of the road, going up. | 6:14 |
| Grace George | On the other side of the river. | 6:14 |
| Annie Gavin | Even then, Annie Stubb lived in there. | 6:23 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 6:25 |
| Annie Gavin | You remember Annie Stubb? | 6:26 |
| Grace George | Yeah, I know who you're saying. | 6:27 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, they were the last people to live there. That was our school. | 6:28 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 6:34 |
| Annie Gavin | They taught women, the girls how to sew and knit and all kind of craft. But they sent the missionaries from up north. | 6:35 |
| Grace George | Now, Ms. Anne, let me ask you this. Have you ever heard why they picked James City when they captured [indistinct 00:06:53]? Why did they put the setup, the camp, in James City? Have you any idea? | 6:42 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, they set the camp in James City because they had good soil, good water. That's why they put the slaves down there. That's why my great-grandmother said. They didn't really tell the slaves that much, but wherever one worked in the house and whatever they heard, they carried it back. | 7:00 |
| Grace George | Carried it back home. | 7:21 |
| Annie Gavin | They had a mouth-to-mouth source communication. | 7:21 |
| Grace George | Had that always. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. | 7:27 |
| Annie Gavin | Then, sometimes the White kids, if they were close enough to that Black kid, they'd teach them what they knew. | 7:28 |
| Grace George | Right, right, right, right. | 7:36 |
| Annie Gavin | They even let them have books. But when they carried back to the shanty, that's what they were. | 7:36 |
| Grace George | The houses? | 7:44 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. But they sometimes didn't have any floors, just some boards nailed up around and the dirt was the floor. | 7:49 |
| Grace George | Yes, ma'am. My mom was saying dirt floors. | 7:54 |
| Annie Gavin | Dirt floor. | 7:54 |
| Grace George | The average house. Well, I know that you as a little girl, you just heard what your parents say. But they didn't have windows. They mostly had, what? Shutters or— | 7:54 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, they had boards for windows. Just a hole in a board. | 8:22 |
| Grace George | From what I understand, they had churches and everything in that area of whole James City? | 8:22 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, well they had churches after they were freed. They had nice churches. | 8:23 |
| Grace George | Did you know much about Jones Chapel or heard much about Jones Chapel Methodist Church over here before they brought it over here? | 8:27 |
| Annie Gavin | I know where it was. They had a nice wooden building, and just down from where Ms. Martha lived the next evening. | 8:40 |
| Grace George | They couldn't see the [indistinct 00:08:49]. | 8:45 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Only thing I remember about that church was that, I mean, I was kind of big sized girl and the church, they weren't using this church anymore, had dancing girls in there. | 8:48 |
| Grace George | Oh. | 9:02 |
| Annie Gavin | Let them use it for a burlesque show. | 9:05 |
| Grace George | Oh. Oh, okay. | 9:07 |
| Annie Gavin | Dancing girls. | 9:10 |
| Grace George | That was before it turned to Jones, to the Methodist church? | 9:13 |
| Annie Gavin | That was after. | 9:14 |
| Grace George | Oh, afterwards. | 9:14 |
| Annie Gavin | After they moved over here. | 9:15 |
| Grace George | Oh. | 9:17 |
| Annie Gavin | See, the first church over here was a wooden church, too, and Reverend Thurston put bricks around us. Rosa was the first person to get married in Jones Chapel. She married George Bell. You remember George Bell? | 9:17 |
| Grace George | Yeah, I remember George Bell. | 9:32 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 9:36 |
| Grace George | Reverend, though. He was a reverend, too. | 9:37 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, a reverend. Reverend Bell. Our Presiding Elder at that time was his uncle. He was from down Newport. He was a preacher, but Aunt Rosa never liked him preaching. But he was a preacher. Francis and Emma, the twins, and Aunt Rosa had I think four children for him. But she was married to your— | 9:41 |
| Grace George | George Washington. | 10:07 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. Yeah, George Washington. | 10:07 |
| Grace George | Which was Washington Spivey's son. | 10:07 |
| Annie Gavin | The son, Yeah. | 10:07 |
| Grace George | And Washington— | 10:07 |
| Annie Gavin | And Washington Spivey was the one who refused to pay the rent. | 10:18 |
| Grace George | Rent and went to court. | 10:20 |
| Annie Gavin | And went to court. | 10:21 |
| Grace George | Because of that land. | 10:21 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. He started to fight. He started to fight. He going to build it up. | 10:24 |
| Grace George | Pass it on down. | 10:30 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. But they say, and well another advantage I had, I was brought up around a store. You know, my dad always get a store. | 10:36 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 10:44 |
| Annie Gavin | Say that Washington Spivey's started it, then they got brick bats and sticks and boards and everything, and ran them all overboard. | 10:45 |
| Grace George | Yeah, when they come to take their land. | 10:55 |
| Annie Gavin | When they came to put them out. | 10:58 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 11:00 |
| Annie Gavin | Because he refused to pay. | 11:01 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 11:02 |
| Annie Gavin | He refused to pay for something that belonged to him. | 11:03 |
| Grace George | Right, right. | 11:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Which was good sense. But as a whole, the James City people stood up for themselves even though we had a hard way to go. Because even in your time when you start to go into school and knew when y'all did, the children that were born and bred in New Bern tried to look down over here. And they found out all of y'all were smarter than they were, but they were glad to come to James City to eat. | 11:07 |
| Grace George | Yes, yes. We always had plenty of food right here. | 11:34 |
| Annie Gavin | Plenty of food, yeah. | 11:39 |
| Grace George | From what I understand, James City used to support New Bern because this was a lot of open field and they used to farm, farming. | 11:40 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Well, that's what a lot of people, they earned their living going over there, getting the White folks clothes, bring them over here, washing them, getting paid for that. Plus, they pulled wagons of food every day. | 11:49 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. My mother said that. | 12:04 |
| Annie Gavin | They kept gardens and fields and stuff. And then, the Lavenhouses settled over there, which he was a farmer and he gave them a lot of work. | 12:05 |
| Grace George | Also, that [indistinct 00:12:17]. | 12:16 |
| Annie Gavin | But they still had a living through carrying, washing and ironing. Ms. Ida, Ms. Mae Liz, you remember, used to carry them big old baskets on the head? | 12:16 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. | 12:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Then, the mills start growing and there were mills here. It was two mills, Mungum Bennett's Mill and Cooper's Mill over on this side, and that was a source of income. | 12:34 |
| Grace George | Was there a plate factory? | 12:48 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, there was a plate factory. | 12:48 |
| Grace George | That made wooden plates in this area? | 12:48 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. Probably some of the stones from it still down there over there by [indistinct 00:12:59] Bell is. Or maybe not now though, because they made a lot of changes. But when I was growing up, some of the stones, the type of stones they made then were still standing. And we didn't get a good road until 1922. I remember that very well. That's the year we started the highway out there. It was mostly rock and stuff. That's when Edgar Grant came here from Georgia to work on that good road, and never did go back. | 12:54 |
| Grace George | Never left James City. | 13:40 |
| Annie Gavin | And people started to come. Wherever there was work, that's where they would settle. Because my daddy, when he had his both feet, he worked on the railroad. He was a brakeman, a cook. Because he lost— | 13:41 |
| Grace George | James City really was almost like an industrial area. | 13:54 |
| Annie Gavin | Yes. | 13:54 |
| Grace George | They had a lot of factories and farmlands, but mostly factories and mill yards. | 13:58 |
| Annie Gavin | Two mills, saw mills. Mungum Bennett Mill was over there on that side and Cooper's Mill was over on that side. It gave work to people in New Bern and all around the area. | 14:06 |
| Grace George | Also, we had a fertilizer tractor. | 14:17 |
| Annie Gavin | Fertilizer, yeah. Yeah. | 14:18 |
| Grace George | I remember Mr. Aaron telling me about that, that he always— | 14:21 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, the fertilizer factory at beginning was in James City, and then it moved over here. Still got a fertilizer factory. | 14:23 |
| Grace George | Yes. Yes, yes. | 14:29 |
| Annie Gavin | But that was the Meadows Company. | 14:29 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 14:29 |
| Annie Gavin | And still, some of the Meadows offsprings are around. | 14:30 |
| Grace George | From what I hear, they sold this land when they told the people from James City they had to leave, they started selling land on this side. | 14:39 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, actually you couldn't buy the land in James City. | 14:48 |
| Grace George | Okay, that's— | 14:50 |
| Annie Gavin | Because I know my daddy said that when he got eight, because he went to work at Mungum Bennett Mill. He grew up down in Havelock. His daddy was a huntsman's guide and papa was scared to go in the woods to the traps. That was one of his things, his duties to do. But he'd go out there and shoot the gun, and Daddy think there's something. Rather, he'd shoot the gun, let him know he'd been there. So, after a while he knew Daddy wasn't going to go by Daddy no more because after he goes and look at the traps and find something in there dead, he knows Papa didn't go there. So, that's when he left home at 11-years-old and went to New Bern and got a job. Then, he transferred from that mill over there and came over here. That's when he met Mama. | 14:51 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 15:44 |
| Annie Gavin | They got married about 16. I think he was 17, she was 16. That's what most of the fellows did. Now, in your case, Newt's daddy and his brother, I think they were about the first people that had a store. Then, Ms. Somas Phillips, you know they went from one—Then, your granddaddy ran a taxi, too. Newt's daddy. | 15:45 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 16:17 |
| Annie Gavin | Just like everything else, some people are ambitious and some not. | 16:17 |
| Grace George | Yeah. She said that he used to drive the horse like a cart for a taxi. Like a wagon. | 16:19 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, taxi. The first taxi was a cart. Not a cart, but a buggy. | 16:24 |
| Grace George | Yeah, buggy. | 16:29 |
| Annie Gavin | A buggy with two seats. | 16:48 |
| Grace George | Like in New Bern. | 16:49 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. | 16:49 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:16:49] farmer. | 16:49 |
| Annie Gavin | He'd get people to work and pick them up from work. And then, his brother had a store down in James City. I didn't know him. | 16:50 |
| Grace George | You knew of him. | 16:50 |
| Annie Gavin | But you knew Bud. I knew Bud and I know Mr. West. | 16:50 |
| Grace George | Yeah, he's a state farmer. That's right. | 16:50 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh, but I didn't know the one that had the store. | 16:51 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 16:51 |
| Annie Gavin | I didn't remember him. But my daddy worked for him. That's what inspired him in going to the store business. | 16:51 |
| Grace George | I think my mom said it was Granddaddy Wes Foye and your daddy. | 16:56 |
| Annie Gavin | Wes Foye, yeah. Your granddaddy. | 16:56 |
| Grace George | Right, right. I'm going to talk to him. | 16:56 |
| Annie Gavin | He had a taxi, too. | 17:09 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 17:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Had a big house up on the hill right there. But you don't remember nothing about that. You should remember that house being there. | 17:13 |
| Grace George | Well, I don't remember the big house but— | 17:14 |
| Annie Gavin | He's the first one that had a big two-story house. That's where Newt and Alma were born, too. Because Admiral was my age. | 17:24 |
| Annie Gavin | But as a whole, the people that were here from the beginning as to those slaves, which my mama was, and my daddy's daddy was from Edgecomb County, Rocky Mount. And they came down here looking a better life because they would hunt and stuff. Then, they settled right in there where Cherrypoint is now. That still belongs to the Black people that never got the money for it. | 17:35 |
| Grace George | Most people came here because they weren't on plantation. They were more or less, was able to get jobs into work. | 18:09 |
| Annie Gavin | Came here looking to work, farming and the mills. Mills were the traction really. But in my daddy's daddy's case, they were in Rocky Mount, Edgecombe County, and all that was up there was farming. I guess they came down here to make more money. | 18:23 |
| Grace George | Right. I found a book that Mr. Ike Long had, and he kept the record at the fertilizer factory. Back in the thirties, they were making like 25 cents a day at the fertilizer factory. I got a book where he kept with all different people that lived in James City, going back as far as Vasalas Neil. | 19:07 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, Vasalas Neil was always, he was a slicker or something, but he was a preacher too. He belonged to our church. | 19:07 |
| Grace George | He was a preacher. Yeah, that's what he was. He was a— | 19:07 |
| Annie Gavin | But he was a wise man. | 19:12 |
| Grace George | Yes. But they called him a slicker, but he was a wise man. | 19:13 |
| Annie Gavin | A slicker, yeah. Yeah. Well, reason they called him a slicker because he could out talk them out of money I guess. But you learned a lot from Vasalas Neil. He was kind of jack-legged preacher. All those people helped each other. | 19:15 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:19:39]. | 19:38 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. They helped each other to survive. Because the women would make quilts, and my grandmother and Willie Stalin's grandmother, George's grand-mama, all had a quilt. And Gracie and Mae Zelamar wouldn't let me play with them because they were coating and they kept away from me, quite tell. | 19:39 |
| Grace George | Did you tell everything they didn't want you to tell? | 20:10 |
| Annie Gavin | So, I had to sit around the old folks. I enjoyed hearing them talk about things that happened. | 20:15 |
| Grace George | Yes. Okay. | 20:20 |
| Annie Gavin | That's why I know as much as to do. | 20:21 |
| Grace George | That's why you know. Very good. | 20:21 |
| Annie Gavin | Because my grandmother. I was 12-years-old when Mama's grandmother died, and so I was a big girl. So, a lot of that stuff I heard from them that was interesting. Ms. Hannah, that was Fella Johnson's grandmother, her daddy was her mother's owner, slave owner. He didn't let her work and he didn't let Ms. Anna be out with the slaves much. She played with his children by his wife in his house. Those White women went through a lot during slavery time. You know that from Roots. Because that woman was looking right at her husband going to Tissie. Those White women had to take a lot, too. | 20:26 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:21:30]. | 21:30 |
| Annie Gavin | Because they say if the slave owner found a woman that he choose, she didn't work. | 21:30 |
| Grace George | Okay. He's going back then. | 21:34 |
| Annie Gavin | No, she didn't work. She took good care of her. And the wife couldn't do anything about that. The White women had to go through a lot. We hear a lot about Uncle Tom, but according to my grandmother and them people that I learned so much from, they called him Uncle Tom because he found out what was happening. He was a big man and he drove for the master, and whatever he would hear in regard to what was going to be done, he would bring it back. | 21:35 |
| Grace George | Bring to them. | 22:13 |
| Annie Gavin | So, they learned first-hand. Eventually, just somebody killed him. | 22:19 |
| Grace George | Is there anything you'd like to ask Mrs. Annie? | 22:19 |
| Unknown Interviewer | Did any of your relatives or any of the people you've heard speaking ever mention Horace James? | 22:31 |
| Annie Gavin | Horace James? | 22:34 |
| Unknown Interviewer | Yeah. | 22:35 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Horace James. Wasn't Horace James Black? | 22:35 |
| Unknown Interviewer | No, he was the— | 22:35 |
| Grace George | No, he founded. They named James City after him. | 22:35 |
| Unknown Interviewer | Yeah, he was the chaplain. | 22:43 |
| Grace George | He was the chaplain. | 22:43 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, oh, oh. Yeah. When they brought this group of slaves and put them down in James City, they picked that area because of the sand and the good water. Horace James was a preacher from Boston, and then he was over them. Horace James, his mission was to teach them. He was a priest and then he had a school. That house that Annie used to live in, that used to be the school, mission school. | 22:43 |
| Grace George | The mission. Mm-hmm. | 23:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Start teaching them how to read and write and sew and do craft. Taught them to be independent. He would come and go from Boston. Then the missionaries used to stay with Reverend Dudley. Oh, Lord. Yeah. | 23:30 |
| Grace George | Well, he always [indistinct 00:23:44] the freedmen. | 23:43 |
| Annie Gavin | Just turn that. Yeah. Yeah. | 23:43 |
| Grace George | He had plenty of [indistinct 00:23:57]. | 23:55 |
| Annie Gavin | Hello, Anne. Come on in and let's join the slave party. | 23:55 |
| Anne (Neighbor) | I'm just coming in three peppers. | 23:55 |
| Annie Gavin | Okay. Those that hadn't heard about James City, and by the time Grace get through working with this, they'll know about it. | 24:11 |
| Grace George | Yeah, everybody going to know about James City. So, maybe do you have time to continue? Or you can come back another time. | 24:12 |
| Unknown Interviewer | Can I come back another time? | 24:12 |
| Grace George | Sure. | 24:12 |
| Annie Gavin | Any special thing you want to know? | 24:12 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 24:12 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 24:12 |
| Grace George | In school with [indistinct 00:24:33] and James was as well. That's good enough. We're going to use your tools. | 24:34 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Well, that was the main thing. | 24:36 |
| Grace George | Yeah, yes. | 24:38 |
| Annie Gavin | That's what it's all about. | 24:40 |
| Unknown Interviewer | I'm messed up, so wherever we were yesterday I guess. | 24:40 |
| Grace George | Okay. She was talking about James City, the original, when it was the first settle. And then what you heard and about Horace James and— | 24:49 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Well, according to my knowledge and what I heard, they put them down here because of the good water and the sandy soil. That was one of the reasons. And then, they built these makeshift houses for them. I guess they built them themselves. They got material for them. Each family had their own little, I'll say, hut. This was after Abraham Lincoln went to—My great-grandmother saw Abraham Lincoln. He came to the plantation where they were, because they lived like the plantations, you know? He was not too well-dressed but he had some beautiful horses. He asked questions, because the stable boy, they had boys, young men to put up the horses and hitch the people's stuff. And he questioned them and asked them did they like the way they lived. But he was a homely man, which we know from his picture. But he had some nice horses. They still didn't know he was the president because he traveled alone. | 24:58 |
| Grace George | Right, right. | 26:37 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, I don't really think he had anything to feel back then. But anyway, the boy told him what he knew. And do they feed you good? Do they take good care of you? He said yes, because I guess that my grandmother said that their owner was good to his slaves. Some of them were very mean. | 26:38 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 27:05 |
| Annie Gavin | But Abraham Lincoln stayed there a day or two. The slave owner's wife was pregnant. Her baby was a girl, but Abraham Lincoln didn't know what the baby would be. He left a name for the baby in the wall. They didn't even know he was the president. He traveled alone. After he got back in Washington, he wrote back and told them where to look and find the letter he had written. I even remember what he named. If it was a girl, Sophronia. That stuck with me because it was a—I'm surprised I didn't name one of mine Sophronia. | 27:09 |
| Annie Gavin | But anyway, soon when he got back in Washington, then they started sending troops and they start freeing the slaves. She said they didn't want to leave where they were because their master was good. Like everything else, there's something good, something bad. | 27:54 |
| Grace George | Right. | 28:25 |
| Annie Gavin | She said just as far as she was 12-years-old, I think she said, and just as far as they could look back, they looked back because they didn't want to leave. And said they were standing on the porch and they waved as far as they could see. Then, they brought them to James City and put them over there and built makeshift houses for them. The special reason they settled in James City, that's why I guess all these hotels trying to get in for the good soil and good water. | 28:25 |
| Annie Gavin | Then, after he went back was so very long after then, the troops started coming in. The war started. Down on Battleground Parkway, used to carry papers down there that the ships and stuff, the boats used to come up there. Because it still got big holes. | 29:01 |
| Grace George | Yeah, okay. | 29:24 |
| Annie Gavin | Or did have last time I was carrying papers down there. That's one of the back— | 29:25 |
| Grace George | That's down on the other side by the Nissan building, in that area? | 29:30 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 29:30 |
| Grace George | Way down. | 29:35 |
| Annie Gavin | Way down in the Thurman Light. | 29:36 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 29:38 |
| Annie Gavin | There were deep holes. Even when was carrying papers down there, there were deep holes where they dug to dig in. I guess the— | 29:40 |
| Grace George | Where they'd bring the ships in or something. | 29:50 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. And to hide while they were fighting, because they had battles down there. | 29:57 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 29:59 |
| Annie Gavin | That's why it's Battleground Park. That's what they're called it. | 29:59 |
