Frances Renfrow Doak and Charles Glenn Doak, Sr.
Narrators
Charles Glenn Doak, Jr.
Interviewer
November 7, 1952
Raleigh, North Carolina

Frances Renfrow Doak - FRD
Charles Glenn Doak, Sr. - CDS
Charles Glenn Doak, Jr. - CDJ

CDJ: November 7, 1952. Well, Mama, I want you to tell us something about your ancestors here, and then something about your childhood and your education and so on, just like Dad did last night. You can start out by telling us about your parents on your father's side, what you know about him, but not too detailed. (0:36, Part 1)

FRD: [Laughs] Well, I noticed last night that your daddy started with his great-grandfather. As a matter of fact, he could have started with Simon Doak, who came from Ireland about 1708. We have that family record complete for you children. Whenever you want to find out where your ancestors came from and when, and where they settled in America, you can read that record. Now, on my side of the house, my father was Perry Van Buren Renfrow. (1:17, Part 1)

CDJ: Was he named after Martin Van Buren?

FRD: Yes. He was born during Martin Van Buren's administration as President of the United States and "Martin Van Buren" was put in there but my father couldn't stand all of that long P.M.V.B. Renfrow, and all his life he signed his name simply "P.V. Renfrow" and called himself Perry Van. The Perry was for an uncle, his grandfather's brother. He also had an uncle-not a granduncle but an uncle-Perry Renfrow. I have all of that Renfrow data so you can refer to it whenever you want to, and if any of your descendants should ever want to join the Daughters of the American Revolution or the Sons of the Revolution you'll find evidence of your right to join either one of those organizations, or their right, in the family papers. (2:37, Part 1)

But my father's family originally came from Scotland and there are several stories about it. Some of them went into France and there's one story that the Renfrow family originated in France and that the name was spelled R-e-n-f-r-e-u-x and that they went into Scotland and settled; that they were lovers of liberty, religious liberty particularly, and so they went into Scotland and established what was the Renfrewshire, R-e-n-f-r-e-w-s-h-i-r-e. At any rate, they came to America and settled. My father's branch of the family settled in Johnston County, and his father was named Wilson Renfrow and his mother was Callie Catherine Pridgen, P-r-i-d-g-e-n, the daughter of Hardy Pridgen, who was the son of Calvin Pridgen, a very influential and well known Primitive Baptist preacher. So, on both sides of my father's family we found people seeking religious liberty and freedom. (4:03, Part 1)

My father was born in Johnston County, September 20, 1840, and the family shortly afterwards moved to Nashville in Nash County, and the farm home in which they lived is standing on the road between the towns of Spring Hope and Nashville, on the left. It is the last farm home, I think, before you get into Nashville and is a very attractive old house and it's just been done over. I hope you'll look it over sometime when you come by there. Drive up to the house and find out who the people are who live there now and ask them to let you look around a bit. It would be interesting.

CDJ: Okay. Now that was your Grandfather Renfrow's house.

FRD: Yes. I don't know whether he ever owned it or not, but my father lived there when he was a boy. It might have been that they rented the farm for a while and then lived somewhere else because there was another old place in Nash County called the Old Renfrow Place. It was somewhere between Nashville and Castalia. (5:17, Part 1)

But the Renfrow family in Nash County. My father was one of thirteen children and twelve of them lived to be grown. There were two boys, John and William Hardy, and John Renfrow was the best educated of all my father's family. He was sent to some college somewhere, and during the Civil War... He was much opposed to the Civil War, and he was the oldest one of the children and was too old for any military service, and he went up to Maryland and got some job up there and when he came back he married a rich widow down in Northampton County-or Halifax County [Unclear 6:07]-and he ran for the legislature on the Republican ticket and got elected. My father was so displeased about it that he stopped spelling his name f-r-e-w and from that time on our branch of the family has spelled it R-e-n-f-r-o-w, and Uncle John continued to spell his f-r-e-w. Uncle Bill, the brother, continued to spell it f-r-e-w, and he has a grandson living here in Raleigh now, Henry Renfrew, and it's quite funny to see the list of names in the telephone book. [Laughs] (6:45, Part 1)

CDJ: The one that spells it f-r-e-w, is he a Republican or a Democrat?

FRD: Republican, yes. They stayed in the Republican party. But my father's sisters all married Democrats, and the strongest Democrats you ever saw in your life.

