B., Maria, June 1, 1976, tape 1, side 2

Peter Gottlieb: Did-- Did you, did you know her very well? Or did she also die when you were--

Maria B.: Oh yeah, my grandma. She lived with us after grand--, Grandfath-- my grandfather died. She broke her heart [??], too, so she came to live with us.

Gottlieb: Was this your mother's parents or your father's?

Maria B.: My mother's parents.

Gottlieb: Did she ever talk to you at all about her life or say anything about slavery to you? Tell the children.

Maria B.: Yes, see she, um, I know she was kind of forcing [??] her and her with her master. He was good and so was the mistress. And so she she grew up and he, uh, he freed them all. He-- I don't think he gave anything, but he freed them. But she would say she, she said a lot of her aunts had a tough time, but she didn't. So she said a lot of time. She, she-- they raised her from a little girl up. Now real small about five years old because she was raised with their children. And they would read the stories. And she said sometimes she would cry, or be lonesome for her mother and she would cry and the master wanted to whip her and the mistress said no don't whip her, maybe she's sick. But she's say, she wasn't sick. She just be lonesome and just cry for [??]. And she never had anything bad to say about her.

Gottlieb: Uh, was it after she was freed that she walked over the mountains?

Maria B.: That's right. When she was free, she wanted to go. I don't know what she went over there for, but she said her feet cracked. It was in November. It started getting cold and she had on shoes when she left. But they wore out, you know, walking across the mountain. I don't know if you know anything about Virginia mountains, but that was the Blue Ridge mountainsshe walked across. Gottlieb: I-- Go ahead I'm sorry. Maria B.: And she got over there and somebody gave her a job and she worked. So she that's why she lived there so long

Gottlieb: Um, what was her name?

Maria B.: Johnson. Anne Johnson.

Gottlieb: And then so that would have been your mother's maiden name?

Maria B.: Uh, yeah. My mother's maiden name was Johnson, too. That's right.

Gottlieb: And, and your father's name was Maria B.: Mickey. Gottlieb: What kind of work did your father do?

Maria B.: He worked for a stove foundry down there. It was a low stove foundry. They mostly took most all of them down now, and he worked for that-- their father. And the father gave him a lifetime home because this house was supposed to have been haunted. Nobody could stay there. And he said he could stay there. He's staying in the county. He'd been working-- you know, back in those days, people say they saw ghosts and he said everybody was moving in the house, was mostly White, was before him, was White. They grow the-- these standards for the hall, the stoves. And after he worked out something, after they found out that he, he stayed there all night because man gave him a lifetime home and he drove the truck for years. And then when the old man died, the young man carried his vision. And of course, when the people died and the cousins nieces come in it was a little different. But he-- but my mother had to pay rent after that. But so I guess for about 20 years he lived there rent free and we we be in the house but my grandmother said she would see things but we had never-- we had steps cracked but that's all. So the house was tore down there. Gottlieb: Uh huh. Maria B.: I didn't even have a picture of it. [audio cuts] It was an all White neighborhood. Laced up.

Gottlieb: Was this in a town or out in the country? Maria B.: It was a town.

Maria B.: And we lived back-- the Whites that was down on our Street. Next street was the main street where the rich people lived and we lived in a house back by itself.

Gottlieb: And you said you saw your father work for a stove foundry. Maria B.: That's right. Gottlieb: Do you, do you know exactly what type of work he did there or was he driving?

Maria B.: He was night watch and then he would drive the horse. That's all he would do. Sometimes he'd be night watch, watching the boys and things. They'd go around through the fan and punch the keys to see if anybody would be in there or anything.

Gottlieb: Did your mother have a job?

Maria B.: Well, when she-- before she got married, she worked at it. But after she got married, she just, you know, would bake cakes for people and wash and iron that's all she did.

Gottlieb: She would take it into the home.

Maria B.: That's right.

Gottlieb: What was the name of the town?

Maria B.: Waynesboro, Virginia. About 12 miles on this side of Stanton. And I think it was like-- the next big place with Charlottesville. I think it was 29 miles, Charlottesville and in Richmond. That big place.