| Grace George | Oh, okay. That's what they called it. | 30:01 |
| Annie Gavin | Battleground Park. Down there by Monette's place and way back there. I used to have to go way around that and they had deep holes, still had deep holes and stuff. | 30:02 |
| Annie Gavin | But they had good and bad masters. Sometimes the master himself, the man was good and the woman was mean. | 30:20 |
| Grace George | Right. Yeah. | 30:33 |
| Annie Gavin | I knew Ms. Hannah. Now, her slave master was her father. | 30:38 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 30:47 |
| Annie Gavin | Now, they'd select themselves a Black woman. They put her in a house and she didn't have to work either. Her cheering. And Ms. Hannah played with her half sisters and brother. Stayed in the big house. She played in the big house. | 30:48 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 31:04 |
| Annie Gavin | So, those slaves felt good. | 31:05 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 31:08 |
| Annie Gavin | That's why there's such a mixture of Black people. They were fathered by them slave owners. Because originally, most naturally those Africans were Black. | 31:10 |
| Grace George | Were Black people when they came. | 31:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. But after he went back to Washington, then the soldiers started to come in, and going to different plantations and stuff. The war, Civil War, they called it, start freeing the slaves. Some of those slaves didn't even know how to take care of themselves because they had been taken care by their masters and stuff. That's why I guess it's still some Black people don't have enough to have a home of their own. | 31:32 |
| Grace George | Take care of themselves. Independent. | 32:05 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. And Ms. Martha's daddy, Washington Spivey. He's the one that had the name in James City. | 32:13 |
| Grace George | Yes. Yeah, I remember that. | 32:19 |
| Annie Gavin | He defied all of them. | 32:19 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 32:21 |
| Annie Gavin | This was after the war, and they were coming over there collecting for those same huts that they had put them in. He decided he wasn't going to pay for them because it belonged to him. | 32:23 |
| Grace George | Still up. | 32:34 |
| Annie Gavin | Still got some your stuff. You say when Washington Spivey, he'd tell them off. He ain't going to pay no rent. To say, babies heads were sticking out the windows. But with him and the other men got together, and they got sticks and bottles and everything else. That's the why James City got the name here. | 32:34 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 33:04 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. They got the name because the Washington Spivey led them into battle. | 33:05 |
| Grace George | That's right. Washington Spivey. | 33:08 |
| Annie Gavin | Led them into battle and used bottles, sticks, whatever. But they ran the law overboard. So, even till today they're scared to come to James City. We still got a lot of it in us. | 33:09 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 33:28 |
| Annie Gavin | Because I can remember, come and ask where people live, we wouldn't tell them anything. One man said to me, "You mean to tell me you live right here in the neighborhood and you don't know these people?" I say, "You can't make me know them." | 33:29 |
| Grace George | You were taught that way. | 33:43 |
| Annie Gavin | But then he showed me he was an insurance man and he had located a check that had been misplaced, and he was trying to find the person. I said, "When you come to James City you better show these people something." | 33:47 |
| Grace George | Show us something. | 33:58 |
| Annie Gavin | We don't believe it. You got to show it to us. | 33:59 |
| Grace George | Right, you got to show us. | 34:01 |
| Annie Gavin | But as a whole, James City people have been very outgoing people and very, very good people. They might fight this morning, but nobody else better come in there. | 34:03 |
| Grace George | Nobody else touch them. | 34:16 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 34:17 |
| Grace George | In reference to taking care of themselves, they were farmers, mills, they owned their own businesses. | 34:20 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 34:26 |
| Grace George | From what my mom said. You had stores. Many of the older people had shops in Old James City. | 34:27 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Well, like everything else, some people have ambition and some don't. Now, your mother's dad and uncle, they've had the first store over here. Because my daddy worked for your mother's uncle. I forgot his name. Most of the time you hear Papa. Then when Papa got his foot cut off, because Papa used to be a brakeman on the train, when he got his foot cut off, that's when he went in the store business. And he was a cook on the train. Always had a cafe. | 34:34 |
| Grace George | Ms. Anne, do you think that's why a lot of people wanted—Not only that they could be free once they come to James City, but it was like industrial area compared to other places with plantation? | 35:14 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. For a long time, the only work that Black women could get was on the farm and in the kitchen. A lot of them walked that long bridge, Ms. Ida and Ms. Mae Lizzie, with clothes on their head. Ms. Mae Lizzie and Ms. Ida wouldn't even have to hold it. | 35:25 |
| Grace George | Just carried the bags. | 35:54 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm, carried it right around the head. But I guess everybody has survived and I'll tell you something else they used to do back then. Didn't have linoleum for the floor. Scrubbed the floor and go down to the sand holes, and get buckets of sand and put on the floor. | 35:56 |
| Grace George | And sand, why? | 36:16 |
| Annie Gavin | The sand itself was a cover for the floor. | 36:17 |
| Grace George | A shield. | 36:23 |
| Annie Gavin | And you see, the sand helped to keep the floor clean. | 36:24 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Say, for instance, they spilled oil or anything. That would catch it. | 36:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. But you know, I knew this happened. Mama never did. She just scrubbed her floor. But Ms. Mae Lizzie and Ms. Ida and those people that were older than she was, everyone said that the children had to scrub the floor, especially kitchen. | 36:35 |
| Grace George | I understand. | 36:50 |
| Annie Gavin | And put sand on it, pretty white sand. It's still pretty white sand down there in them holes. | 36:51 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 36:56 |
| Annie Gavin | And then you know we had a plate factory here, across over there near water, where Rimbell used to live. For years. Just since I've been growing up, since I've been back home, they told us it was a plate factory where they made plates. | 36:57 |
| Grace George | What did they make the plates out of? Did I hear wood? | 37:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Sand and some kind of way to put it together. But they had unique ways of doing things, but it had to serve the purpose for the time. | 37:19 |
| Grace George | Is this what the government helped set up for the people, for the community to survive? | 37:34 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, I don't think it was so much for the community but it was a good location to get plenty of sand. | 37:39 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 37:48 |
| Annie Gavin | Seemed like plates are made out sand somewhere. It wasn't in operation when I was growing up, but the building, part of it was still there. I think the reason they located it where they did, because there was a lot of sand there. | 37:48 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. | 38:04 |
| Annie Gavin | And then beside farming, they started the meals and that's what people took care of themselves of working at the mill. There was a Mungum business mill over there, some of the [indistinct 00:00:30] still there. That's where most people lived. And then people from far near will come and get rooms with people so they could work at the mill for years and years. Then the war came, the first war. I can remember the end of it, but I don't remember when—But I do know that my uncles and all went. And then when the war came to the end, they start coming back home. I lived through about two wars, I guess, or three. | 0:11 |
| Grace George | Okay. Okay. | 1:21 |
| Annie Gavin | The church was the center of everybody's life then. They sometimes didn't get to see each other that lived far away apart until they went to church. They couldn't pray loud as slaves had to turn the pots down. I wonder, I always heard them say, "Turn the pots down." They had big old iron pots. The pots are supposed to have caught the sound. | 1:23 |
| Grace George | What? | 1:55 |
| Annie Gavin | If they get happy or something. | 1:56 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 2:00 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Isn't that something? | 2:00 |
| Grace George | That's why they holler so loud now. | 2:00 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. They pray. | 2:06 |
| Grace George | They let it out now. | 2:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, they let it out now. | 2:07 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:02:12] something. | 2:11 |
| Annie Gavin | This Uncle Tom, I had that explained to me about an older person, had a old guy to call Uncle Tom. Now when we think of Uncle Tom, we think of somebody who tells everything. | 2:13 |
| Grace George | Right. Right. | 2:27 |
| Annie Gavin | But Uncle Tom wasn't a person that told everything. He gathered everything he could they had to take them out to bring back to the slaves and to sneak out books. The master's children by Black a woman, she had all the privileges. Now Ms. Hannah, which was Stella Johnson's grandmamma, she played with her sisters and brothers in the big house. | 2:28 |
| Grace George | Now is that [indistinct 00:02:58]? Are they related to her in any way? | 2:57 |
| Annie Gavin | No. Ms. Anna, she's your relative. This Hannah, Stella Johnson's grandmamma. But she came late years. I was a big girl when she came here. She looked White. | 3:03 |
| Grace George | I heard Mama talk about [indistinct 00:03:18]. | 3:16 |
| Annie Gavin | Like Ms.. Mary saw, you couldn't tell them from White. | 3:18 |
| Grace George | That's right. | 3:20 |
| Annie Gavin | And then she didn't like White folk. She didn't. | 3:23 |
| Grace George | Okay. It was close. | 3:24 |
| Annie Gavin | But it's the funniest thing because they had the most White blood dislike White people. Because nowadays there's no difference, people are people. I guess that's what they were working toward. | 3:28 |
| Grace George | Ms.. Anna, did you ever hear much about Paul Williams when you were growing up as a girl? | 3:42 |
| Annie Gavin | Who? | 3:43 |
| Grace George | Paul Williams. | 3:46 |
| Annie Gavin | No. | 3:47 |
| Grace George | He was supposed to be one of the committee 12 leaders being Davis. | 3:56 |
| Annie Gavin | He was one of the leaders? | 3:56 |
| Grace George | One of the leaders in 1898. | 3:56 |
| Annie Gavin | What was his first name? | 4:01 |
| Grace George | Paul. Paul Lewis. I guess it's Paul Lewis. | 4:02 |
| Annie Gavin | Paul Lewis. Yeah. Oh, my name is Williams and Old Man Arnold, they were some of the outstanding, the Elliots. Of course Ms. Francis, I think she was half White. My mother's grandmother, Mama said you couldn't tell her from White, and she hated White people so she wouldn't have had a calendar on her wall, turned the face around. But mama say she had long black hair she could sit on and say you couldn't tell her from White. But her mother was half White and her daddy was White, so that's how she— | 4:05 |
| Annie Gavin | Now I saw mama's aunt, they lived in Boston and she was very light. She came to visit us a couple of times I remember as a child, and mama would go shopping with her. The drugstore would we be right down there on the corner. She naturally having lived in Boston she had the accent and everything and she was White looking. Something she wanted, the druggies couldn't understand what she's talking about, told her to come around there and said she could find it behind his counter. Mama said, "Now ask her—" | 4:54 |
| Annie Gavin | My mother say her grandfather was half Indian. He came from the Florida Everglades. It was a general mixture of people. You heard a lot of different stories. Regardless to what happened, there was always somebody that was good. My great-grandmother said that her master's wife was very good to them. A lot of things she did for them that she didn't want her husband to know. They had to work in the fields and everything, but some of them had some—And that Uncle Tom, we think of Uncle Tom as a tattle tale, but that Uncle Tom was a person that drove for the master and his wife and stuff. He got to hear and learn everything. Everything he learned he'd bring it back. He was a tattle tale in that way. | 5:43 |
| Grace George | Just in reverse of what they called him. | 6:49 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. And finally trying to killed him. But some of those people, they found so good as slaves until they didn't want to be free. Maya, she I knew, say that when their soldiers put them out leading them to freedom she was one of them. They settled down in James City. They kept looking back. As far as they could look they looked and the master and his family was on the porch. They felt so bad, they hated to be leaving them because they were good to them. | 6:58 |
| Grace George | They were good. And they didn't know what they were going to be facing. | 7:33 |
| Annie Gavin | That's right. And then you find in any situation there's some good. No matter how bad people are, there's some good among them. Because there was a time the James City people, I reckon, I guess that was their set up. They didn't let no strangers come over here and start anything, because if it start with one you got all of them to fight. That's when James City got a reputation of being bad. | 7:36 |
| Grace George | He's heard that story. No, they didn't take no junk. | 8:06 |
| Annie Gavin | They didn't take no junk. No way. | 8:10 |
| Grace George | I can understand that because when you were free you had to protect yourself. You didn't have your master or anybody in that way, so you had to come together as a family. | 8:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, as a unit. They could be mad at each other but nobody else better not come in there bothering. | 8:23 |
| Grace George | And they would share whatever they had. | 8:31 |
| Annie Gavin | They'd share whatever they had. | 8:32 |
| Grace George | I remember that from Grandma. | 8:34 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. When I was growing up, there wasn't any—It is a thing, it's welfare. Those people that didn't have children to feed them after they got old, they had to depend on whatever somebody would give them. Now Reverend Dudley, you knew Reverend Dudley, he fed a lot of people. My daddy fed a lot of people because by this time he had a little cafe down the bridge. Ms. Jenny and Roxanna, they're kin to Bobby, would go down there and he'd let them scrub the floor or wash the dishes. He made meals for the men at the factory. There used to be a fertilizer factory that's over here now was down there on the railroad. You remember when that was there, though, don't you? | 8:40 |
| Grace George | No. | 9:24 |
| Annie Gavin | If so you were very little. | 9:30 |
| Grace George | Is that the same one that Mr. Ike Long was the overseer? I have his book record showing that the men of James City that worked there. | 9:32 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. That's the same, huh? They eventually moved it all the way over here. We just crossed the road. They still cooperate. | 9:45 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:09:50]. That's the Meadows Company? | 9:50 |
| Annie Gavin | Meadows Company. The Meadows Company owned a lot of—I guess at one time they owned slaves, but they always were outstanding in the Black community. Whatever went wrong, the Meadows always came to their rescue. | 9:51 |
| Grace George | Well, is it true that when they were told to leave old James City, Meadows Company owned a lot of properties in the area? | 10:08 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. And they came over here. | 10:18 |
| Grace George | And bought the land from them? | 10:21 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 10:23 |
| Grace George | Now there's a man, Mr. Brooks, that was Black man from the area that had so much land over here. | 10:27 |
| Annie Gavin | That was Em Hicks and them's grandfather, the Brooks and the Browns owned this area. The Brooks is on one side, Em and them's granddaddy and the Browns on the other, which is Brownsville. You remember the house we lived in? | 10:31 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. | 10:56 |
| Annie Gavin | That used to be their house. They used to live right there. | 10:57 |
| Grace George | Right down on Shiloh Church? | 11:00 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. And the Brooks is on this side track. | 11:03 |
| Grace George | And that is where we are? | 11:04 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. They had land they sold. My daddy bought his place I think from the Brooks. | 11:12 |
| Grace George | Apparently they were free before. How did they come about so much money and property? Just like everybody owned property back there, how did they come into it? | 11:22 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, not everybody, some people don't want anything anyway. They're going to depend on somebody else. But they inherited it from somebody. | 11:35 |
| Grace George | Yeah. They [indistinct 00:11:45]. I don't know. Because for the short period of time they own so much land in this area. Now we know that over on the other side of the— | 11:44 |
| Annie Gavin | He couldn't own it. That's when they had to come over here. | 11:53 |
| Grace George | So they came over here and they were the ones selling it. | 11:56 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. Actually, according to my grandmother and those other people that knew, James City was given to the slaves, but they never had a deed to it. They gave it to them to use maybe because that's what they did. | 12:01 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:12:18] they did to survive. | 12:17 |
| Annie Gavin | Then after a while I guess government maybe took it over and they had to pay rent. That's where your granddaddy came in and started that revolution. He used to say, "Youngins heads were sticking out all them windows." | 12:26 |
| Grace George | Yeah, just looking. | 12:43 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Mr. Washington Spivey said, "I ain't paying no more rent because it belongs to me." | 12:49 |
| Grace George | Well, they went to court for that property. | 12:52 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. | 12:53 |
| Grace George | Years ago in the 18—About 100 years. | 12:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. | 12:53 |
| Grace George | Finally they had to go and that's when they started purchasing land over here. | 13:02 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 13:02 |
| Grace George | Ms. Anna, the strange thing is that apparently they said it didn't belong to the people, but for so many years they never did anything with that land over there in James City. | 13:07 |
| Annie Gavin | Maybe the number of years they had to let it lay before the government could take it because it was given to them. A man Washington Spivey said he wasn't going to pay for what belonged to him. But they had lived there paying— | 13:21 |
| Grace George | It was more like a reparation for their enslavement and helping during the war. Whereas a lot of countries, they have been paid, like the Chinese, Japanese, all these other people for war time. I would say that it seems with a little research that that was given to the people turned over instead of money, the land was turned over. | 13:39 |
| Annie Gavin | One thing was when the government—Freedom. They had to make arrangements, some place for them to live. I guess it was about the same thing all over. But these people that were brought to James City, they understood that these makeshift houses belonged to them. But yet one real estate man got greedy and started making them pay. | 14:07 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:14:40]. | 14:35 |
| Annie Gavin | That's where Washington Spivey and his followers rebuild. We ain't going to pay for what belonged to us. | 14:40 |
| Grace George | I understand they had post offices over there, hospitals [indistinct 00:14:55]? | 14:48 |
| Annie Gavin | After they put the slaves down, Washington—What's his name? James something. | 14:54 |
| Grace George | Horace. | 15:00 |
| Annie Gavin | Huh? | 15:00 |
| Grace George | Was it James—[indistinct 00:15:05]. | 15:00 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. They sent a priest here, Catholic. And then the house that Annie Stove used to live in. You remember that two-story house? | 15:04 |
| Grace George | Yeah. I remember that house. Yeah.,I remember. | 15:16 |
| Annie Gavin | When I was growing up, that was a school. The missionaries had a school there. I wasn't old enough to go, but I used to go there. They taught the girls how to sew, how to make clothes and crochet and knit and stuff like that. And then some of the missionaries stayed with Reverend Dudley and those missionaries stayed in touch. They used to come and go. They brought Goldie. You know Goldie, Ms. [indistinct 00:15:51] Goldie? | 15:18 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. | 15:52 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, the missionaries brought her here. Then those families that didn't have children and wanted children, they would bring them for them. | 15:53 |
| Grace George | That's what happened to my grandma Becca. She was brought here with the missionaries. | 16:02 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 16:05 |
| Grace George | Some of the people he adopted her, Mrs. Catherine Midgette? | 16:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. The Midgettes. | 16:12 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:16:14] grandma, because her mother died at the time. She was a missionary from Boston and she died. So the missionary was going to take her back to Boston when they leave, but some of the people said they would take care of her so they left them with Ms. Catherine Midgette. | 16:17 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. And she raised her. The thing about it, your grandma was more White than she was Black, let's face it. You couldn't tell her from White. | 16:42 |
| Grace George | No. | 16:49 |
| Annie Gavin | I guess it was not too many people—She was too White to be Black. She had some Black, so she had to be Black. | 16:52 |
| Grace George | Right. Right. I think that's why they were going to take her back to Boston. Ms. Catherine [indistinct 00:17:12]. | 17:02 |
| Annie Gavin | I guess that's when she met Wes Foye [indistinct 00:17:19]. | 17:02 |
| Grace George | Right. Just a little girl. | 17:21 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Yeah. She fair good, though, because he was smart. He had a big house. Newt and them [indistinct 00:17:32] come considered rich. | 17:22 |
| Grace George | They had ponies and everything else she said. | 17:33 |
| Annie Gavin | Huh? | 17:33 |
| Grace George | They used to have a pony and everything. | 17:36 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh yeah. My daddy worked with one of the brothers, Wes Foye'sbrother. That's how he started in steel business. Those people that worked could have something. | 17:42 |
