Will asked, "Tell me about when you lived on the Bishopville highway. Who was living at home with you then."
Malcolm replied, "At that time, there was Walter, Lula, Harvey and Mary."
"When was that? What year?"
"As far back as my memory takes me, it's to thereabouts 1923. Anything back of that is just a dim memory like something you might have dreamed. We were still in Lee county, but we moved from nearby Alcott school to out on the Bishopville-Bethune highway in 1923. Daddy farmed there with the aid of us older ones. In 1923 and 1924. We moved to Hartsville in 1925...I don't remember exactly what month - it was in the winter part of the year. We moved in two rooms in a home and then from that two rooms - it was in March and it was snowing - we moved while it was snowing. That was maybe 1926."
"And you moved back to Hartsville because Granddaddy was working in the cotton mill?"
"That's right. He moved here from the farm and went to work here in the mill. I believe the year was 1925 - I don't remember what month. And between the moving my sister Argent was born, and my sister Annie Sue was born when we lived on the Bishopville-Bethune highway. She was a baby when we moved here. And, in 1928, we had another sister born into the family; Mildred Christine. She was born on the first of December in 1928, I think it was. She died with colitis; that was the doctor's diagnosis. She was buried June 30th in 1930. That made her age 18 months."
"Where was she buried?"
"At Wayside, over in Lee county in the vicinity of Lee State Park. The park wasn't there at that time. It was built in the early '30's. Then I had a brother that was buried there also, but I don't know where either of the graves are at. His name was Laurie Edward. He was born in 1913. I don't remember the exact date. There was thereabout 11 months between his birth date and mine. That's dating back to the early 1900's."
"There's not a church there at Wayside?" Did there use to be?"
"I think there is. I'm not sure but I think there is still a church there, but the cemetery is gone. All grown up. Some stones still there. I've got no way of knowing where my brother and sister is at. I have an uncle that's buried there but nobody knows where his grave was at. Uncle Charlie Watson. His wife was my mother's sister. She was buried at St. Matthews due to the fact that they didn't know exactly where her husband was buried. She was buried in the cemetery close in to the lot to my granddaddy, Thomas G. Burkett, and his wife, Mary Jane Burkett, and my uncle, Clarence Burkett."
"And they lived where?"
"St. Matthews. That's on the Bethune-Bishopville highway on the right between them."
"That's the name of the church?"
"Yeah."
"When you were young did granddaddy even talk about what it was like when he was a child; where he was from, or anything?"
"No. For some reason, things like that was never discussed. I guess that's why it's so hard to come up with any information that will be valuable to younger folks. I always looked on my granddaddy as being a very old man, but undoubtedly he was not. He must have been in his early 50's, but he had a beard and maybe that's what threw my thinking off. My grandmother died after you were born; maybe 1945."
"Which grandmother?"
"My mother's mother. My grandmother Jane. Her name was Jane Watson Burkett. No relation to the Uncle Charlie I mentioned earlier. She was 86 when she died. I'm pretty sure Jack was a year old. They were living on Coker Avenue at the time of her death. And. I think at the time, we were living on Emmary or Norwood Avenue."
"Did granddaddy ever tell you how he lost his fingers?"
"He lost his fingers in a gin accident when he was working at a gin. I've never seen how a cotton gin works, but he was feeding a hopper. He told us he lost it when he got his hand caught feeding cotton in a hopper. It got caught and he snatched it back and pulled part of it off. It - the rest of it - had to be amputated. That was before my time during his first marriage.
"In that marriage he had three children: Lula, Mattie and Walter. Walter, at this time, is living in Camden in the Kershaw county nursing home."
"Were they born in North Carolina? Was granddaddy living in NC at the time?"
"I think there was a time when he worked in NC, but I don't have no idea for sure. The history of our people just was never discussed, for some reason. It was just something nobody talked about."
"Why wouldn't he be on the 1910 census?"
"I have no idea. Him and Momma married in 1912 in Lee county."
"Did he ever tell you the story about why he ran away from home?"
"Indirectly, from what he thought was cruelty from his daddy. His daddy being overbearing; whipping him, him and the girls. All of them left home at an early age. He put on all of his clothes and just left. All of them left at an early age. He said their daddy loved them but he was so just so strict it was unbelievable."
"They lived on a farm?"
"Yeah."
"Where?"