Gottlieb: Uh, can you tell me when you were born?

Maria B.: On February 11th, 1908.

Gottlieb: Uh, how many brothers and sisters did you have?

Maria B.: Uh, in all there was 13 of us. There were nine girls. And. And, uh. Five boys, I think. Yeah, five boys. I think that's the way it'd go. I don't know I'd forgotten. There was fifteen of us.

Gottlieb: Were you the oldest or the second oldest.

Maria B.: The second oldest.

Gottlieb: Did anybody else live with you and your parents when you were growing up? Any relatives?

Maria B.: Not until my grandmother was coming and I was pretty big then.

Gottlieb: Did any of your brothers or sisters or your parents ever move north?

Maria B.: Oh, all of them's away. Now some is in New York. One brother is up here with me. I mean, not with me. But he lives over in Wilkinsburg. One lives in Philadelphia. I have two sisters-- three sisters and one brother in New Rochelle. [??] and two of em. Two sisters there.

Gottlieb: Were you the first one to move or did you follow anybody else up?

Maria B.: No, I was the first one to move. I moved on account of me getting mad. I got mad.

Gottlieb: Um, I'd like to come back and ask you a little bit later some of the circumstances about why you left Virginia, but could you tell me how much schooling you were able to get in Virginia?

Maria B.: Well, I could have gone-- I could have finished high school but I didn't. My mother had locked jaw and I would stay home with her a lot, but I kept my grades up. But I only went to the ninth grade and the reason I didn't go to Standard [??]. There was a hole that bad and they could never fill it up. And what in heck, I think, a geologist, whatever you call it, come all over the world to find out why that hole was, we couldn't find out. Well, they couldn't see that hole and put the the Colored-- the Black high school. And I was always scared to go. So I didn't go.

Gottlieb: There was a hole in the ground.

Maria B.: That's right. A hole in the ground. And that school-- I left there in 1930 and that school was built about 4 or 5 years before I left there. And maybe now, maybe more than that, because I was I would have went to high school. That's why I didn't go. And that that school is still staying there. But I thought maybe the dirt might cave in, you know, that school might go and that's why I didn't go. But I did take a sewing course. There were some kind of clerical course at home.

Gottlieb: So you went through nine grades at a different school.

Maria B.: No, same school, then in my home. But I didn't I didn't go to high school because I was scared. I couldn't stay. I'd be nervous thinking that, you know, school was going to cave in.

Gottlieb: So when you were if you had gone on, you would have had to go to this other school. Maria B.: That's right. Gottlieb: But it wasn't the same one you had been going to.

Maria B.: No, because they didn't have a-- they got a high school there in that, but they didn't have one when I was growing up. They just had the grade school. Not for Colored people. They had one for the White people. You know, they was different. They went to different segregated schools, you know? Gottlieb: Yeah.

Gottlieb: Would-- did you use to go to school for the, for just as long and at the same period of time of the year that children go to school now.

Maria B.: No we had six months for a while when I was gone and I think we still had six months when I quit. But after-- later on, my sister and brother went to a nine month school.

Gottlieb: Do you remember what months of the year those six were.

Maria B.: Started and set in October and I imagine ended up in must have been March or April, something like. Mm.

Gottlieb: Did your, uh. Did any of your brothers or sisters, were they able to finish high school?

Maria B.: One sister finished, and she lives in New York. She passed it. The rest of them could have they just didn't want to. There wasn't no reason they just didn't stay in school.

Gottlieb: Can you tell me what kind of, uh, work you did as a child, either helping your parents or, uh, with jobs that you had to earn money?

Maria B.: Well, I used to wash-- wash cars by hand. There wasn't no-- it wasn't-- now what do you call those things. No car washes then. I did washing and I guess I didn't do it too good. But 8 or 9 years old, I used to wash cars with people that worked in the office. The office was right-- was close to my house is, just in our back yard, the office where the people work. And they would get me to wash the cars and I would wash them for a quarter. That's the first work I ever did was to help my parents. In the garden and different things. I'd be doing something all the time, some kind of a hang work or something. I sewed my own things. TI could be still happy doing some old thing. I used to go and pick berries and can them.

