Race & Place: Oral Histories

Interview of Lorraine Paige by Sarah Lawrence of the Race and Place Project on February 7, 2002 and February 14, 2002. (Oral History)
Biographical Information Lorraine Paige was born in 1936, the youngest of three children. She discusses life on her parents' farm and enjoying all its animals, and how her father would take her on his "A-shaped sled" to clear snow from neighbors' paths. She describes the interactions with their neighbors in the community and tells of how many of them, including herself, worked for the wealthy, white Van Clief family in Esmont. Paige describes the playhouses she and her friends built, and how when they got older they ventured to Thomas's store in Esmont to listen to the piccolo. Paige discusses how her grandfather insisted that his boys as well as his girls get a good education, an unusual position for that time, and how her father therefore was an active influence in her own education. She traces black education in Esmont back before the Esmont school, and recounts the difficulties and losses experienced in transferring from the Esmont school to the Burley school in Charlottesville. She also discusses the sports activities and parents' participation in the Parents and Teachers Organization (P.T.O.). Paige lists some of the social organizations that existed in Esmont and talks about what happened in the community on Christmas and during Revivals. Project Description Race and Place is a project of the Virginia Center for Digital History and the Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies. The goal of the project is to chronicle the life of African-Americans in the Charlottesville, Virginia area during the period of segregation. As part of this project we have conducted a series of interviews with current residents of the Charlottesville area who were alive during that period. The project has also incorporated oral interviews conducted by other Charlottesville institutions which cover the appropriate subject area. Notes About Our Transcription The transcripts represent what was said in the interview to the best of our ability. It is possible that some words, particularly names, have been misspelled. Where we did not feel sure of spellings we have indicated this by the use of the term 'phonetically' in parentheses following the word in question. Places where words were unclear are noted by 'inaudible'. Brackets have been used to indicate additions made to the text upon review by the interviewee. We have made no attempt to correct mistakes in grammar.

Ms. Lawrence:	Today is February 7, 2002. Sarah Lawrence is interviewing Mrs. Lorraine Paige at her home in Esmont, Virginia. Good afternoon.
Mrs. Paige:	Good afternoon.
Ms. Lawrence:	Can you state for the record your full name please?
Mrs. Paige:	Lorraine Virginia Bolden Paige.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay, how do you spell Bolden?
Mrs. Paige:	B.O.L.D.E.N. That's my maiden name.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay, and Paige is spelled?
Mrs. Paige:	P.A.I.G.E.
Ms. Lawrence:	Ah, okay. When and where were you born?
Mrs. Paige:	I was born in Esmont, Virginia on April the fifth, 1936.
Ms. Lawrence:	And do you remember your grandparents' names, I mean, not their names but where they were born? Of course you remember their names!
Mrs. Paige:	(Laughter) To my knowledge, my father's parents were born in Esmont. And my mother's parents were born in Blenheim, Virginia, which is just off from Monticello mountain out that way.
Ms. Lawrence:	And what were their names?
Mrs. Paige:	My father's mother was named Octavia Gardner Bolden. And my father's father was John Edward Bolden.
Ms. Lawrence:	All right.
Mrs. Paige:	My mother's mother was named Eloise [Wood] Jones and her father was John Lee Jones.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay and Eloise was spelled E.L.O.I.S.E.?
Mrs. Paige:	Mm-hm.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay, great. And where were they born?
Mrs. Paige:	Blenheim.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh that's right. B.L.E. -?
Mrs. Paige:	N.H.E.I.M.
Ms. Lawrence:	H.E.I.M., okay. And do you remember when they were born?
Mrs. Paige:	Not really.
Ms. Lawrence:	What about your parents?
Mrs. Paige:	I have records somewhere that I could look up. But I can't remember.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay.
Mrs. Paige:	My parents, yes. My mother of course was born in Blenheim and her birthday was August the 18th, 1906. And my father was born in Esmont and he was born on December the 2nd, 1901. [Added later that her father's name was John Danfourth Bolden and her mother's name was Muriel Calista Jones Bolden]
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. And he was born here and raised here. And you grew up here. How'd your parents meet?