But now, my father was a small man-that is in height-but he was very muscular, well built, and as tough as could be physically. He could stand any sort of strain. He could lift the heaviest kind of load. He volunteered and went in the Civil War and was in Company I, 30th North Carolina Regiment. He fought the four years of the war. He was wounded twice and he was present in the... No, let me see just how it was now. I have that all written down for you too and I ought to be reading that so as not to be making [mistakes], because when I wrote that I took it directly from my daddy's dictation. (7:52, Part 1)

But at any rate, he saw Stonewall Jackson brought into the tent after Jackson had been wounded by his own men. You know the story of how they fired on him, thinking he was the enemy. My father saw Mrs. Jackson's arrival, and when she was there she entered the tent where her husband was lying in a dying condition. My father was removed to a hospital in Richmond the next day. Jackson died and his funeral was held in Richmond and my father was able to go and stand on the street and see the funeral procession. (8:35, Part 1)

At that time my father knew nothing except war. He had never heard anything in the world about peace, or the possibility that men could work out a peace on this earth, or any way to live in honor except to fight it out. While he wasn't too militant in his personal attitudes toward people and things-he was a very kindhearted man and he always forgave very quickly and forgot very quickly-but it was in his later years that he too came to see that war was so wrong, and on his dying bed, in 1919 at my home, he would ask me every morning if the Senate had ratified the peace treaty. It was at the time when Woodrow Wilson was working so desperately to get the Senate to ratify the League of Nations covenant, or the peace treaty which included the League of Nations covenant, and Father would say to me each morning, "Daughter, did the Senate ratify the treaty yesterday?" and I would have to tell him no. (9:51, Part 1)

One day I told him that Knute Nelson, a fine old Senator from the state of Minnesota, who was a Republican, had made a speech on the Senate floor the day before in which he pleaded for ratification and said that he fought in the Civil War and that he knew how terrible a thing war is, and how necessary it was that mankind find some way to abolish it, because with modern weapons and modern wholesale killings it would eventually mean the destruction of mankind and civilization and that we should find a way to end war. My father looked up at me with his big gray eyes swimming in tears and said, "Knute Nelson and Perry Renfrow know. They went through it." I have never forgotten that and I've used it often in speaking to audiences about how a man who had been a soldier could finally come to a realization of the fact that the actual terror of war is justification enough for abolishing it, even if we didn't need to abolish it in order to save material things and forms of government. (11:13, Part 1)

My father married Ellen Douglas Sorsby, who was born January 16, 1853, in a new home that my grandmother and grandfather had just built in the town of Nashville. Her family was, on the mother's side of the house and the father's, the Blounts. The Blount family was the first family in North Carolina to receive a grant of land from the king of England. John Gray Blount was the first Blount to be so honored and his vast estates in eastern Carolina caused many other members of the Blount family to come from England. The records in the hall of history here show that there were members of the Blount family coming from England constantly over a period of a hundred years and settling in eastern North Carolina on the Tar River, extending all the way from Rocky Mount to the town of Washington. My mother's mother was Frances Blount. On the mother's side of the house she was related to the Emersons of Massachusetts and never failed to remind us that whatever writing ability we might have came from the Emerson family. (13:01, Part 1)

CDJ: Ralph Waldo Emerson?

FRD: The Ralph Waldo Emerson family of Massachusetts. Just what the direct line was I don't know because my grandmother's papers were all left with her oldest son, D.H. Sorsby, and his daughter, Effie Sorsby, came into possession of them, and that would make a book, if I told you the story of her life. Some time I will write it down, and if I could only find her and find what she did with all of Grandma's papers I might be able to give the exact relationship with the Emerson family.

Anyway, Great-grandmother came from Massachusetts to Rocky Mount and the family settled there, and her grandma's aunt married a Donaldson, a man by the name of Donaldson, who built the first cotton mill on the Tar River, and it was the second cotton mill built in the state of North Carolina. The first one is supposed to have been the Schenck mill over in Cleveland County. This mill that was built by grandmother's uncle-in-law was on the Tar River at Rocky Mount and is still standing, still operating, and I think the fourth generation of [Unclear 14:26] family now operates that mill. It's a very interesting story. (14:31, Part 1)

Grandmother was the only child of Henry Blount and his wife, Mildred Harrison, whose family, on her father's side of the house, produced two presidents of the United States, William Henry Harrison and Benjamin Harrison. Neither one of them were outstanding presidents, and there's not much there to be proud of but certainly nothing to be ashamed of, and Grandma was very proud of her Harrison kinship through her mother, Mildred Harrison.

CDJ: You say that was the only family that produced two Presidents of the United States?

FRD: Did I say that? Well, I shouldn't have said that.

CDJ: I think the Roosevelts.

FRD: Well, that's right, and then the Adamses of Massachusetts.

CDJ: And I think there were some others, maybe Madison and some of those fellows [Unclear 15:33] Jefferson. (15:36, Part 1)

FRD: Yes. Well, at any rate, Grandma inherited from her father, Gen. Henry Blount-who won his title in the War of 1812-a large estate, and she married her first cousin, Benjamin Henry Sorsby, whose mother was Virginia Blount and the sister, you see, of Grandma's father, Henry Blount, and they lived in the house in Nashville. This is a sketch of it, hanging on the wall right here. Her mother died when she was an infant and her aunt, Nancy Blount Gardner, brought her up. (16:26, Part 1)

When she was fourteen years of age her father took her and brought her by stagecoach to Raleigh and on to Winston-Salem and she entered Salem Academy. It's now Salem College, a class-A college for girls, but then it was just a finishing school for girls, but they really did finish them. They taught them all of the arts of housekeeping and my grandmother did the most beautiful needlework and she could cook the most delicious desserts. She made the nicest [Unclear 17:03] cakes I've ever seen. She was a tiny little woman with copper hair. She was the only one of my grandparents that I saw. My father's parents and my mother's father died before I was born. But she had a keen sense of humor, and she knew so many things and told the most delightful stories, and we did love Grandma. She would come and stay with us in her old age for long visits, and that was a great event in our childhood. But if I'm going to keep on talking about my parents it would take a tape recorder from here to around the world and back to tell all I know about them. (17:46, Part 1)

CDJ: All right. Well we know now something of your background.

