[This text is machine generated and may contain errors.]

Emma Dupree [0:11]
Raised 'round a town bout two miles of Falkland on the farm Dupree Farm and it was my life then helping peoples, fixing my herbs, taking it to 'em food and so on like that on up every year and every year and finally my mother stopped farming. We moved right in the little town of Falkland. And I served 15 years with Eaton King, his wife named Daisy and so on. I served there and was married there twice. And my last husband, I went to work where he was working at with Dr. Jennis Morrill, for 15. I still was making my herbs and helping him out with his medicine [for] all and any kind of sickness, I always did and all I made fix and rubbin' and pneumonia and dropsy. In 1918 the influenza when it begun I toted my tea and so on the Lord just let it work. And it's been working I've been doing it all my life and on up until now. They have found me some of my herbs self heal many dangerous things. Diseases, complaints, and arthritis and sugar and Bright Kidney Disease and cirrhosis [of the] liver, so on and that's the story that they is telling. I get calls and they comes and get my herbs biggest of them raised here on my yard. And they tell the story that is happenin'. And I gets mighty good views, I'll get mighty good views from some of the different doctor that don't know anything about my life. But this life of mine I was told I was an itty bitty girl. Six years old, my daddy took me to the Seven Spring, and I got 14 I went myself. So it's just my life, I already did it. And they always used it. They use my food, they use my popcorn they use little cone come out the body they use anything that I fed on them. They were nice, yes they were nice anything and people doctored it, with the doctors help with the herbs. They just doctored it with the same herbs, mullein, and [inaudible], heart leaves, redshank and so on right all that kinda herbs and it healed it, it helped it did. Well the water was more purified then it is now the water was well water and pump water on that was iron, that was pure iron and the food, vegetables, iron spiders, iron pots, stone bowls, wooden trays and they had no ice box much. The babies meals I helped tied it a string to a jar and let it down in the well to keep it for the babies, it didn't sour. You have your meats and so on, you have your food, barbeque and so on and you get a coal out of your have for your stove and lay it around in the bowl. You could keep it 'til Tuesday. And I used to buy this block of ice, the ice truck would come along and you'd lay in the ground and sprinkle some salt over it and wrap it up in brown paper and bury in the ground go cut you off some when you want it. And well that's our food and chickens and hogs and everything they were raised different. The food from then was better than the food we're eating now. And I think it's poisoned and you know the pipes we run up and down here and my drank I worked hard and this morning I cleaned it. And that rust if it drip on anything they ain't ever gettin' out. A little while and high do it settle inside the liver, intestines, kidneys and the bladder, and blood so on. And I just think that but the Lord said it and the word is true He said for the end that there would be diseases that no doctor couldn't comprehend and He said that we had been it would be again.

[5:21]
So I gets called different from you, been doing it, back in my big life, cooking, and herbs. So that's that's the Bible going back to what He said and we read in what He said. All the different cancer diseases and all the different cancer mind killing cells and their whole family and all that His word so that this way I live it and that this way I believe the Bible God said His word would not fail for it would have me not pass away so that's it. We is eating and living and death. Poison, poison what has it done to your blood and that's everything, your nose and just everything. Its showing you doing it no good. I don't remember this [inaudible] but that's what the Lord said. We will run in contact me and I don't know I must say myself. I was born with it because I always did it, just as far back as I remember. A real old man I stole my mother's they call it [inaudible] compacted in it. And I had slipped it I know I carried it for him from mid town and [Bar Merlin] was hardly able to lift up his leg and put in there. I ended up seeing his legs had busted open [inaudible].

[6:56]
But it healed it then, it healed that leg. He had a daughter, my granddaughter and they head to work that same month, July, bunching cotton. The leg busted open and so I just already did it. And nobody never mind I used the nothing that I often do for them, white or colored. My herbs I could rub em, make my grease and cook my food and they would eat that plenty. They had a plenty food they just placed on it.

[7:35]
It worked just like any other medicine that come from the pure medical education doctors. It just work all over your body and God just get in it and just let it help. Helping it, this red plane, a lot of it grow right round here, in my yard. Good for you unless you can buy it and you pay for it. Catnip, green sage, you buy sage put that in your bathroom, put that in your food. They don't even do that now, golly know that way you session your food we ate back in them days, they don't use that anymore. See that's got a whole lot to do, do with you. Whatever you eat if that's feeding everything [inaudible]. Blood and nerve system, straight, that is everything. So diseases the way it is now, I don't know nothing else but just that. We just eating our diseases and dranking it. The heat the cooks our food, thats poison. you make your biscuits, your cake, or whatsoever and put in that stove when you smell that scent time every time you open it, it's in your food when you was cooking with wood, cast iron was quite better. Then there's gass and electric and all that stuff that we've eaten and smelling and this and the deep freezer and then the cabinet and you put it in hot grease whatever you frying, steak and so on. And time it heated and you go to bite it and about all under come off in your mouth and bone is a bone in it is blue black butcher it's done frozen rotten. Now that is the way it is and I know y'all have hadn't eaten it, seen it like that. Watch it if you happen. That's just this way it is and we have pipes all these here pipes. It's not iron, like the old pump pipes.