| Grace George | They'd have something [indistinct 00:17:56]. | 17:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Because my daddy had a horse and cows and all that stuff. | 17:53 |
| Grace George | That's what amazes me when I look back at all the things that those people have had and tried so much and was successful. Today when I look around and I don't see those things, it alarms me. | 18:02 |
| Annie Gavin | That's right. That's right. Different things happened that broke everything up. And then I think the younger generations, they got along so good they wasn't as ambitious. | 18:18 |
| Grace George | True. | 18:34 |
| Annie Gavin | They weren't as ambitious. | 18:35 |
| Grace George | It was already laid out for them. | 18:35 |
| Annie Gavin | Already laid out for them. Sweat had already been sweated for them to have it and they didn't value it too much. | 18:37 |
| Grace George | That's why I feel it's important for us to preserve this history so that they can go back and look and see some of the struggles that these people went through to have where they are today, which they should be for them because of the struggle. | 18:47 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. | 19:00 |
| Grace George | Even with the '60s, they don't understand what took place a lot of the struggles. | 19:00 |
| Annie Gavin | You're right. Some people have ambition and move on anyway and some have inherited it. But Wes Foye, I don't know what happened with all the stuff that he did have, but something happened. | 19:07 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 19:32 |
| Annie Gavin | And some of it was with him because I think the reason he and Ms. Beth didn't get along, he was a courter. | 19:33 |
| Grace George | He loved the women. | 19:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 19:48 |
| Grace George | That's usually [indistinct 00:19:49] every generation consideration does it every time. | 19:48 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. But Ms. Beth always was smart. She was a smart woman. She always had a garden. She had all the vegetables. She kept her little flock together. | 19:48 |
| Grace George | My mom would say they'd have to get up early in the morning to go to New Bern to sell the potatoes. | 20:01 |
| Annie Gavin | Sell vegetables? | 20:07 |
| Grace George | To sell vegetables before they go to school. | 20:11 |
| Annie Gavin | Throw them in to school. | 20:11 |
| Grace George | Then in the evening they go back and collect who was interested in more vegetables for the next day. | 20:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. But that was good in a sense to be taught because my Uncle Ben and I had to get up before daylight. By this time my daddy, he worked the railroad, had lost his foot and we'd had to go out there to the shop and then build a fire. I put on the coffee pot and put on rice. Then I had to make biscuits. I probably had a little counter thing. I wasn't tall enough. He had a block there. I made breakfast for those men at the factory when I was about 12. I hate it so bad. But it puts something in you. | 20:20 |
| Grace George | Yes it does. | 21:03 |
| Annie Gavin | It makes you know that if you want something, work for it. | 21:04 |
| Grace George | You have to work for it. That's important today. | 21:05 |
| Annie Gavin | That's important. | 21:05 |
| Grace George | They want it to fall out of the sky. | 21:11 |
| Annie Gavin | That's right. | 21:12 |
| Grace George | If it don't make a million dollars on the first day's work they don't want to work. | 21:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. But it gives you ambition. You got it double from Washington Spivey Reservoir. | 21:19 |
| Grace George | He's about to kill me [indistinct 00:21:29] trying to feed both sides. | 21:25 |
| Annie Gavin | Both sides. And then there's some people that don't have any ambition. It makes you glad and proud that you were made to do things. | 21:34 |
| Grace George | You want to give it to them. Why? What's the matter? It's out there. Go for it. | 21:42 |
| Annie Gavin | Right, right, right. | 21:44 |
| Grace George | I had two sons and I think I drove them crazy telling them how they do it. You can't do this and you can. They would look at me sometimes, "Give me a chance to let me complete this verse and then I'll try that." | 21:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 22:07 |
| Grace George | I think about four things at one time and they're all happening. That's how I see it. And if it's all done it's all done. | 22:09 |
| Annie Gavin | It's done. Right. | 22:18 |
| Grace George | Yeah. [indistinct 00:22:22] one thing. | 22:21 |
| Annie Gavin | I think that ambition goes on down through the line. Somebody will grab it. | 22:22 |
| Grace George | Sometimes it takes a lot of generations to [indistinct 00:22:33]. | 22:31 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, a lot of generations. Uh-huh. | 22:33 |
| Grace George | That's why I say I don't believe in giving up hope, because somewhere along the way somewhere somebody's going to pick it up. | 22:35 |
| Annie Gavin | Going to pick it up. True. All right. Ruth Anne's daughter is very ambitious. She sews. She makes hats and suits. | 22:43 |
| Grace George | A designer. | 23:00 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, she took economics in school but she makes a living sewing now. She's still in school though in Richmond. | 23:00 |
| Grace George | It comes up [indistinct 00:23:13]. Let me ask you, like you say, most of the social activity centered around the churches. | 23:11 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 23:21 |
| Grace George | I remember hearing people talk about excursions, going on excursions. Did you ever [indistinct 00:23:27] about the church? | 23:22 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh yeah. The church. Then they went by train. Get on the track up there by James. I still call all of that's James City as far as I'm concerned. They're where the Ramada Inn and all that, it's still James City because that's the center of James City. | 23:27 |
| Grace George | Forever. [indistinct 00:23:52]. | 23:48 |
| Annie Gavin | And get on the train and go to Morehead to the beach. The churches would run excursions for way of making money for the church. | 23:52 |
| Grace George | My mom say everybody will be standing out when you come back to see who's on the train. | 24:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 24:12 |
| Grace George | It's a big thing to do. | 24:12 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 24:17 |
| Grace George | Want me to open the door? | 24:19 |
| Annie Gavin | No, I don't think there's anybody there. Wait a minute. Let me see. Sometimes [indistinct 00:24:27]. But I tell you about James City, there was a time there was just Black businesses and Black people. And the Whites start moving in all out there. You remember the part about the mill. | 24:33 |
| Grace George | I remember one mill that was there when I was younger. That was the last one. You can still see some of your equipment still over together. I remember that one. | 24:55 |
| Annie Gavin | Two mills. | 25:00 |
| Grace George | But they said there was a lot of them on the water. | 25:00 |
| Annie Gavin | The mills over on that side and mill on this side. At that side that where Ms. Dorcas lived. Y'all lived right to the end of that street, though. But those people, they got along, except as I remember growing up seemed like some of them people had too many fusses over children. | 25:02 |
| Grace George | Yeah, yeah. because watching over each other's children. | 25:31 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. His grandmamma and Nicie Beasley and them, they used to have fussing spells every week. | 25:40 |
| Grace George | Understand that there was always one or two in the community that had something going. | 25:45 |
| Annie Gavin | And ended up in the coat house. | 25:51 |
| Grace George | Yeah. My mom say every Monday morning—And I think that courthouse downtown New Bern, they would fuss and fight on the weekend and they all had to wind up in the courthouse Monday morning. | 25:52 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. And then they come back almost holding hands. | 26:03 |
| Grace George | They had to go to court every Monday morning. | 26:03 |
| Annie Gavin | Have them pay the money out. | 26:03 |
| Grace George | Pay the money out. | 26:03 |
| Annie Gavin | Plus most level children fighting. | 26:03 |
| Grace George | I'd like to say that there is a place that nobody else knows, but in New Bern where they would go for the hearing and it wouldn't be right in the courthouse. It's a building downtown. My mom pointed it out on Craven Street. | 26:22 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. | 26:35 |
| Grace George | There was a lady that would sit there and they'd just come tell her what they did on the weekend and pay the money out and come back home. | 26:35 |
| Annie Gavin | Pay the money. They're satisfied, going home until next time. But I'll tell you what, they could fight among themselves but nobody else better not bother them. Do them sides that were mad, jump upside, jump on them. They're almost a clannish. That's what they were. James and people were clannish. They could be ever so mad with each other. Don't no outsider come in their mess. Because they used to run Blacks back to New Bern and Blacks come over here to get food because we always had food. And even when y'all going to school— | 26:41 |
| Grace George | We had plenty of food. Everybody had a garden. They always had some food. | 27:19 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. I often think about that girl was—Marian's Daisy, talking about what she had for breakfast, collard green. And this girl made fun of it. She should have had some collard green because she got so skinny [indistinct 00:27:52]. She had plenty. But we ate what we had. | 27:26 |
| Grace George | That's it. | 27:49 |
| Annie Gavin | You warm up them collard greens and dumplings and that fat meat. When you come from school— | 27:57 |
| Grace George | You know what? We have a special bacon and egg for breakfast. | 28:00 |
| Annie Gavin | No. | 28:00 |
| Grace George | Whatever was available, they ate. | 28:00 |
| Annie Gavin | We ate it. | 28:00 |
| Grace George | If you had it in the evening and it was left over—I remember my grandma wasn't like—When I came along, we started had to have a separate breakfast something different, but whatever you had— | 28:11 |
| Annie Gavin | You had some collard greens for supper and something leftover you warm it up. | 28:18 |
| Grace George | Warm them up. Make those [indistinct 00:28:24] flapjacks. | 28:22 |
| Annie Gavin | That dumpling. Oh, cutting the dumpling in half and they turn it down into grease. We stay healthy, too. | 28:28 |
| Grace George | That's why we lived a long time because— | 28:38 |
| Annie Gavin | And they made soup. My mother and my daddy used to make big old pots of soup and everybody ate. Even during my time and y'all came around there's always a biscuit. | 28:38 |
| Grace George | A big old pot. | 28:50 |
| Annie Gavin | Always something. | 28:50 |
| Grace George | Ms. Anna, those big black pots, I have found one. They used to cook out, this is going way back a little bit longer, over the fire place. | 28:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 29:05 |
| Grace George | You don't remember any of that, but my mom said that. I used to say, "Well, how did they bake their biscuits or their bread?" And she said they would push it— | 29:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Put it in the ashes. | 29:13 |
| Grace George | In the ashes, covered— | 29:14 |
| Annie Gavin | I experienced that. | 29:16 |
| Grace George | Oh you did? | 29:17 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. And Maya. They had the pot. Tryon Palace got all that stuff. | 29:22 |
| Grace George | Yeah. Okay. | 29:27 |
| Annie Gavin | You could push the pot over the flame because you keep the fire under—It was fireplace. They didn't have stoves. The first stoves I know about was a cook stove. They push it over there. And then they could have a way of pulling it out and stirring it up, pushing it back and take the potatoes and put it in the ashes, cook them and bake them in the ashes. Bake the potatoes in the ashes. But the fireplace was the main heat. Then after a while they had cook stoves. They could bake inside the stove. | 29:29 |
| Grace George | And for their beds, she was telling us they had every—Most of the furniture back there they had was handmade. | 29:55 |
| Annie Gavin | Handmade. Handmade baby beds. Hand made. But always some carpenters, because that's what your grandad was, a carpenter. George Washington, which was Martha's brother and Washington Spivey. Yeah. | 30:18 |
| Grace George | He was a carpenter. | 30:34 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. Let's say you and Burton, all them came in because George Washington was Burt's Granddaddy. My Aunt Rose married George Bill, me and them came home. | 30:42 |
| Grace George | I have a picture, maybe they'll let me share, of her grandma, which was Mariah— | 30:51 |
| Annie Gavin | Maya. We call her Maya. | 31:00 |
| Grace George | I'm going to try to put that on exhibit. We have Robert's father when he was an infant. How old would Robert be if he was alive now? | 31:02 |
| Annie Gavin | Robert would be old now because I'm going on 82. Robert would've been, I guess— | 31:13 |
| Grace George | He's older than you? | 31:25 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. He was older than I am. | 31:27 |
| Grace George | He's close to my age. [indistinct 00:31:28]. If he was a little baby in her lap— | 31:28 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. That was Mama's and Aunt Rose's mother. | 31:33 |
| Grace George | Yeah. So that's your grandmother? | 31:35 |
| Annie Gavin | My grandmother. I didn't know her. She died before I was born. | 31:39 |
| Grace George | You've seen the picture, though? | 31:43 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, I've seen the picture. | 31:44 |
| Grace George | I told her I would cherish and take good care and put it back to the family until we get a real museum. | 31:45 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. I didn't know that grandmother. | 31:54 |
| Grace George | She said she was born back in the 1830s. | 32:00 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. | 32:02 |
| Grace George | She was a slave. | 32:03 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Well, I don't know about her being a slave. I think she was born after the war. I think she was born here in James City. | 32:04 |
| Grace George | Your grandma? | 32:23 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. She was Maya's daughter. | 32:24 |
| Grace George | Go ahead. I'll get it out the car and let you look at it. | 32:27 |
| Annie Gavin | I know, I've seen it. | 32:29 |
| Grace George | You know what I'm talking about? Okay. | 32:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. Rob was sitting on her lap. | 32:29 |
| Grace George | Yeah. And who's that other one who was standing up? She tell me was her daughter. | 32:39 |
| Annie Gavin | Had to be Sarah. | 32:44 |
| Grace George | Sarah. Sarah. | 32:45 |
| Annie Gavin | Sarah. Because I didn't know mama's mother. She was already dead when I came along. I know mama said that her daddy was a woman chaser. | 32:46 |
| Grace George | Okay. They all are. I tell you, I ain't even talk this, but my mom say that's what chasing is, it's so close knit. | 33:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 33:13 |
| Grace George | Everybody was a chaser. | 33:17 |
| Annie Gavin | Chaser. | 33:18 |
| Grace George | They had a family here and a family there. | 33:18 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Yeah. | 33:20 |
| Grace George | It was one of those, like the kings and queens over there, keep the money in the family. They kept everything else. | 33:23 |
| Annie Gavin | Everything in the family. Yeah. | 33:26 |
| Grace George | And it is true, it's very few families here that are not connected— | 33:26 |
| Annie Gavin | Interrelated? | 33:26 |
| Grace George | —families. | 33:26 |
| Annie Gavin | Connected either by birth or friendship. But they could be mad and that came up to all of us. | 33:46 |
| Grace George | Yes. Yes. | 33:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Because I remember when I was down on the corner and Lucy Spencer down at Cherry Point had been misplaced and they had to put it in FBI, I guess it was. But he came there asking me where Lucy Spencer lived. I said, "Why?" Still waiting. Yeah, that's why I moved from down there, because I knew Net selling whiskey. I didn't know. I wasn't going to send him over there and maybe catching Net selling whiskey. | 33:54 |
| Grace George | That bootleg. | 34:29 |
| Annie Gavin | That bootleg. And he said, "Do you know Lucy Spencer? Where she live?" I said, "I don't know." | 34:35 |
| Grace George | That's right. | 34:39 |
| Annie Gavin | Then he looked at me so strange. I was supposed to know because I was keeping store in the neighborhood. That's when I was down on the corner. Then he say, she ain't going to tell me nothing so he showed me her check, she was working Cherry Point and a check had been misplaced. He showed me check. I said, "Why didn't you tell me that to start with?" | 34:42 |
| Grace George | That's right. | 35:00 |
| Annie Gavin | I said, "She lives right—" That man had to laugh. It took a minute. But I knew Net sold whiskey. | 35:09 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 35:11 |
| Annie Gavin | I wasn't sending that White man over there and catch Net selling. | 35:11 |
| Grace George | Lock hm up. | 35:16 |
| Annie Gavin | We was clannish, though. Yeah, we were clannish. | 35:18 |
| Grace George | When you come ask some questions, you had to know the inside scoop. | 35:21 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. People could fight among themselves in James City, but nobody else better not come in. | 35:28 |
| Grace George | Now they got that reputation. I remember some research that I did that they were saying that they would come over when they were talking about running him off the land and they sent the sheriff over here. | 35:32 |
| Annie Gavin | They ran him over. | 35:45 |
| Grace George | They ran him in the water, he had to swim back. When the government said, "Look, you have to come over here because these people will not—" | 35:46 |
| Annie Gavin | That was a time to call the military. | 35:52 |
| Grace George | Yeah, they sent that. | 35:53 |
| Annie Gavin | National Guard we call it now. They came to James City. James Daniel's granddaddy had a place up James City and a flat farm. Well, I don't remember this. Mama say she was a child still. They made lemonade. The National Guard came and they called it the militia, which is what it was. They all came and had a big party. Jane said people pacified them. | 35:58 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 36:28 |
| Annie Gavin | But they raised themselves some hell with sticks and bricks and bottles. | 36:28 |
| Grace George | They had sticks and everything waiting for them. Well, we call it the National Guard. | 36:33 |
| Annie Gavin | National Guard. | 36:35 |
| Grace George | They called the military to come in. That's when some of those attorneys and boys that they sent to Congress, like George White. | 36:39 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 36:43 |
| Grace George | Ohara. | 36:43 |
| Annie Gavin | Ohara. | 36:43 |
| Grace George | Sent them in to settle rather than have bloodshed during that period of time. | 36:43 |
| Annie Gavin | They had to show us something because they didn't mind dying. They didn't mind it because it felt like their rights were taken. | 36:56 |
| Grace George | Now my grandma Martha stayed in that old house. That's why she refused to leave there up until the—We had to literally pick her up and bring her around because she couldn't take care of herself. And old James City was speaking about that. They loved that land, they loved that area so much, to them it was promise land. | 37:06 |
| Annie Gavin | That's where they were brought up. | 37:23 |
| Grace George | They called it promise land. | 37:26 |
| Annie Gavin | Promise land. | 37:26 |
| Grace George | She said she would've die there. And that was Washington Spivey's daughter. She was some of the last ones other than Bill Spivey that was over there. | 37:28 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Right. Right. | 37:28 |
| Grace George | Still, that was everything to them. | 37:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. Well, one thing, Ms. Martha was a pusher. | 37:46 |
| Grace George | Strong. | 37:50 |
| Annie Gavin | When we used to raise money for the church, she played a part of a bishop, had on the hat and the coat. She had a gross voice and we would raise all them pennies and stuff. | 37:54 |
| Grace George | Raise a lot of money. | 38:10 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 38:10 |
| Grace George | I tried to mention some of those things in there that these are things you should go back and— | 38:10 |
| Annie Gavin | You couldn't tell JT Barber from—You didn't ever know him, did you? | 0:01 |
| Grace George | Yeah, I seen some old pictures. | 0:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, he couldn't tell him from White, but his mother was dark. Dark as I am. | 0:18 |
| Grace George | What's that, the wind? | 0:18 |
| Unknown Interviewer | Yeah. | 0:18 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. | 0:18 |
| Grace George | Oh, okay. | 0:18 |
| Annie Gavin | It blows through the trees. | 0:19 |
| Grace George | Okay. Ms. Annie, just whatever. I really don't have any questions, but you always tell us about James City, how it used to look and how the people more or less survived or something about your [indistinct 00:00:46] | 0:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, they really survived by farming and mills. It was always a mill in the area of James City, in my lifetime. | 0:47 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 0:57 |
| Annie Gavin | Even before then, the men like George Brown and them walked the bridge across town, way across town where the mills—There's still mills over in the area over in the area. Over near Miller Ice Cream company, over in that area. They would walk that bridge mornings, even Bill Spivey's generation, and walked back at night. They carried a lunch. For the most part we lived in almost the same type houses that they built for the slaves when they brought them here. Just some straight boards, framing, straight boards. In some cases wasn't no division. The way they survived was naturally they had to work on the farm and whatever they were asked to do. | 0:58 |
| Annie Gavin | But some of them were lucky enough to work around the big house. The big house was the master's house, the owner, and whatever they learned, they carried back. | 1:54 |
| Grace George | To their community. | 2:08 |
| Annie Gavin | Some of the younger people learned how to read, how to write, because little children they played with taught them and they carried that back. But they had to hide the books. | 2:08 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 2:21 |
| Annie Gavin | They had a slat in the floor, they'd hide the books. But every night, come back with something else. There were a lot of them had good education before they were free. Then some of the White kids that they played with, they had to teach the little Black child in order to be able for her to know to play with them. That was interesting to me. Then this man that was a fighter, he's a heavy-built fella. They called him Uncle Tom. He really wasn't Uncle Tom because he was a fighter from the beginning. But he had to do it secretly. | 2:22 |
