Audio
Oral History Project - Monk, Herman 1980
Transcript
Interview NRGNPP 002
File NRGNPP 002-T
TAPE TWO
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Mr. Herman Monk |
Intervi ewer: |
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Paul J. Nyden |
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Beckley, W. Va. |
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August 17, 1980
PN: Maybe you could mention a couple of the things you were talking about
before. You said you lived inside the Gorge for 35 years of your life?
HM: No, not exactly. I said I worked inside of the Gorge for 35 years.
That was at Thurmond and Prince.
PN: When were the years that you worked at Thurmond?
HM: 1927 till 1932.
PN: That was when you were with Armour…
HM: Armour and Company, yes.
PN: What did you do?
HM: I was office manager and cashier.
PN: Did they sell…
HM: Wholesale meats.
PN: How many people lived in Thurmond at that time?
HM: Oh, I'd be a—guessing; I would say 300. Three hundred people would be
probably right.
PN: What was the occupation of most of them?
HM: Railroad men.
HM: Were there any coal miners that lived right in Thurmond?
HM: Very few, very few; most of them were railroad men.
PN: How would you describe the general appearance of the town of Thurmond at that time?
HM: Well, it was unusual, in that it had no street. It only had a side— walk. The big business started about 1900; that's when Armour had a branch, opened their branch there in 1900. Course, I didn't go till ‘27, but it was still a good—sized little community for the shape it was in.
PN: Were most of the houses in Thurmond like
HM: Well, they, very few people lived except maybe, a lot of people lived in apartments, but most of the houses were on the hill, back of the town itself, back of the street, the sidewalk.
PN: So people lived in apartments?
HM: Yea, yea. Most people in apartments. The Bank had apartments over the building, and several other buildings around there. I lived in an
apartment over Armour and Company branch, over Armour and Company.
PN: Was that unusual to have apartments in the towns along the New River?
HM: Well, I don't know about the New River itself, but it wasn't unusual there . Space was scarce and expensive then.
Then you moved out of Thurmond in 1932?
HM: In 1932, and came to Beckley. Well, they closed their branch house there, and combined with Mullens and opened up a branch here at Beckley.
PN: When did you start working in Prince? Maybe you could talk about that a little bit.
ma: In 1944, I bought the store, and had others run the store for a while under my supervision. But for two years, I stayed with the company; then I quit in ‘46, in February of ‘46. From then on, I had that store and ran that store.
PN: That was a store that you owned yourself rather than running for another company?
HM: At Prince? Yes. I owned the store, lock, stock, and barrel.
PN: Was that the major store in Prince where people bought their food and…
HM: Yea, I would say that was the major place, yes.
PN: What did you sell?
HM: Anything, dry goods, meats, groceries, novelties, md anything else to sell. In 1949 and 1950, that was probably my two most prosperous years.
PN: ’49 and ’50?
HM: Yea, maybe ‘51 and ‘52, I don't know.
PN: What happened after that?
HM: The coal companies started to collapse, cut off men. And as they cut off men, I lost customers.
PN: Who were the majority of your customers in Prince?
HM: They had to be from up the creek, up Laurel Creek, up to Lay land, Backus Mountain.
PN: Was it mostly coal miners?
HM: Mostly coal miners, yea, then. But it developed later into more relief customers than actual workers. That's when I quit.
PN: Was that in the 1950s, or are you talking about a later time?
HM: No, I 'm talking about 1975; that's when I quit the store business, and rented it out to another party.
PN: So the store is still operating today?
HM: Yes sir, still operating.
PN: When we spoke before, you mentioned the story about how the town of Prince was founded and where the town got its name.
HM: It got its name by the people who settled it by the name of Prince, Robin and Dave, moved down there from Beckley, h-. Prince did, in 1870. Stretcher Neck Tunnel was being completed by the C&O, and was completed by 1873. I had an old account book that showed the sales by the store in 1873. And it showed, you know the C&O had hundreds of men working on that tunnel. They had no equipment in those days. They moved the rock and dirt by road scraper, and horse power, and man power, mostly man power. They had Italian labor. And this account book showed the daily sales, coffee, and most of it looked to me like it was sales fir bachelors, for people working on the tunnel. They'd have coffee, tobacco, md liquor. And they sold liquor by the drink. Now I don't know how they got by with that in the store, but they did.
PN: Was that the same store that you later took over?