[9:50]
And then there's a well, was drawn in fresh water. Just like just like you all took me from that spring, purified water right out of the ground but they come and they put something in it they tell me I don't know that and them old nasty pipes is a site and they keep up them little pipes by running a stick in there and see that rust and it open like [inaudible] and you drink from it. What do you think about that? What is it? That's what is you know you know whatever go inside it, it goes all over. It's stuck in here. I get calls and they come and get my [herb], the biggest of them I raised here in my yard.

[10:40]
That's horseradish.

Speaker 1 [10:41]
Go over and get a piece for us and show us what to do with it.

Emma Dupree [10:46]
Now you can use this in any way, any kind of way you want to you lay it, lay it on you for a fever. Just anywhere, your chest, or your head, shoulders, you know anywhere the fever is and I have it for high blood, I have put it right up there, a little epsom salt and a little [inaudible] will bring your blood down just like that. Now I ain't known it to fail. I just ain't known it to fail. And this leaf it was a house right back there, Dr. [Beisel] was our doctor here and they sent some with him because they know for that boys and couldn't find out what kind of fever he had and this right by itself and [inaudible]. Cleared his fever in less than a half a day. Because then the demo time and you can hardly tell that boy was breathing. You just had a summon, summon round the neighbors. And this [inaudible and vinegar] laid all over his stomach. All back there in [vinegar] and it was in the dinner time and it was in this month, putting in tobacco, in that evening, I didn't watch the time, but it took a long time for night. He told his mom he was ready to eat and got nothing in him that week. Just this plant by itself. But you know they don't have a nurse with it. It don't take nothing but Jesus, and I don't talk about it unless I'm talking to him about it too. I'm standing here talking to you just like this till night and there'll be some og him talking in me to the power of Jesus. I recall everything we made He made it. He put life and power in everything. He [inaudible], the wind, and everything it belongs to Him. This root here grows, he grows like a man but this was on the side of the house this is poke sallet. It has their arms and has their legs and everything and this is what we ate and grew. My mama lived and drank some of this and I helped gut it and boil it and she drank the juice and I'd get all the meat I could and make her [pancake].

[13:02]
This is Jimsonweed. This [inaudible] but you can smoke it. I've got it for people, people and dried and crumble two and put them in a box and sell them for the smoke off in their pipe. Real old.

[13:37]
This is purple when it gets ripe. Purple. I've made one wine for what kind of rheumatism where they say their bursitis and arthritis to the new red and rheumatism and rheumatic rheumatism. That still was three things when you see the arthritis and the neuritis and the bursitis. Same thing but it's also called you full of cold and multiple diseases and you will be. You go naked and go bareheaded and all that and they will the shoes and the stockings. Now this right here, well that's turtle oil. You know what a turtle is don't you? Well that's oil out of him, that's the fat from him. That's for rheumatism and that's what you use way back in them days, you would just get a turtle and get the fat and the sun dries it up, the oil, that's what they did.

[14:38]
Well the tree there, I really don't know the name of that tree. My granddaughter had the Rickets in rheumatic rheumatism and Dr. [Ian] in Greenville was her doctor and she was sickly and thin and weakly and Mrs. [Servase] had that tree and brought her some of the berries. They was ripe at that time and told me to feed her on it and then bury the limbs and that will heal because it's a healing berry tree. So it's healing to the nation. So that's the name that she gave me. But that tree is in the old fashioned Bible, but I don't know where that's the name and the seed in it [come on off], seed on it come on the other side from [grown] and them little apples and I packed some up I didn't last year but year before last but I give a lady a quart jar that I did have packed up. We had sugar she said the doctor couldn't do [nothing with it]. I give her that jar of berries and it helped, she said. I pack them up in brown sugar, rock candy, you know? And honey, you know just pack them up and let that just draw their strength of the power in them out and it's like I got them cherries, ain't nothing to them cherries but rock candy and honey. See all that juice that come out from them cherries well that's a good [blood toner]. Cherries, wild cherries.