| Grace George | Yes, yes, yes. | 3:03 |
| Annie Gavin | Whereas Uncle Tom, you think of Uncle Tom as going back, telling the White man everything. | 3:04 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:03:09] | 3:06 |
| Annie Gavin | But he learned everything he could from the White man to bring back to the Blacks and Thurgood Marshall passed. | 3:09 |
| Grace George | Yeah, I heard. | 3:20 |
| Annie Gavin | He's descendant of a slave. And a lot that they picked up, the White man didn't know that they were intelligent enough to remember, but then those little White kids had to teach them what they knew in order— | 3:21 |
| Grace George | To be able to play. | 3:40 |
| Annie Gavin | —be able to play with them. And Ms. Hannah Smith, her daddy was a White man, was her slave owner. Her mother had children for him. But he made a special house for her. She had to work and Ms. Hannah played with his children by his wife. That was Stella Johnson's mother. I was a big girl when she— | 3:41 |
| Grace George | All these people lived in James City? | 4:07 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh, yeah. So everything that Ms. Hannah would learn, she carried back to the other Black little children. So they passed it on. You'd be surprised how people can grasp things that they want to know. | 4:09 |
| Grace George | Did we have a school? You remember, or your mother or all of them. I know you remember the schools here, but what were some of the first schools, if you remember, in your day before we got— | 4:27 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, the first school I remember was the little red schoolhouse, right in there where the James City sign, dedicated to James City on the highway. | 4:40 |
| Grace George | The marker. | 4:47 |
| Annie Gavin | The marker, you know where the marker is. Just over bit on the hill, just before you get to the railroad, it was a little red schoolhouse. My mother went there, but I didn't. I didn't. I was a little girl. | 4:47 |
| Grace George | Right. | 4:59 |
| Annie Gavin | I remember that though. And Ms. Fields, you know Mr. Fields? | 5:00 |
| Grace George | Right. | 5:06 |
| Annie Gavin | His wife's granddaddy was teaching and he was half White. You could look at her and tell that he was almost White. But that's when most of them went to the school. Then the Baptist people built the building way down in there were where Norca and them lived, right back there. They had a schoolhouse there and a dormitory set up. | 5:06 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 5:34 |
| Annie Gavin | Because the children that lived farther away, like Bryces Creek and all, they could get rooms there all the week and go home. | 5:35 |
| Grace George | Oh, they stay over the weekend— | 5:42 |
| Annie Gavin | Weekend. | 5:44 |
| Grace George | —and go back. | 5:44 |
| Annie Gavin | The people that had some education, they pushed it and they really tried hard to get the Black ones educated. Some of those people were educated way before the end of slavery because the White ones taught them— | 5:47 |
| Grace George | Yeah. Well, was this the missionary? Some of them were— | 6:05 |
| Annie Gavin | Missionaries. Then, yeah, they start sending missionaries and you know where Annie Stove used to live? | 6:06 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 6:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, that was— | 6:16 |
| Grace George | That's down there by that Ramada Inn area. | 6:17 |
| Annie Gavin | But it's on the other side of the road. | 6:17 |
| Grace George | On the other side of the railroad track. | 6:17 |
| Annie Gavin | Like you're going up. Eve and them, Annie Stove lived in there. | 6:17 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 6:17 |
| Annie Gavin | You remember Annie Stove? | 6:27 |
| Grace George | Yeah, I know Ms. Annie. | 6:28 |
| Annie Gavin | —Well, they were the last people lived there. That was a school. | 6:29 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 6:35 |
| Annie Gavin | They taught the girls how to sew and knit and all kind of craft. But they sent the missionaries from up North. | 6:36 |
| Grace George | Ms. Annie, let me ask you this. Have you ever heard why they picked James City when they captured New Bern? Why did they set up the camp in James City? Have you any idea? | 6:43 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, they set the camp in James City because they had good soil, good water. That's why they put the slaves down there. That's what my great-grandmother said. They didn't really tell the slaves that much, but wherever one worked in the house, whatever they heard, they carried it back. | 7:02 |
| Grace George | Carried it back home. | 7:22 |
| Annie Gavin | They had a mouth-to-mouth source of— | 7:23 |
| Grace George | Had their own. | 7:25 |
| Annie Gavin | —communication. Then sometimes the White kids, if they were close enough to that Black kid, they'd teach them what they knew. | 7:31 |
| Grace George | Right, right, right. | 7:37 |
| Annie Gavin | They even let them have books. But when they carried back to the shanty, that's what they were. | 7:37 |
| Grace George | The houses. | 7:45 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. But they sometimes didn't have any floors, just some boards nailed up around and the dirt was the floor. | 7:50 |
| Grace George | Yeah. That's what my mama was saying, dirt floors. | 8:00 |
| Annie Gavin | Dirt floors. | 8:01 |
| Grace George | The average house. Well, I know that you was a little girl, you just heard what your parents said. But they didn't have windows. They mostly had, what? Shutters or—? | 8:01 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, they had boards for windows. Just a hole in the board. | 8:12 |
| Grace George | From what I understand, they had churches and everything in that area of Old James City? | 8:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Well, they had churches after they were free. They had nice churches. | 8:23 |
| Grace George | Did you know much about Jones Chapel? Heard much about Jones Chapel Methodist Church over here, before they brought it over here? | 8:28 |
| Annie Gavin | I know where it was. They had a right nice wooden building, just down from where Ms. Martha lived, the next [indistinct 00:08:47] | 8:37 |
| Grace George | They couldn't [indistinct 00:08:48] | 8:47 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. The only thing I remember about that church was that, when I was kind of big-sized girl, and the church, they weren't using this church anymore. Had dancing girls in there. | 8:53 |
| Grace George | Oh. | 9:11 |
| Annie Gavin | Let them use it for burlesque show. | 9:11 |
| Grace George | Oh, okay. | 9:11 |
| Annie Gavin | Dancing girls. | 9:11 |
| Grace George | That was before it turned to the Methodist Church? | 9:12 |
| Annie Gavin | That was after. | 9:14 |
| Grace George | Oh, afterwards. | 9:15 |
| Annie Gavin | After they moved over here. | 9:16 |
| Grace George | Oh. | 9:18 |
| Annie Gavin | See, the first church over here was a wooden church too. | 9:18 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 9:23 |
| Annie Gavin | Reverend Thurston put bricks around us. And my Aunt Rosa was the first person to get married in Jones Chapel. | 9:23 |
| Grace George | Oh. | 9:32 |
| Annie Gavin | She married George Bell. You remember George Bell? | 9:33 |
| Grace George | Yeah, I remember George Bell. | 9:42 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 9:42 |
| Grace George | Reverend Bell, he was a reverend? | 9:42 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, Reverend Bell. Our Presiding Elder at that time was his uncle. He was from down Newport, but he was a preacher. But Aunt Rosa never liked to hear him preach. But he was a preacher. Frances and Emma, the twins, and Aunt Rosa had, I think, four children for him. But she was married to your— | 9:42 |
| Grace George | George Washington. | 10:11 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-uh. John—Yeah, George Washington. | 10:11 |
| Grace George | Which was Washington Spivey's son. | 10:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Son, yeah. | 10:15 |
| Grace George | And Martha— | 10:15 |
| Annie Gavin | And Washington Spivey was the one refused to pay the rent. | 10:20 |
| Grace George | Rent and went to court. | 10:22 |
| Annie Gavin | And went to court. | 10:23 |
| Grace George | Because of that land. | 10:23 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, he started the fight. He started the fight, you going build it up. | 10:23 |
| Grace George | Pass it on down. | 10:23 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, and another advantage I had, I was brought up around the store. My dad always kept a store? | 10:40 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 10:47 |
| Annie Gavin | And they say that Washington Spivey started it. Then they got brick bats and sticks and boards and everything and ran the law overboard. | 10:47 |
| Grace George | Yeah, when they come to take the land. | 10:57 |
| Annie Gavin | When they came to put them out. | 11:00 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 11:01 |
| Annie Gavin | Because he refused to pay. | 11:01 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 11:03 |
| Annie Gavin | He refused to pay for something that belonged to him. | 11:03 |
| Grace George | Right. | 11:08 |
| Annie Gavin | Which was good sense. But as a whole, the James City people stood up for themselves. | 11:09 |
| Grace George | Right. | 11:19 |
| Annie Gavin | Even though we had a hard way to go, because even in your time when you start to going to school in New Bern, y'all did— | 11:20 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:11:26] | 11:25 |
| Annie Gavin | The children that were born and reared in New Bern tried to look down over you and they found out all of y'all were smarter than they were. But they were glad to come to James City to eat. | 11:27 |
| Grace George | Yes. We always had plenty of food. | 11:36 |
| Annie Gavin | Plenty of food, yeah. | 11:41 |
| Grace George | From what I understand, James City used to support New Bern because this was a lot of open field and they used to farm. | 11:44 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Well, that's what a lot of people, they earned their living going over there, getting the White folks clothes, bring them over here, washing them, getting paid for that. Plus they pulled wagons of food every day. They had gardens and fields and stuff. Then the Lavenhouses settled over there, he was a farmer and he gave them a lot of work. But they still had a living through carrying, washing and ironing and Ms. Ida and Ms. Mae Lizzie, you remember, used to carry them big old baskets on the head? | 11:52 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. | 12:32 |
| Annie Gavin | Then the mills start growing and there were mills here. It was two mills, Mungum Bennett's Mill and Cooper's Mill on this side. And that was a source of income. | 12:36 |
| Grace George | Was there a plate factory? | 12:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, there was a plate factory. | 12:53 |
| Grace George | Made wooden plates in this area. | 12:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Probably some of the stones from it still down over there by where Rimbell was. Or maybe not now though because they made a lot of changes. But when I was growing up, some of the stones, the type of stones they made then, were still standing. We didn't get a good road until 1922. I remember that very well. That's the year they started the highway out there. It was mostly rock and stuff. That's when Edgar Grant came here from Georgia to work on that good road and never did go back. | 12:57 |
| Grace George | Never left James City. | 13:41 |
| Annie Gavin | People started to come. Wherever there was work, that's where they would settle because my daddy, when he had his both feet, he worked on the railroad. He was a brakeman, a cook. Because he lost— | 13:43 |
| Grace George | James City really was almost like an industrial area. | 13:57 |
| Annie Gavin | Yes. | 14:00 |
| Grace George | They had a lot of factories and farmland, mostly factories [indistinct 00:14:04] | 14:01 |
| Annie Gavin | And two mills, sawmills, and Mungum Bennett Mill was over there on that side, and Cooper's Mill was over on that side. Gave work to people in New Bern and all around the area. | 14:06 |
| Grace George | Also we had a fertilizer factory. | 14:20 |
| Annie Gavin | Fertilizer, yeah. | 14:20 |
| Grace George | I remember Mr. Aaron telling me about that. | 14:20 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, the fertilizer factory— | 14:20 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:14:21] | 14:20 |
| Annie Gavin | —at the beginning was in James City. | 14:20 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 14:20 |
| Annie Gavin | Then it moved over here and we still got a fertilizer factory. | 14:20 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 14:21 |
| Annie Gavin | But that was the Meadows Company. | 14:35 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 14:36 |
| Annie Gavin | And still on the Meadows' offsprings around. | 14:39 |
| Grace George | From what I hear, they sold this land. When they told the people from James City they had to leave, they start selling land on this side. | 14:42 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, actually you couldn't buy the land in James City. | 14:46 |
| Grace George | Okay. That's— | 14:46 |
| Annie Gavin | Because I know my daddy said when he got—because he went to work Mungum Bennett Mill, he grew up down Havelock. His daddy was a huntsman's guide and Papa was scared to go in the woods to the traps. And that was one of his duties to do. But he'd go out there and shoot the gun and Daddy think there's something. Rather, he'd shoot the gun, let him know he'd been there. So after a while, he knew his daddy wasn't going to go by there anymore because if you go to look at the traps and find something in there dead, he know his papa didn't go there. | 14:57 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 15:30 |
| Annie Gavin | So that's when he left home at 11 years old. Went to New Bern and got a job. Then he transferred from that mill over there and came over here. That's where he met Mama. | 15:38 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 15:47 |
| Annie Gavin | They got married about 16. I think he was 17, she was 16. That's what most of the fellas did. Now in your case, Newt's daddy and his brother. I think they were about the first people that had a store. Then Ms. Simons Phillips, you know they went from one—Then your granddaddy—Ran taxi too, Newt's daddy. But just like everything else, is some people ambitious and some not. | 15:48 |
| Grace George | She said that he used to drive the horse like a cart for a taxi. | 16:22 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, taxi. but— | 16:27 |
| Grace George | Like a wagon. | 16:28 |
| Annie Gavin | The first taxi was a cart, not a cart but a buggy. | 16:29 |
| Grace George | Buggy. | 16:31 |
| Annie Gavin | A buggy with two seats. | 16:31 |
| Grace George | Brought them to New Bern. [indistinct 00:16:32] | 16:32 |
| Annie Gavin | He carried people to work and pick them up from work. Then his brother had a store down in James City. I didn't know him. | 16:32 |
| Grace George | You knew— | 16:53 |
| Annie Gavin | But you knew Bud. I knew Bud and I know Mr. Wes— | 16:53 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:16:54] farmer. | 16:53 |
| Annie Gavin | But I didn't know the one that had the store. | 16:53 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 16:55 |
| Annie Gavin | I didn't remember him. But my daddy worked for him. That's what inspired him in going into the store business. | 16:56 |
| Grace George | I think my mom said, was Granddaddy Wes Foye. You and your daddy. | 17:00 |
| Annie Gavin | Wes Foye, yeah. Your granddaddy. | 17:12 |
| Grace George | Right, right. | 17:12 |
| Annie Gavin | He had a taxi too. | 17:12 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 17:12 |
| Annie Gavin | Had a big house up on the hill. | 17:12 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 17:12 |
| Annie Gavin | Right there. You don't remember nothing about that house? You should remember that house being there. | 17:12 |
| Grace George | I don't remember the big house, but— | 17:12 |
| Annie Gavin | He was the first one had a big two-story house. That's where Newt and Alma were born too. Of course, Alma was my age. But as a whole, the people that were here from the beginning, as to those slaves, which my mama was. | 17:27 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:17:50] | 17:49 |
| Annie Gavin | And my daddy's daddy was from Edgecombe County, Rocky Mount. And they came down here looking a better life because they would hunt and stuff. Then they settled right in there where Cherry Point is now. That's still belongs to Black people, never got the money for it. | 17:49 |
| Grace George | Most people came here because they weren't on the plantation. They, more or less, was able to get jobs and to work. | 18:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Came here looking work, farm and mills. Mills were the traction really. But in my daddy's daddy's case, they were in Rocky Mount, Edgecombe County. And all that was up there was farming. I guess they came down here to make more money. | 18:20 |
| Grace George | Right. I found a book that Mr. Ike Long had and he kept the record at the fertilizer factory. Back in the thirties they were making like 25 cents a day at the fertilizer. I got a book with all different people that lived in James City, going back as far as to Silas Niel. | 18:34 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. But Silas Niel was always, he was a slicker or something. But he was a preacher too. He belonged to our church. | 18:34 |
| Grace George | Yeah, that's what [indistinct 00:18:36] He was a— | 18:34 |
| Annie Gavin | But he was a wise man. | 18:36 |
| Grace George | Yes, but they called him a slicker. | 18:36 |
| Annie Gavin | A slicker, yeah. | 19:18 |
| Grace George | But he was a wise man. | 19:18 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. The reason they called him a slicker because he could out talk them out of their money, I guess. But you learned a lot from Silas Niel and he was kind of jack leg preacher and he had a lot. All those people helped each other. | 19:19 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:19:42] | 19:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, they helped each other to survive because the women would make quilts. My grandmother and Willie Stalon's grandmother, George's grandmama, all would quilt. And Gracie and May Zellarmar wouldn't let me play with them because they were courting. They kept away from me because I'd tell— | 19:42 |
| Grace George | You'd tell everything. They didn't want you to— | 20:17 |
| Annie Gavin | So I had to sit around the old folks. That's why. And I enjoyed hearing them talk about things that happened. | 20:18 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 20:23 |
| Annie Gavin | That's why I knew as much as I do. | 20:24 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:20:27] | 20:24 |
| Annie Gavin | Because my grandmother, I was 12 years old when Mama's grandmother died. So I was a big girl, so a lot of that stuff I heard from them that was interesting. Ms. Hannah, that was Stella Johnson's grandmother. Her daddy was her mother's owner, slave owner. He didn't let her work, and he didn't let Ms. Anna be out with the slaves much. She played with his children by his wife in his house. | 20:29 |
| Grace George | Oh. | 21:14 |
| Annie Gavin | Those White women went through a lot during slavery time. You know that from Roots because that one was looking right at her husband, going to tessie. Those White women had to take a lot too— | 21:15 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:21:29] | 21:27 |
| Annie Gavin | Because they say if the slave owner found a woman that he choose, she didn't work. | 21:33 |
| Grace George | Okay. Even back then? | 21:37 |
| Annie Gavin | No, she didn't work. She took good care of her and the wife couldn't do anything about it. Them White women had to go through a lot. | 21:38 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 21:50 |
| Annie Gavin | And we hear he had a lot about Uncle Tom. But according to my grandmother and them people that I learned so much from, they called him Uncle Tom because he found out what was happening. He was a big man and he drove for the master and whatever he would hear in regard to what was going to be done— | 21:52 |
| Grace George | Done to them. | 22:15 |
| Annie Gavin | —he would bring it back. So they learned first hand. So eventually just somebody killed him. | 22:15 |
| Grace George | Is there anything you'd like to ask Mrs. Annie? | 22:16 |
| Unknown Interviewer | Did any of your relatives, or any of the people you've heard speaking, ever mention Horace James? | 22:33 |
| Annie Gavin | Horace James? | 22:37 |
| Unknown Interviewer | Yeah. | 22:37 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Horace James. Wasn't Horace James Black? | 22:46 |
| Grace George | No. He found that—They named James City after him. | 22:46 |
| Unknown Interviewer | He was the chaplain. | 22:46 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, oh. | 22:46 |
| Grace George | The chaplain. | 22:46 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, he was— | 22:46 |
| Unknown Interviewer | [indistinct 00:22:47] | 22:46 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. When they brought this group of slaves and put them down in James City, they picked that area because of the sand and the good water. Horace James was a preacher from Boston and then he was over them, Horace James. His mission was to teach them and he was a priest and then he had a school. That house that Annie used to live in, that used to be the school— | 22:46 |
| Grace George | The mission— | 23:31 |
| Annie Gavin | Mission school. Start teaching them how to read and write and sew and do craft. Taught them to be independent. He would come and go from Boston. Then the missionaries used to stay with Reverend Dudley. | 23:31 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh Lord, yeah. | 23:46 |
| Grace George | Well, he also— | 23:46 |
| Annie Gavin | Just turn that. | 23:46 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:23:56] with the Freedmen. | 23:56 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, yeah. | 23:58 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:23:59] | 23:58 |
| Annie Gavin | Hello, Anne, come on in and let's join the slave party. | 24:00 |
| Anne (Neighbor) | I was just coming to get three peppers. | 24:01 |
| Annie Gavin | Okay, those that hadn't heard about James City and by the time Gracie through working with this, they know all about it. | 24:02 |
| Grace George | Everybody will know about James City. So do you have time to continue or you can come back another time? | 24:02 |
| Unknown Interviewer | Can I come back another time? | 24:02 |
| Annie Gavin | Any special thing you want to know? | 24:31 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 24:33 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 24:33 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:24:34] school [indistinct 00:24:35] as well. That's good enough. We're going to use your tools. | 24:33 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah well, that was the main thing. | 24:33 |
| Grace George | Yeah, yes. | 24:47 |
| Annie Gavin | That's what it's all about. | 24:47 |
| Unknown Interviewer | I'm all set. So wherever we were yesterday, I guess. | 24:47 |