Gottlieb: What was the first job that you had once you were finished with school?

Maria B.: I went to work for a lady I stayed with for six years, and I left there and came up here and got married.

Gottlieb: So that was the, being a domestic.

Maria B.: That's right. She had two children.

Gottlieb: She lived in the. Did she live in Waynesboro?

Maria B.: That's right. And they've been busy with her daughters. Married somebody work here at the glass factory. And I was supposed to get in contact with her, and I lost the address, and I never did. I don't know where she is now. But I stayed with her. I stayed with the-- I was there before their daughter was born. She's six years older now. I didn't have no where I go to work. I was only-- we were the only kind of Colored families that was in there. In that vicinity. And I was raised-- we was raised up, you know, with White people. We all play together, but we just didn't go to school together.

Gottlieb: Mhm. What what would you do with the money that, that you would earn when you were-- during the time you were still living at home?

Maria B.: Well, I always brought some. My mother wouldn't let me give her my-- I bought some for the house to spend you know, I never did throw away money.

Gottlieb: Your parents wouldn't ask you to turn it over to them?

Maria B.: No, they never, they never did. They said use it for yourself. But I'd always buy something.

Gottlieb: Did any of your brothers ever, uh, help support your parents with their jobs?

Maria B.: Well, they weren't too hot, but they did something now and then cause they was-- doing something.

Gottlieb: What can you tell me a little bit about how you came up to Pennsylvania? You said it was connected with your marriage.

Maria B.: Yeah, well, I came up to visit. I had a nervous breakdown. I just work, work, work all the time. And he laid out work for me and he would tell me not to be working so much. She had took in boarders to help her husband work in the bank, to help her out and things. And so I was just keep cleaning and carrying on and taking care of children. And she would tell me about-- I got, I got real nervous and Doc said I had to go away. So I came up here with my cousin and that's how I got married. Then I really got nervous after that. I really. But I got over it.

Gottlieb: Uh huh. Uh, did your cousin know somebody up here?

Maria B.: She came up here, I think, on account of her husband. He was a railroad man. I think he was up here more than he was anywhere else. And after she moved, he was still on the road. But I think this was the closest place to where he would travel at or somewhere I know.

Gottlieb: And so she was coming up to see him?

Maria B.: Well, she come up there and, and she lived right down here past the house. She did. Her house tore down. She came up. She was living up here now. I thought I'd come up here and visit her. Gottlieb: Oh, I see. Maria B.: Cause I knew her very well. I knew, you know, [unintelligible] That's on my father's side.

Gottlieb: So it was like a vacation for you?

Maria B.: That's right.

Maria B.: Both of them had come up here and got married. And what made it so bad, the man I married had six children. Gottlieb: Already? Maria B.: Already. That's what made the worst thing. Then I got the Warren family. Gottlieb: Yeah. Maria B.: And I got nervous again. I mean, I got more nervous on top of the head. Gottlieb: Uh huh. Maria B.: I was. Well, I got cured a little bit. I met with some of them up here, and Maggie helped me a little bit because I didn't have no work to do.

Gottlieb: And what year was that when you first came up?

Maria B.: Where I stayed?

Gottlieb: When you got married. When you came up to see your cousin?

Maria B.: Oh, I was coming this time-- oh, I stayed down Townsend Hall, right down the street. Wilkins Avenue eastbound. That's where I lived every day. Gottlieb: Uh huh.

Gottlieb: And what year was it?

Maria B.: 19. The first part of 1930. Because I got married in October. I got married quick. I wasn't-- you know, I wouldn't go and I didn't-- I didn't-- I got married quick, I mean. You know, I didn't-- we didn't go together too long on the town so-- and I went to work while I was here. So I would just stay-- I would stay a little longer. They was too stingy by giving some days. So I said, I'm going on back home. So some woman had a baby-- friend to the lady I used to work for. He asked me to come back and watch her. Bake while she was [??] and all. So I went back there and I was already supposed to be married then. I went back there and we're currently bickering because she could get able to get up and I'd come up here.

Gottlieb: And then you came back and got married.