"I don't know. I really don't know where they come up at. But two of his sisters, they left home at a early age, too. He was fifteen when he left home. Hired hisself out to - I'm trying to think maybe a cousin of his'n - a BULLOCK. Hired hisself out a year and was a farmhand. That's what he was doing when he got married, was working on a farm somewhere, but I don't know where."
"A cousin on which side? Do you know anything at all about him?"
"No. I would assume it was on his side of the family"
"So that would be some of Mance's brothers' or sisters' children?"
"I would assume, but I'm not sure. It was before my time. There was a story he told about hiring hisself out more or less like a slave for $50 a year. Farm labor. His clothes was bought. The man he was working for bought his clothes. Of course, he had a place to stay and three meals a day."
"That would have been in the 1890s?"
"It would have had to have been in the 1890s, 'cause he was born in 1882 and he hired out when he was sixteen years old. I don't remember any of my sisters' ages. One of my half sisters, Lula, lived, worked and died in Lee county. The second oldest sister married in South Carolina and not too long after marriage, moved to North Carolina and lived in Charlotte until after her death. My half brother is in Camden in the nursing home. Daddy would talk with us boys, but never would go into much detail as to where he come from, nor was he very much talkative about how he was treated, other than his daddy was cruel. Said he was sure he loved them but was just cruel."
"Do you know if that was in South Carolina or North Carolina?"
"No, I don't."
"Did William Mance have any relatives that you know of?"
"No, I don't. I remember seeing my granddaddy one time and I picture him as having long hair."
"When was that? About how old were you?"
"I might have been six years old. The fact of it is, I didn't see any of his brothers or sisters 'cause, back then, we didn't have no way of going nowhere. Was just a chosen few of anybody that had a way of going. It was just a miracle if you got to see any of your relatives. The ones that you seen was the ones that lived right around you. Daddy's younger brother, Sam, married a woman that was born between Germany and New York. She was on her way visiting here to visit an aunt of hers. At that time Uncle Sam was driving a bread truck and him and Aunt Cecelia met and got married and she got part of her inheritance and she and Uncle Sammy went into business in Gretna, Louisiana. They were in the dry cleaning business for a while."
"Can you tell me about the Alcott school?"
"Yeah. That's maybe 6 to 8 miles out of Lydia. I very faintly remember it 'cause I was 6 years old. I remember going to the school and Walter and my two half-sisters had already quit. I remember me and Walter going there."
"What kind of school was it?"
"It was a graded school, one through six. It was two big rooms. The building is completely down now. We was right at the school, across that big ditch and across that field."
"Is that where your grandfather lived?"
"Yeah. That's where Mother's daddy lived. Right on down back of where we lived next to the highway, back down at the edge of the woods. He lived there for years and years."
"What kind of work did he do?"
"He was a blacksmith and a watchmaker."
"That's a strange combination!"
"That's what he was doing. He done all the farm work for a man by the name of Otis Hicks. In fact of the business, the Hicks family still owns that land. My daddy farmed there, sharecropping for Otis Hicks. But my granddaddy on Mother's side, Tom Burkett, he kept up the farm machinery. It didn't cost him any rent at all 'cause he kept up the farm machinery...farm equipment... sharpening planes, patching wagon wheels. You remember wagon wheels with flat iron rims? That's what he done, which wasn't a big thing, but he did work for other farmers, too. But he would get paid for that; that was his livelihood. He didn't farm. On the end of his porch he made a 8 by 10 room. He had a desk in there where he worked on watches. Had clocks and stuff hanging all over the wall."
"Do you know where he came from?"
"Well, I think it was somewhere near where Lee State Park is now, but momma was born in Bishopville, just a little piece back of the school house in Bishopville - there in the Red Hill in the flat just before you go up the hill - I think that's where momma was born."
"So Burkett lived in town?"
"There, in the edge of Bishopville. Just this side of the schoolhouse. I remember the place. It's been down for years. It just finally rotted down. I always was told that Grandpa built that house and that's where momma was born."
"Did Grandpa Burkett live in Alcott 'til he died?"
"No, he left there and went out on the Bethune road. His health had got to the place where he moved up to where the water mill used to be with Aunt Nora, which was his daughter, and Uncle Charlie."
"How old were you when you moved away from Alcott? You stopped going to school when you moved away from there?"
"No. When we moved from there I was in the first grade. It must have been in 1921, and we moved from there in 1923. Maybe my first year was at Alcott, and my next school was on the Bethune-Bishopville highway. Daddy had moved on the farm with my uncle Charlie Watson to sharecrop for him. They were brother-in-laws; my daddy and Uncle Charlie. At that time, Charlie Watson owned the land. The school was not too far from the St. Matthews cemetery. We went to school there for two years. We moved from there in '24. My sister, Annie Sue, was born there in '24."
