1.4 Life on the land: Voices

Interviews from Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World.

Eunice Austin

Eunice Austin talks about growing up on a farm in Catawba County. (1:11)

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Eunice Austin talks about the work she and her sisters did on the farm, often work that would ordinarily be done by boys. (1:00)

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Eunice Austin talks about her mother’s work on their family farm. (0:15)

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Eunice Austin interviewed by Jacquelyn Hall, Newton, North Carolina, July 2, 1980. Interview #H-107 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Flossie Durham

Flossie Durham, born in 1883, describes her family’s move from the farm to Bynum, NC. (1:23)

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Flossie Durham talks about the crops her family planted on the farm. (1:28)

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Flossie Durham explains how family friends helped her mother make the decision to move to Bynum after her father’s death. (:49)

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Flossie Durham describes moving into the mill house in Bynum. (1:10)

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Flossie Durham talks about her work on the farm as a child and about her brothers’ work. (1:51)

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Flossie Durham talks about the cotton gin her family where her family took their cotton. (1:10)

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Flossie Durham describes helping her mother at home on the farm and describes her mother’s work. (1:00)

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Flossie Moore Durham interviewed by Mary Frederickson and Brent Glass, Bynum, North Carolina, September 2, 1976. Interview # H-66 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

George Dyer

George Dyer describes his parents’ financial situation when they got married and started farming. (1:15)

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George Dyer talks about his parents’ decision to leave their farm. (1:23)

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George Dyer talks about the farm where he grew up. (1:26)

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George and Tessie Dyer interviewed by LuAnn Jones, Charlotte, North Carolina, March 5, 1980. Interview # H-161 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Gladys Hollar

Gladys Hollar discusses her grandparents and farm life. (1:35)

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Gladys Hollar discusses the work that her mother and the children did on the family farm. (1:08)

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Gladys Hollar talks about the impact of her father’s death on the family and their farm. (0:59)

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Gladys Hollar describes her mothers worries about the family’s survival. (0:19)

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Glenn E. and Gladys Hollar interviewed by Jacquelyn Hall, Conover, North Carolina, February 26 and 28, 1980. Interview # H-124 in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

• Next: A sharecropper's contract

Contents: North Carolina in the New South

Chapter 1: Changes in agriculture

• Next: A sharecropper's contract
• Previous: Sharecropping and tenant farming

As you read

These interviews were part of a larger collection of oral histories collected in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The interviewers were interested in capturing the experiences of the men and women who were part of the early textile industries in North Carolina at the turn of the twentieth century.

The interviews were the bases of a book entitled Like A Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World, published by University of North Carolina Press in 1987. You can learn more about this project and listen to more interviews at the Like A Family website.

Questions to consider

1. What type of farm did these people live on – did they own or rent?
2. What type of work was done by different members of the family? The father? Mother? Children?
3. What types of crops did each family grow? Which crops did they sell? What crops were grown to be used by the family?
4. How many children were in each family?
5. Some of these people’s families left their farm. Why? What motivated these families to give up farming?
6. How did these families obtain clothing or goods not grown on their farm?
7. Flossie Durham described the types of shops and factories in Bynum. What shops or factories were in Bynum when she was a young girl that were no longer part of that town when she gave this interview?
8. How was George Dyer’s father paid by the lumber company?
9. Eunice Austin and Gladys Hollar both lost their fathers as young children. How did the loss of their father affect their families?

Learn more

Related topics

• Search LEARN NC for more resources on North Carolina, families, farming, history, and industrialization.

A “digital textbook”

LEARN NC’s digital textbook for North Carolina History uses primary sources and multimedia to tell many stories about the past, not just one.

Part seven explores the political, economic, social, and cultural history of the state in the last decades of the nineteenth century.

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