FRD: Well anyway, let me say this about the Sorsby family. Grandma and Grandpa Sorsby had twelve children and three of them died in infancy. Nine lived to be adults. There were three boys in the family and only one of those boys married, and he had a family of six or seven children. In those days it seemed that they always had large families but there'd be three or four of them to die in infancy so there were never so many of them that lived to adulthood. But Uncle Ben, my mother's oldest brother, had four boys and one girl to live to adulthood, and all of them are dead except this daughter, Effie, about whom I've spoken a moment ago as having the papers. So far as I know she's still living. The last I knew of her she was a Mrs. F.S. Miles, and Mr. Miles was from Atlanta, Georgia, so I'm going to ask my son, Renfrow, who's now living in Atlanta, to see if he can find out at least whether there was a death certificate filed for her or whatnot has become of her. (19:08, Part 1)

Well anyway, my father and mother, when he came home from the Civil War, he had seen Mother when she was a little girl. She was nine years old when the war began and about the first year during the war he came home and one sunshiny morning he was riding his horse along past the Sorsby plantation. My mother and her brothers and other children were playing a game called Chase the Fox and Mother was the fox. She had hidden herself in what we call the jamb of the fence. That was a log fence, the rails laid, you know, crisscross. The object of the game was to find the fox, and of course they always pretended that they had killed the fox. So her older brother had found her and he was pretending to beat her over the head with a horn, and my father rode up and he said, "Well hold on there, little boy. You'll hurt that little girl. Stop hitting her with that horn." My mother said she looked up to see the handsomest man she had ever seen in her life, sitting astride a horse, and he was in his Confederate uniform. So her brother stopped beating her with the horn and my father rode on. (20:42, Part 1)

That afternoon she went to the dressmaker's to get her dress fitted and my father rode up into the yard at the dressmaker's home to get a pair of boots made by the dressmaker's father, Old Man Tisdale, who was the shoemaker. My father looked around and said, "Aren't you the little girl I saw this morning playing Chase the Fox?" and she said yes. So he said, "Well, I've come to get my shoes made," and Miss Tisdale, the old lady that was getting ready to fit Mother's dress, said to her, said, "Ellen, your hair is getting too long. You ought to have it cut." She said, "Well, there are no barbers here to cut my hair," and my father said, "Well I'm a barber, because I've learned to do barber work since I've been in the army. Get up in this chair here and I'll cut your hair for you." (21:47, Part 1)

So they put a dictionary-Mother was nine years old-they put a dictionary up on the... About ten I guess she was then, because he'd been in the war about a year and she was nine when the war started. So they put a dictionary in a chair and she sat up on the dictionary to make her the right height and he cut the ends of her curly hair, and it fell on the floor and he picked up a lock of it and picked up a string, or a little piece of cloth from the dress that Ms. Tisdale was making for my mother, and tied it around that lock of hair and put it in his pocketbook and went back to the war and stayed for three years. After he and Mother were married, he gave her that little keepsake that he'd had all those years and said that he'd made up his mind when he saw that little girl that day that he was going to marry her when he came back from the war. My little granddaughter, little Frances, loves for me to tell her that story. I told it to her this morning before we got out of bed. She asked me, says, "Tell me the story about the lady that was your grandma.

CDS: Your mother. (22:58, Part 1)

FRD: My mother, her grandma-great-grandmother. So that was a little bit of romance in my mother's life that she always enjoyed telling us, but I know once she said she was going to write the story of her life and my sister said, "Well Mother, you haven't had enough romance in your life," and she said, "Well good heavens, no one ever loved a man better than I loved Perry Renfrow." To Mother just the mere fact that she loved him as long as she had was romance, [Laughs] and I guess it was, when you look at some of the endings that come to marriages in this day and time.

But my mother and father had it awfully hard because my grandfather was much opposed to her marriage to my father, not that he didn't like my father but simply because of the fact that she was so young, and my mother's...[There was] thirteen years' difference in their ages. But my father, you see, had no real trade. He came back from the war; he went in without a trade and he came back having to just make his living the best way he can. He'd simply worked on his father's farm until he was married and when he came back they had such a little bit of land to divide up between all those children that he had to go looking out for himself. (24:18, Part 1)

Well, he did farm. He learned to be quite a good construction man. He could build houses and he could build all sorts of things and he learned to be a surveyor. He took it up by himself. Mother and Father's children were all born in Nashville, and in 1887 the town of Spring Hope in Nash County was started and it was nine miles west of Nashville. My father told my mother that he thought it would be a good idea for the family to move up to Spring Hope, that he was going to build the railroad station for the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad and that he thought there would be a great deal of work up there, that it was in the heart of a good farming area with much lumber to be cut and shipped, and that he thought it would be a good idea to move there. Well, she didn't want to leave Nashville but she consented to do so, of course, and they moved to Spring Hope.(25:25, Part 1)