| Grace George | Okay, she was talking about James City, the original, when they first settled in here, what she heard and about Horace James. | 24:59 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Well, according to my knowledge and what I heard, they put them down here because of the good water and the sandy soil. That was one of the reasons. And then they built these makeshift houses for them. I guess they built them themselves. They got material for them. Each family had had their own little, I say, hut. And this was after Abraham Lincoln went—See, my great-grandmother saw Abraham Lincoln. | 25:00 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 25:49 |
| Annie Gavin | He came to the plantation where they were, because they lived like plantations. And he was not too well-dressed, but he had some beautiful horses. | 25:50 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 26:05 |
| Annie Gavin | Then he asked questions because the stable boy, they had boys, young men, to put up the horses and hitch the people and stuff. He questioned them and asked them how did they like the way they lived and said, but he was a homely man, which we know from his picture. But he had some nice horses. But they still didn't know he was the president. | 26:08 |
| Grace George | All right. | 26:36 |
| Annie Gavin | Because he traveled alone. | 26:37 |
| Grace George | Right. | 26:40 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, I don't reckon he had anything to fear back then. | 26:40 |
| Grace George | That's right. | 26:44 |
| Annie Gavin | But anyway, the boy told him what he knew. "Do they feed you good? Do they take good care of you?" And he said yes because I guess—And my grandmother said that their owner was good to his slaves. Some of them were very mean. | 26:44 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 27:09 |
| Annie Gavin | But Abraham Lincoln stayed there a day or two and the slave owner's wife was pregnant and she had had a little—She eventually had, her baby was a girl. But Abraham Lincoln didn't know what the baby would be. He left a name for the baby in the wall. Then after he'd gotten—Well, they didn't even know he was the president, traveled alone. After he got back in Washington, he wrote back and told them where to look and find a letter he had written. I even remember what he named. If it was a girl, Saphronia. That stuck with me because I'm surprised I didn't name one of mine Saphronia. | 27:09 |
| Annie Gavin | But anyway, when he got back in Washington, then they started sending troops and they started freeing the slaves and she said they didn't want to leave where they were because that master was good. | 28:04 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 28:24 |
| Annie Gavin | Like everything else, was some good, some bad. | 28:24 |
| Grace George | Right. | 28:27 |
| Annie Gavin | She was 12 years old, I think she said. And just as far as they could look back, they looked back because they didn't want to leave. And said they were standing on the porch and they waved as far as they could see. Then they brought them to James City and put them over there and built makeshift houses for them. The special reason they settled in James City, that's why I guess all these hotels trying to get it— | 28:29 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:28:59] | 28:57 |
| Annie Gavin | For the good soil and good water. Then after he went back, wasn't so very long after then, the troops started to coming in. The war started. Down on Battleground Parkway, used to carry papers down there that the ships and stuff, the boats used to come up there because it's still got deep holes. | 28:58 |
| Grace George | Yeah, okay. | 29:25 |
| Annie Gavin | Or did have, last time I was carrying papers down there. That's one on the back— | 29:27 |
| Grace George | Down the other side, by the Nissan building, in that area? | 29:30 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 29:30 |
| Grace George | Way down. | 29:30 |
| Annie Gavin | Way down way in the Thurman like. | 29:37 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 29:42 |
| Annie Gavin | There were deep holes, even when was carrying papers down there, there were deep holes where they dug to dig in. I guess they— | 29:42 |
| Grace George | They used to bring the ships in. | 29:52 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. And to hide while they were fighting because they had battles down there. | 29:57 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 30:00 |
| Annie Gavin | That's why it's Battleground Park. That's what they call it. | 30:01 |
| Grace George | Okay, that's what they call it. | 30:04 |
| Annie Gavin | Battleground Park. Down there by Monette's place and way back there. I used to have to go way around that and they had deep holes, still had deep holes and stuff. But they had good and bad masters. Sometimes the master himself, the man was good and the woman was mean. | 30:04 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 30:34 |
| Annie Gavin | I knew Ms. Hannah. Now her slave master was her father. | 30:44 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 30:47 |
| Annie Gavin | Now they'd select themselves a Black woman. They'd put her in a house because she didn't have to work either. Her children, Anne, Ms. Hannah, played with her half-sisters and brothers. | 30:49 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 31:02 |
| Annie Gavin | Stayed in the big house. She played in the big house. | 31:03 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 31:05 |
| Annie Gavin | So those slaves fared good. | 31:06 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 31:11 |
| Annie Gavin | That's why it's such a mixture of Black people. They were fathered by them slave owners. Because originally, naturally, those Africans were Black. | 31:12 |
| Grace George | Black people. [indistinct 00:31:31] | 31:28 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. But after he went back to Washington, then the soldiers started to coming and going to different plantations and stuff. And the war, Civil War they call it, start freeing the slaves. Well, some of those slaves didn't even know how to take care of themselves because they had been taken care by their masters and stuff. That's why, I guess, it's still some Black people don't have given up enough to have a home of their own. | 31:34 |
| Grace George | Take care of themselves. They've been dependent. | 32:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. And your—Ms. Martha's daddy. | 32:15 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 32:16 |
| Annie Gavin | Washington Spivey. He's the one that had the name in James City. | 32:17 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 32:17 |
| Annie Gavin | Because he defied all of them. | 32:17 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 32:17 |
| Annie Gavin | This was after the war and they were coming over there collecting for those same huts that they had put them in and he decided he wasn't going to pay for them because it belonged to him. | 32:25 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:32:35] | 32:35 |
| Annie Gavin | That's where you got some of your stuff. | 32:35 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 32:35 |
| Annie Gavin | You say Washington Spivey, he'd he'd tell them off. He ain't going to pay no rent and they say babies' heads were sticking out the windows. But with him and the other man got together and they got sticks and bottles and everything else. That's the why James City got the name it had. | 32:50 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 32:58 |
| Annie Gavin | They got the name because the Washington Spivey led them into battle. | 32:58 |
| Grace George | That's right. [indistinct 00:33:01] | 32:58 |
| Annie Gavin | Led them into battle and used bottles, sticks, whatever. But they ran the law overboard. So even till today, they're scared to come to James City and we still got a lot of it in us. | 33:00 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 33:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Because I can remember, come and ask where people live. We wouldn't tell them anything. The one man said to me, "You mean to tell me you live right here in the neighborhood and you don't know these people?" I say, "You can't make me know them." | 33:34 |
| Grace George | You were taught that. | 33:44 |
| Annie Gavin | But then he showed me he was an insurance man and he had located a check that had been misplaced and he was trying to find the person. I said, "When you come to James City, you better show these people something. We don't believe it. You got to show it to us." | 33:48 |
| Grace George | That's right. | 33:59 |
| Annie Gavin | But as a whole, James City people have been very outgoing people and very, very good people. They might fight this morning, but nobody else better not come there. | 34:06 |
| Grace George | Nobody else touch them. | 34:16 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 34:16 |
| Grace George | In reference to taking care of themselves, they were farmers, mills. They owned their own businesses from what my mama said. They had stores. Many of the older people have shops now. | 34:21 |
| Annie Gavin | Well— | 34:33 |
| Grace George | In Old James City. | 34:33 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Well, like everything else, some people have ambition and some don't. Now your mother's dad and uncle, they've had the first stores over here because my daddy worked for your mother's uncle. I forgot his name. [indistinct 00:35:00] Papa. Then when Papa got his foot cut off, because Papa used to be a brakeman on the train. When he got his foot cut off, that's when he went in the store business. He was a cook on the train, always have café. | 34:44 |
| Grace George | Ms. Annie, do you think that's why a lot of people wanted—not only that they could be free once they come to James City, but it was like an industrial area, compared to other places with plantations? | 35:07 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, mm-hmm. For a long time the only work that Black women could get was on the farm and in the kitchen. A lot of them walked that long bridge. Ms. Ida and Ms. Mae Lizzie with clothes on their head. Ms. Ida wouldn't even had to hold it. | 35:36 |
| Grace George | Carry the basket. | 35:52 |
| Annie Gavin | Carry it right on with her head. But I guess everybody has survived. I'll tell you something else they used to do back then. Didn't have linoleum for the floor. | 35:53 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 36:09 |
| Annie Gavin | Scrubbed the floor and go down to the sand holes to get buckets of sand and put on the floor. | 36:09 |
| Grace George | Ms. Annie, why? | 36:16 |
| Annie Gavin | The sand itself was a cover for the floor. You see the sand helped to keep the floor clean. | 36:24 |
| Grace George | Say for instance, if they spilled oil or anything, that would catch it before [indistinct 00:36:37] | 36:29 |
| Annie Gavin | But I knew this happened. Mama never did that. She just scrubbed her floor. But Ms. Mae Lizzie and Ms. Ida and those people that were older than she was, every Saturday the children had to scrub the floor, especially kitchen. | 36:38 |
| Grace George | I understand. | 36:51 |
| Annie Gavin | And put sand on it. Pretty white sand. It's still pretty white sand down there in them holes. | 36:52 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 36:56 |
| Annie Gavin | Then we had a plate factory here, across over there near the water where Rimbell used to live. For years, just since I've been growing up, since I've been back home, they tored it down. It was a plate factory where they made plates. | 36:57 |
| Grace George | What did they make the plates out of? Did I hear wood? | 37:14 |
| Annie Gavin | Sand, and some kind of way to put it together. But they had unique ways of doing things, but it had to served the purpose for the time. | 37:19 |
| Grace George | Now is this what the government helped set up for the people? For the community to survive? | 37:34 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, I don't think it was so much for the community, but it was a good location where they could get plenty of sand. | 37:42 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 37:46 |
| Annie Gavin | Seemed like plates are made out sand somehow. But it wasn't an operation when I was growing up. But the building, part of it, was still there. I think the reason they located where they did, because there was a lot of sand there. | 37:47 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. | 38:04 |
| Annie Gavin | —and then beside farming, they started the mills. And that's what people took care of themselves, was working at the mill, at the Mungum Business Mill over there. Some of the piling's still there. That's where most people lived. And then there was people from far and near that would even come and get rooms with people so they could work at the mill for years and years. Then the war came, the first war. I can remember the end of it, but I don't remember when it—But I do know that my uncles and all went. And then the war came to an end, they started coming back home. I lived through about two wars, I guess, or three. | 0:09 |
| Annie Gavin | But the church was the center of everybody's life then. Sometimes didn't get to see each other, those that lived far way apart until they went to church. And they prayed. Oh, they couldn't pray loud as slaves, had to turn the pots down. I wonder, I always heard them say, "Turn the pots down." They had big old iron pots. The pots was supposed to have caught the sound if they get happy or something. Isn't that something? | 1:17 |
| Grace George | Maybe that's why they holler so loud now. | 1:57 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, they pray. | 1:57 |
| Grace George | They let it out now. | 1:57 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, they let it out now. | 1:57 |
| Grace George | Isn't that something? | 1:57 |
| Annie Gavin | And they had this Uncle Tom, Dad explained to me about an older person, had a man, a old guy they called Uncle Tom. And now when we think of Uncle Tom, we think of somebody who tells everything. But Uncle Tom wasn't a person that told everything. He gathered everything he could have been, they had to take them out to bring back to the slaves. | 2:08 |
| Grace George | All right, okay. | 2:33 |
| Annie Gavin | And to sneak out books. And the master's children by a Black woman, she had all the privileges. Now Ms. Hannah, which was Stella Johnson's grandmama, she played with her sisters and brothers in the big house. | 2:36 |
| Grace George | Now, is that cousin Anna [indistinct 00:03:03] Was they related to her in any way? | 2:54 |
| Annie Gavin | No, Ms. Anna, she's your relative—Ms. Hannah was Stella Johnson's grandmama, but she came late years. I was a big girl when she came here, but she looked White. | 3:04 |
| Grace George | I heard Mama talk about Stella Johnson. | 3:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Like Ms. Mary Sawyer, you couldn't tell them from White. | 3:15 |
| Grace George | That's right. | 3:17 |
| Annie Gavin | And then she didn't like White folk. | 3:20 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 3:20 |
| Annie Gavin | She didn't. But it's the funniest thing because they had the most White blood, dislike White people. Because nowadays there's no difference, people are people. And I guess that's what they were working toward. | 3:20 |
| Grace George | Ms. Ann, did you ever hear much about Paul Williams, growing up as a girl? | 3:36 |
| Annie Gavin | Who? | 3:36 |
| Grace George | Paul Williams? | 3:36 |
| Annie Gavin | No. | 3:36 |
| Grace George | He was supposed to be one of the community of 12 leaders in Davis. | 3:36 |
| Annie Gavin | He was one of the leaders. | 3:36 |
| Grace George | Leaders in 1898. | 3:36 |
| Annie Gavin | What is his first name? | 3:58 |
| Grace George | Paul. Paul Lewis. I guess it's Paul Lewis. | 4:01 |
| Annie Gavin | Paul Lewis, yeah. Only Amos Williams and Old Man Armor, they were some of the sort of outstanding, the Elliots. And of course, Ms. Francis, I think she was half White. And my mother's grandmother, mama said you couldn't tell her from White and she hated White people. So she wouldn't have had a calendar on her wall, turn the face around. But mama said she had long black hair she could sit on and you couldn't tell her from White. But her mother was half White and her daddy was White, so that's how she's—Now, I saw mama's aunt, they lived in Boston and she was very light. | 4:01 |
| Annie Gavin | And she came to visit us a couple of times, I remember as a child, and mama would go shopping with her. She said the drug store used to be right down there on the corner. And naturally, having lived in Boston, she had the accent and everything and she was quite looking. Something she wanted, the man, the druggist couldn't understand what she's talking about, told her to come around there and said if she could find it behind his counter. Mom never asked her. | 4:57 |
| Annie Gavin | My mother say her grandfather was half Indian, he came from the Florida Everglades. But it was a general mixture of people and you heard a lot of different stories. But regardless to what happened, there were always somebody that was good. Because my great-grandmother said that her master's wife was very good to them. A lot of things she did for them that she didn't want her husband to know. They had to work in the fields and everything, but some of them had some—And that Uncle Tom, we think of Uncle Tom as a tattle-tell. But that Uncle Tom was a person that drove for the master and his wife and stuff. So he got to hear and learn everything. Everything he learned, he'd bring it back. He was tattle-tailing that way. | 5:39 |
| Grace George | Just in reverse of what they called him. | 6:44 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. And finally, finally killed him. But some of those people, they fared so good as slaves until they didn't want to be free, because [indistinct 00:07:02] now she, I knew, say that when their soldiers put them out, leading them to freedom, she was one of them, they settled down in James City. And so they kept looking back. As far as they could look, they looked. And the master and his family was on the porch and they felt so bad, they hated to be leaving them because they were good to them. | 6:46 |
| Grace George | They were good and they didn't know what they were going to be facing. | 7:30 |
| Annie Gavin | That's right. And then you find in any situation, there's some good. No matter how bad people are, there's some good among them. Because there was a time the James City people I reckon—I guess that was their setup up. They didn't let no strangers come over here and start anything. Because if it start with one, you got all of them to fight. That's why James has got a reputation being bad. | 7:31 |
| Grace George | He's heard that story. They didn't take no junk. | 8:01 |
| Annie Gavin | They didn't take no junk, no way. | 8:05 |
| Grace George | I can understand that because when you were free, you had to protect yourself. You didn't have your master or anybody to in that way, so you had to come together as a— | 8:08 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, as a unit. They could be mad at each other, but nobody else better not come in there, bothering. | 8:18 |
| Grace George | And they would share whatever— | 8:26 |
| Annie Gavin | They'd share whatever they had. | 8:27 |
| Grace George | I remember that one. | 8:28 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, because when I was growing up, there wasn't any such thing as welfare. And those people that didn't have children to feed them after they got old, they had to depend on whatever somebody would give them. Now, Reverend Dudley, you knew Reverend Dudley, he fed a lot of people. And my daddy fed a lot of people because by this time he had a little cafe down the bridge. And Ms. Jenny and Roxanna were kin to Bobby, would go down there and he'd let them scrub the floor or wash the dishes. And he made meals for the men at the factory, because it used to be a fertilizer factory that's over here now, was down there on the railroad. You remember that was there, though, don't you? | 8:35 |
| Grace George | No. | 9:24 |
| Annie Gavin | If so, you were very little. | 9:24 |
| Grace George | Is that the same one that Mr. Ike Long was like the overseer? They have his book record showing that the men of James City had worked there. | 9:25 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, he was the same one. They eventually moved it all the way over here, which is across the road, they still operate. | 9:39 |
| Grace George | That's the Meadows Company. | 9:45 |
| Annie Gavin | Meadows Company. And the Meadows Company owned a lot of, I guess at one time they owned slaves, but they always were outstanding in the Black community. Whatever went wrong, the Meadows always came to their rescue. | 9:47 |
| Grace George | Well, is it true that when they were told to leave old James City, Meadows Company owned a lot of properties in the area? | 10:00 |
| Annie Gavin | Yes, and came over here. | 10:13 |
| Grace George | And bought the land from them? | 10:14 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 10:14 |
| Grace George | Now, there's a man, Mr. Brooks, that was a Black man from the area that had so much land over there. | 10:14 |
| Annie Gavin | That was M. Hickson and them's grandfather. The Brooks' and the Browns owned this area. The Brooks' on one side of M. and them's granddaddy and the Browns on the other, which is Brownsville. And they used to live, you remember that house we lived in? | 10:33 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 10:48 |
| Annie Gavin | That used to be their house, they used to live right there. | 10:51 |
| Grace George | Shiloh Church. | 10:54 |
| Annie Gavin | Yes. And the Brooks' owned this side track. | 10:57 |
| Grace George | Where we are. | 10:57 |
| Annie Gavin | And they had land they sold after the fellas, my daddy bought his place, I think from the Brooks'. | 11:08 |
| Grace George | Apparently they were free before. How did they come about so much money and property? Just like everybody owned property back there, how did they come into— | 11:12 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, not everybody. Some people don't want anything anyway, they going to depend on somebody else. But they inherited it from somebody. | 11:27 |
| Grace George | Maybe they [indistinct 00:11:35] I don't know. Because for that short period of time, they owned so much land in this area. Now we know that over on the other side— | 11:34 |
| Annie Gavin | They couldn't own it. That's the reason they had to come over here. | 11:49 |
| Grace George | So they came over here and they were the one ones selling it. | 11:49 |
| Annie Gavin | Now, actually, according to my grandmother and those other people that knew, James City was given to the slaves, but they never had a deed to it. They gave it to them to use maybe, because that's what they did. | 11:59 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:12:16] | 12:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Then after a while, some I guess government maybe, took it over and they had to pay rent. That's where your granddaddy came in and started that revolution. He told them he wasn't, he used to say. And the young one's heads was sticking out on them fenders. | 12:19 |
| Grace George | Yeah, just looking. | 12:36 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. And Mr. Washington Spivey said, "I ain't paying no more rent because it belongs to me." | 12:39 |
| Grace George | Well, they went to court over that problem years ago in the 18—About 100 years ago. So finally they had to go and that's when they start purchasing land over here. But Ms. Annie, the strange thing is that apparently they said it didn't belong to the people, but for so many years they never did anything with that land over there in James City. | 12:45 |
