Items

• Oscar Merritt Residence Reunion of the Interracial Committee of the 1960s in Mount Airy

  Recording of a dinner hosted by Oscar and Winnie Merritt at their home on January 28, 2003 that was a reunion of the Interracial Committee that existed in the 1960s in Surry County.
  

• Interview with Lena M. Smith

  Interview done as part of an oral history project for Surry County Historical Society. Smith, who is a white woman, was an only child. Her parents were a doctor and a nurse. Smith was a teacher. Talks extensively about the medical community in Stokes and Surry County. Also talks about the Reynolds family's support of schools and other institutions in the area and the exodus of people from the Westfield area to go work in mills in Mount Airy and other places. Interview is in two parts.
  

• Interview with Ruth Minick

  Interview done as part of an oral history project for Surry County Historical Society. Father was from Pennsylvania and she discusses how her family having Northern connections made them outsiders in the Mount Airy community. Minick, who is a white woman, discusses growing up in Mount Airy, including having black people as servants in the household, getting switched for misbehaving, going to school and church. Minick attended the North Carolina College for Women (now UNC-Greensboro) and graduated in 1924. After college she was a teacher in High Point and later Mount Airy. Notes being a teacher her job was protected better than many during the Depression.
  

• Interview with Hazel P. Reeves Jackson

  Interview done as part of an oral history project for Surry County Historical Society. Jackson, who is a white woman, recalls attending a one room school and later attended Copeland High School which she graduated from in 1926. Grew up on a farm in Siloam and reminisces about the various crops raised and picking fruit in the family's orchards. Also recalls about medical care in the rural area and how scary it was when someone got sick. Attended Greensboro College and became a teacher after graduation. Remembers fellow students at Greensboro College who had to quit because their parents couldn't afford tuition during the Depression. Her husband worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Interview is in three parts.
  

• Interview with Lurenda Berry

  Interview done as part of an oral history project for Surry Historical Society. Lurenda's husband Hiawatha was also present for the interview. Lurenda, who is black, was one of 15 children and grew up in Chestnut Ridge on a farm. Her father raised cows and hogs, grew tobacco, and had an orchard on their property. Berry recalls helping out on the farm growing up, including missing school when her and her siblings were needed to work the farm. Her family attended Chestnut Ridge church which held large church picnics. Her paternal grandfather was enslaved and received land following the end of the Civil War which was passed down through the family. Met her husband at a baseball game. He played first base for a team out of Westfield. Her mother died when she was 16 and Lurenda helped to raise her younger siblings after that, including several coming to live with her and her husband after they were married. Interview is in three parts.
  

• Interview with Hiawatha Berry

  Interview done as part of an oral history project for Surry Historical Society. Interview done in his kitchen and his wife (Lurenda) is also in the room. Berry is a black man and he grew up in Winston-Salem and moved to Surry County to help out on his uncle's tobacco farm after his mother's death in 1933. Discusses how a hog killing worked and what cuts would be got from it as well as hunting wild game to supplement their food. Family attended Locust Grove Church. Discusses how white children in the community had school buses to get to school but the black children did not, which resulted in many black children not being able to make it to school. Interview is in two parts.
  

• Interview with Mary Ellen Houck Graham

  Interview done as part of an oral history project for Surry County Historical Society. Graham was born and raised in Rockford, NC. Graham, who is white, discusses her education during segregation. She also mentioned black people who worked for her family at different times growing up. She also discusses her mother working to help put her and her brothers through college and getting the news that her youngest brother was killed in World War II. Interview is in two parts.
  

• Interview with Raynor Wilson

  Interview done as part of an oral history project for Surry County Historical Society. Raynor Wilson's family were Quaker going back to England. Wilson is a white woman. She discusses how her family came to the area near Westfield and the general experience of Quakers in North Carolina from her perspective. Interview is in two parts.
  

• Interview with Paralee Reid Fentriss

  Interview done as part of an oral history project for Surry Historical Society. Prentiss, who is a white woman, recalls growing up in Pilot Mountain. Her father delivered coal for a living but often was not paid for it. Attended UNC-Chapel Hill for a semester but caught the flu and didn't go back. Husband was a civil engineer and they were married November 1930 right as the Depression was hitting North Carolina. Her husband's work took them up and down the east coast before they returned to Pilot Mountain when he joined the Civil Conservation Corps and then the Army. Her husband served in World War II and was gone for almost 5 years serving in Europe. The whole family moved to Japan in 1950 before returning to Pilot Mountain. Remembers the KKK threatening to come to Pilot Mountain at one point and her brother, a judge, putting a stop to that happening after a black woman alerted him to it. She remembers race relations in Pilot Mountain being good. After her husband died in 1961, she became a house counselor at Salem Academy. Interview is in two parts.
  

• Interview with Ruby Hardy Stanley

  Interview done as part of an oral history project for Surry County Historical Society. Stanley, who is a white woman, grew up in Shoals on a farm. Discusses life growing up and her extended family, including grandparents. Discusses how her grandmother was 13 when she was married. Talks about growing up with very little, particularly during the Great Depression and generally how life worked in the rural part of Surry County, including seeing a doctor and the division of labor in the household. Interview is in two parts.
  

• Interview with Sallie Davis Pratt

  Interview done as part of an oral history project for Surry County Historical Society. Interview done in Pratt's living room on Tom Jones Road near Level Cross. Pratt, who is a white woman, discusses growing up on a farm and having black families who worked with her family on their tobacco farm. Also discusses life in the rural area of Surry County, including only being able to get to Mount Airy in a wagon, not getting to school very often because she had to work, and going to church revivals. She didn't go much beyond 4th grade. Her husband was also a tobacco farmer and she discusses life as a wife and mother on a tobacco farm, including manning the barns during curing. Interview is in two parts.
  