Maria B.: I got married down there. He came down and we got married. Gottlieb: Oh, I see. Maria B.: And I came back.

Gottlieb: Did you work when you came back and settle down with your-- Maria B.: No.

Maria B.: I had all the children and the house was messy the wife had been sick for a long time. And I-- much as I could do is take care of them and clean and try to get things straight.

Gottlieb: What kind of work did your husband do?

Maria B.: He worked at the Weston and he was [??]

Gottlieb: Had he been born and come up from the South?

Maria B.: Yeah, he born in Georgia.

Gottlieb: Do you know how long he had been up here?

Maria B.: He came up here when he was about-- I think he said, 14. Stayed with his brother for a while because he got a job and he went to the army. Went to the army, came back. He got married eight-- let me see, was he. Yeah, I think he got. Anyway, he got married 18. I think he must have went to the army after he got married. I don't remember that part, but I know he come out from his-- and he said he wasn't of age when he got married. And that part I can't tell you.

Gottlieb: Did he work at the Weston House all the time you were married to him?

Maria B.: All the time I was married to him. He was pinching off from that. Yeah, he worked there 45 years.

Gottlieb: And you can-- go ahead.

Maria B.: Of course. Sometimes he was laid off, you know, youu know how times was in the Depression days.

Gottlieb: Did you come up on the train from Virginia?

Maria B.: That's where I came from. On the train.

Gottlieb: Can you tell me what route the train would have taken from, from Waynesburg to--

Maria B.: Well, I got on at a place you called Basic, Virginia. It's all Waynesboro now. Got on there and I rode and I got-- I got to Hagerstown Junction, and then I changed. Sometimes I wait there six hours. Then I got-- didn't go through Washington, and I came right up to Shenandoah Valley. And then I came on Pittsburgh and Braddock. Braddock.

Maria B.: And I had to find a way to come back here.

Gottlieb: Did you bring much with you when you came back to settle down?

Maria B.: No, just a trunk. My mother's [??] and different stuff. Just a trundle of suitcases, that's all.

Gottlieb: Um, did you used to go back to Virginia once you would settle down?

Maria B.: Yeah, I've come back every year for a while, while my mother's living, and I even went back when my two sisters was living. But they died and now I just go every now and see my brother.

Gottlieb: Did. You used to go back every year at a certain time of the year or just whenever you got a chance?

Maria B.: Whenever I got a chance I got, I got the money.

Gottlieb: Did you ever used to send money back to your.

Maria B.: Well, I didn't send my mother. I used to make clothes and send to-- my mother had a son that his wife died. And I used to send things to my mother, my mother's children was younger and I was sending the children-- make things like that and send that to them.

Gottlieb: What did you think of Braddock, northern Pittsburgh area when you moved in?

Maria B.: It was so smoky I could hardly stand it. It was clean where I come from. And the dirt and me cleaning all the time. It was awful. But I kind of got used to it. You couldn't hardly see. When I first came up here, you-- all the days would be like this. And it was a luxury when you saw sunshine.

Gottlieb: It's really changed a lot then. I guess.

Maria B.: You're right.

Gottlieb: Were there any things about it that you liked?

Maria B.: I didn't like too much of it. It was all right. I always did like the country life, that kind of life, you know, when men has a different life, a good man. I, like-- grew up picking berries and things like that. But when the time was too, it was pretty dirty.

Gottlieb: Well, this I noticed when I was driving in here, there was lots of woods around these roads here. Was it like that when you were first up here?

Maria B.: Well, when I came up, up there and called [??] Hill was all woods. And we used to go up there and make garden and and you could-- people hunt for rabbits and, and, you know, get apples and everything up there but they, they built the houses different. You can't hardly get nothing now.

Gottlieb: So it wasn't really like living in a, in a real built up city.

Maria B.: No. When I came here they had-- some people had coal mines in their backyard and you would go there and get you a little coal, but the coal, it was funny. It wasn't like it was rusty looking on one side and it burnt real quickly just burning your stove out. But we used it. It wasn't like the coal you'd buy at the coal yard. I think the car run a mile. But even living was easier when I first came up here, you know? Not like now. You get more things without going to the store. People raised chickens. I raised chickens. That's what helped me raise these children in the backyard. I can't do that now.