They found a one-room house with a little shed room onto the back of it, and so they stored their furniture and lived there in that house during the summer, and the boys usually slept out under the trees at night on cots or pallets. They went to work on our cottage home and finished it in September, late in September, and they had just gotten moved in when I was born on October 13, 1887, and I was the first child born in the town of Spring Hope. Whenever I am there, or anybody from Spring Hope sees me, they say something about that and they call me the "Virginia Dare" of Spring Hope. So far as I know I am the only person who knows positively that he or she was the first person born in a given town. I don't think it's any particular thing to be proud of but it adds a little interest to my life, and I love my little old town of Spring Hope and I go back there whenever I can and I have many devoted and loyal friends there. My parents are buried there. (26:38, Part 1)

My oldest sister married James Oliver May, of the prominent Nash County family, and they had no children but they adopted a nephew of my brother-in-law's, James Oliver May, Jr., and have brought him up. They brought him up and he is a nice, good citizen of that town now and has two little boys of his own, and I think of him as being my only relative in Spring Hope, not a blood relative but a young man that I love very dearly. (27:14, Part 1)

I lived in Spring Hope until 1905. In 1900, after I had had a number of years of schooling. Of course I started to school at the age of six as other children do and went to school in Spring Hope and my life was just like that of the average school child. They would stand me up to say speeches on Friday afternoons, and the first speech I ever said in public was a little recitation, with a doll in my arm, spoken at the Christmas tree in the Baptist church. We would have a Christmas tree at Christmas, with the Methodist and the Baptist church combining and having all the children come for the Christmas tree, and we'd get a gift and we'd get apples and oranges. One of my recollections [Unclear 28:11] taught me a lesson that I have never forgotten. They would pile the fruit around the tree and after the presents had been distributed then they would say, "One, two, three," and all the children were permitted to rush up to the tree and get the fruit from around the tree. Well, I rushed up to the tree and I was going to be smart. I lifted my dress with my ruffled petticoat showing underneath, but what cared I if I got all the fruit I wanted, and I filled my lap full of oranges. Then I looked around and I saw bananas on the other side of the tree, and bananas are my favorite fruit, so I dropped the oranges and ran around to get the bananas but before I got there the boys had grabbed the bananas and I came away from the tree without any fruit at all. So [Laughs] from that day to this I've always tried my best to make myself satisfied with the first thing I got, [Laughs] at least not turn it loose until I was sure I had the other bird in hand. [Laughs] I can remember now how ashamed I was when I got home and had to admit I had nothing. [Laughs] (29:22, Part 1)

Well, they said I was a smart little girl in school, and I did used to win prizes for being able to say the multiplication table and recite the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments and things like that. When I was about-well, in 1900. How old was I then? I was thirteen years old. It was just before my thirteenth birthday. They sent me to Wilmington and let me go to school in the [Unclear 29:52] Graded School, and I've always felt that it was a great mistake that, when my mother got sick in January, that they called me home instead of letting me stay on for the rest of the year, because I learned so much in that school. I remember the teacher giving us every day a lesson in civil government and it was then that my keenest interest in government was aroused, and ever after that until very recently I was able to tell you the names of every one of the cabinet members, the names of the United States senators, the names of the presidents, and things like that. I just had an interest in government and kept it up and have never gotten over it. (30:39, Part 1)

But I stayed in Wilmington most of that winter, as I said, and the last of January I had to go back to Spring Hope and help take care of my sick mother. The next fall I still wasn't prepared for college so my father and three or four other families in the town, realizing that the little school in Spring Hope-which was what we called an "entered school," e-n-t-e-r-e-d, entered school, and it meant you entered your children and paid so much for them to go to school, if there wasn't enough money in the treasury to run it as a public school. But that year they didn't like the teacher they had, and so Father and three or four other families got a young lady, Miss Laura Edgerton from Lewisburg, to come to Spring Hope and run a private school, and she got me ready to enter Littleton College the next fall. So I went to Littleton two years, and there I had an interesting experience. I won a scholarship and was able to go the second year on that scholarship. The scholarship was withdrawn though, or rather it wasn't available for competition and I didn't get it the third year. (32:00, Part 1)

So the family moved down to Bertie County so my father could help my brother in his farm work. My father had had an accident and was not able to carry on any active work but he could sit around my brother, Tom's, store and look after his livestock that he had for sale, and so the family moved there. I stayed there for three months, but the last of April I decided I was going to take a business course and by borrowing the money and making arrangements I came to Raleigh and took a business course in Jones Business College, and on the first day of January, 1906, I went to work for the Seaboard Air Line Railroad in Raleigh as stenographer in the master mechanic's office. Isn't that about all we have time for me to tell now?

CDJ: Where was it Bertie County where they lived?