HM: No, that was in the 1870s, '73 on up. That same family kept the store until '37, 1937. Of course, they prospered in their store. In 1873, when the railroad was completed from Richmond to Huntington, that opened up a great deal of trade here, by merchants going to Prince to pick up freight and all that. They really prospered for several years in that —— the counties of Raleigh, Wyoming, and Mercer, and even Logan — would go to Prince to get their merchandise. Would take days to do it, but they did it.
PN: Way from Logan?
HM: Previously they had to go to Charleston. They was quite successful, and finally, the family ended up rather rich. After they got making money on the store, lots of money, they bought coal land. I mean unmined coal, coal royalty, that made them rich.
PN: This was the Prince family?
HM: Yea. The principal of the Prince family was old man William Prince, and two sons and one daughter. They're all dead, and the last one died some five or six years ago. And the two descendents of the family were only, were two girls; they live in Charleston now.
PN: How did they originally get the money to buy Prince, or start developing
Prince?
HM: Well, 1 don't know. He paid a thousand dollars down, and that was ‘70 I don't know how he got the money, because money was mighty
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scarce. He'd been a I asked a kin to him didn't you know? He |
soldier in the Southern Army of the Civil War, and one time, and he jokingly said: t 'Why, Herman, stole horses." I can't vouch for the truth of |
that, of course.
P N: When was the first coal brought out of there? I heard it was, was it 1873 from Quinnimont?
HM: Yea, I think that's right. That's what the monument, there's a monument down there to that, whatever you call it, event. That was the Beury family who lived later on down at Prince, I mean at Beury. You 've heard of Beury? B — E — U — R — Y. They really made their money, the Beurys did, after they went down there.
PN: Between 1932, when you moved out of Thurmond, md 1944, when you began operating the store in Prince, did you live in Beckley?
HM: Most of the time I lived in Beckley, yes sir. A year of that I was in Norton, Virginia, for the same company. And I came back here in 34, in January '34, and stayed there till I quit in '46.
PN: When you began operating the store in Prince, what did that town look like then?
HM: About like It does now, except maybe a little cleaner. And fewer
people; there's more people that moved in there now, on the hillsides than there were when I went down there.
P N: Were the houses in Prince originally built by a company?
HM: No, by individuals, by the Prince people. They built houses and rented them, most of them. Now when I went there, that was the case. In '46 or t 47, they sold Prince, the Prince family did, except the two acres adjacent to the store there that's fenced. They kept that for a family residence, cause they all died and left.
PN: Did the Prince family own the whole town at that point?
HM: Up until they sold it in 1947, yes sir. They owned the whole thing to, up to wherever the line between Quinnimont and Prince would be.
PN: Was it the Prince family that originally built the homes?
HM: Yea. They had two homes for themselves; a son, he built a house on the precipice, on the bank above right back of the store. He lived in it for several years, twenty probably, and then he moved to Charleston. And the other one is down by the store, the family residence. Both of them been razed, gone, torn down, whatever you want to call it.
PN: When you began operating the store there in 1944, what type of people lived in Prince? Was it mostly white people, or were there some Black people living there?
HM: Well then it was mostly white. Mostly, T would say, a few coal miners, but mostly railroad men. As was Thurmond, you know, mostly rail— road men. The railroad worked a whole lot more men then than now. They really paid attention to the track then, and now it seems to be all gone to smithereens, as far as trackage is concerned. That's no indictment against the Chessie System; it seems to be all over the United States -- bad track.
PN: Would people live in Prince and go up and down to work…
HM: Well, yea. They, for instance, in 1940s, they would have 20 men on a section, maybe as high as 20 men. Now they have three or four, if they have that.
PN: What was a section? A certain length?
HM: Yea, they would go, say, from Meadow Creek to the bluff down below Thurmond. Or maybe the section went from Meadow Creek to the sand plant, which is at Thayer.
PN: The sand plains?
HM: Sand plant, where they excavated stone and ground it up and sold it as sand. They sold the sand mostly, I think, for glass—making. It had properties that the glass—makers wanted.
PN: What did people do for recreation in Prince?
HM: Now, I wouldn't know about that [ laughs]. After the toll bridge was built, they could come to town very easy then, after the toll bridge was in '32. Prior to that, they had to go to Thurmond, and back around, to get to Beckley. And they didn't go to Beckley very much then, as a result of that.
PN:Did they have any bars in that area in the thirties?
HM: Bars?
PN: Yea.
HM: You mean liquor, sold liquor?