Gottlieb: Would it be hard for you to to go back to Virginia when you used to go back?

Maria B.: No, I like-- Virginia's built up too. It's different than it was when I was there. It's easier. It's, it's-- where I came from just north of the city. Theres markets and you gotta DuPont plant down there. Got a Crompton plant over there. It just don't look the same. And what got me so bad-- I tell my grandchildren, I said, I want to take you down and show you the man [??]. I'll show you the horseshoe curve. The hairpin curve. Nobody told me nothing. They don't write me too much. I went down there and here, bless me. They cut their whole mouth down. Gottlieb: Wow. Maria B.: Well, I was. I think that was the worst thing I ever heard of cutting that man down. Well, it looks. It's different now. One part of mine is all cut down and leveled off and got hotels and things like that. I didn't like that, cause that hairpin curve-- I always liked that because when you go down there the grab through would stop your car and you could, you could-- you slow up. Then after you pass that, grab the car, just shoot that. And I wanted to show them all that and I didn't have nothing to show.

Gottlieb: Um, was it hard to go back to the south in terms of the the way black people were treated down there as compared to up here?

Maria B.: Not at the beginning. We didn't have too-- the only thing we had in Virginia that bothered us, but we lived down among the White people. And my brother would always do something. I mean, it's like the poor people, you know, like they would pick on my brother. The rich people would take up on him because they liked him and the poor people didn't like that. So one day some girl got raped down there, White girl, and she said she knew who it was. So they put her on one of my brothers, and the man said, it ain't him because he was working for me and I know it wasn't him. Our other brother was a younger brother, but he couldn't get out of it because he was at-- he had cried. He was four, and my mother had nearly died when he was born. And she [??]. And so he, um, he was at the shelter and my sister, she jumps up and, and they said, give me some clothes. That he had, he had been fishing a couple of days before that. But that night he was at the shelter, but Mama couldn't prove it because she didn't know exactly where I was, she didn't give him the money for the shelter. Found her later. So they trapped him up and put him in prison. So he stayed in there from 15 years until he was 23 years old, I think. But he-- they treated him kind of nice. He learned different trades that-- but he could never prove it. And so after his-- after my mother died, I got him just a quick-- my mother was worried and crying. I told her, I said, just wait he'll get out. So that's the only trouble we had with them then. They, you know, they did that because they was mad at him anyway, because a police come out one my brother,and he knocked him down and they didn't put him in jail. They had that against us, you know. So that's the only trouble that-- we got along with everything. Of course that was bad.

Gottlieb: Yeah, right.

Gottlieb: Uh, when you-- the neighborhoods that you've lived in up here, have they been mostly Black or have they been mixed too.

Maria B.: That crowd there used to be White. They used to be white. This neighbors always been White. And, uh, what Colored people they were right after from me, cause the next door was White. All White neighbors just about.

Maria B.: Yeah, it didn't used to be White. Not this house with the dark side, the next house used too be White.

Gottlieb: Have you lived here in this-- right in this area of Braddock Hills all the time you've been here?

Maria B.: Ever since 1930.

Maria B.: October 1930. Yeah, October. I got married in September. I didn't come up til October.

Gottlieb: You found the white people up here pretty much the same as they were in Virginia.

Maria B.: Yes, I did. But it wasn't the same.

Maria B.: Because most of them was farmers but they were the same. Got along with the children. I used to feed the children and how to grow up. We cooked the rolls and everything, they'd come in and beg. A little boy, [??] his mom and ran around all night and he called me mom. He come across to give me some bread. I said no, go home. He said, if I go home my mom will beat me and I said, you don't go your mom will beat you too. If you stay here-- I had to feed him every morning. So his grandmother went down to Florida to visit him and say, Well, guess what? I said, What? When I saw Bernie, Bernie didn't say hi, Grandma. He said hi Mrs. B. and she was so mad because she'd be in bed too the poor little boy. You know, I had to give him his breakfast every morning.