• Interview with Grover J. Scott

  Interview done as part of an oral history project for Surry County Historical Society. Scott's daughter Peggy Scott Hardy was also present during the interview. Scott, who is a white man, was born in Shoals, NC and grew up on a tobacco farm. Worked for the state of North Carolina building roads starting at age 17. Went back to tobacco farming after World War II. Interview is in 3 parts.
  

• Interview with Grace Zelma Terrell Riddle

  Interview done as part of an oral history project for Surry Historical Society. Interview done in Riddle's home near Level Cross, NC. Riddle, who is white, discusses growing up on a tobacco farm. Her granddaughter Margaret Riddle Walker from Florida was also present for the interview. Discusses quilting and quilting frolics and corn shuckings. Discusses the Spanish flu pandemic and those in her family who died. Interview is in 4 parts.
  

• Interview with Fannie Fulk Fowler

  Interview done as part of an oral history project for Surry Historical Society. Her father donated the land for the school that she and her siblings attended. Recalls attending the fair in King and taking the train to get there. Interview is in two parts.
  

• Interview with Bessie Simpson Hardy

  Interview done as part of an oral history project for Surry Historical Society. Interview done with Ruby Hardy Stanley. Hardy, who is a white woman, discusses growing up on a farm, the medical care available living so far from town including utilizing a midwife. Hardy had 9 children, 8 of which lived to adulthood. Goes through what a typical day looked like when she was raising her family on a farm. Notes she worked 18 hours a day and didn't have any modern conviences including a washing machine or electric iron. She also discusses using the Sears catalog. Interview is in two parts.
  

• Interview with Will Monday

  Introduction by Robert Merritt Track 2 - 42 minute interview with Will Monday about the circumstances leading up to the 1912 Courthouse tragedy. Mr. Monday was originally from Carroll County but became prominient civil, business, political, and church affairs of Mt Airy. He served on the MA school board for 32 years and was instrumental in beginning Surry Community College. Born in 1887. Died in 1967. Ruth Minick (1907-2001) interviewed him. Annie Thomas her friend is the other voice heard. Interview is in 6 parts.
  

• Bill Gilliam Remembers

  Interview with Bill Gilliam conducted by Robert Merritt
  

• Interview with Litha Lowe, Fred Lowe, and Jack Hatton, Lowgap, North Carolina

  Interview with Litha Lowe, Fred Lowe, and Jack Hatton, Lowgap, North Carolina, recorded on September 7, 1978. Part 1: Church, quilting, bee hunting, different types of honey. Part 2: Bee Lore, Ginseng. Part 3: Snake Stories, role of Victrola in early life, "haint" tails. Recorded as part of the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project, in the collection of the Library of Congress
  

• Interview with Roscoe Bowman George

  Interview with Roscoe Bowman George conducted by Barbara Summerlin on October 22 and November 6, 1997. Bowman George is a former city commissioner for Mount Airy. He was born and raised in the city and discusses his life in the town. He worked at the Mount Airy Chair Company before getting involved in politics in the town and served in the Army during World War II. Discusses having African-American people as servants in his home growing up and his father employing African-American men for his tobacco business. Audio is in three parts.
  

• Interview with Wilber and Pauline Moseley

  Interview with Wilber and Pauline Moseley conducted by Robert Merritt on June 4, 1996.The couple discusses working at Renfro Hosiery Mills. Wilber started working there at age 14 in 1929. Wilber served in the Navy during World War II and returned to the mill after the war. Audio is in two parts.
  

• Interview with Monroe Dodd

  Interview with Monroe Dodd conducted by Robert Merritt on February 16, 1996. Interview discusses Dodd's life. He was born in Pilot Mountain and then moved to Mount Airy after his father's death in 1919 from the Spanish flu. He was one of eight children (four boys and four girls). Focus is on the experience of African-Americans in Mount Airy in the first half of the 20th century, including experiencing segregation at public facilities and restaurants in town. Dodd served in the army during World War II, travelling to several bases in the US (Fort Bragg, Fort Lee in VA, CA and NJ) and then went to Europe (Scotland, Belgium, Germany). He also discusses segregation in the military and how it was different in Europe versus the United States. Black cemetaries in Mount Airy are also discussed near the end of the interview. Audio is in two parts.
  

• Interview with Margaret Leonard, Evelyn Coalson, and Ester Dawson

  Interview with Margaret Leonard, Evelyn Coalson, and Ester Dawson conducted bu Barbara Summerlin on November 7, 1997. The interviewees, all sisters, discuss growing up in an area called "The Hollows," in Carroll County, VA. They attended the Willow Hill Moravian Church. Audio is in two parts.
  

• Interview with Ruth Minick

  Ruth Minick, interviewed by Robert Merritt on March 19, 1999. Ruth Minick became a local historian for Mount Airy after her retirement. She was born and raised in Mount Airy. Her interview mostly discusses her research into the history of Mount Airy. Audio is in two parts.
  

• Elizabeth Merritt Oral History Interview transcript

  Elizabeth Merritt Oral History Interview transcript from interview in May 1981. Topics include family history, growing up in Mount Airy, flu epidemic of 1918, college, and returning to Mount Airy to care for parents in 1943.
  

• Oral History Interview transcription with Norman Webb - edited version

  Oral History interview transcript with Norman Webb conducted by Gene Rees on July 31, 2001 and edited by son Tom Webb. Transcript includes Mr Webb discussing his involvement in WWII, CCC - Civilian Conservation Corps, Webb Trucking Company, H&W Trucking Company and various other topics