"Is that when Tom Burkett moved?"
"Oh, no. He stayed there for a long time after we moved. In other words, they had room enough up there where Aunt Nora and Uncle Charlie was living - Ben's home - that they had room for them and they wasn't no bother."
"Granddaddy left there because he went to work in the mill? That was the first time he worked there?"
"No, he worked in the mill when his first family was children."
"Here?"
"Worked here at the Milliken Mill."
"Did he live on the Mill village?"
"At one time, on Norwood Avenue."
"How much did he earn working there?"
"My recollection was that it was less than nine dollars a week. He barbered also in one room of the house. Lived on the corner of Emmary street. I went to work when I was 14. Had to stop school in the sixth grade."
"Walter was at home then?"
"Yeah."
"Walter said y'all had a cow."
"We did. We did. That was back in... Now we lived there twice. Daddy moved back to the farm. We were here for about a year then. Yeah, we had a cow and her name was Jerry. I had forgot about her."
"Why did he go back to the farm?"
"I guess he thought he could make more money. That's something we never asked no questions about. That was when he went back to Charlie Watson's farm; his brother-in-law. He went back to farm for Uncle Charlie. That's out between Bishopville and Bethune on the left from Bishopville about five miles out. Used to be a water mill there where they'd grind corn and grits. The house was just before it...I think maybe the old house is...maybe some of it is still piled up there. And across the road from that place is where Annie Sue was born. And I went to school there, too."
"Is there a church there?"
"Huh-uh. The church is up the road there further; St. Matthews church. There's a cemetery there on the right."
"Do we know anybody buried there?"
"Grandma and Grandpa...and Uncle Boss. And that's where we moved from when we came here to stay. It was either '25 or '26. I was in the third grade."
"Now I'm real confused. James moved here from the Bishopville highway for a year then moved to the Watson place for two years and then came back here in '25."
"That's the way it happened. I was just a child, but I remember the cow. She was in the back yard."
This continuation of the above conversation was taped February 19, 1989.
"Can you start with when the family moved back to Hartsville?"
"We moved to Hartsville in '24 and stayed for part of a year. Daddy went back to the farm, 'cause Sue was born out there. We stayed out there for about two more years on Uncle Charlie's place. Our baby sister Christine - we called her 'Bill' 'cause she came on the first of the month - was born on the first of December, 1928 and died the 30th of June in '30. She was 18 months old. But we were living here then. We must have left the country in '25 or the first part of '26."
"When your family came back here what did you do?"
"Go to school. At Thornwell. Thornwell Elementary, but it was just Thornwell school then."
"For how long?"
"Finished the sixth grade. I was 14 in July and went to work in August of that year; 1928. We were living there in the corner house. We were there when our sister died; the youngster of the group."
"When you went to work in the mill what did you do?"
"Run a stitching machine in the cloth department."
"What was the working day then?"
"From six o'clock until six. From whistle to whistle. It was eleven hours but we got a hour off for dinner. We'd get off and come home for dinner. Fifty five hours a week. Six dollars and a nickel. I wasn't making but twelve dollars a week when you was born."
"Tell me about the whistle."
"Well, there was a wake-up whistle and it would blow at fifteen minutes 'til whatever hour people was supposed to be at their job. You was supposed to be on the job then. And it would blow for dinner time. You could hear it all over the mill village"
"Was the ice plant here then?"
"The ice plant was down there when we moved here in '24."
"Where were you living when you had Jerry the Cow?"
"Down on the end of Mill Avenue. I was still at home. Argent was a baby. The cow was in the back yard. People all down there kept cows and a chicken or two. They didn't keep hogs. I guess that's why people look down on people who was coming up on the mill village. I never felt uncomfortable for it, but...
“I would come from that house back down there to where Annie Riley was twice a day to get milk for Argent and Louise Gathings - they were babies - from a cow that the Holloways had. To help furnish milk.
“I think her name was Jerry, but she was a Gurnsey cow. When we moved and had the cow, Walter walked all the way from there leading the cow in from the country. She was the source of milk and butter for the family. Those people up the street toward the mill, they had a cow with more milk than they could use. Momma and Daddy would relieve them of some of the milk for the young'uns."
"Who was Louise Gathings?"