Gottlieb: Did you ever work outside your home for, for wages when you've been living up here?

Maria B.: No, I never worked.

Maria B.: One time I went out in the morning and worked three hours a day. That didn't last too month. No longer than a month. I think, I think it's better staying at home. And if I try to tell my daughter, stay at home, you save more by staying at home than you do run out and and like you buy food, you got to buy something quick. And children have fed. And because I'm right here now, I feed them a lot and clothes that they could sew they buying and pay 2 or 3 prices. I-- I've done better by staying at home because I raise chickens too. I think that helped pay a lot and they can raise a God but they can't raise chickens. But they can't go to the store and get the meat wholesale you know, and put them in the freezer they have to go to.

Gottlieb: Yeah.

Gottlieb: Did you and your first husband part after.

Maria B.: I never had. My husband went ahead. He was married twice. He had the six when we got married. And I had and I had twins. I had eight boys.

Gottlieb: Is he still living?

Maria B.: The husband? Yeah, he's living. He's 77 now, but he gets around good.

Gottlieb: When you were first living up here in the, in the 1930s, did you notice any difference between those Black people who had been born in the South and come up like you had and those who had been born in Pennsylvania?

Maria B.: There was a lot of difference between the Black people in Virginia and the Black people in Georgia. This is much different. It's a whole lot different. But I don't know why. But they-- I don't know. They they different altogether than people in Virginia.

Gottlieb: In what ways?

Maria B.: Well, I don't know. They don't seem to understand why people like Virginia doing things because I think they all raised up together, you know, they didn't have no contact with them. And me, I was raised up with them. I understand, but they was like anybody up there. The thing was we used to fight. The next day we'd make up and they fight and they fuss a lot. And it was-- they was trying to get along like Virginia people getting together and I feel different. Virginia is halfway between them. Virginia is more like I think more like the North and, you know, than down beat down south. A lot of difference. All right.

Gottlieb: Um, what other what other differences are there between the Black people from Virginia and those from Georgia?

Maria B.: Well. Let's see.

Maria B.: I don't know but I think there are still dividing cells, but I've been so used to living mixed that that's what-- that's what I've been used to doing. I don't think I would want to live with all Black people because I never was used to. Gottlieb: Yeah.

Gottlieb: Did you know a lot of Black people who had come up here from Georgia?

Maria B.: Just these around here. My husband, he came from Georgia. I told him if I'd known he's from Georgia, we never would have gotten married because-- a [??] used to come down from Georgia. He'd come down to my house about in Waynesboro and next, next summer there'd be more babies, you know, born from me. And I just didn't like him for nothing. And he didn't tell me he was from Georgia until after we got married. He would say he's from Missouri. He never talked about Georgia. So after we got married, I found and I told him, I wish I had known that. That'd be the one thing that kept us separate. Gottlieb: Yeah. Maria B.: I never knew that.

Gottlieb: Um, are there quite a few people from Georgia living right around here? Maria B.: That's right.

Maria B.: Just about all of them. But only was-- a few people here now moved from Virginia. But at first I was about the only one. Because some of them don't care too much for West Virginia. But I get along with the people here. I don't know. So far I mean. If they didn't think-- if they don't like it, they don't say nothing.

Gottlieb: Yeah.

Gottlieb: Did you ever have any trouble with Black people who had been born and raised up here in Pennsylvania?

Maria B.: I don't know. I don't know. I never had no trouble. I've never been, you know, go to church with them and everything like that. Most of the young people around here was born. I don't have no trouble with them

Gottlieb: Um. Uh, did your husband grow up in a, in a countryside down there?

Maria B.: Yeah, he's way back in the country.

Gottlieb: Did any of your brothers or sisters or any other relatives ever come up here to live after you did?

Maria B.: One brother came up, stayed here with me. The one's in Philadelphia now. And another one came up here and stayed and he went to New Rochelle. I guess I wanted to stay, like two years, and the other stayed about the same time, I think.

Gottlieb: Did they live with you when they were here?

Maria B.: That's right. They lived with me-- well they all lived me til they could find a room somewhere.