Mrs. Paige:	I think through a cousin, actually my father and his sister married first cousins and I think they were married first and got introduced that way.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay, all right. What are some of your earliest memories of Esmont? Or life at home in Esmont I guess, perhaps not the town itself yet, but -
Mrs. Paige:	My earliest memories I guess, I don't remember when we moved into our home but I remember being there when it wasn't finished with my brother and sister and mother and father, which is just two doors down from me. And just being there on the farm with all the animals. My father was a farmer.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay.
Mrs. Paige:	And I guess my earliest memories were just being there with, having all the animals and being able to go outdoors, ride the horses, do whatever.
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh, uh-huh.
Mrs. Paige:	Even as a little girl.
Ms. Lawrence:	Really, how old do you think you were before you started riding?
Mrs. Paige:	I'm sure my father had me on the horse when - the beginning he had to hold me -
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh.
Mrs. Paige:	(Chuckle) And so, I guess I remember really riding like three, four years old.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, wow. Did you have farm-related chores?
Mrs. Paige:	Yes and no. (Chuckle) Being the youngest of three children I didn't get a lot of them, but yeah, feeding the chickens and that type of thing. My father always took care of the livestock until my brother was old to help. But the little animals, yes, we fed. And I remember being able to have a pet lamb that we raised from a bottle and stuff like that.
Ms. Lawrence:	Who were your brother and sister, what were their names?
Mrs. Paige:	My brother's name is John Russell Bolden and my sister is Muriel, M.U.R.I.E.L., Calista, C.A.L.I.S.T.A, Bolden Carty, C.A.R.T.Y.
Ms. Lawrence:	T.Y.?
Mrs. Paige:	Mm-hm.
Ms. Lawrence:	And Russell was with one "L" or two "L"s at the end?
Mrs. Paige:	Two "L"s.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. All right. So your parents were the only other people, I mean it was your parents and your sisters and brothers, or just one sister and one brother -
Mrs. Paige:	One sister and one brother.
Ms. Lawrence:	And anybody else live with you at any point in your upbringing?
Mrs. Paige:	No, not me. I had - earlier my parents were in New Jersey for a few years, and at that point my aunt and her daughter lived with them. But that was before my time.
Ms. Lawrence:	What took them to New Jersey?
Mrs. Paige:	Work. My father was also a painter. And some of the, his friends and all, from here, that had gone to New Jersey, asked him to come paint so that was just I guess before the Depression, leading into the Depression, so he decided to go and, you know, do some work, so he moved his family to New Jersey, and my understanding was that they moved back here the year before I was born.
Ms. Lawrence:	So he had given up the farm to go to New Jersey?
Mrs. Paige:	At that point, yes.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. When did your parents get married?
Mrs. Paige:	Twenty nine or eight....
Ms. Lawrence:	Roughly.
Mrs. Paige:	No it can't be twenty nine my sister was born. Must be twenty seven, 1927.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm, and how much older are your brother and sister?
Mrs. Paige:	My brother's five years older than I am, my sister's six years older than I am.
Ms. Lawrence:	So you were the baby.
Mrs. Paige:	There was one child that died at birth, younger than me.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. How soon did he or she come after you?
Mrs. Paige:	I think it was like six or seven years.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm. So your dad was a farmer -
Mrs. Paige:	And a painter.
Ms. Lawrence:	In Esmont. Okay, and a painter. 'Cause that was actually quite a few years, it sounds like, that he was up in New Jersey, painting.
Mrs. Paige:	Well, probably four or five. But when he lived here, he farmed in the spring and summer, and painted during the winter.
Ms. Lawrence:	Hmm. Because everything - who took care of the farm in the winter?
Mrs. Paige:	Well he did his livestock and stuff and then went to work, you know.