"She was a second cousin. It was Momma's brother's daughter's girl."
"She lived with you?"
"No, but they lived on the same street."
"Were there any other relatives that you know of who lived on the Mill Village back then?"
"The only ones that I know of who lived here at all was one of Monroe Burkett's daughters and her husband. Lottie Gathings."
"What about before that?"
"Well, Walter was born down there in the middle house on Norwood street."
"Wait a minute! You mean James and Hannah lived on the Mill Village?"
"Yeah. That's where Walter was born."
"So James WOULD have been working in the mill here. Did Hannah work in the mill too?"
"I just don't recall him ever saying."
Earline, who had been sitting quietly at the table, listening, added "Talking about cows on the mill village, they had cows on the mill village when we moved back there in '38.. They had chickens when you were a baby. Remember the one that ran you out of the yard."
"I remember that. I've been afraid of chickens ever since!"
Earline continued, "Momma and daddy had a cow up there on Jordan street. Ollie Wilkes sent his little girl from up the street and she wouldn't drink it because it came from a cow! She wouldn't drink milk unless it came from a store in a bottle."
Malcolm got back into the conversation. "Yeah. It hadn't been a whole heap of years since the city cut that out. Everybody who wanted a cow about had one, and they were reasonably clean. Nobody never had no hogs that I know of. The hog pens were down behind the village near where the Holiness church is now. We had hogs there when I was a little feller. And we wasn't the only ones that had a cow. There was some Barnhills on Mill Street that had one where the old open lot used to be; 'The Hanging Tree for the slaves', they used to call it. There's an empty lot there. Nothing's ever been good on it. There was a big Sassafras or Sweetgum tree. There's nothin' never been built there at least since 1925. The tree wasn't cut down, it just stayed there until it completely fell down from old age."
Will handed a tinted group photograph to Malcolm. "Can you tell me about this photo?"
"This is my Grandmother, Jane Burkett. This is my mother's daddy, Thomas Burkett. The one on the extreme left is grandmother's sister, Della Watson. The back row is Aunt Node, Ben's mother; my mother and daddy; uncle Clarence - we called him 'Uncle Boss'; Walter; aunt Lucille, Boss' wife. This is the cousin I talked about getting milk for her daughter; Lottie Gathings."
"Which cousin is she?"
"That was Momma's brother's oldest daughter. Monroe was his name but he was always called 'Pete'. The second one from the left on front is Elsie Stewart. She and the one next to her was sisters, but it was a broken up home due to a death. Elsie was Ben Watson's adopted sister. They was related to Ben's daddy on their mother's side. My sister, Mattie, was married to Ben's daddy's brother, Charley Watson. They were no relation to us. Uncle Charley was married to Momma's sister. Is that muddied up enough for you?"
"Yep, it is. I’ll figure it out someday."
"I can't make out the one in the center in back. This picture was taken at Grandpa's home between where I was born and the Alcott school."
"Mary Jane's sister, Emma, married John Hopkins and they're both buried in Mt. Elon church cemetery. And Della married who?"
"I think it was Charley Hopkins. It was their son that Lula married. They didn't have but one child and his name was Alex. No family relation, though they all lived out in the same vicinity.
“One of the Burkett boys lives down the street here. This was the youngest Burkett's son, I think. He's the only brother these eight girls had. He got killed in a car wreck a number of years ago. His sons' names was Alton and James; there was two of them boys."
"Let's spring forward to 1928 when you started in the mill. How long did you work there?"
"Well, I was there for a while, but I left for a month and a half."
"To where?"
"To Charlotte to stay with Mattie, my sister, and Furman. About 1930. Stayed up there for a while and then - I don't know how - ended up in Danville, Virginia."
"Any particular reason?"
"No. Just nothing to do. Walked and hitchhiked up to Danville, to the Dan River Mills. I didn't get a job in Danville. Me and a Hearst boy was together. I left there and went back to Charlotte to Mattie's. I worked there in the Louise Mill in Charlotte for about two weeks and then I went to Rockingham to stay with Uncle Canty. I worked there in Hannah Pickett number one the day that the mills went on eight hours; in '36 or '37, I reckon."
"Why did you decide you didn't like it there?"
"Just young, I guess. I didn't like Rockingham. In fact, I never went back to get my four hours' pay, which was thirty cents per hour. That's what the mill started up on. I couldn't live at Canty's no how, not at that cat house. They were my cousins but they were too much for me.. and Uncle Canty was a part time preacher... 'Course, preachers can't help what their children do. Anyway, I just didn't like Rockingham."