Gottlieb: What, what kind of jobs were they able to get when they were here?

Maria B.: One of them was a mechanic. He, uh. Excuse me. He, uh, you know, worked on automobiles and worked in filling stations in place and fixed cars and washed cars. Anything he could do he would take it. But he really he could fix cars pretty good. And that's what my husband said he was doing in Philadelphia till he got a pension law. He's three years older than I am. And the other brother. He's a cook. When he went to New Rochelle to cook, he worked for some bakery downtown while we were here.

Gottlieb: Did you or your husband ever help them get these jobs?

Maria B.: My husband would go out and help them. He we go out and find jobs. We found jobs for them real quick.

Gottlieb: When they left-- after they, you know, left your your place to go to board. Do you know where they-- you know where they did go to live? Did they stay in this area?

Maria B.: Yeah, One of them stayed. One of them stayed on, oh, I forgot the name of that street in Shadyside. Anyhow, stayed on Shadyside. He, um, the man that he worked for-- he worked for come by. He lived on Tannehill. That's why he moved there. And this rich man saw how nice he kept the place and he said, Well, I want you to keep my apartment for me. So he kept that apartment for him for a long time. Mhm. You know, you know how you, how you stay there. He worked too. How you stay there and wash the things, you know. I forget what you call it now.

Maria B.: And then he left.

Gottlieb: Did you join a church? When you came--

Maria B.: I belong to The First Baptist Church. Right down there.

Maria B.: I belonged-- at first I belonged to Shiloh in Virginia. And I moved up here and I joined right away.

Gottlieb: Were you raise as a Baptist?

Maria B.: That's right.

Gottlieb: Did you, did you join First Baptist right away when you moved up or was it.

Maria B.: That's right. About the same week I moved. Well, not before. Before I moved up, I [??]. But the second Sunday, I went to church.

Gottlieb: Uh huh.

Maria B.: Because I like-- even down home, I used to go to the White Presbyterian churches a lot. And up here I go to [??] church and I like it when I can get out there. All of them the same to me, just the name, I mean.

Gottlieb: Uh. There wasn't any particular reason why you joined First Baptist then, as opposed to some other church.

Maria B.: Oh, no. That was the closest church around here. That was all.

Gottlieb: Was it very different from the, uh, from the churches that you had been going to in Waynesboro?

Maria B.: It was about the same. Like Virginia people a little bit different from, you know, from, from the people that was up here. But it was why-- I don't know, some of them didn't-- couldn't read and write and nothing like that. You know, some of them didn't go to school. I didn't have that much but some of them didn't have as much as I had.

Gottlieb: Yeah.

Gottlieb: But in terms of the way the services would be conducted and that kind of thing, it wasn't.

Maria B.: That's Right. They do a lot of arguing, you know, and they know really what they was arguing about.

Gottlieb: Were a lot of the members of that First Baptist Church from Georgia.

Maria B.: That's right.

Maria B.: All of them from Georgia, not even from Mississippi or nothing. Just about everyone around here's from Georgia even including my husband.

Gottlieb: Mhm.

Gottlieb: Were you ever active in any church groups, clubs?

Maria B.: Well, I belong to the missionary, but since I had to babysit, so I don't do too much. But I do teach Sunday school every-- some of-- I teach the babies of all things. You think I have the older one, but the babies are so, you know, the little children around up to six years old. They're so, so active and so bad that my daughter-- I had her teaching and my husband, Sidney told me, but she wouldn't do it. So I have to teach them because don't nobody want to teach them. They they just too bad. They just don't want to be bothered with.

Gottlieb: Did you ever belong to any other kind of clubs like social clubs or women's groups?

Maria B.: I used to belong to some kind of a hobby club. I was the only-- they said they had another Black woman but I never seen her. I belong to that for a while and it kind of broke up.

Gottlieb: What was the, what was the name of the club?

Maria B.: I forgot now. I got, I got pictures of me and the woman but I can't remember how it was called now.

Maria B.: I forget a lot of things. But the woman lived in Pittsburgh. So the women come from all around to the club. We'd exchange things, you know, making everything.

