Ray: Well, the best I remember is, and what I think really is, is it was built around the raw materials in this area, and it would flourish when different wars came along, it would flourish and then just seem to drop off to near nothing, kind of an everyday thing with small mines and small farms. Every time there was a war, really the Civil War is what brought most of these places to be. Iron Ore is here, coal is here, hardwood is here, the necessary materials you need to conduct a war. Of course everybody went to work with the mining supplies and farming supplies. Actually the mining in the area built Wilkesville. Same is true when WWII came along, up until that time nothing much was happening much, it was just an old dusty community with horses and wagons. It was mostly horsepower everybody used, they had general stores, which at that time were supply stores where you could buy supplies, but mostly centered around mining supplies. Because at that time, family mines, little small mines, worked by families, and that’s kind of what Wilkesville survived on, people coming in and buying supplies. Of course it was always a little community but it really thrived during a war period, it seemed to build up and thrive at that time. There was a demand in WWI, the Civil War, and WWII. The mines were in demand, coal was in demand and iron ore and limestone was in demand. We have all of that in the area. That’s really what built these small communities. I’ll just go along as best as I can remember

Rachel: Can you tell us about what you’ve been told about when Morgans Raiders came to town?

Ray: Yes, naturally I wasn’t there but just passed down from my grandparents. He came through the Welleston area and my grandparents owned a small farm a little over into Jackson County. They hid part of their horses when they knew he was coming, but part of them they didn’t get to hid, two of them. The soldiers took the horses and as they were leaving my grandfather and neighbors shot two of his soldiers as they left the farm. Then he came on, what I’m told through Wilkesville and spent the night somewhere around what we call the Wells mansion, and then after that went on through to the river, with some trouble along to way. That’s about all I know seconded handed from my grandparents.

Rachel: Can you tell us about how the bean dinner originated?

Ray: Well that was soldiers coming home from the civil war. That’s where the bean dinner got its start. Of course we’ve all, even my grandparents and parents have always lived in this area here and they’ve always went to the bean dinner, that was one of the big doings in the summer. The thing to look forward to would be the Wilkesville bean dinner. Everybody went, it used to be a family affair. They started off by going in buggies and wagons until the Model-A fords came along, then of course since than everything has changed, whether for the good or not, I don’t know, but they did change when the automobile came along.

Rachel: Do you remember your first car?

Ray: I sure do.

Rachel: Can you tell us about it?

Ray: Yup, a Model-A ford. We all thought that was the greatest thing to ever come down the road. You could buy gas for like 5 gallons for a dollar. You could ride all weekend after you got off of work, if you could get off work, you could ride all weekend for a dollar. That was the highlight of our weekend. Get of on Sunday and run that Model-A ford.

Rachel: Can you remember anything about the covered bridges in the are?

Ray: Yes, every bridge was covered, it was wooden bridges all over this area and they were all covered to protect the wood, flooring and sides because they were all wood. They usually had roofs on them, and usually were well kept. Whoever attended the county roads, but that was the kind of bridge you crossed. It was a covered wooden bridge. Of course everyone had to stop the teenagers, the young people always had to take carbide lamps and blacken their names or their girlfriends name or they carve it in the woodwork with their pocketknife. It was just a kind of thing young folks did. The stores in Wilkesville as I say was taken care of the mining community, they carried mining supplies. One of the big items was carbide for the
carbide lamps, bank powder that everyone in the mines used to shoot their coal with, and the fuse and you could buy horse harnesses and horse collars, things that might break and hand tools. Like belly-oggers and stuff like that you bought them at the general store in Wilkesville. That’s where you went to buy your supplies. But that’s kind of been the history. You hate to think that something goes back to a war, but the

truth is that the raw materials around here did cause everything to flourish during the period of a war. Even WWII, you couldn’t hardly give coal away to save your soul. If you sold any coal it was usually for two dollars a ton and you could get it for less if you didn’t happen to have the two dollars. It was a fair amount of money at that time. And it was kind of family mines at that time too. Small family mines and that’s all there was but still they all had to have supplies. Well, WWII comes along and what happens? There’s a big demand for coal, a big demand for hardwood, everybody needs iron ore, everybody needs limestone, so the little villages around here naturally begin to flourish again. Everybody had a job, but before that nobody had a job. About the only job you could look forward to was WPA, which was a government sponsored thing. Which poor families, I hate to say poor because I guess we was on of them, but we had a farm and anyone who had a farm or coal mine wasn’t eligible for any help. But some of the poorer ones the government paid them so much for working on a county road, of course they’d only get so many days a month, or something to that effect. When WWII came along, that all ended. Everyone had a job, everybody went to work and like I say places like Wilkesville started to flourish again, they started to come alive.