Ms. Lawrence:	Else - close to Esmont? Or back to -
Mrs. Paige:	Mostly in Esmont, sometime in Charlottesville. But mostly -
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh okay, I was thinking, how do you travel to New Jersey. Okay, I see.
Mrs. Paige:	Oh no, locally.
Ms. Lawrence:	Right, okay. And your brother helped him eventually, on the farm?
Mrs. Paige:	Yes.
Ms. Lawrence:	Did he hire any other people to work the farm?
Mrs. Paige:	At times. During hay season.
Ms. Lawrence:	Did they ever stay with you or were they local?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh they were local. They didn't stay with us.
Ms. Lawrence:	And what did your mother do?
Mrs. Paige:	Housewife. There were a few times in my life I remember her working locally at, for, private families.
Ms. Lawrence:	Hmm, domestic work?
Mrs. Paige:	Domestic work. But very rarely. Mostly she was a housewife.
Ms. Lawrence:	When did she go to do that? Was it, what was the reason she would go and occasionally work?
Mrs. Paige:	Um, somebody would ask her, sort of. You know, and she would go out for a while, maybe to buy something for the home or something of that nature.
Ms. Lawrence:	So, not to come every day, to clean the house all day?
Mrs. Paige:	No she never worked every day, you know. But during my growing up time she was always at home.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah. Did you ever go with her on those errands or go with her to people's homes?
Mrs. Paige:	No.
Ms. Lawrence:	No, okay. Um -
Mrs. Paige:	Because when I was that age I was old enough that my sister was home, because she was older, or I was old enough as a teenager myself to be at home.
Ms. Lawrence:	Right, okay. Did you go to school here?
Mrs. Paige:	Yes I did.
Ms. Lawrence:	At the Esmont school?
Mrs. Paige:	Esmont. And in fact, it was at Esmont High School.
Ms. Lawrence:	And can you remember any teachers who left an impression on you?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh yeah there were a lot of teachers. Our first grade teacher, I think, Mrs. Southall, probably left an impression on most of us. (Laughter)
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh yeah? (Chuckle) How so?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh she was just a grand old lady. You know sort of, I guess we had her first and second grade because at that point we had like two or three grades sometimes in one room. So I remember her as the first and second, and at that stage we went like half a day. The first grade went in the morning and the second grade went in the afternoon.
Ms. Lawrence:	Can you describe her a little more?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh she was sort of a small lady, not a heavy voice but a forceful voice and very good with children. You know, very energetic type of lady I remember.
Ms. Lawrence:	Did she run a tight ship?
Mrs. Paige:	No I didn't think she did. Some did, but I didn't think she did. I think she was just a kind lady that loved teaching as a lot of our teachers, I remember as I was going up further in school, and having some that we had two and three to a - classes to a room - so you had to assign one class to do something and teach another one, which all the time, was kind of hard sometimes because you're listening to something, trying to do something. But we came out okay.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm, mm-hm.
Mrs. Paige:	And I did my last two years of high school at Burley. In Charlottesville.
Ms. Lawrence:	Ah, okay. What were some of the other activities at school that you did, besides working and studying? Did you have other -?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh we had recess of course and baseball games and all kind of relays because at that time it was two black schools. Especially when we got into the [lower] grades. Albemarle Training School and Esmont, and so you always did things to relate to them and had what we called a Field Day that they either came to us or we went to them or we went to Washington Park and played the games. The other thing was the big thing out here that each spring we did have a Field Day even among ourselves.
Ms. Lawrence:	Many different sports?
Mrs. Paige:	Many different sports. From maypole wrapping to flag relay to baseball games.
Ms. Lawrence:	And did the girls do this as well as the boys?
Mrs. Paige:	Yes, softball of course for the girls at that point and baseball for the boys. And there were many activities going on. Our parents were very involved with the P.T.O. and things of that nature because if they hadn't we wouldn't have had too much in school, so they had to really support the school in order for us to have different things and different activities at the school.
Ms. Lawrence:	You mean financially?