PN: Yea, where people could buy drinks or beer.
HM: Yea, yea, there was one that operated there for, it's still operating, I think, in a small way. But in the old days, in the saloon days, the Princes had a monopoly on that. And they either operated their own, or leased it out to people. There was a saloon there for years; in fact, that was, account for some of their money, I imagine.
PN: The Princes?
HM: The Prince money, yea. And the fact that they had some thirsty people there, they had to a... That certainly was the case when the bridge, when the tunnel was being built. Cause that paper, the account book I had showed that everybody bought liquor.
PN: This is back in 1873?
HM: Yea, yea.
PN: That was primarily Italian workers, you said, that were working…
HM:I would say that, you know they, and Irish. There was comnunities in Fayette County that still have the people that, people who started, such as the Catholic communities, Like Irish ones that would go back in the country from Thurmond, the railroad and saddle [sic].
PN: did they come from originally? Did they come directly from Italy to work at Prince?
HM: I wouldn't know about that. I don't know how they got those a…
But they had to have them, because that earth had to be moved, you know.
They had the big tunnel at Hinton, and then one at Prince. That one at
Hinton is larger than the one at Prince, longer.
PN: Then they built that, what would you call it, an aqueduct?
HM: You mean at Hawk's Nest? Yea. That wasn't started till 1928, and finished in probably '32 or '33, or something like that?
PN: Did you know anything about that when it was being built, when you lived in Thurmond?
HM: Well, I knew it was being built, that's all. And I could see the works from the train when ltd go to Charleston, or something like that. I was aware of it, but it didn't affect us any, either way.
PN: Because it had nothing to do with the railroad itself?
HM: Except in maybe hauling in material that they might have needed, which it would be small, I would think.
P N: When you lived in Thurmond between 1927 and 1932, did people come to Thurmond from other towns?
HM: Oh yea, Oak Hill, they'd come down from Oak Hill. They'd recently completed the road down the creek from Mt. Hope, or Glen Jean, to, I think. Well the first time I was ever in Thurmond was 1924, and we had a hard road all the way down from Glen Jean to, recently completed, from Glen Jean to Thurmond.
PN: How did you get across the river? Did they have that bridge there at that time?
HM: Same as now, which is it seemed to be tacked onto the railroad bridge really. Have you been down there?
PN: Yes.
HM: Sure, Thurmond don't look like it used to.
PN: What was the major difference, many more people there?
HM: Well, that main street, you know, is absolutely nothing now except one concern there. I think that's the river people, that run the rafts down the river. Have you ever ridden that river yet?
PN: Not yet.
HM: Going to?
PN: Going to try. Did they have bars and saloons in Thurmond at that time?
HM: Oh yea, they had some famous ones. That was prior to my time, though. Yea, they had some, they had some rather famous, or infamous, there was one called the Black Hawk on the south side of the river, which is opposite from the main Thurmond. That seemed to be pretty much of a saloon.
PN: When you lived there back in the late twenties, did you have a radio?
Did most people have radios?
HM: I bought my first radio at Thurmond in 1937, soon after I went to … That was an Atwood—Acute radio. I paid Shirley Collins $145 for a battery radio; this little thing right here [points to a small transistor radio] would be a heck of a lot better than that. But that's the way she went. Radio was new in them days. And I don't know when radio was come into general usage, but I would say 1925 or '24, don't you think?
P N: I think so. At Thurmond, what types of people used to live up on the hill there. Was that railroad people too?
HM: Yea, mostly railroad people. You see, the railroad was doing a big business in them days. I 've been told, and have read several times that in nineteen and ten, Thurmond's business exceeded by far either Charleston or Richmond, Virginia. The total value of money business.
It wasn't no slouch in 1927 when I went there.
PN: Did people come in from some of the other coal towns, like Sewell or Caperton or Beury?
HM: Yea, on Saturday night, there was a train called Number Eight, a local train. They had so many people come from towns down below Thurmond there that they have to stop the train between stations so that the conductor could get all the tickets. And they, most of them unloaded at
Thurmond. The sidewalk looked like Broadway there on Saturday night.
PN: 101at did the people come to do specifically?
HM: Well, there was a drugstore and a barber shop and the pool hall, and of course, there was two grocery stores, and they stayed open. One pretty good store, called Collins Cash Mercantile Company. The men in the mines down there, of course, they'd bring their wives and children too, you know. They had stayed on the job a whole week, and that gave them some bright lights on Saturday night.