FRD: At Woodville and Lewiston. They're two little towns with a railroad dividing them. (33:01, Part 1)

[End tape one, side one]

CDJ: Maybe you can tell us something about his childhood and background. First of all, I'd like to have, for the grandchildren's sake and ours, a little history of your family. Start off with your father and tell us who he was, and who your granddaddy was, and where they came from, as best you know.

CDS: As best I know they came from Ireland, my grandfather did, but my father was born and raised in North Carolina.

CDJ: Where was he born?

CDS: He was born in-I believe it was Guilford County, over near Stokesdale.

CDJ: That was your father, my granddaddy.

CDS: Yes. (1:04, Part 2)

CDJ: And of course he was an infant when he was born. [Laughs]

CDS: He was the son, the only son in the family. There was eight sisters-nine sisters, I believe there was-and he was the youngest one in the family.

CDJ: Did you ever see any of your aunts?

CDS: Oh, yes. I saw all five of them.

CDJ: Well where do they live, or are any of their descendants living around Guilford College now, or Stokesdale?

CDS: Not around Stokesdale. There's none of those sisters living now, no. There's Barretts in High Point, of course, children of Aunt Jane. I believe it was Aunt Jane.

CDJ: [Pause] [Unclear 2:12] Does the light [Unclear 2:16] when you talk? Well then, it's bound to be on record. (2:20, Part 2)

CDS: My father had two whole sisters and the rest of them were half-sisters. My grandfather was married twice.

CDJ: And your father was married twice.

CDS: And my father was married twice. My father had four children in the first marriage. There was my sister, Mamie, my brothers Bud and Will, and then Eula, your Aunt Eula.

CDJ: She's the only one that's still living.

CDS: She's the only one that's still living. She's living in Greensboro. My father and mother were married when my sister, Eula, was nine years old. Father was sixteen years older than Mother.

CDJ: Well now, what happened to your father's first wife? She died, I assume.

CDS: Yes, she died there in Greensboro.

CDJ: What was her name, before your father married her? Do you remember? (3:24, Part 2)

CDS: [Unclear 3:25]

FRD: [Unclear 3:27] Your father's first wife was a-was it a Balsley?

CDS: Yes, that's right. She was a Balsley.

CDJ: In other words, then, your grandmother was named Coble, and your father married-the first woman he married was named Balsley.

CDS: Yes, I think that's right.

CDJ: And then he married Emily Watson.

CDS: Yes.

CDJ: Now, where did he meet Emily Watson? Did you ever hear him say?

CDS: I think he met her in Greensboro. My grandmother and her two daughters came over from down near Brighton, England, and when my grandmother was married the first time she married a Watson, and the next time she married was a man named Buck, and he had one son, and Granny Buck was the sister of Mr. Buck's wife. [Unclear 4:34] On her deathbed she asked Grandmother to take care of her son, and when Grandmother came to this country she married Mr. Buck.

CDJ: He was an Englishman too. (4:58, Part 2)

CDS: Yes, and he owned a farm out there where [Unclear 5:02] Mill is now.

CDJ: Well how in the world did he happen to get over here from England with his wife?

CDS: He didn't come with his wife. His wife died before-.

CDJ: No, I mean with his wife, who was your grandmother, Granny Buck.

CDS: My grandmother came over here.

CDJ: But she came with her husband, didn't she?

CDS: I don't think so.

CDJ: Oh, he came first and then she came second.

CDS: Yes.

CDJ: I see.

FRD: [Unclear 5:26]

CDJ: Oh, I see. In England then there was a law saying that he couldn't marry her so he came over here and got settled and then she came over here and brought your mother.

CDS: And Aunt Alice. (5:42, Part 2)

CDJ: And your mother then was not the daughter of Mr. Buck.

CDS: No.

CDJ: She was the daughter of Mr. Watson. What happened to Mr. Watson?

CDS: He died [Unclear 5:53]

CDJ: Before-.

CDS: Granny Buck ever left England.

CDJ: Yes, I see.

CDS: And then Mother and Mr. Buck left Grandmother and moved to Canada, and wanted her to go along with him and Mother and Aunt Alice. She wouldn't go but he took the [Unclear 6:22] and went on to Canada. He was a great man for stock, raising nice horses [Unclear 6:29]. So he left this country and went to Canada, and Granny Buck would not go with him, so she continued to live on the farm. He gave her the farm there and she continued to live there on the farm right outside of Greensboro, and then [Unclear 6:54]. (6:54, Part 2)

Mother was very musical and she taught music, and after my father married my mother. They'd never had music at Guilford College because the Quakers didn't believe in music at that time, but my mother wasn't Quaker. She was Presbyterian and my father was Methodist. But Dr. Hobbs, President Hobbs at Guilford College, asked my mother if she would come to Guilford and run a private music class there, and she did. She did that for some time and then [Unclear 7:49], I reckon, because when I was less than a year old she bought a lot and built out there at Guilford College, the same place where you and Renfrow bought. I was raised. There were three other children-my sister, Nell, Bob, Henry, and I-and I was the youngest. Mother had the music pupils come down to the house to take their lessons, and in later years, a few years after that, they built a cottage up there on the campus and she taught music for about fifteen years there at Guilford College, and we were all raised there [Unclear 8:54] the campus at Guilford College. (8:58, Part 2)

CDJ: Well, do you recall about what year was it that she started teaching music?