Mrs. Paige:	Financially. Because originally, this area bought the land for the school and all. So -
Ms. Lawrence:	You weren't getting help.
Mrs. Paige:	We weren't getting help.
Ms. Lawrence:	How active were the parents in the curriculum and these activities, I mean, aside from the financial aspect?
Mrs. Paige:	You mean on a day to day basis?
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah. Or those P.T.O. meetings, what was going on there?
Mrs. Paige:	Well P.T.O. meetings they were very active because they were always held at night because so many of them did work. And of course, they walked to them. They didn't have a lot of automobiles when I first remember, so, they were very active in all of that, and Field Days and stuff like that. Sometimes on the day to day basis, or so forth, going to the school for things, they weren't as active as some parents are now because - well a lot of them couldn't be active, they were working, the other thing, some of them didn't know how to be active and so forth, assisting with the reading and stuff. I was very fortunate. My father was very active by me, and although being born there, as a man back then, most of black men did not attend school that much.
Ms. Lawrence:	In your father's generation?
Mrs. Paige:	In my father's generation.
Ms. Lawrence:	Beyond the point where they could work?
Mrs. Paige:	Right.
Ms. Lawrence:	And that was different with the women?
Mrs. Paige:	Well yes, you know.
Ms. Lawrence:	Why didn't - ?
Mrs. Paige:	They didn't put the women out to work as soon as they did the men.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, yeah.
Mrs. Paige:	That I'm told about anyway.
Ms. Lawrence:	Right.
Mrs. Paige:	But my grandfather did not believe that. He wanted his children to have education. So my father went through the ninth grade. That's, at that time that was all offered out here. So he did graduate and as long as we were in school he could always outdo us in math.
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh, uh-huh. (Chuckle)
Mrs. Paige:	Any problems.
Ms. Lawrence:	Did he help you with your homework then?
Mrs. Paige:	Yes, yes, always.
Ms. Lawrence:	What time did he finish his work on the farm?
Mrs. Paige:	Well, any time after dark. (Laughter) You know, any time after dark. When he had his horses into the stables and fed for the night. Then he was in.
Ms. Lawrence:	Who did most of the, if any, disciplining in the home?
Mrs. Paige:	Both my parents. I guess my mother because she was around more. And yeah, so, yeah.
Ms. Lawrence:	Do you feel like they both made decisions together about the family budget, or decisions regarding you kids, or did one of them take the lead more?
Mrs. Paige:	I don't think so, I think it was made together.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm. And how would you describe their relationship together, your parents?
Mrs. Paige:	A very good one, you know. My mother died first, but my father never remarried. I grew up in a really loving home.
Ms. Lawrence:	All right. Um, what else here. You've talked about the athletic dimension to school. Were there any social clubs that you belonged to?
Mrs. Paige:	Uh, not really out here at that time. There weren't social clubs within school, everything was based on going to school and coming home.
Ms. Lawrence:	And church?
Mrs. Paige:	Church was always a part of our lives. As long as I can remember. Sunday School, Baptist Training Union at Church, most on Sunday.
Ms. Lawrence:	What was Baptist Training Union?
Mrs. Paige:	That was an evening program for - they used to say for youth, but everybody - and it was classes, just for bible discussion. Sort of like Sunday school but didn't have that book that you really taught out from Sunday to Sunday. But sort of discussions.
Ms. Lawrence:	Hmm. And adults went too?
Mrs. Paige:	Yes.
Ms. Lawrence:	So you had the whole community, or a large part of the community?
Mrs. Paige:	Right.
Ms. Lawrence:	Huh. Were there any fervent debates that happened?
Mrs. Paige:	At times. At times.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm. Do you remember any of them?
Mrs. Paige:	Um, not right off hand.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, yeah I'm sure. Difficult.
Mrs. Paige:	But there were a lot.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm. Hmm. Did you have other relatives who lived in Esmont?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh yes, lots of them.
Ms. Lawrence:	Lots of them?
Mrs. Paige:	Lots of them.