| Annie Gavin | Maybe the number of years they had to let it lay before the government could take it, because it was given to them. Just like Washington's Spivey said, he wasn't going to pay for what belonged to him. But they had lived there paying— | 13:14 |
| Grace George | Like a reparation for their enslavement and helping during the war. Whereas a lot of countries, they have been paid like the Chinese, Japanese, all these other people for wartime. So I would say that it seems with a little research, that was given to the people, turned over. Instead of money, the land was turned over to— | 13:31 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, I think one thing was when the government freed them, they had to make arrangements for someplace for them to live. And I guess it was about the same thing all over, but these people that were brought to James City, they understood that these makeshift houses belonged to them. But yet, one real estate man got greedy and started making them pay. And that's where Washington Spivey and his followers rebelled, we ain't going to pay for what belonged to us. | 13:55 |
| Grace George | I understand they had post offices over to your hospital. | 14:40 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Well, after they put the slaves down, Washington what's his name? James something. | 14:43 |
| Grace George | Horace. | 14:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Huh? | 14:53 |
| Grace George | James. | 14:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, they sent a priest here. A priest here, Catholic. And then the house that and Annie Stove used to live in, you remember that two story house? | 14:56 |
| Grace George | Yeah, I remember. | 15:07 |
| Annie Gavin | When I was growing up, that was a kind of a school. The missionaries had a school there. And I wasn't old enough to go but I used to go there and they taught the girls how to sew, how to make clothes and crochet and knit and stuff like that. Then some of the missionaries stayed with Reverend Dudley. And those missionaries stayed in touch, they used to come and go and they brought Goldie. You know Goldie, Ms. Melrose Goldie? | 15:13 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 15:43 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, the missionaries brought her here. Then those families that didn't have children and wanted children, they would bring them for them. | 15:45 |
| Grace George | That's what happened to my grandma Becca. She was brought here by the missionary, with the missionaries. Some of the people he adopted her, Mrs. Catherine Midgette. | 15:54 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, the Midgettes. | 15:55 |
| Grace George | His grandma. Because her mother died at the time. She was a missionary from Boston and she died. So the missionary was going to take her back to Boston when they went, but some of the people said they would take care of her, so they left her with Ms. Catherine Midgette. | 15:55 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. And she raised her. But a lot of those, the thing about it, your grandma was more White than she was Black. Let's face it. But you couldn't tell her from White. And I guess it is not too many people—She was too White to be Black, because she had some Black so she had to be Black. | 16:34 |
| Grace George | Right, right. I think that's why they were going to take her back to Boston, but Ms. Catherine [indistinct 00:17:08] | 16:53 |
| Annie Gavin | And I guess that's when she met Wes Foye. | 16:53 |
| Grace George | Right, just a little girl. | 16:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, yeah. She fared good though, because he was smart. He had a big house. And Newton, then become considered rich. | 17:14 |
| Grace George | He had ponies and everything else, she said. | 17:27 |
| Annie Gavin | Huh? | 17:29 |
| Grace George | They used to have a pony. | 17:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, yeah. And my daddy worked with one of the brothers, Wes Foye's brother. That's how he started in the store business. And those people that would work could have something. | 17:33 |
| Grace George | Could have something. | 17:44 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Because my daddy had a horse and cows and all that stuff. | 17:44 |
| Grace George | That's what amazes me when I look back at all the things that those people had and tried so much and were successful. Today when I look around and I don't see those things, it alarms me. | 17:44 |
| Annie Gavin | That's right, that's right. Different things happened that broke everything up. And then I think the younger generations, they got along so good, they wasn't as ambitious. They weren't as ambitious. | 18:17 |
| Grace George | Already laid out for them. | 18:27 |
| Annie Gavin | Already laid out for them. Sweat had already been sweated for them to have it and they didn't value it too much. | 18:28 |
| Grace George | That's why I feel it's important for us to preserve this history, so that they can go back and look and see some of the struggles that these people went through to have where they are today, which they should be for them because of the struggle. Even with the '60s, they don't understand what took place, a lot of things. The struggles. | 18:37 |
| Annie Gavin | You're right. Well, there's some people will have ambition and move on anyway, and some have inherit it. But Wes Foye, I don't know what happened with all the stuff that he did have, but something happened. | 19:01 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 19:22 |
| Annie Gavin | And some of it was with him, because I think the reason he and Ms. Becca didn't get along, he was a courter. | 19:23 |
| Grace George | He loved his women. | 19:33 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 19:40 |
| Grace George | That's usually [indistinct 00:19:41] does it every time. | 19:40 |
| Annie Gavin | But Ms. Becca always was smart, she was a smart woman. She always had a garden, she sold the vegetables and she kind of kept her little flock together. | 19:40 |
| Grace George | Yeah, my mom would say they'd have to get up early in the morning to go to New Bern to sell the— | 19:52 |
| Annie Gavin | Sell vegetables? | 19:57 |
| Grace George | To sell vegetables before they go to school. | 19:57 |
| Annie Gavin | Before they went to school. | 19:57 |
| Grace George | And in the evening they go back and collect who was interested in more vegetables— | 19:57 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. But that was good in a sense, to be taught. Because my Uncle Ben and I had to get up before daylight. And by this time, my daddy, he worked at the railroad, had lost his foot. And we'd had to go out there to the shop. And Ben built a fire and I put on the coffee pot and put on the rice, and then I had to make biscuits. And I probably had a little counter thing. I wasn't tall enough, he had a block there. And I made breakfast for those men at the factory when I was about 12. I hated it so bad but it puts something in you. | 20:10 |
| Grace George | Yes it does. | 20:43 |
| Annie Gavin | And it makes you know that if you want something, work for it. | 20:52 |
| Grace George | You'll have to work for it. And that's important today. | 20:53 |
| Annie Gavin | That's important. | 20:53 |
| Grace George | They want it to fall out of the sky. | 20:53 |
| Annie Gavin | That's right. | 20:53 |
| Grace George | If it don't make a million dollars on the first day's work, they don't want to work. | 20:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. But it gives you ambition. You got it double from Washington Spivey in Westport. | 21:09 |
| Grace George | He's about to kill me [indistinct 00:21:18] trying to feed both. | 21:10 |
| Annie Gavin | Both sides. And then there's some people that don't have any ambition. It makes you kind of glad and proud that you were made to do things. | 21:28 |
| Grace George | You want to give it to them. "Why? What's the matter? It's out there, go for it." | 21:31 |
| Annie Gavin | Right, right, right. | 21:32 |
| Grace George | I think I had two sons and I think I drove them crazy, telling them how they do. How you can't do this and you can. They would look at me sometimes, "Mother, give me a chance to let me complete this first and then I'll try that." | 21:46 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, yeah. | 21:48 |
| Grace George | I think about three or about four things at one time and they're all happening. That's how I see it. And when it's all done, it's all done. | 21:48 |
| Annie Gavin | It's done, right. | 21:48 |
| Grace George | Concentrate on one thing. | 21:48 |
| Annie Gavin | But I think that ambition goes on down through the line. Some of them, somebody will grab it up. | 22:11 |
| Grace George | Sometimes it takes a lot of generations. | 22:12 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, a lot of generations. | 22:12 |
| Grace George | That's why I say I don't believe in giving up hope, because somewhere along the way, somewhere, somebody's going to pick it up. | 22:26 |
| Annie Gavin | Going to pick it up, true. Right now, Ruth Ann's daughter is very ambitious. She sews and she makes hats and suits. | 22:32 |
| Grace George | A designer. | 22:46 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, she took economics in school but she makes a living sewing now. She's still in school, though, near Richmond. | 22:54 |
| Grace George | It comes out. | 22:55 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 22:55 |
| Grace George | Let me ask you, like you say, most of the social activities centered around the churches. | 23:05 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 23:07 |
| Grace George | And I remember hearing people talk about excursions, going on excursions. Did you ever hear people talk about the church? | 23:07 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh yeah. The church, then they went by train. And the train get on the track up there by James. I still call all of that James City, as far as I'm concerned. And there where the Ramada Inn and all that, it's still James City because that's the center of James City. | 23:19 |
| Grace George | James City, forever. | 23:35 |
| Annie Gavin | And get on the train, go to Morehead to the beach. The churches would run excursions for a way of making money for the church. | 23:41 |
| Grace George | Mama said everybody be standing out when you come back to see who was on the train. | 23:52 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 23:52 |
| Grace George | It's a big thing. | 23:52 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. They would—No, I don't think there's anybody there. Wait a minute, let me see. | 23:52 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:24:16]. | 23:52 |
| Annie Gavin | But I'll tell you about James City, there was a time there were just Black businesses and Black people. And then the Whites start to moving in. You remember among them businesses, you remember the mill, part about the mill. | 24:40 |
| Grace George | I remember one mill that was there when I was a little girl. That was the last one, you can still see some of the equipment still over there. I remember that one. | 24:42 |
| Annie Gavin | Two mill. | 24:43 |
| Grace George | They say there was a lot of them on the water. | 24:51 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, mills over on that side and a mill on this side. And that's out there where Ms. Dorcas lived. Y'all lived right to the end of that street, though. But those people, they got along except as I remember, growing up, seemed like some of them people had too many fusses over children. | 24:53 |
| Grace George | Yeah, yeah. Because watching over each other's children. | 25:17 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Sadie Hill's grand mama and Nicie Beasley and them, they used to have fussing spells every week. | 25:20 |
| Grace George | Understand that there was always one or two in the community that kept something going. | 25:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. And ended up in the courthouse. | 25:29 |
| Grace George | Yeah. My mom say every Monday morning, and I think that courthouse downtown New Bern, they would fuss and fight on the weekend and they all had to wind up in the courthouse Monday morning. | 25:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. And then they come back almost holding hands. | 25:29 |
| Grace George | Walking, have to go to court— | 25:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Having done paid the money out. | 25:29 |
| Grace George | Paid the money out. | 25:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Plus, most of her children fighting. | 25:29 |
| Grace George | Now, I've got to say that there is a place that nobody else knows, but in New Bern where they would go for the hearing, it wouldn't be right in the courthouse. It's a building downtown, my mom pointed out on Craven Street, that there was a lady that would sit there and they'd just come tell her what they did on the weekend and pay the money. | 26:09 |
| Annie Gavin | Pay the money. They satisfied, go home until next time. But I tell you what, they could fight among themselves, but nobody else been that violent. Besides, they were mad. Jump offside, jump on. They're almost clannish. That's what they were, James City people were clannish. They could be ever so mad with each other. Don't no outside come in there, mess. Because they used to run Blacks back to New Bern and them Blacks come over here to get food because we always had food. And even when y'all were going to school— | 26:36 |
| Grace George | We had plenty of food because everybody had a garden. They always had some food. | 27:05 |
| Annie Gavin | I often think about that girl, but she didn't—Marian's Daisy was talking about how what she had for breakfast, collard green. And this girl made fun of it. And she should have had some collard greens because she got so skinny and [indistinct 00:27:34] and she had plenty. But we ate what we had. | 27:29 |
| Grace George | That's it. | 27:35 |
| Annie Gavin | You warm up them collard greens and dumplings and that fat meat when you come from school. | 27:43 |
| Grace George | We didn't have a special like bacon and eggs for breakfast. | 27:58 |
| Annie Gavin | No. | 27:58 |
| Grace George | Whatever was available, they ate it. | 27:58 |
| Annie Gavin | We ate it. | 27:58 |
| Grace George | If you had it in the evening and it was left over, I remember my grandma. It wasn't like when I came along, we started to have a separate breakfast, something different. But whatever you had— | 27:58 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, if you had some collard greens or something, some left over, we warm them up and eat them. | 28:05 |
| Grace George | Eat them up. Make those— | 28:06 |
| Annie Gavin | That dumping. Cutting the dumpling in half and turn it down in the grease. We stayed healthy, too. | 28:12 |
| Grace George | That's why we lived long. | 28:20 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. And they made soup. My mother and my daddy used to make big old pots of soup. And everybody ate. Well, even during my time and y'all came around, there was always a biscuit, always something. | 28:21 |
| Grace George | Ms. Annie, those big black pots, I have found one. And they used to cook out, hanging. This is going way back a little bit longer, over the fire place. | 28:33 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 28:33 |
| Grace George | You don't remember any of that, but my mom said that—I used to say, "Well, how did they bake their biscuits or their bread?" And she said they would push it. | 28:33 |
| Annie Gavin | Put it in the ashes. | 28:53 |
| Grace George | In the ashes. | 28:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 28:53 |
| Grace George | Cover it up. | 28:53 |
| Annie Gavin | I experienced that. | 28:53 |
| Grace George | Oh, you did? | 28:53 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, and they'd had the pot. They had it so the thing and Tryon palace all that kind of stuff. You could push the pot over the flame because you keep the fire under it, it was fireplace. They didn't have stoves. The first stoves I know about was a cook stove. And they push it over there and then they could have a way pulling it out and stirring it up, push it back. And take potatoes and put it in the ashes, cook them and bake them in the ashes. Baked potatoes in the ashes. But the fireplace was the main heat. Then after a while they had cook stoves, they could bake inside the stove. | 29:05 |
| Grace George | And for their beds, she was telling us most of the furniture back there right after the war they had was handmade. | 29:58 |
| Annie Gavin | Handmade. Handmade baby beds. But always some carpenters, because that's what your granddad was, a carpenter. George Washington, preacher, Ms. Martha's brother. And Washington Spivey, yeah. | 30:04 |
| Grace George | He was a carpenter. | 30:13 |
| Annie Gavin | I say you and Burton, all of them came in. Because George Washington was Burt's Granddaddy and Aunt Rosie married George Bell, Amelia and them came home. | 30:13 |
| Grace George | I have a picture of [indistinct 00:30:41] of her grandma. Which was Maria? | 30:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Maya, we called her Maya. | 30:13 |
| Grace George | I'm going to put that in the exhibit. We had Robert Spivey when he an infant. How old would Robert be if he was alive now? | 30:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Robert would be old now, because I'm going on 82. Robert would've been, I guess, yeah, he was older. | 30:13 |
| Grace George | So if he was a little baby in her lap— | 30:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, he was a baby and that was Mama's and Aunt Rose's mother. | 30:13 |
| Grace George | Yeah, so that's your mom— | 30:13 |
| Annie Gavin | My grandmother. I didn't know her. She died before I was born. | 30:13 |
| Grace George | You've seen the picture, though? | 30:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, I've seen the picture. | 30:13 |
| Grace George | I told her I would cherish and take good care and put it back to the family until we get a real museum. | 30:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. I mean, I didn't know that grandmother. | 30:13 |
| Grace George | She said she was born back in the 1830s. She was a slave. | 30:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Well, I don't know about her being a slave, I didn't keep up. I think she was born after the war. I think she was born here in James City. | 31:53 |
| Grace George | Ms. Maya, your grandma? | 32:04 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, she was Maya's daughter. | 32:27 |
| Grace George | Go ahead. I'll get it out the car and let you look at it. | 32:27 |
| Annie Gavin | I know, I've seen. | 32:27 |
| Grace George | You know who I'm talking about. | 32:27 |
| Annie Gavin | Yes, Robert was sitting on her lap. | 32:27 |
| Grace George | Yeah, yeah. And who's that other woman who's standing up? She didn't tell me, it's a daughter. | 32:28 |
| Annie Gavin | The had to be Sarah. | 32:32 |
| Grace George | Sarah. | 32:32 |
| Annie Gavin | Sarah. Because I didn't know mama's mother, she was already dead when I came along. But I know mama said that her daddy was a woman chaser. | 32:32 |
| Grace George | Okay. They all were. I hate to talk this, but my mom say that's why chase is so close knit. Everybody was a chaser. | 32:49 |
| Annie Gavin | Chaser. | 32:59 |
| Grace George | They had a family here and a family there. | 33:00 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, yeah. | 33:00 |
| Grace George | It was one of those like the kings and queens over there, keep the money in the family, kept everything else— | 33:05 |
| Annie Gavin | Everything in the family. | 33:07 |
| Grace George | And then it's true. There's very few families here that are not connected families. | 33:07 |
| Annie Gavin | Interrelated, yes. Because they connected either by birth or friendship. But they could be mad and that came up through all of us. | 33:25 |
| Grace George | Yes. | 33:38 |
| Annie Gavin | Because I remember when I was down on the corner and Lucy Spencer, a check down at Cherry Point had been misplaced and that they had to put it in FBI, I guess it was. But he came there, asking me where Lucy Spencer lived. I said, "Why?" Just before I moved from down there, because I knew Net sold whiskey and I didn't know, I wasn't going to send him over there and maybe catch Net selling whiskey. | 33:38 |
| Grace George | That bootleg. | 34:08 |
| Annie Gavin | That bootleg. And he said, "Do you know Lucy Spencer, where she lives?" I said, "I don't know." | 34:16 |
| Grace George | That's right. | 34:23 |
| Annie Gavin | Then he looked at me so strange. I was supposed to know because I was keeping store, and that's when I was down on corner. Then I read, he say, "She ain't going to tell me nothing." So he showed me her check, she was working at Cherry Point and her check had been misplaced. Then he showed me a check, I said, "Why didn't you tell me that to start with?" | 34:23 |
| Grace George | That's right. | 34:39 |
| Annie Gavin | I said, "She lives right there." That man had to laugh, me too. But I knew Net sold whiskey and I wasn't sending that White man over there and catch Net selling. We was clannish, though. Yeah, we were clannish. | 34:40 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:35:04] ask some questions, had to know the insides. | 35:01 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. The people could fight among themselves in James City, but nobody else better not come in. | 35:01 |
| Grace George | They got that reputation, I remember some research that they did. They were saying that they would come over when they were talking about running them off the land and they sent the sheriff over here. | 35:01 |
| Annie Gavin | They ran him over. | 35:25 |
| Grace George | They ran him in the water, he had to swim back. And so the governor said, "Look, you have to come over here with these people—" | 35:26 |
| Annie Gavin | That was the time to call the military, National Guard we call it now. And they came to James City and James, Daniel's granddaddy, had a place up James City and a flat farm. Well, I don't remember this, Mama said she was a child still. They made lemonade and the National Guard came and they called it the militia, which is what it was. And they all came and had a big party. James said the people pacified then. But they raised themselves some hell with sticks and bricks and bottles. | 35:36 |
| Grace George | Sticks and everything. Well, he called it the National Guard. | 36:12 |
| Annie Gavin | National Guard. | 36:15 |
| Grace George | Military to come in, so that's when some of those other attorneys and boys that they sent to Congress like George White. | 36:16 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 36:25 |
| Grace George | O'Hara [indistinct 00:36:32] rather than have bloodshed during that period of time. | 36:25 |
| Annie Gavin | They had to show us something. Because they didn't mind dying, they didn't mind it. Because they felt like their rights were taken. | 36:38 |
| Grace George | Now, my Grandma Martha stayed in that old house. That's why she refused to leave there, up until we had to take her, literally pick her up and bring her around because she couldn't take care of herself. And old James City was speaking about that. They loved that land, they loved that area so much. To them it was— | 36:45 |
| Annie Gavin | That's where they were brought up. | 37:03 |
| Grace George | They called it promised land. | 37:04 |
| Annie Gavin | Promised land. | 37:05 |