CDS: '84, I think it was, the year I was born.

CDJ: You were born October the 7th, 1884. Now, your father-.

CDS: It might have been [Unclear 9:24]

CDJ: Well now, you know when you were born, '84. You're talking about-.

CDS: I mean the time we moved to Guilford, when I was about a year old. Then of course my father still worked in Greensboro. He worked for [Unclear 9:49] See, he was a slave owner, and he never married until after his mother died. When the war came along and took the slaves away from all the Southerners, why, he had never [Unclear 10:08] real manual labor much till he lost all his [Unclear 10:11 property and decided it wasn't worth it]. He had a lot of land but that's all he had.

CDJ: He was what they call land poor. (10:21, Part 2)

CDS: Land poor. And he went on [Unclear 10:23]. He tried to go to work in his later years [Unclear 10:31] and he worked at [Unclear 10:33] and he worked for a number of years there. Then when they moved to Guilford in a year or so he gave up the job in Greensboro and worked there at Guilford in a country store, a general mercantile store, for Lee Smith.

CDJ: Well now.

CDS: Then he worked for-.

CDJ: .Lee Smith, is that the same fellow that's still out in Guilford?

CDS: Still over there at Guilford. He worked for Lee Smith and John McCracken and [Sheriff Wheeler 11:15] in their stores out there.

CDJ: Well now, you grew up at Guilford College and went to... Was there a public school there at Guilford College?

CDS: Yes, a public school, a free school we called it.

CDJ: And how far did that take you in your school work, about to what grade?

CDS: Well, I don't know. About the sixth or seventh grade, I reckon.

CDJ: And then when you finished that school, where did you go? (11:44, Part 2)

CDS: Well, there wasn't any high schools in the country then. The only few high schools were in the larger cities. Guilford College had a preparatory department connected with their college, and I did my high school work there at the preparatory department of Guilford College. That's why I played on the Guilford College team seven years.

CDJ: [Laughs] Well now, when you finished your preparatory work, how old were you then?

CDS: Well, let's see. When I first played at Guilford was in 1900. I wasn't in college then but I was [Unclear 12:28] grade school. Then, in 1904, I played with the college. I was in preparatory school then, 1904.

CDJ: So that would have made you-in 1904-that would have made you twenty years old.

CDS: Twenty years old, yes. Played football and baseball with them that year and then I carried on [Unclear 12:56]. Not every year did I play with them. The one year I-.

CDJ: What did you do that year? Do you remember?

CDS: I entered professional baseball in 1905. (13:12, Part 2)

CDJ: Well in that time you could play college and professional too.

CDS: Yes. Then I dropped out of pro ball and stayed in amateur ball, played with an amateur team in Emporia, Virginia and managed a club at Pulaski, Virginia in 1907. Then in 1908 I went back into pro ball with Greensboro and I played there, and then I was in Charlotte pro ball, Winston-Salem, and in the South Atlantic League with Montgomery, Alabama and Charleston, South Carolina. No, I started at Albany in the South Atlantic and they broke up [Unclear 14:03] so I went to Montgomery, Alabama, and then the league cut down to six clubs and they transferred me over to Charleston, the league did, and I finished the season at Charleston. [Unclear 14:19] Then I dropped out of pro ball and stayed out of it for some little time. Then I started coaching there at Guilford, full time coach, in the fall of 1910, I believe it was. Wasn't it, Fran, or '11?

FRD: What? (14:44, Part 2)

CDS: When I started coaching at Guilford. Fall of 1910, wasn't it, or '11?

FRD: [Unclear 14:50]

CDS: Fall of 1910, and I stayed there till '14 and then went to Chapel Hill and coached basketball and baseball over there for two years and then went over to Trinity College, which is now Duke University, and coached there for two years. Then I went from there-.

CDJ: What made you decide to go from Carolina to Trinity?

CDS: Well, I was there... I don't know, just... They dropped me there at Carolina, I reckon. I don't know. They changed coaches all around. Doggie Trenchard was there, the football coach, and when he left all the rest of us left. Then I was at Trinity for two years. Then in-.

CDJ: Let's see now, what years were you at Trinity?

CDS: Then in 1918 I-.

FRD: You got there in the fall of '16.

CDJ: You were at Trinity in fall of '16. (15:57, Part 2)

CDS: No, the spring of '17 and the spring of '18. I coached basketball and baseball there. Then I left there and went to Hopewell, Virginia and worked in that powder plant until the war closed, and then my brother-in-law, Ben Renfrow, and I bought... In December, 1918, about the middle of December, I got into Raleigh and he and I bought the. [Unclear 16:39] ran the store over here [Unclear 16:43] and Ben and I bought him out, and I stayed in the grocery business there then, with Ben, until Paul [Unclear 16:56] partnership, and I ran that caf? over there a little while and then [Unclear 17:04] bought that from me and I went back to Duke, or Trinity College, and coached the baseball team in '21, or '20. '21, I guess. Then I came back here and [Unclear 17:24] and I bought Ben Renfrow out, and we ran that store for three years together. Then in the spring of '22 I coached the freshman baseball team at State, and in '23. And then Joe and I decided to get out of the store business and went into the foundry business with the [Unclear 17:54] Company. I stayed in that less than a year.