PN: When did they go back?
HM: They had a train that took 'em back about nine o'clock, I think. 1 don't remember that exactly, but I do remember the incoming train.
PN: Did they have churches in Thurmond then?
HM: They had one church.
PN: What kind was that, a Baptist, or…
HM: I think that was mostly Baptist, yea. I not certain about that.
I remember one preacher they had down there; he was a doggone nice fellow.
But I don't know what his, I believe he was a Presbyterian.
PN: In Prince when you lived there, how big were the homes that most people lived in?
HM: Of course, the two homes that the Princes built were rather palatial. But the homes built to rent, you might say, didn't amount to a whole lot, except they were homes.
PN: How many rooms did most of them have?
HM: They had enough to take care of the family, four or five rooms. 1 lived in a little house there close to the store that had four rooms; they were rather big, they had a bath, four rooms and a bath. I stayed in that little house for four years. Then the big Prince house became vacant; I moved up there, paid rent on it. But while I stayed in the little house at Prince, of winters, we heated with oil in a stove, rather than fool with coal.
PN: If there were four rooms in the house, what would people use the four rooms for usually?
HM: Two rooms for bedrooms, and dining room and kitchen would be combined, and then the living room. We got along very well in that little house; course we had two children, two boys, which they 're gone now. Incidentally, they're in Richmond, Virginia this morning. One lives near Richmond, Virginia; the other one flew in there last night from Chicago. They '11 be here later in this week with their families; be glad to see 'em.
PN: How many rooms did the Prince house live in, or have, when you lived there?
HM: We had unused rooms, I think about 14. Real big rambling structure, with a front porch that went around the front and one side. It was a nice house. Took a whole lot of money to heat it in the winter time.
PN: That's still standing now?
HM: No, no. 1 moved to Beckley in ‘54 , and it was rented after that.
PN: That was the last time?
HM: That was the last time, yea. He couldn't keep it insured, so he just, he gave it to a cousin, I think, and he dismantled it.
PN: In Thurmond, when you lived there, when people lived in the apartments, how big were most of the apartments that people had?
HM: Well, I don’t know, I really don't know. Of course, I visited one or two, but I don't recall how big they were. I know the apartment I had, it
had, it was for employees of the company, you see. They had three apartments above the branch there. Mine was right square on top of the branch, and the rest of them over to one side. I had five or six rooms in that
apartment there, enough that I could sub—rent some of it, and get my rent free that—a—way.
Did you rent that directly from the Armour Company?
HM: Yea, I paid a minimum, I paid $15 a month.
PN: In your experience, especially back when you lived in Thurmond, what were the activities of unions back about that time?
HM: Well, until, until 1933, the unions, as far as coal mines is concerned, didn't exist hardly. They may in small cases, but not very much. They had no national union. I don’t think, until Roosevelt was elected in 1932. In 1933. I was over at Norton, Virginia. And that’s when they are reinstated the union and I remember, at the hotel where I lived, a couple of organizers were organizing the people. Coal mines were kind of like Thurmond, theres mines all around at Norton. Nortons in southern Virginia.
PN: So it wasn’t really until after Roosevelt took office that…
HM: The union’s as far as the mines, the union, the mine union was concerned {sic}, it became full-fledged in 1933.
PN: How about the railroad workers?
HM: They had a union then; they had a union then. But it wasn’t very active.
PN: Did it become more active in the thirties too?
HM: Yea.
PN: Let me just ask you a few more questions about the store in Prince. When you ran that, was most of your business with food, would you say, or…
HM: well, I sold everything, see, from groceries to feed to hardware and dry goods, I would say groceries maybe accounted for 50% of it.
PN: But half was a variety of other…
HM: Yea, it was a general store, more so that it is now, of course.
PN: Do you remember, when you lived along the gorge, or when you were working there, were some of these railroad—town and coal—town baseball teams popular?
HM: No, had been previously. Now Scar bro, in the old days that's much beyond my scope Scarbro had a big team. And they 'd play teams on the river, down the river Rush Run and all those towns down the river would have teams. Some of them, not all of them, of course. But the baseball had more or less disappeared when I went there.
PN: In ‘44?
HM: In'27.
PN: Was that a big form of recreation for people?
HM: Well it would have been then. I don't know anything about it, except I hear about these, Scarbro had, seemed to have a big team. And Beckley, now I did see some baseball in Beckley after I come to Beckley in 32. But I didn't hear of any down at Thurmond when I lived there. Well, of course, some people would talk about national baseball, but…
PN: When you lived In Prince, or, when you were operating the store in
Prince, was most of the population there white at that time?