Ms. Lawrence:	Wanna' just start naming them? (Laughter)
Mrs. Paige:	(Laughter)
Ms. Lawrence:	We'll skip the spelling for now!
Mrs. Paige:	Okay, um, of course, my grandfather lived next door to us and -
Ms. Lawrence:	Let's just tell - your house right here is 6751 Porter's Road, so 2 houses down is where you grew up, which was 675-
Mrs. Paige:	But of course it wasn't name that.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh right, right, that's right, okay. So we'll just talk about, we're heading south down the road.
Mrs. Paige:	Okay, okay, we're heading south now, well the next driveway down would have been my grandfather's.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. With that cattleguard?
Mrs. Paige:	Right. That's the home place. There, where my father grew up. And, so my driveway to my home would have been the next one. About one driveway up was Hattie Gardner's. Still on this side of the road.
Ms. Lawrence:	Hetta did you say?
Mrs. Paige:	No it was Hattie. Hattie and Kenton Gardner.
Ms. Lawrence:	Who were they?
Mrs. Paige:	Uh, they were aunts, great aunts of mine, aunt and uncle of my father, and their children. And there were a lot of houses, like, if you want to know, they're back down off the road I had more cousins that were Nelsons. Because, my background family is a three part family because my [great]-grandmother remarried. So Nelsons and Boldens were her children. She had five Boldens and eleven Nelsons I think.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh boy.
Mrs. Paige:	(Laughter)
Ms. Lawrence:	(Laughter)
Mrs. Paige:	And she lived to be quite an old lady -
Ms. Lawrence:	All right.
Mrs. Paige:	- in good health.
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh.
Mrs. Paige:	So, well actually the whole area of Esmont, there were cousins all over.
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh.
Mrs. Paige:	There were Scotts down the road, the other end, and the Robinsons, and, so, we grew up with family and friends around.
Ms. Lawrence:	Right, right. And how often did you see family and friends? Like what was the social life at your house like?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh, great social life at my house, they were in and out all the time, you know.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm, the house you grew up in?
Mrs. Paige:	Mm-hm, yeah.
Ms. Lawrence:	What would they - would they drop by or -?
Mrs. Paige:	They would drop by - my cousin and I sort of - after school it was a rule that later on, when my mother was working, his mother worked, he came to my house, usually a lot, after school.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm, what was his name?
Mrs. Paige:	Ted Gardner. I don't know if you've interviewed him or not. Theodore Gardner. But we were together a lot because, his mother was working, most of the time we'd drop our books - he'd drop his books off at home and come on over to our house and stay until his mother came home. Well my friends across the road - the Ward sisters, Lucks, the Wards, I think you've interviewed some of them.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm.
Mrs. Paige:	Um, you know, we played back and forth together.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah.
Mrs. Paige:	And, from first one house to the other, our parents allowed us sometime on Friday or Saturday evening, invite the neighborhood kids in to play records, dance and salsa.
Ms. Lawrence:	Could you do that alone? I mean, were your parents there or -?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh no they were always home.
Ms. Lawrence:	They were always home.
Mrs. Paige:	They were always home.
Ms. Lawrence:	Was there a different room you could go in or did you stay in the living room?
Mrs. Paige:	They let us go in the living room and do it, but they were circling and all through the house. It was never -
Ms. Lawrence:	Open thing.
Mrs. Paige:	And whoever's house we'd be up and that, doing that, parents were always home.
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh, uh-huh. Not like today. (Chuckle)
Mrs. Paige:	Not like today, no. No, they would never allowed you to do that. And most of the time you were never allowed to have friends in if someone wasn't home.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm, mm-hm.
Mrs. Paige:	This was a rule.
Ms. Lawrence:	Right. Um, what other kinds of play, when you were a little younger, before the parties, what other kinds of play did you do?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh, imaginary things. We had playhouses. We had them at school, we had them at home. Because our school was surrounded by woods, so we had them at school too. But at home - our house, it's a big two story house, so underneath the house, you can walk - as children we could walk under - and so, we built a playhouse, and took daddy's boards and all, and boarded up around the house, took a lot of furniture and boxes and whatever at the house and put it underneath it. And in the summer I had two cousins that always came from New York to spend the summer with my grandfather -
Ms. Lawrence:	Alone?