Gottlieb: Tell me of what you remember from the 1930s, the Depression and how, how your family was able to to get through that period of time.

Maria B.: Well, when I and I had all them children-- people wasn't having too many children in them days, you know. And the welfare didn't want to give us money because they-- we had a rotten old worker, too. I remember his name was Rock. He, he fooled around with some woman, some White woman got hit, knocked in the head and he quit or they put him out one so he wouldn't let you get out. He had some kind of excuse. I don't know what was his reason. So we couldn't get on the welfare and so my husband would go get coal. We had a coal furnace in from the state. And this-- I'm just hoping to get around because I'm working, because I just was raising chickens and, and so on and different things like that. And sometimes we sell some candy or something like that and, you know, make it. And flowers. I sold paper flowers and artificial flowers and five and ten months I sold a whole lot of artificial flowers and then I sold candy every Saturday and had enough to buy meat for Sunday dinner. And we made it. But my husband, he grown and put in coal. You see a coal power street. He had asked me to put it in like made it like that. But we made it all right because some of the people that you think would be doing good, their children to come in, I'd feed them with my children and I made a lot of cakes and things. They like that too. But after eating beans and greens, we weren't craving something sweet. And I always had dessert just about every day. A lot of Kool-Aid and stuff like that. We got along.

Gottlieb: Where would you go to sell the candy and the artificial flowers?

Maria B.: They would go in the forrest where all the rich people was, hoping. They didn't even have money. I remember one girl, her husband didn't have nothing. He didn't give no money for her. He was a drunkard. And she bought 6 or 7 candy from me, that was a penny a piece, and she never was able to pay. So we didn't fool around with the poor people too much because they were in worser shape than I was in. And we learned that the rich people they bought it.

Gottlieb: Was your husband out of work for a very long period of time?

Maria B.: Yeah, he was out pretty long. Well, he wasn't exactly out. He would work 1 or 2 days a week, but that wasn't enough to hardly make it.

Gottlieb: Well, these are all the questions that I, that I had to ask you. If you think that I've skipped over something, that's-- that would be important for me to understand I'd appreciate it if you tell me. But otherwise, I don't. I don't have anything else to ask.

Maria B.: Yeah that's so far. I can't think of nothing except even this place had changed when I came cause that's out in Tarnage [??]. And, um, I just would get out because I had so many children, so they said, we'll get the septic tanks. We'll get the city, you know, soon. So finally they got it to me but my children are all grown up. And I had that old toilet cost something, cause we had to keep on moving it. And then they got the roads paved. Old dirt, you see they're not paved too good. And that-- dust would come in the house. It was awful. Sometimes the children. I'd let them have a dance or something after I take care of the house so I'd be sick a lot. The dust would be so thick on the floor. The mud outside. It was a lot different then. I had to work so hard. And then we had coal so that'd smoke the walls all up. It was hard work

Gottlieb: Yeah. It still is hard work to keep a place clean.

Maria B.: It is. With all the automatic things you got it's still hard work.

Gottlieb: When you used to go back home to Virginia once you were living up here. Well you told me you were the first member of your family to come up here. Maria B.: That's Right. Gottlieb: Did they look on you as a person who was doing much better than they were?

Maria B.: They was telling me, say you come down here and you-- If I lived like that, I would come down. I would put on airs. I tell them I never was. They say I come down. They didn't like the way I would do, you know, they want me to come down like a big shot, like I lived in Pittsburgh. But I didn't do that. I come down, I was like, I always was but they-- my sisters didn't think I would do that. And I go back to visit the people I used to work for.T here's a girl that I used to go to school with, so.

Maria B.: This is the same person all the time. I didn't have nothing anyway, but when I used to make them like I had something when I didn't.

Gottlieb: Yeah. So they-- did they, did they treat you differently as far as you could tell?

Maria B.: No, they act all right. Because, you know, just the same person. I was when I left. For some people, they go away to the city. I don't know if you and your people or not, but they come back. They go away they think they, you know, more than what they are and come back.

Gottlieb: Well, thank you very much Mrs. Maria B..

Maria B.: You're welcome. I hope you're happy, son.