| Grace George | She said she would die there. And that was Washington Spivey's daughter. She was some of the last ones other than Bill Spivey. | 37:07 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, right. | 37:09 |
| Grace George | Still, that was like everything to them. | 37:09 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, one thing, Ms. Martha was a pusher. | 37:26 |
| Grace George | Strong. | 37:28 |
| Annie Gavin | And when we used to raise money for the church, she played the part of a bishop. Had on the hat and the coat and she had a grouse voice. We would raise all them pennies and stuff. | 37:29 |
| Grace George | Raise a lot. | 37:43 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 37:43 |
| Grace George | I just wanted to mention some of those things in there, that these are things you should go back and— | 37:52 |
| Grace George | And I think that we could trace back to some of their—excuse me—if you could can pass them down. | 0:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. Right. Right | 0:09 |
| Grace George | And I imagine I think [indistinct 00:00:18] did a while building houses in Newburn. | 0:18 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, yeah! | 0:21 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:00:22] say. | 0:21 |
| Annie Gavin | I bet he did. | 0:21 |
| Grace George | A few houses over in— | 0:21 |
| Annie Gavin | River and Elliot. | 0:21 |
| Grace George | —Elliot and all of them. Some of the houses that's over here, but they [indistinct 00:00:29] all of that. [indistinct 00:00:29] on. They put a [indistinct 00:00:33] on a lot of the houses down here. You know? | 0:27 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. | 0:29 |
| Grace George | You've got one or two of them around. But they sort of—the carpentry's over this area, you know— | 0:29 |
| Annie Gavin | The architecture was about the same. Mm-hmm. | 0:42 |
| Grace George | They didn't [indistinct 00:00:50]. But then I don't [indistinct 00:00:50]. You know, the thing is just— | 0:42 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, they worked—they worked what they could get, but we had a lot of fisherman, you know? At the boats they'd go out and fish. Like Simon and them could go out and fish, catch fish and sell. And Mrs. Ida and them, putting them out with a basket of clothes on the head and walk across that bridge and with the basket, not even holding it. I don't know how they kept— | 0:49 |
| Grace George | I got pictures of 1500 people carrying baskets on their heads. | 1:10 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. | 1:10 |
| Grace George | And the railroad tracks—did you know anybody that, you know, worked, other than your father, that worked on the railroad tracks? From when you were a child you might remember it. | 1:10 |
| Annie Gavin | No. And my daddy worked mostly away from the—because he got his foot cut off at Morehead. The owner, [indistinct 00:01:43], he was a brakeman. And that's how his foot got cut off. He put his foot to pull that, whatever it was, and the thing rolled over. | 1:32 |
| Grace George | Let me say this, we, by collecting a few other Black [indistinct 00:01:55], we [indistinct 00:01:56] did have the [indistinct 00:01:56] like honorable discharged. That was dated at 1865, right? So then there's a good possibility that that man might belong to [indistinct 00:02:16] because most of all the, you know— during that time, we was fighting many [indistinct 00:02:49]. | 1:49 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 2:48 |
| Grace George | So he's from—he comes from Philadelphia. But this ain't facts. And I think we have that [indistinct 00:02:49] here, but I'm not sure. I have to make sure that we held on to that. But that might be interesting. | 2:48 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. | 2:48 |
| Grace George | Because they'd be going to— | 2:48 |
| Grace George | War stories. | 2:48 |
| Grace George | So he— | 2:48 |
| Unknown Interviewer | [indistinct 00:02:51] the presidents— | 2:48 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:02:54]. | 2:48 |
| Unknown Interviewer | [indistinct 00:02:55]. | 2:48 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, we had a lot of fellows that went to war. Sherman went to—he was in battle. And my Uncle Jimmy we'll—we— | 2:55 |
| Grace George | Sammy Randolph met way back [indistinct 00:03:09]. | 3:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Sammy Randolph. | 3:09 |
| Grace George | That was way back. That was— | 3:11 |
| Annie Gavin | World War One. | 3:12 |
| Grace George | —World War One. | 3:12 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. | 3:12 |
| Grace George | But it was—I see there's a Bryant, called Colonel Bryant. | 3:18 |
| Annie Gavin | Who? | 3:22 |
| Grace George | I think—only thing I heard was the "Bryant" that was fighting in the war. | 3:22 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. [indistinct 00:03:42]. | 3:41 |
| Grace George | Okay. So it could have been his father [indistinct 00:03:42] until the war. I think it could be his father could have been back in the Civil War. | 3:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, but— | 3:41 |
| Grace George | It couldn't have been about 100 and something years old by now. | 3:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Maybe. But I do know he went in the service because Sherman went in the service, too. | 3:48 |
| Grace George | Sherman went in late— | 3:57 |
| Annie Gavin | World War Two. | 3:57 |
| Grace George | —World War Two. Cause Pitt probably went in World War One. | 3:57 |
| Annie Gavin | World War One and my uncle Jimmy, and my uncle Wilbert. World War One. | 3:57 |
| Grace George | Well, most of them went in the war. At that time, that was a way of getting away and learning, you know— | 4:07 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, they were drafted, you know. They had to be drafted even then. And I know when the Armistice Day my grandmother's son, he was married to Mama Lou, they had brought him from Norfolk. Somebody had killed him. | 4:11 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. | 4:30 |
| Annie Gavin | And it still had them small houses and doors and had them under the tree. They had brought him back here. John Washington shot him about Ms. Hunt's. | 4:32 |
| Grace George | John Washington? | 4:48 |
| Annie Gavin | John Washington. Lord, leave him them. Uh-huh. And he's the one sent telegram. And he's the one came home with the body after killing him. | 4:49 |
| Grace George | After killing him? | 4:57 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. | 4:57 |
| Grace George | Who remembers [indistinct 00:05:00]. | 4:59 |
| Annie Gavin | Getting old, Ms. Hunt. Ms. Hunt Lloyd's sister. Yeah. | 5:00 |
| Grace George | I was [indistinct 00:05:09]. | 5:08 |
| Annie Gavin | And then he stayed here. But he hung around Papa all the time. I think he called himself trying to—because he and Papa were friends. That was more Lee's and them's father. And he was from—I forgot where he's from. But anyway, he came here to work. But he worked at the mill. He used to bring—Papa would wake up in the mornings and they could bring so much material from the mill. They allowed you to carry as much as you could carry and not have to pay for it. Because my daddy was working at the mill when he built this house. And as much as he could carry on his shoulder, he could have. | 5:08 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 5:55 |
| Annie Gavin | And he would bring so much every night and he and Mama would go over there and nail it on the wall. Mama holding a lamp. And I was a year old at the time. Which means they had been in that house because the house been made over since then 81 years. | 5:57 |
| Grace George | That's the one Delores still lives in, right? | 6:27 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Delores still lives in the [indistinct 00:06:33] house. | 6:27 |
| Grace George | You let me know about the [indistinct 00:06:40]. | 6:27 |
| Speaker 4 | How are you doing? How are you doing? | 6:27 |
| Grace George | Ah! | 6:27 |
| Speaker 4 | How are you? Cold-hearted, cold city. | 6:43 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Yeah. | 6:45 |
| Speaker 4 | Because I used to come see you all of the top. | 6:46 |
| Annie Gavin | You send me all the time? | 6:47 |
| Speaker 4 | I used to come see you out here, driving a truck [indistinct 00:06:50] Jose. | 6:48 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, yeah. That's right. I knew I knew your face. | 6:50 |
| Speaker 4 | Yeah. What y'all was saying? | 6:54 |
| Annie Gavin | No, we weren't saying—We talking about the war. | 6:56 |
| Grace George | The old times. | 6:58 |
| Annie Gavin | The old times. This is a reporter. And he's putting us on the news. | 6:59 |
| Speaker 4 | Oh, yeah! | 7:05 |
| Annie Gavin | Gonna tell him about Old James City. Y'all got a history, too, there. | 7:05 |
| Speaker 4 | Yeah. Yeah. | 7:09 |
| Annie Gavin | Down there. | 7:10 |
| Speaker 4 | Yeah. | 7:10 |
| Grace George | Did you know anybody from James City years and years ago? | 7:14 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, because— | 7:19 |
| Speaker 4 | Yeah, Georgia. | 7:19 |
| Annie Gavin | Everybody knew Georgia! | 7:19 |
| Grace George | Old Georgia that [indistinct 00:07:25] the water [indistinct 00:07:25]. | 7:19 |
| Speaker 4 | It was a— | 7:19 |
| Grace George | Georgia in the modern time. | 7:27 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. | 7:27 |
| Grace George | I'm more for the back. | 7:27 |
| Annie Gavin | 'Cause cold city and new— | 7:27 |
| Grace George | That's not a cold Pop. He used to live in that block house on the corner. What his last name? | 7:32 |
| Annie Gavin | Lived in the black-block house? | 7:41 |
| Speaker 4 | Yeah. He used to wait at Cherry Point. We could— | 7:42 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:07:45] the lady is, too. | 7:43 |
| Speaker 4 | Yeah. | 7:43 |
| Annie Gavin | I don't know. I never had nobody in James City with Cherry Point when it got there. That could work. Because my sister used to work Cherry Point. Addy. And that's what— | 7:50 |
| Grace George | I understand that's when things got good to the area when the Cherry Point opened up. | 8:01 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. 'Cause people got to know each other. Like— | 8:06 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:08:09] knowing. | 8:08 |
| Annie Gavin | —down Hollow and all around the little places, people got to know each other. Some of us knew each other by the churches. | 8:09 |
| Speaker 4 | Yeah. Yeah. | 8:17 |
| Annie Gavin | These days— | 8:17 |
| Speaker 4 | That was Mulberry a long time, too, ain't it? | 8:17 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, he was! He's not with us anymore. | 8:21 |
| Speaker 4 | No? [indistinct 00:08:24]? | 8:23 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-mm. | 8:23 |
| Speaker 4 | When he got back? | 8:24 |
| Annie Gavin | He's out—where is he, Grace? | 8:25 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:08:30] is it [indistinct 00:08:30]? | 8:28 |
| Annie Gavin | No. It's not Rocking Run. It's out that way, though. | 8:30 |
| Speaker 4 | Out where, Rocking Run? | 8:37 |
| Annie Gavin | No. It— | 8:37 |
| Grace George | No, it's further out. | 8:39 |
| Annie Gavin | Further out. He said— | 8:41 |
| Speaker 4 | Hey, [indistinct 00:08:42]. | 8:41 |
| Grace George | Maysville? | 8:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Maysville. He lives in Maysville. | 8:45 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 8:46 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. | 8:56 |
| Grace George | And I think he's not too fortunate— | 9:03 |
| Annie Gavin | He's— | 9:08 |
| Speaker 4 | No, but he [indistinct 00:09:09] they got made with. | 9:08 |
| Annie Gavin | Run [indistinct 00:09:09]. Maysville, yeah. | 9:08 |
| Speaker 4 | Yeah. | 9:08 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. Run Small is—can't even think of nobody now. | 9:08 |
| Speaker 4 | Bell Grady? | 9:08 |
| Annie Gavin | It's that way. It's the same direction that—it's not too far from home. | 9:08 |
| Speaker 4 | It must be back where [indistinct 00:09:14] there. They in Jacksonville, [indistinct 00:09:24]. | 9:12 |
| Annie Gavin | Hm? | 9:20 |
| Speaker 4 | It ain't Jacksonville. | 9:20 |
| Annie Gavin | No, it's not Jacksonville. Jacksonville is [indistinct 00:09:28]. | 9:20 |
| Speaker 4 | Well, he's got the be [indistinct 00:09:31] then. That's [indistinct 00:09:31]— | 9:20 |
| Grace George | Is it Jones [indistinct 00:09:31]? | 9:20 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, he wasn't the first, but he was Presiding Elder at first. But he's the one put the bricks around us. | 9:31 |
| Grace George | Okay because we moved over here with—it was a wooden church. | 9:44 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, it was a wooden church. | 9:48 |
| Grace George | Right next to the end. So they bricked it up over here. | 9:51 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, it was just a small church in James City. | 9:55 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. | 9:58 |
| Annie Gavin | But who brought us over here? | 9:59 |
| Speaker 4 | How about putting on a TV? | 10:01 |
| Annie Gavin | No, he's a reporter. History stuff. | 10:03 |
| Grace George | This is a community college club, that public radio station. | 10:12 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, yeah? Uh-huh. | 10:29 |
| Grace George | This is for—he's from the college. | 10:35 |
| Annie Gavin | They record things for future generations. | 10:35 |
| Grace George | Is it true that a lot of the bricks were hauled over? They brought the bricks by a train? And they [indistinct 00:10:35] on the train? | 10:35 |
| Annie Gavin | On a train. And parked the train—Reverend Thurston and, you know, Reverend Thurston was quite— | 10:35 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:10:43]. They had the right hand. They could get it done good. | 10:39 |
| Annie Gavin | And they parked the train on the tracks out there. | 10:47 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. | 10:50 |
| Annie Gavin | And the little boys like this, it was—as long as it's big enough to bring a brick— | 10:51 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. | 10:56 |
| Annie Gavin | —they would be bringing those bricks. And Latamar, I think, was the people that used to sell lumbar and doors and stuff. | 10:56 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. | 11:05 |
| Annie Gavin | So Reverend Thurston, he was a tricky man! | 11:06 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. | 11:09 |
| Annie Gavin | He would have service and invite these people to the service. And it was summertime. He'd tell them, pull off your coat. And these women sitting up here with their arms out, Latamar, I remember the people's name was Latamar was the ones that sold the material. And then he'd say, you see these doors? They let us have them until we can get some money to pay for them. Then the man get up and said we could have them! He was cranky! You know, it's—a friendship gets a lot. | 11:10 |
| Grace George | I try to tell our people that. | 11:43 |
| Annie Gavin | Friendship gets a lot. Reverend Thurston was nice to everybody. | 11:43 |
| Speaker 4 | I tell you, I'm going to tell you a lot, too. My daddy— | 11:51 |
| Annie Gavin | Who? | 11:53 |
| Speaker 4 | My daddy had it, too. He can tell you everything happened about that. | 11:53 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. | 11:56 |
| Speaker 4 | But he made it in the cold city. You go up that way? | 11:57 |
| Grace George | Well, maybe we will eventually because what happened here, we're talking about James City, but James City was the key that many people came through James City— | 12:00 |
| Annie Gavin | James City. | 12:09 |
| Grace George | —and spread out throughout the counties— | 12:10 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. | 12:12 |
| Grace George | —and, you know, the area. So many of you will tell us stories that happened here, and then they moved to other areas so it is interesting to come around and talk to—because most Black communities are pretty much set up. | 12:12 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 12:26 |
| Grace George | And they did things similar. | 12:26 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. | 12:26 |
| Grace George | And I take James City as like Ellis Island, that you came through here, but all couldn't stay because it was too small, from what I understand. | 12:30 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. | 12:37 |
| Grace George | So many of them branched out all around the surrounding areas. | 12:41 |
| Annie Gavin | And a lot of— | 12:45 |
| Grace George | There's a possibility [indistinct 00:12:48]. | 12:46 |
| Annie Gavin | And a lot of people got to know each other, come together here at Cherry Point. Because through the churches, they used to meet up, but the churches didn't interchange pulpits as much before they had transportation. But they went on the horse and buggy. | 12:48 |
| Speaker 4 | That's where I met you, through the church. | 13:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. That's right. Yeah. And we don't do enough of that no more! | 13:10 |
| Speaker 4 | That's right! | 13:16 |
| Grace George | Tell us your— | 13:16 |
| Annie Gavin | No, we don't fellowship between churches like we used to. Since we got something to travel on, we don't do it. But— | 13:17 |
| Grace George | Ms. Davis said she used to walk to the Morehead City. You would like, take a little—you didn't have the transportation. You'd ride a little bit, walk a little bit, till you get where you gotta go. Everything was— | 13:27 |
| Annie Gavin | I know a minute about walking to Morehead City that— | 13:41 |
| Grace George | She said her father was walking that much. | 13:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 13:41 |
| Grace George | She said he'd had to walk. | 13:42 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, they rode the horse and buggy and stuff. | 13:47 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. The train. | 13:52 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Catch a train. We used to catch a train to Morehead City and down in that area. I guess people have walked, though, because people have walked from Havelock to New Bern. | 13:54 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. | 14:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. | 14:08 |
| Grace George | They're saying, about what year did you finish school? You being— | 14:08 |
| Annie Gavin | 1930. | 14:09 |
| Grace George | 1930. Okay. Okay. Because I'm curious when I see these pictures— | 14:11 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 14:19 |
| Grace George | —you finish at the Barber School? | 14:22 |
| Annie Gavin | No, I finished Kinston. | 14:22 |
| Grace George | Okay. Okay. | 14:22 |
| Annie Gavin | I went to Kenston. That was Summer Reverend Thurston's doing. | 14:26 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 14:27 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Because Sutton School was losing its credit. And he got me a room at Holloway's. Holloway's a good man. Old man Holloway was president of the bank. Kinston had a Negro bank. | 14:28 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 14:45 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. [indistinct 00:14:47] Atkins. | 14:46 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. And so the ministers took an active role in the community. | 14:48 |
| Annie Gavin | In the community. Yeah. Yeah, Sutton School was closing. And I was a senior, and he got a room for me with the Holloways in Kinston. And Dr. Harrison lived right beside the Holloways. And I used to babysit for them. And I learned—and his wife was very smart. And I learned a lot from her. But she was brought up in White people's kitchen. Her mother—that's how her mother made a living for her and sent her to [indistinct 00:15:36], and she was very smart. | 14:54 |
| Annie Gavin | And so I learned a lot. And matter of fact, she taught me not to eat with my fingers. Use your knife and forks so. And even today when I'm by myself, I use my knife and fork. | 15:38 |
| Grace George | Okay! That she did. | 15:56 |
| Annie Gavin | That's what it's for. But she grew up and her mother worked for a family and she grew up in that family. So everything she knew she taught to me, and she was about the Harrison's wife. Very smart. | 16:02 |
| Annie Gavin | Dr. Harrison saved more people's lives during than the flu epidemic. He become famous. White and Black, he attended. 'Cause they're all dead now. | 16:18 |
| Grace George | That is good to remember. | 16:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, it's good to—things that happen, you don't ever really forget. And— | 16:35 |
| Grace George | It's good to share that knowledge. You know? | 16:44 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. And we had a habit of eating with our fingers and picking it up out the plate. She didn't let me do that. I ate to the table with them. You had to have your napkin. I almost do the same thing right now. I had to use that knife and fork a certain way. But we're used to taking it up and eating it. | 16:46 |
| Grace George | Yeah, we eat the way we enjoy. | 17:03 |
| Annie Gavin | But she worked with the—her mother worked with the White family, and they taught them a lot. | 17:08 |
| Grace George | It's amazing how no matter how much we're taught, we're interwoven the way we were brought. | 17:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. Right. | 17:20 |
| Grace George | And to this day, I cannot understand what the separation was. You know, it happened. Because we are like, interwoven. It's one depending on the other. | 17:23 |
| Annie Gavin | That's right. | 17:33 |
| Grace George | Yeah. [indistinct 00:17:35]. | 17:34 |
| Annie Gavin | And always was that way. | 17:34 |
| Speaker 4 | Well, you take fish, I eat them with my hand even now. Don't nobody know, especially when I'm alone by myself. | 17:36 |
| Grace George | You want to enjoy it? | 17:36 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. The taste better that way. | 17:41 |
| Speaker 4 | I get to myself, I put them fingers in my own fish. | 17:42 |
| Annie Gavin | I can't eat fish. Fish make me sick. | 17:47 |
| Speaker 4 | It don't come with a fork big enough to pick up the fish or nothing. Let me get to—I like to eat by myself, anyway. | 17:50 |
| Annie Gavin | So you could eat it just like you want to. | 17:55 |
| Speaker 4 | Eat it all. | 18:02 |
| Annie Gavin | You can get your fingers. | 18:02 |
| Grace George | Love fish. | 18:02 |
| Speaker 4 | Yeah. | 18:02 |
| Grace George | It's a good food to eat. | 18:02 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, my children love fish, but I can't eat fish. I never could eat fish. I can eat crabs, though. I never could eat fish. Mama found out when a very young child at a cousin—it make me sick. You know, it would come back. | 18:02 |
| Grace George | Don't touch it then [indistinct 00:18:16]. | 18:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-uh. I don't need—have no taste for— | 18:16 |
| Grace George | It's amazing, though, because most things that are against you, you really like it. | 18:21 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. | 18:24 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 18:24 |
| Annie Gavin | But in my case, it'd make me sick. It wouldn't stay down in my stomach. I was allergic to fish. But I could eat crabs. But all my children can eat fish. And they love fish and I used to have to cook them because they loved them. | 18:26 |
| Speaker 4 | You take Mr. Edward, when he used to run out of old man's—you know him long. | 18:42 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 18:47 |
| Speaker 4 | He still run that place farm and showing us up [indistinct 00:18:51] Center Lane. | 18:48 |
