Louise J. Sills Oral History Interview

June 6, 1972
Oral History #OH0004
Creator(s)
Lennon, Donald R. (Interviewer); Sills, Louise J. (Interviewee)
Physical description
0.005 Cubic Feet, 1 audiocasette, 1.5 hours, 32 pages
Preferred Citation
Louise J. Sills Oral History Interview (#OH0004), East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA.
Repository
ECU Manuscript Collection
Access
No restrictions


Biographical/historical information

Louise Jelks Sills, whose ancestors came from Greenville County, Virginia, and settled in Nash County, North Carolina, recounts family history and tradition concerning life at Belford Plantation. The plantation was started by her great-grandfather David Sills and remained in the Sills family for a hundred years (p. 1).


Scope and arrangement

Included in her description of Belford are: the store which was established on the plantation in 1798 (p. 1); the plantation house itself; the post office (1804) (p. 2); the church (1857) (pp. 6, 15); the school (p. 6); the blacksmith shop (p. 3); the ice house (p. 4); and the doctor's office (p. 5). She also describes Christmas (p. 17) at Belford and gives some history of the Sills, Alston, Jelks, and Thompson family genealogies, courtships, family life, and ghost stories (pp. 5-12).

Other topics discussed are life on a plantation, enslavement of people and the hiring of enslaved persons, the invasion of Union troops during the Civil War, and activities of the white supremacists group, the Ku Klux Klan (pp. 3-24). The Hiring-out system allowed a hirer to temporarily lease an enslaved person from an enslaver, generating revenue for the enslaver through the labor of the enslaved people completing the work.

She also gives several brief descriptions of how Reconstruction affected her family and their friends. For instance, she describes how after enslaved persons were freed, enslavers did not know how to take care of themselves, even in the essentials of cooking (pp. 4-5).

Some details are given by Miss Sills concerning the schools the Sills family attended, including the Edgeworth School in Greensboro, North Carolina. (p. 9), St. Mary's Hall in New Jersey (p. 9), and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School (pp. 13-14). There is also a detailed description of the school that was started on the Belford Plantation (pp. 5-6).

Several sections of the interview concern apparent death. Miss Sills gives detailed descriptions of how people were presumed dead and came back to life (pp. 12-14).

Another part of the interview concerns her life in Nashville, N.C., where the Sills family moved to from Belford Plantation in 1898 (p. 18). She gives a detailed account of the hanging in Nashville in 1900 of two Black men for robbery and murder (pp. 26-27). She also describes how times have changed during her lifetime, reminiscing about the first telephone system (pp. 21-22) and other advancements in Nashville.

The Sills famly was predominant in the Nash County Circuit Court. Miss Sills's father became the county clerk in 1898 (p. 18) and her brother took over the office fourteen years later (p. 20), remaining in the office for fifty-seven years. Miss Sills worked as an assistant clerk for her brother from 1932 to 1962 (p. 20).

For related materials see Collection #201 and Mf. Collection #11.


Administrative information
Source of acquisition

Gift of Louise J. Sills

Processing information

Processed by M. Elmore, November 1991

Encoded by Apex Data Services

Descriptions updated by Ashlyn Racine, May 2023

Copyright notice

Repository does not own copyright to the oral history collection. Permission to cite, reproduce, or broadcast must be obtained from both the repository and the participants in the oral history, or their heirs.

General note

1860s-1960s


Key terms
Personal Names
Sills, Louise J.
Family Names
Sill family
Corporate Names
Belford Plantation (Nashville, N.C.)
Topical
County clerks--North Carolina--Nash County
Plantations--North Carolina--Nash County
Slavery--North Carolina--Nash County
Places
Nash County (N.C.)--Race relations
Nashville (N.C.)--Social conditions--20th century
North Carolina--History--Civil War, 1861-1865