Rachel: Do you remember what it was like growing up on a farm?

Ray: Do I remember what it was like growing up on a farm? You bet ya. My mother hollered at you one time, at four o-clock in the morning. You didn’t wait for her top call you a second time; if you did there was problems at the end of that staircase. But at four o-clock you got up, and every kid no matter of its age, if you could walk you had a job to do. But we had barns full of horses, your farm work was all done with horses, there was no such thing as anything easy on a farm. But you fed and watered your horses and your cattle, and you got these horses all ready to go to work, then you went back to the house to get your breakfast. After you fed and watered everything and milked the cows and what have you. Then you went back to eat your breakfast and you hopped it was daylight by that time, because then you take the horses and you go to the field plowing corn or putting up hay or whatever came down, but that’s the way it is all summer ling. That’s what you have to do. That’s what we did back then. Everything was manual, you did it with your hands. You had no tractor or hired help or anyone working for you. You made your own bread and beans with these, (holds up hands). That’s what this area around here is all about around here. Me and my brothers worked on the farm until daylight, then in the evening when everything was done we went to the coal mine and worked for several hours in the coal mine. Of course in the wintertime we had to go to school in the daytime, work in the mine in the nighttime and go to school in the daytime. We missed a lot of school but we did kind of learn our ABC’s. It was hard, everything was hard, there was no money, a dollar don’t look like much but the we was getting like $2.20 a week. People wouldn’t believe that today but it was a fact. But that’s the way we bought or school clothes and we helped out at the house with whatever needed to be bought there. That’s the way you did it, you did it with your hands.

Rachel: Can you tell us about how the villages sprung up around the railroad?

Ray: That’s exactly how, you start way down at Alice Station it was the only railroad. I believe it was the Hocking Valley Railroad, and you have little villages they was all centered around this, the raw products produced around here, we still have them around here, of course a lot of the coal is gone but you start coming up from Pomeroy until you got around Alice Station, then come on up to Minerton, and there was several houses at Minerton, and a big mine at Minerton that loaded coal on the railroad. Of course war is what brought coal mining and industry into being. You come up to Clarion, Hawk Station, Thomsonville, Radcliff and on into Hamden and McArthur. All down that line there used to be family mines but during WWI they was big mines, what we considered to be big mines, you know and maybe they had 20 or 30 men working, that was considered a pretty good sized mine. But every little village came about for that, and for your supplies you came to Wilkesville, to the general store, that’s where you bought these supplies to use. Every one of these villages up and down the railroad had company houses on it, which were owned by the company. The reason for that was to take care of the miners that worked on the mine. They produced the limestone, the iron ore and all this was done with horses. There was no machinery much then, but any of the supplies you moved to the railroad you moved there with horses. Of course in WWII that changed because you had trucks or whatever, but everything boomed in WWII. I wasn’t here for the boom, I was on my way to Germany, but that’s the way it happened. That’s the reason for Wilkesville and most of these little villages, is the raw materials we have in this area.

Rachel: What would you do for fun after you got done working?

Ray: Excuse me?

Rachel: What would you do for fun after you got done working:

Ray: Fun, our dad would promise to take us fishing, maybe over to lake Alma. if we done real good during the summer, if the corn came out all right. We would go to Sunday school, if there wasn’t to much work to do. About once a month you would go to Sunday school, but usually there was farm work and it always came first, and work at the mine, but all of these came first, and the work in the timber, you had to do it all. But that’s the way we grew up.

Rachel: Is there anything final you would like to add?

Ray: Finale. At 76 years old I don’t consider anything final.

Rachel: Okay, thank you.