HM: Yea, for the first, the first time, but then, the business grew, we had a whole lot of business from the coal mines. And they were probably half Black.
PN: Where would most of the miners come from? From right near by?
HM: No, there was, up the creek —— that's Laurel Creek —— there was Laurel Creek Coal Company, Hemlock Coal Company, Greenwood Coal Company, and Lay land. There was four mines up the river from there. Laurel Creek 'was the first one up the creek, Laurel Creek would be, that was three or four miles up from Quinnimont, and the rest of them were pretty well clustered together.
PN: Were there many immigrants that stayed in that area to work?
HM: Well, in those days, mines are not like that now, the men lived on the job. They had to, because they didn't have transportation. Nowadays, a man' 11 work 30 miles away from his job, he can drive his car right to his house or to the mine. It’s changed a whole lot. The method of mining has changed, mostly for the worse, I think.
PN: I was going to ask you what you thought about the changes that have taken place. Maybe you could talk about that a little bit more.
HM: Well of course, I don't know anything about anything as far as that t s concerned 'cause I didn't work for the railroad, didn't work for the coal mine. But I learned a little about both when I went to Thurmond. The railroad was very busy. Course, my knowledge of mining, I just had to, all I got in mining was heresay.
PN: What did you mean when you say that you that you felt that things had gotten worse over the years?
HM: Well, at least the men worked; they may not have gotten much money, but they had a job. It's different in that respect. Statistics weren't kept in those days like they are now, you know. You had no idea what the national picture was insofar as unemployed was concerned.
PN: But people could work more steadily?
HM: Yea, they did, they did work steadily. But, after the company stores got with them, they didn’t have much money left.
PN: Maybe you could talk about that a little bit. In your store, did you accept scrip of any kind?
HM: Oh no, we sold wholesale altogether. No, at Prince, you mean? No we didn't have no scrip. Credit and cash; mostly credit, to my sorrow.
PN: How did the company stores work in some of the other towns?
HM: Well, they had scrip, you know, the miner could cut scrip between pay days. In fact, he lived out of the store. The grocery account was paid, was supposed to be paid, on a pay—day basis, which was twice a month. They had an arrangement where you could buy furniture, something like that, on what they called “lease”. And they charged, their charges was a little bit exorbitant too. There was no bargains in the coal company store. And in some cases, later on, when the Depression came on, some of the coal companies kept from going broke by the company store. At least one I know, remember, of.
PN: You mean, they could make so much money there that that would…
HM: Yes, they could their work done, you know, very, very cheaply. And then they'd charge higher prices in the store, so that they made for gains. I know one store, a company store, I won't call any names, someone told me this, he said, ' 'Do you know what we charge for butter?" "Yup, I know. That would be about 32C a pound, then. And the coal company was getting a dollar a pound by selling a quarter, a quarter of butter for 25 cents and then getting a dollar for 33 cents. That was called high profit.
PN: Called what?
HM: High profit. And exorbitant profit, too.
PN: When the miners got their pay, sometimes they hardly had anything left?
HM: That's right. They settled up in the store, he didn’t have very much money left. Of course, he lived out of the store.
PN: When you operated the store in Prince, did many people have gardens there to add on to their food?
HM: Oh, very few, very few. One thing we did sell was seeds. I still remember the name of the seed company, Dien—Ferry; it was later Ferry— Morris.
PN: Did many people go fishing in the river?
HM: Yea, there was a little bit of fishing went on, but not a whole lot.
PN: Did many people have animals at that time? Hogs or…?
HM: No, by that time, they were a little bit scarce. 1 remember, I had to build a fence to keep a certain man's cows out of our place at Prince, but that didn't last long. When they went out of business, why that was about all. No stock running out, or none in their homes even. It wasn't a farming community, you know.
PN: Did the miners or railroad people have, keep any animals, like hogs or goats?
HM: Not many, very few. Now they may have in the old days, but very few in my time.
PN: Well, is there anything else that you think's important that should be mentioned?
IN: No, I think we’ve covered the waterfront pretty good. That's about all I know, anyway.
PN: So, do you think we’re done?
HM: OK.
(END OF TAPE)
Description
Thurmond, Prince, Store owner & operator, Prince and Beury families
Date Created
08/17/1980
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