| Annie Gavin | Who? | 18:52 |
| Speaker 4 | Mr. Edward. | 18:52 |
| Annie Gavin | Edward Hicks? Is that— | 18:52 |
| Speaker 4 | Real light skinned. | 18:52 |
| Annie Gavin | Mr. Edwards a school teacher? | 18:57 |
| Speaker 4 | Yeah. | 18:59 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, yeah he's still alive and Mrs. Edwards is still alive. | 19:00 |
| Speaker 4 | Yeah, he's still [indistinct 00:19:04] real estate, too. | 19:00 |
| Annie Gavin | He does? | 19:05 |
| Grace George | How old is he? | 19:07 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, he talking about Lil' Pop. Talking about Mr. Evans? | 19:07 |
| Speaker 4 | Yeah. | 19:11 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 19:11 |
| Speaker 4 | You been add your [indistinct 00:19:16]. | 19:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Mr. Evans. Poppa Evans. | 19:15 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 19:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. | 19:15 |
| Speaker 4 | He's selling real estate now. | 19:15 |
| Grace George | Yeah, [indistinct 00:19:17] is sold. | 19:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. He's got a office. | 19:15 |
| Speaker 4 | I got to see him today sometime. | 19:20 |
| Annie Gavin | He's still at it. | 19:22 |
| Speaker 4 | I'm about to sell him [indistinct 00:19:27] Atlanta [indistinct 00:19:27] gets to Jacksonville. | 19:26 |
| Grace George | Now he must be about, what? Is he that old? | 19:26 |
| Annie Gavin | He's old as I am or older. | 19:30 |
| Grace George | And Mr. Rivers? | 19:32 |
| Speaker 4 | 82, ain't he? | 19:39 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 19:39 |
| Grace George | What about Mr. Rivers? | 19:39 |
| Annie Gavin | Rivers is in a nursing home now. | 19:39 |
| Grace George | Yeah, he's—my mom said he was the principal down at James [indistinct 00:19:41]. | 19:39 |
| Annie Gavin | He was Principal of James School. Mm-hmm. | 19:41 |
| Speaker 4 | Or at about nine. | 19:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, Mr. Evans, I think he's stopped traveling now. Yeah, Mr. Ellis is come there being 100. | 19:49 |
| Speaker 4 | You're right. [indistinct 00:19:57] in it. But he down there around Cherry Point, Jackson, or Holloway. | 19:57 |
| Annie Gavin | Hollow. | 20:00 |
| Grace George | And I think if we could trace back to some of their ancestors, it's usually past they them down, you know? | 20:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. Right. Right. | 20:16 |
| Grace George | You know? | 20:16 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. | 20:16 |
| Grace George | And I imagine, I think, some of them did a lot of building the houses in Newburn. | 20:16 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh yeah. | 20:23 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:20:23] sake. | 20:23 |
| Annie Gavin | Uh-huh. It did. | 20:23 |
| Grace George | A few houses over [indistinct 00:20:24]— | 20:23 |
| Annie Gavin | Reverend Elliot. | 20:23 |
| Grace George | —Elliot and all of them. Some of the houses that's over here, like Mrs. Davis's and all of that, still are. They still don't look like the houses downtown. You know, you've got one of two of them around. | 20:25 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. | 20:32 |
| Grace George | But they sort of, the carpenters over this area, you know— | 20:32 |
| Annie Gavin | The architecture was about the same. | 20:32 |
| Grace George | —[indistinct 00:20:33]. But I don't feel the thing is history [indistinct 00:20:48]. | 20:32 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, they worked what they could get. | 20:48 |
| Grace George | The railroad tracks— | 20:54 |
| Annie Gavin | But we had a lot of fisherman, you know, type of boats go out and fish. Like Simon and them could go out and fish, catch fish and sell. And Mrs. Ida and them putting them out, basket of clothes on the head, and walk across that bridge with the basket, not even holding it. I don't know how they kept [indistinct 00:21:16]. | 20:54 |
| Grace George | I've got pictures of people carrying baskets on their head. | 21:15 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. | 21:18 |
| Grace George | Now the railroad tracks, did you know anybody that, you know, worked, other than your father, on the railroad tracks? From when you were— | 21:19 |
| Annie Gavin | —his foot got cut off. He put his foot to pull that, whatever it was, and the thing rolled over. | 0:01 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:00:11] by collecting a few artifacts and everything, there's a lady that does have—honorable discharge, that was dated back 1865, so now there's a good possibility that that name might be on there, because most of all the—You know, during that time, there was fighting within the south, so she comes from Philadelphia, but this dates back and I think we have that as an exhibit, I'm not sure, I have to make sure that they held onto that piece, but that might be interesting. His name is on there. | 0:12 |
| Unknown Interviewer | [indistinct 00:01:05] stories of former residents here [indistinct 00:01:09]. | 1:05 |
| Annie Gavin | We had a lot of fellows that went to war. Sherman went and he was in battle. My Uncle Jimmy— | 1:11 |
| Grace George | Sammy Randall went way back [indistinct 00:01:27]. | 1:25 |
| Annie Gavin | Sammy Randall. | 1:27 |
| Grace George | That was way back. That was [indistinct 00:01:29]. | 1:28 |
| Annie Gavin | World War One. | 1:29 |
| Grace George | I see there's a Bryant, [indistinct 00:01:38] Bryant. | 1:34 |
| Annie Gavin | Who? | 1:39 |
| Grace George | I think it's—The only thing I heard of a Bryant, that was fighting in the war. | 1:40 |
| Annie Gavin | Pierpoint. | 1:47 |
| Grace George | Okay. It could have been his father too in the Civil War. Do you think [indistinct 00:01:54]'s father could have been back in the Civil War? | 1:50 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, but— | 1:57 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:01:59] about 100 and something years old by now. | 1:59 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Maybe. But I do know he went in the service, because Sherman went in the service too. | 2:00 |
| Grace George | Sherman went in [indistinct 00:02:14]. | 2:11 |
| Annie Gavin | World War Two. | 2:13 |
| Grace George | World War Two, because [indistinct 00:02:14]. | 2:13 |
| Annie Gavin | World War One, and my Uncle Jimmy and my Uncle Wilbert, World War One. | 2:13 |
| Grace George | Well, most [indistinct 00:02:24], that time, that was a way of getting away and learning. | 2:23 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, they were drafted. You know, they had to be drafted even then, and I know when the Armistice Day, my grandmother's son was married to Mama Lou, they had brought him from Norfolk, somebody had killed him. They still had them small houses and doors and had it under the tree. They brought him back here, John Washington shot him [indistinct 00:03:02]. | 2:27 |
| Grace George | John Washington? | 3:04 |
| Annie Gavin | John Washington, Maude Lee and them. Mm-hmm. He's the one telegraming, he's the one came home with the body. | 3:05 |
| Grace George | After he killed him? | 3:11 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. | 3:11 |
| Grace George | Lord, have mercy. | 3:11 |
| Annie Gavin | [indistinct 00:03:17] Lloyd's sister. Yeah. | 3:11 |
| Grace George | I don't know. | 3:11 |
| Annie Gavin | And then he stayed here, but he hung around Papa all the time. I think he called himself Turner, because he and Papa were friends. That was Maude Lee's and them's father. He was from—I forgot where he's from but, anyway, he came here to work but he worked at the mill. He used to bring—Papa would wake up mornings and they could bring so much material from the mill. | 3:24 |
| Annie Gavin | They'd allow you to carry as much as you could carry and not have to pay for it. Because my daddy was working at the mill when he built his house. As much as he could carry on his shoulder, he could have. He would bring so much every night, and he and mama would go over there and nail it on the wall. Mama holding a lamp. | 3:56 |
| Annie Gavin | I was a year old at the time, which means they had been in that house, because the house has been made over since then, 81 years. | 4:29 |
| Grace George | That's the one that Laurie still lives in, right? | 4:42 |
| Visitor | Yeah. [indistinct 00:04:46] still lives in [indistinct 00:04:47]. | 4:43 |
| Grace George | You let me know about [indistinct 00:04:55]. | 4:43 |
| Visitor | How you doing? How you doing? How are you? Cold-hearted cold city. | 4:57 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Yeah. | 5:00 |
| Visitor | You always out. | 5:01 |
| Annie Gavin | You see me out all the time? | 5:02 |
| Visitor | I used to come see you [indistinct 00:05:05]. | 5:03 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, yeah. That's right. I knew I knew your face. | 5:06 |
| Visitor | Yeah. What y'all was saying? | 5:09 |
| Annie Gavin | No. We weren't saying—We're talking about the war. | 5:11 |
| Grace George | The old times. | 5:14 |
| Annie Gavin | Old times. This is a reporter. He's putting us on the news. | 5:15 |
| Visitor | Oh, yeah. | 5:20 |
| Annie Gavin | I was telling about old James City. Y'all got a history too now. | 5:21 |
| Visitor | Yeah. Yeah. | 5:24 |
| Annie Gavin | Down there. | 5:25 |
| Visitor | Yeah. | 5:28 |
| Grace George | Did you know about from James City? Years and years ago? | 5:30 |
| Visitor | Joe Joe. | 5:35 |
| Annie Gavin | Everybody [indistinct 00:05:37] Joe Joe. | 5:35 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:05:38]. Joe Joe in the morning time. [indistinct 00:05:44] farther back. | 5:38 |
| Annie Gavin | Because Cole City [indistinct 00:05:46]. | 5:38 |
| Visitor | [indistinct 00:05:49] in that block house on the corner. What was his last name? | 5:49 |
| Annie Gavin | Lived in the block house? | 5:56 |
| Visitor | Yeah. [indistinct 00:05:58]. | 5:57 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:05:58]. | 5:57 |
| Visitor | Yeah. | 5:58 |
| Annie Gavin | I don't know. Everybody in James City worked Cherry Point when we got there. That could work. Because my sister used to work Cherry Point, Hattie. That's what— | 5:58 |
| Grace George | That's when things got good to the area when Cherry Point opened up. | 6:21 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah, because people got to know each other. | 6:22 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:06:23]. | 6:23 |
| Annie Gavin | Down Hollow and all around the little places, people got to know each other. Some of us knew each other by the churches. | 6:24 |
| Visitor | Yeah. Yeah. [indistinct 00:06:34] get a long time too, ain't it? | 6:31 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. He was. He's not with us anymore. | 6:35 |
| Visitor | Oh, that right? | 6:40 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. | 6:40 |
| Visitor | Where he at now? | 6:40 |
| Annie Gavin | He's out—Where is he, Grace? | 6:41 |
| Grace George | Is it Rocking Run? | 6:43 |
| Annie Gavin | No. It's not Rocking Run. It's out that way, though. | 6:46 |
| Visitor | Oh. Out towards Rocky Road? | 6:47 |
| Annie Gavin | No. | 6:52 |
| Grace George | Further out. | 6:54 |
| Annie Gavin | Further out. | 6:54 |
| Visitor | [indistinct 00:06:55]. | 6:54 |
| Grace George | Maysville? | 6:55 |
| Annie Gavin | Maysville. He lives in Maysville. | 7:00 |
| Grace George | I think he's got [indistinct 00:07:04]. | 7:00 |
| Visitor | [indistinct 00:07:05] got made with? | 7:05 |
| Grace George | Mm-hmm. | 7:07 |
| Annie Gavin | [indistinct 00:07:10] Maysville. Yeah. | 7:10 |
| Visitor | Yeah. | 7:10 |
| Annie Gavin | [indistinct 00:07:13] Small is—Can't even think of nobody now. | 7:13 |
| Visitor | [indistinct 00:07:20]? | 7:19 |
| Annie Gavin | That way. It's the same direction that—It's not too far from home. | 7:22 |
| Visitor | It must be [indistinct 00:07:28]. | 7:26 |
| Annie Gavin | Hmm? | 7:34 |
| Visitor | It ain't Jacksonville. | 7:37 |
| Annie Gavin | No. It's not Jacksonville. Jacksonville is St. Julia. | 7:39 |
| Visitor | He got to be [indistinct 00:07:45]. | 7:44 |
| Grace George | Is it [indistinct 00:07:49]? | 7:48 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, he wasn't on the first but he was Presiding Elder at first. But he's the one who put the bricks around us. | 7:50 |
| Grace George | Because we moved here, over here, with—There was a wooden church. | 7:58 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. It was a wooden church. | 8:03 |
| Grace George | They bricked it up over here. | 8:04 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, it was just a small church in James City. But who brought us over here? | 8:09 |
| Visitor | [indistinct 00:08:15] put it on the TV. | 8:15 |
| Annie Gavin | No. He's a reporter. History stuff. | 8:18 |
| Grace George | This is a community college public radio station. | 8:26 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, yeah? | 8:30 |
| Grace George | This is from [indistinct 00:08:33]. | 8:30 |
| Annie Gavin | They record things for future generations. | 8:33 |
| Grace George | Is it true that a lot of the bricks were hauled over—They brought the bricks by train [indistinct 00:08:46]. | 8:40 |
| Annie Gavin | On a train. | 8:44 |
| Grace George | On a train? | 8:44 |
| Annie Gavin | And parked the train—Reverend Thurston was White. | 8:47 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:08:55]. He had the right [indistinct 00:08:59]. He could get it done. | 8:53 |
| Annie Gavin | They parked the train on the tracks out there. The little boys like this, as long as you were big enough to bring a brick, they would be bringing those bricks and Latimore. I think was the people that used to sell lumber and doors and stuff, so Reverend Thurston, he was a tricky man. He would have service and invite these people to a service and in the summertime, he'd tell them, "Pull off your coat." These women sitting up here with the arms out—Latimore. I remember the people's name was Latimore that was the ones that sewed material. | 9:01 |
| Annie Gavin | Then he'd say, "You see these doors? They let us have them, if we can get some money to pay for them. Then the man get up and said we could have them." He was tricky. You know? Friendship gets a lot. | 9:42 |
| Grace George | I tried to tell our people that. | 9:59 |
| Annie Gavin | Friendship gets a lot. Reverend Thurston was nice to everybody. | 10:00 |
| Visitor | I'll tell you a lot to my daddy. | 10:04 |
| Annie Gavin | Who? | 10:05 |
| Visitor | My daddy he's 82. He can tell you everything that happened about that. But he lives in Cole City. | 10:13 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 10:13 |
| Visitor | You go up that way? | 10:13 |
| Grace George | Well, maybe we will eventually, because what happened here, we're talking about James City but James City was the key that many people came through James City and spread out throughout the counties or the area. Many of you will tell us stories that happened here and then they moved to other areas, so it is interesting to come around and talk to—Most of the communities are pretty much setup this way and they were similar. | 10:14 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. | 10:43 |
| Grace George | I take James City as like an Ellis Island that you came through here, but all couldn't stay because it was too small. Many of them branched out all around the surrounding areas. | 10:44 |
| Annie Gavin | A lot of people got to know each other, come together, working at Cherry Point. | 11:02 |
| Grace George | Yeah. | 11:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Because through the churches, they used to mingle but the churches didn't interchange pulpits as much before they had transportation, but they went on the horse and buggy. | 11:08 |
| Visitor | That's where I met you, through the church. | 11:20 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. That's right. Yeah. We don't do enough of that no more. | 11:24 |
| Visitor | That's right. | 11:30 |
| Grace George | Fellowship? | 11:30 |
| Annie Gavin | No. We don't fellowship between churches like we used to, since we got something to to travel on, we don't do it. | 11:31 |
| Grace George | That's right. There's [indistinct 00:11:43] you would take a little—You didn't have the transportation, you'd ride a little bit and walk a little bit until you get to [indistinct 00:11:53]. | 11:37 |
| Annie Gavin | I never knew nobody walked to Morehead City. | 11:52 |
| Grace George | She said her father or something. | 11:52 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 11:52 |
| Grace George | They had to walk. | 12:00 |
| Annie Gavin | Well, maybe they rode the horse and buggy and stuff. | 12:01 |
| Grace George | The train. | 12:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Or catch a train. Used to catch a train to Morehead City down in that area. I guess people have walked because people have walked from Havelock to New Bern. | 12:08 |
| Grace George | Miss Annie, but what year did you finish school? | 12:19 |
| Annie Gavin | 1930. | 12:24 |
| Grace George | 1930? | 12:26 |
| Annie Gavin | Mm-hmm. | 12:27 |
| Grace George | Okay. Okay. I'm curious when I see these pictures. | 12:30 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 12:33 |
| Grace George | You finished at the barber school? | 12:33 |
| Annie Gavin | No, I finished Kinston. | 12:36 |
| Grace George | Okay. Okay. | 12:40 |
| Annie Gavin | I went to Kingston. That was some of Reverend Thurston's doing. | 12:41 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 12:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 12:41 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 12:41 |
| Annie Gavin | Because Sutton School was losing its credit. He got me a room with the Holloways, the Holloways, the man Holloway—Old man Holloway was president of the bank. Kinston had a Negro bank. | 12:44 |
| Grace George | Okay. | 12:59 |
| Annie Gavin | [indistinct 00:13:00] Atkins. | 12:59 |
| Grace George | The ministers took an active role in the community? | 13:02 |
| Annie Gavin | In the community. Yeah. Sutton School was closing, and I was a senior. He got a room for me with the Holloways in Kinston. Dr. Harrison lived right beside the Holloways and I used to babysit for them and I learned that his wife was very smart. I learned a lot from her. She was brought up in White people's kitchen. Her mother, that's her mother—Mother made a living for her and sent her to [indistinct 00:13:49], and she was very smart. | 13:07 |
| Annie Gavin | I learned a lot and matter of fact, she taught me not to eat with my fingers, use your knife and fork. Even today, when I'm by myself, I use my knife and fork. That's what it's for, she said. But she grew up and her mother worked for the family and she grew up in that family. Everything she knew, she taught to me, and she was Dr. Harrison's wife. Very smart. | 13:54 |
| Annie Gavin | Dr. Harrison saved more people's lives during the flu epidemic. He became famous. White and Black, he attended. Of course, they all dead now. | 14:31 |
| Grace George | It's good to remember. | 14:48 |
| Annie Gavin | Yes. Good to—Things that happened, you don't ever really forget. | 14:48 |
| Grace George | That's right. It's good to share that knowledge. | 14:55 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. You know, we had a habit of eating with our fingers and picking it up off the plate. She didn't let me do that. I ate at the table with them and had to have your napkin and I almost do the same thing right on, and I had to use that knife and fork a certain way. | 14:56 |
| Annie Gavin | But we were used to taking it and eating it. | 15:16 |
| Grace George | Enjoying. | 15:19 |
| Annie Gavin | But she worked with the White—Her mother worked with a White family, and they taught them a lot. | 15:23 |
| Grace George | It's amazing how—No matter how much you're taught, we're interwoven, the White and the Black. | 15:29 |
| Annie Gavin | Right. Right. | 15:33 |
| Grace George | To this day, I cannot understand what the separation of White—It happened. Because we are like interwoven. It's one depending on the other. | 15:36 |
| Annie Gavin | That's right, and always was that way. | 15:47 |
| Visitor | [indistinct 00:15:50] nobody know, especially my [indistinct 00:15:54]. | 15:49 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. It fit the [indistinct 00:15:55]. | 15:49 |
| Visitor | [indistinct 00:15:57]. | 15:49 |
| Annie Gavin | I can't eat fish. Fish make me sick. | 16:02 |
| Visitor | [indistinct 00:16:04] a fork picking up fish. Let me get to—I like to eat by myself. | 16:04 |
| Annie Gavin | So you can eat it just like you want to. Take it with your fingers. | 16:09 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:16:13] fish? | 16:12 |
| Visitor | Yeah. | 16:12 |
| Grace George | It's a good [indistinct 00:16:15]. | 16:12 |
| Annie Gavin | All my children love fish but I can't eat fish. I never could eat fish. I can eat crabs, though. I never could eat fish. Mama found out when I was a very young child that—Because it would make me sick and it would come back. | 16:16 |
| Grace George | Don't touch it now then. | 16:29 |
| Annie Gavin | I don't have no taste for— | 16:33 |
| Grace George | It's amazing, though, because most things that are against you, you really like it. | 16:39 |
| Annie Gavin | But in my case, it'd make me sick. It wouldn't stay on my stomach. I was allergic to fish, but I could eat crabs but all my children can eat fish, and they love fish, and I used to have to cook them because they loved them. | 16:40 |
| Visitor | You take Mr. Edward, he's still running that [indistinct 00:17:01]. | 16:56 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 17:00 |
| Visitor | He's still running that place [indistinct 00:17:03] and showing up for supper. [indistinct 00:17:05]. | 17:02 |
| Annie Gavin | Who? | 17:05 |
| Visitor | Mr. Edward. | 17:06 |
| Annie Gavin | Edward Hicks? | 17:08 |
| Visitor | Real light skinned. | 17:10 |
| Annie Gavin | Mr. Edward, the schoolteacher? | 17:12 |
| Visitor | Yeah. | 17:13 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, yeah. He's still alive. Mr. Edward is still alive. | 17:14 |
| Visitor | He's still working real estate too. | 17:38 |
| Annie Gavin | He does? | 17:38 |
| Grace George | How old is he? | 17:38 |
| Annie Gavin | Oh, he talking about little pop. Talking about Mr. Evans? | 17:38 |
| Visitor | Yeah. | 17:38 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 17:38 |
| Visitor | [indistinct 00:17:39]. | 17:38 |
| Annie Gavin | Mr. Evans, Papa Evans. | 17:38 |
| Grace George | Okay. Okay. | 17:38 |
| Visitor | He sells real estate now. | 17:38 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 17:38 |
| Grace George | [indistinct 00:17:39]. | 17:38 |
| Annie Gavin | He got an office. | 17:38 |
| Visitor | [indistinct 00:17:39] see him today sometime. | 17:38 |
| Annie Gavin | He's still at it. | 17:39 |
| Visitor | I might see him [indistinct 00:17:40]. | 17:39 |
| Grace George | Now he must be about, what? Is he that old? | 17:40 |
| Annie Gavin | He's as old as I am old. | 17:44 |
| Visitor | [indistinct 00:17:47]. | 17:45 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. | 17:47 |
| Grace George | What about Mr. Rivers? | 17:48 |
| Annie Gavin | Rivers is sitting up in a nursing home now. | 17:49 |
| Grace George | Yeah. He's—My mom said he was a principal down at James City [indistinct 00:17:54]. | 17:53 |
| Annie Gavin | He was principal of James' school. Mm-hmm. | 17:53 |
| Visitor | [indistinct 00:18:00]. | 17:57 |
| Annie Gavin | Yeah. Mr. Evans, I think he stopped traveling now. Yeah. Mr. Evans is coming in there being 100. | 18:01 |
| Visitor | Sure right. [indistinct 00:18:11] Holloway. | 18:10 |
| Annie Gavin | Harlow. | 18:14 |
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