[16:22]
So that tree the big tree we just planted but you see that grown with the limb? That other tree with just like [inaudible]. But the children kill it getting it's berries and breaking the limbs so that's another one. But some of them berries and in fact even the leaves. Now last fall, in November my older sister lost her baby in Richmond and I went to the funeral and one of the boys, [Wyatt] the doctor, couldn't do nothing with the sugar she had and [looked just like you could just take and put your thing in her eye] get out you a [hunk of blood] the sugar it was so [high]. And I made her $6 worth of herbs, some of them leaves, the bark of the berries, of the leaves, you [just much power in them] that there is in the berry. All them got the same strength. I sent her that and rabbit [tobacco] and I put on one on [groups/roots] they were small I got a lot and I cook some of it, you eat that. You eat [pork sallet when it first come] up just like mustard green and it's good. And And when my brother died he had [inaudible]. He said the doctor said [he didn't know where his sugar went to]. [inaudible] He says she [doesn't know she bought it] until till the water wouldn't even get [color] and then I've seen her since then she don't look well [this included] in everything and a foot and legs they started turning [red] dark like it's supposed to be. So I just don't know all I knew it I was medicine the say you come get little medicine thing but whatsoever I heard they would use it, all of it. [inaudible], anything, they used it. So that's just what happened I learned a lot though from the doctors. They know quite natural ideas]. Helping him out with his medicine and keeping it all straight on the shelf and making herbs and of that site and then the doctor lady I'd go with her to [the night] to get her herbs she'd take [pains] and show me what that grew and what the root look like, there's all of that. Well that was you know that was only help to what [inaudible]. Oh we'd cook, I cook, cook and my mom didn't care she raised the plant and I'd go and take an axe and cut them down and cook and wash pot and [inaudible]. I'd take [inaudible] I could go and go on again in this and again it would keep on laying that's something to say they had never known to have. Put your hand on again just didn't lay down no more and I guess don't know what that just have it. That's what it was.

[19:38]
I have a maypop vine right in there. Now that's a healer of [inaudible]. It's right in there and they were two of them but you know, it got bruised. I don't know whether it'll make it or not. You can you can watch the leaves and pretty much can watch the leaves in anything and this'll tell about what it is. And that leaf ain't got but, ain't got but three of these but even still it's about shaped like a hand.

[20:22]
And when the maypop comes it smells like a banana and they good, they good for you. They use to eat them and grown folks and children too cause I have been and picked a many of them for the [male children, colored] who had been in the low ground at Falkland, but you can't find them down in their much. They took me over the river from Falkland around Penny Hill cut even around it and we passed back out of the field they had run down my birthday. I sat quiet a minute and they told me to get out and get them and set them out but I thought maybe I'd better stay there and maybe I could go back when when the maypop come on the vine. So that I know this was good but a lady in New York she had the [inaudible] at the heart and all Dr. [Ravel] told her they didn't know no help for her but the maypop. Any thing about the maypop you're taught the maypop, the maypop vine, root and anything, the only thing they know would help her and now a friend of mine here had met [inaudible] in New York she was visiting and then told us that well I have a friend that she really know herbs and what herbs works. Said and she knows the most thing and she sent me the money by the way and I sent it back and she sent it back. It was two years and I stepped on more on that railroad going to the blacksmith shop, our blacksmith man would tell me saying anything you got to cut me and bring to me I'd be glad to fix it for you. And I went and stepped on home, I told him I stepped on the snake and I bet that snake is older than me. He said well I gone have to kill it but happy to kill the snake but I went back and found it through the maypop, right in between the [Qian] and looking on the way to run I had run over I got eight and I sent them to her in the next summer she come set and she said the Lord kept me until you got me some. Said I'm well. She was here last summer. She owed a favor to one of this lady's daughter [funeral]. [inaudible]. She had them up, she cooked them and ate them up and drunk the broth from them. That is what she do, that's what she do with that.

[23:03]
Well now this mullein is a lung, kidney, [any part back there]. Now my mother you know used a lot of this [with lung trouble]. You part it right in this part I've got a lot of dry ground there. You boil it and just put your foot, put your stuff in that if you swell up. The fluid goes, it's settling going in your body and get dry and then you know there's a lot of them that lasts the knee and the ankle from the from the arthritis and the bursitis. The fluid get in there in the knee [hop up]. Well just bathe in that with white vinegar and epsom salt and put your foot in there and draw that out. While that's doing that it's doing that. Double tansy, high blood, [flooding] at the heart, [inaudible] couldn't get their breath and be there panting and run down my [inaudible] and cram it down in there like that and been on time for who could get it.