CDJ: What was that fellow's name, Huddleston, that you-? (18:01, Part 2)

CDS: Huddleston and [Unclear 18:01].

CDJ: Huddleston and [Unclear 18:03].

CDS: Yes. Then in the spring of '24 I coached the varsity over here, varsity baseball, and then in the fall of '24 I joined the teaching staff at State College and went into teaching physical education and still coached baseball until 1940, the year that you and Peanut would have been sophomores.

CDJ: Well that was... Yes, that was probably 1940, because in the spring of '39 we were [Unclear 18:43].

CDS: I haven't coached any baseball since. I did physical education work up until last year and then they retired me, and then they asked me to come back this fall, and I'm now teaching again in the physical education department. I played. In my younger days, I started out... The first amateur ball I played was in '98 in High Point [Unclear 19:22] and I stayed in baseball through a long number of years. At Guilford I played all sports. I played football, basketball, baseball, and ran track. (19:42, Part 2)

CDJ: Well now, what do you remember as the most vivid thing in your childhood, any one particular thing that stands out in your childhood in the way of an event or happening, something that happened to you?

CDS: Happened to me?

CDJ: Yes. Like, some children can remember more than anything else when they got a spanking, or when they did something good, or-.

CDS: I remember getting a whipping for being late coming home from the grocery store because I stopped and played baseball. Mother give me a whipping and I ran away from home and stayed two days.

CDJ: Where'd you stay?

CDS: I stayed around in the neighborhood there. [Laughs](20:32, Part 2)

CDJ: [Laughs]

FRD: [Unclear 20:33]

CDJ: [Unclear 20:34] [Laughs]

FRD: Did your mother know where you were?

CDS: Yes.

CDJ: She wasn't much worried then.

CDS: No, she didn't worry about it.

CDJ: [Laughs]

CDS: I just spent one night away from home. [Unclear 20:51]

CDJ: Well, did she whip you when you came back home then?

CDS: No, no, she [Unclear 20:56].

CDJ: [Laughs]

CDS: Then one of the outstanding things, when I was a kid the first coach I ever had in baseball was Lucian Simms that lived in the neighborhood there, and he pitched some mighty good baseball. [Unclear 21:20] he pitched way back then. Lucian was pitching for Guilford, and Bob Stafford was playing with Oak Ridge Institute, and they used to have good teams. Both of them were good ball clubs. Harris Bristow, a Guilford student. One day when Oak Ridge and Guilford was playing and Lucian was pitching for Oak Ridge and Bob Stafford was playing... I mean Lucian was pitching for Guilford and Bob Stafford was playing for Oak Ridge, and Bob was a wonderful hitter. Bristow told Lucian, he said, "I'll give you a silver dollar for every time you strike Bob Stafford out today." I was sitting at the foot of that big old oak up there where they used to play baseball, and this game went fifteen innings, and Lucian struck Bob Stafford out four times in that game and every time he struck him out Bristow would rise up and roll him a silver dollar out across the mound. I can see that silver dollar rolling out across that mound. (22:38, Part 2)

CDJ: [Laughs] You can see that right now.

CDS: Right now I can see that dollar rolling out there.

CDJ: Made quite an impression, I reckon.

CDS: Then another instance that happened when I was playing at Guilford in basketball in the last year I played. We were champions of North Carolina. It came down to beating Wake Forest and all of them. We were to play Tennessee-the University of Tennessee were champions of Tennessee-on Friday night, and they had to ride trains in those days and they didn't get to Guilford until 11:00 at night so we couldn't play them that night. But they still wanted to play us, and we were due to play Virginia, who had been [Unclear 23:42] and they had whipped us [Unclear 23:45]. So we were due to play Virginia on Saturday night but Tennessee was so insisting on wanting to play and they didn't want to stay over till Monday. So we played them Saturday afternoon and we gave them a licking and then beat Virginia that night, and we beat them twenty to nineteen, I remember that. I don't remember what the score was with Tennessee but we beat them fairly easy. We only had six players. That's all we had. We had a squad of about ten men but there wasn't but six of us that ever played. All of us, we would go in a game and play forty minutes. We didn't take any rest or anything, just went out and played.(24:35, Part 2)

I had the good success there at Guilford with my baseball and basketball. [Unclear 24:45] Ernie Shore as pitcher and Tiny [Unclear 24:52] catcher. Tiny and I had a record there the last year I played at Guilford. I played shortstop, and we never had a stolen base on us the whole spring. [Unclear 25:07]

CDJ: In basketball I've heard you speak about.

CDS: Charlie [Unclear 25:17].