"Why did you leave the mill here?"
"They had let me and my daddy go from the mill. The mill was supposed to run on the fourth of July and I didn't work. They said 'you work or you quit' and I quit. But I don't remember what year it was. I might have been fifteen years old. There's kind of a story to that. Everybody was planning an annual outing and we was supposed to be off. I quit and they fired my daddy but they took him back the next week 'cause he was in 'slashing'."
"The mill was supposed to be closed on the fourth and didn't?"
"They decided they'd run and got in touch with the people the day before for us to come in. Daddy wouldn't make me work, so I didn't go in. I quit. In my memories of Mama packing a suitcase, once in a while a tear would drop in there and I guess that had a lot to do with my coming back.
“That's something I never did like. I didn't dislike my daddy, I loved him, but I never did think that it was a fair shake to put me to work at fourteen years old. But, as we got old enough, we went to work to feed the rest of the family. I guess that's why I never did have nothing. It just got breeded into me to live from day to day."
"OK. It's about 1936 and you're back in the Milliken Mill here. When did you get married?"
"In 1939. I was working in the Cloth room."
"None. I was still working. I didn't take my physical until 1945, right at the end of the war. I had left the mill and was working at the bleachery. I was a air raid warden for the Village for a few years at the first of the war. My job was to make sure all the lights were out on practice days. Nothin’ ever come of all that, though."
"When?"
"I don't know. I went to the funeral home in 1943. I dug graves and helped get ready for funerals."
"So we moved out to College Heights in 1943?"
Earline added information on that point. "Jack was about nine months old when we moved to College Heights. Jack was born on the mill village on Norwood Avenue across from the open field across from where the school used to be. You were born down on Jordan Street. We moved from Norwood to across from the 'Y' but didn't stay there long. From there we moved to College Heights."
Malcolm again: "When you were a baby we lived there on Emmary Street with your granddaddy Ross."
Earline reminded: "That's where you learned to walk and talk and read books. You don't remember the book you read when you were two, do you?"
"I remember 'Pink pills for an owl with fuzz on his tongue.' The owl tongue in the book was fuzzy."
Malcolm had a less pleasant recollection: "You don't remember hitting me 'cross the shins with your pop gun, do you? We were living on Emmary Avenue."
"No, fortunately I don't.”
“Well we was on the porch on a Sunday and I was looking’ at the paper and you walked up with your pop gun and then hit me across the shin with it. I hopped around and thought you had broke my leg!”
“I must have blocked that out of my memory, but I apologize, Pop.
“How long did you work at the bleachery, Pop?"
"About a year or so. From there I went to the funeral home for a year and a half and from the funeral home to the grocery store. I stayed there for about a year and a month. I went back to the mill on the seventeenth of February in 1947. Betty was born after I went back to the mill. Betty was born on the first of July in '47. I stayed at the mill until I retired. My last day down there was the twenty second of April in '77. Your mother was visiting in California. I had been retired about two weeks when she came home. They retired me due to a heart condition. That finally caught up with me in '84."
"What other things can you tell me about working in the mill?"
"That's about it. None of them are the best memories I like to think about. Really, the last six years I was down there I hated it with a passion. The first years were kindly pleasant, more to speak. I graded cloth."
"I remember seeing you do that, flipping the folds of cloth over. I used to be amazed at how fast you could make it move. I remember the big oak tables."
"Those were the inspection tables. The third year after I went there from the Piggly Wiggly I was promoted to a supervisor. It paid a dollar and five cent a hour. Of course, that was fifteen cent an hour more than I was making. Out of all the years I worked down there I might have worked a week all together in the Weave room; picking up quills or sweeping, or something. But I really didn't like the Supply room."
“Can you tel me about that?”
“No, Son, them’s some unpleasant memories and there ain’t no cause to bring them up now.”
“is there anything else you can remember from your childhood, Pop?”
“Well, I remember the first time I seen an airplane. I must have been about five years old. Daddy hitched the mule up to the wagon and Mama made a big pot of beans and some biscuits and we left at daybreak. We went all the way to the other side of Bishopville to where they had dragged a field down with logs pulled behind mules so the plane could land. That was the first trip I can remember and I mostly remember riding all day there and back to see the airplane. Folks had come from all around to see it. It was the first one that had been there."
The conversation ended. It was not enough, but it would never have been enough. Still, I wish I had done more.
The photos are from my collection of prints.