[24:28]
[inaudible]. This is uh catnip. You can tell the difference in that and you know that if you had buy this ground up it's just as expensive as can be. Catnip. That's sweet flag right there. That's a kidney colic that's charged ain't got to boil it. We ate the root. Now we ate as a kid we wouldn't [inaudible] in [piece]. That's what we ate, now smell it. That's the way it grewn.

[25:33]
Well I can go around and see what we find this way. I have too much, I pulled up a lot and lost them because I pulled up the sticks and I lost uh. This here is sassafras. They uh [inaudible] sassafras I had it there drying. Red. That right over there that's another kind of mint that's what's called [grip now that's something pure summertime] mint. This right over in here, grandman, grand my daddy's man and man all some of these. Come up with the root [inaudible]. Now you can smell the difference of that kind of mint, you can smell the difference. And that round there. This is my sage bush here and I believe I'm going to lose it cause don't care where I move that, my friends or somebody come get themselves some. See how they have a break in it?

[26:56]
They come in here they slips in here and break something. Now that is good medicine. That's good medicine good going in your food too. You can also boil it and it's good for you know ulcerated stomach and iron, now they back they drunk all of it and then they put it in their food, specially they pork meat. Pork, I cook and I will put some of that sage and pick it like picking a goose and and dry it and then you can grind till it's just like that you buy and cook in pork, any pork meat you put some of that in there and that will kill that poison of the animal and it's hog meat, pork meat, that's what I cook with. That's another thing for your stomach, they will they cook different, it is cooked, the food. I bought a ham cause a ham now won't cook. Put it in the oven the fresh ham, anything like that I always would layer some sage some time I put kind of bag, you know just wash and having a little bag and lay it round in there when I be baking a whole ham. It still would be in there taking some of the poison from the ham. Pork meat you know right now a lot of people can't eat it but they don't cook it right if they would cook it. It still wouldn't bother the blood, but you see they don't cook it. They just [scorch of it] and it's not done and if it's not done [inaudible] my son. You know he was well he had worked up and kept he didn't do the cooking so much he just give all of it to the oven to cook and I visit him, Fort Monroe up in Virginia and they had planted a big party for the gentleman's you know and so on and they wives and he just was head of seeing everything being cooked and fixed. Now no man put on pork meat, it cooked about anything without it being covered up. And they had to have the right cooked food, everything right for the surgeons and the best of medicine and they're still doctors, though this year boy was going into Dukes for his liver and kidney and the kidney bygone was gone in fact I think. And liver was just about gone with this cover. And one of my sons told me if I would seen a liver part shape and what it looked like and a human being said Mama since [inaudible] [I'd really think]. Said it looked just like what is covered covered over just like coming out of a little [home chimney] and then a [inaudible]. Looked like [pushing away you can hold]. He said the whole liver was like that. And he was kind of working on amongst the doctors. So I don't know. This is a herb. Some call it silkweed some call it butterfly weed, but this is a wonderful herb for high blood and bright kidneys and so on and it grows you look at it line and it grows down in their different. Grows in there different from the most herbs. This is mint. This is white mint. I've got three different kinds of mint round here. This is this good drink all for your kidneys and lungs and I drank a lot, I drank a lot of it. I drink this when it start to boil and I have me a cup with nothing in it. As soon as it get cold, I'm drinking it. I will cook it, boil it real good and get all the strength out of this herb. Then I strain it, take it out and strain it real good and put it in a jar, bottle, or whatever container that I got with rock candy and lemon juice and honey in my in my herbs. The strength out of my herbs all that mix together. See it ain't colored much yet you haven't boiled it but anyway I'll start drinking me some of that when it do get color, just like it's coffee. It's good for the [marrow even in your] bones and it makes the [rest solid]

[30:09]
That's the way I do it. You get various [space] here on the yard and in the woods some places it don't grow like it do out on the river, out in the lower place. Now when I [moved to] Falkland down bruising old spot all up and down on the low grounds you know you could get most all of the herbs, the maypops and it's all that. People's inner children growing up just to live off them just like fattening pigs. You're very strong and healthy. They don't get any of that now, they don't get nothing like that and it makes a difference to blood and [inaudible] and all that stuff is not fed with this stuff like back when I was growing up and after I growed up, I still used it and the older people did too. But just like everything is changing. I say my mom could come back here and see all this here stuff I expect she'd dig a hole, run right back into the ground. My mom doesn't like this, get your meat cured and burgers and road you had to get in the woods and wait until that pass by and see this all, just all that is happening in our lives now going on further from way back but way back was still with the best. 82 and it's makes me very strong and crazy and brave and thanking to God it's just like this, just like he made it, that's the way I am.