CDJ: .[Unclear 25:18]

CDS: .and a young fellow named Winslow who played center for us, from down here in the eastern part of the state, about six feet four or five. Just a country boy, but he learned how to play basketball [Unclear 25:28].

CDJ: Well, in all your athletic career, what would be-?

FRD: [Unclear 25:47]

CDJ: What would you say, if anything that you can name, was the greatest thrill you had in athletics? I know that's a question that's asked a lot of athletes and I have to laugh because I think that events like that only-they grow in magnitude as people talk about them and actually at the time they happen you couldn't tell whether it's the greatest event or not. But do you recall-? (26:25, Part 2)

CDS: Well, I've had so many I don't know.

CDJ: [Laughs] So many events, you mean.

CDS: I remember one time when we was playing Winston-Salem and I was playing professional ball with Greensboro. We had pop-flied down there at third base with two out, foul ball, and I dropped it, and then they had a couple of men on base. Of course they didn't score then but they scored later and tied us up. My dropping that fly ball. It would have been the third out. Then we went on for twelve innings and I came up in the twelfth inning and I doubled down the left field foul line and scored a man. [That run] won us the ballgame. [That] made me feel about as good as anything I've ever done, because Winston and Greensboro were big rivals. (27:26, Part 2)

CDJ: Yes. Any time you can erase a mistake with a good play that way.

CDS: I remember one time when I was playing basketball there at Wake Forest, the coach who was coaching at Wake Forest, they had a write-up in the paper that they were going south and they were going to play Guilford in an exhibition game-a practice game-on the start of their trip, and we beat them thirty-three to eleven.

CDJ: [Laughs] Well, it was a type of game [Unclear 28:01] The paper had it right; they just had the shoe on the wrong foot.

FRD: [Unclear 28:13]

CDJ: Well I suppose that you would consider that you've had a successful married life. Even while we're making this recording your spouse [Laughs] is continuing in a vein that she has long continued in. [Laughs] (28:36, Part 2)

CDS: Well, in 1913... Well in 1908, when I was in Greensboro playing ball, there was a certain young lady by the name of Miss Frances Blount Renfrow who came to Greensboro as a secretary in the law firm of [Unclear 29:04], and she boarded at my sister-in-law's boarding house, my half-brother's widow.

CDJ: Who was that?

CDS: Sister Ella. She had never been much interested in baseball-that is, Frances Blount Renfrow had not been interested in baseball-but my sister-in-law was just crazy about baseball and she got her to go out there and see us play one afternoon, and I did fairly well, I guess, and she wanted to meet me, so.

RFD: What?

CDJ: [Laughs]

CDS: Sister Ella introduced us that night at the supper table. [Laughs]

CDJ: [Laughs] She wanted to meet you, huh?

FRD: [Laughs]

CDS: [Laughs] That's what she told me. (30:04, Part 2)

CDJ: That's what she told you? [Laughs]

FRD: [Laughs]

CDJ: Now what's this vicious rumor that I heard about? [Laughs]

FRD: Now, don't you tell that now. [Laughter]

CDS: So we met and we got to going together there [Laughter] and enjoying each other's company. I went over to Salisbury to play a game [after the season was over with 30:34] and when I left she said, "Well, I guess I won't see you anymore," and I said, I'll be back before you leave." So I came back and we kept up our acquaintance, and finally in 1913 we decided that it was about time we was getting married, I reckon.

CDJ: Now, [when did you meet her], in 1906?

CDS: 1908.

CDJ: 1908, and you went with her for five years.

CDS: Yes.

CDJ: You wanted to kind of make sure. [Laughs] (31:07, Part 2)

CDS: I used to make trips down here to Raleigh, and we made trips down here at the fair and we'd go out to the fair, and State would always play a football game there during the fair. Came down here one time; she invited me down to see State play Georgetown. Georgetown had a fellow named Costello. The only time I've ever known her to want to leave [31:38 early]. Georgetown beat us-beat State-that day forty-eight to nothing. Costello just run up and down the field and about the third quarter she was ready to leave. I said no. I wanted to see Costello run some more.

CDJ: [Laughs] She was pulling for State, huh?

CDS: And the next year she invited me down again because State had imported about four or five of the Georgetown players down here, [Unclear 32:07] and some others, and they got the coach down here from Georgetown, and they beat Georgetown that day twelve to nothing. (32:15, Part 2)

CDJ: [Laughs] So [Unclear 32:18] of athletics is nothing new, huh? [Laughter] Well this has been an interesting broadcast. [Laughs]

CDS: Then we got married and lived together happily ever after.

FRD: [Laughs]

CDJ: [Laughs] That's right. Well, what ambition do you have for yourself now that you've gone back to the college? You get to teach out this year.

CDS: Oh, I wouldn't mind staying another year after this. If I could finish out this year I wouldn't mind another one. I feel like I've kind of served my time in the teaching profession and I wouldn't give up the teaching profession for anything I know of. There's not too much money in it but there certainly is satisfaction, if you don't take it too serious. (33:19, Part 2)

[End tape one, side two]