Mrs. Paige:	No, with their mother.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay.
Mrs. Paige:	And down between my father's house and my grandfather's there's a row, a fence and a row of what we call laurels, and they sort of met, and my cousin and I made a playhouse in that. And we had to always remember at the opening at night to put up a rail or else the horses would go in, if they were out in the fields. (Laughter)
Ms. Lawrence:	Huh. Go into your playhouse -
Mrs. Paige:	Yes.
Ms. Lawrence:	- and ruin it?! (Chuckle)
Mrs. Paige:	Well no, they just walked through it, you know, but -
Ms. Lawrence:	But it was your house.
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah it was our house. So we had to remember daddy put up a rail for us to take down and put up at night and they would go in, so. And with the friends coming back, if we weren't playing with that we played marbles, shooting marbles, tag was another good game we played a lot. My friends and I used to make little mud dolls and all kind of families and stuff. You'd mix up the mud and put it in the sun and let it dry.
Ms. Lawrence:	Hmm. And they didn't break?
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah, they did. (Laughter)
Ms. Lawrence:	(Laughter) Depending on how hard you played.
Mrs. Paige:	But, you know, it was fun when you were doing it, you know, and various things. So there were a lot of good games. Hide and seek, all kinds for us little kids.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. Um, now, back to what you were kind of getting at a little bit, parental supervision and stuff, dating. What was the dating life like here, if, if any, I mean, in terms of going out with groups of friends outside the home, or a boyfriend?
Mrs. Paige:	Uh, there were groups by the time I got to that age, when my, you know, the cars were a little bit more, so we went in a car.
Ms. Lawrence:	At what age were you allowed to go on a date?
Mrs. Paige:	Well, we were allowed to go in groups I guess, you know, especially once we started Burley. I was fifteen, sixteen. Because we needed to go to activities, so we could get in groups and go. But, I can remember my sister and my cousin Ted and I always tagged along you know. But down the road they had a, there was a store that had a - well it wasn't really a restaurant but it had little booths in there and it had a piccolo where you used to dance by then.
Ms. Lawrence:	What's a piccolo?
Mrs. Paige:	It's a big music machine that has records in it and you put money in it and it plays.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay, okay, like a jukebox?
Mrs. Paige:	Jukebox, yeah, we used to call them piccolos but it was a jukebox.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay okay. All right, uh-huh, okay.
Mrs. Paige:	And my sister and her friends, they were all allowed to get in a group and go down there and you know dance a while and they would all come.
Ms. Lawrence:	What was the name of that store?
Mrs. Paige:	It was Thomas's store.
Ms. Lawrence:	Thomas's store. So they walked there?
Mrs. Paige:	They walked there as a group, you know, and you'd have so long to stay you should be home by this time. So the whole gang would get together like we did for school. And you'd pick up everybody as you go down the road. And they'd go down and dance a while and then all walk back. That was the other pleasant memory I have for when I was young, that in the winter, being able to get out and [sleighride] and we do all of this - almost in the roads because there were no cars. But they used to get together, especially on a cold day or if it was snowing and the teachers couldn't get from Charlottesville, and maybe walk down there and uh - do -
Ms. Lawrence:	Get a little hot chocolate?
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah. And, you know, dance along with the juke box, etcetera.
Ms. Lawrence:	Any favorite tunes you remember?
Mrs. Paige:	Ah! Not particularly.
Ms. Lawrence:	No? (Chuckle)
Mrs. Paige:	(Laughter)
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. Who was the school principal at the time you were, went there?
Mrs. Paige:	When I went to school it was an Isaac Faulkner.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. I.S.A.A.C.?
Mrs. Paige:	Mm-hm.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay, and then at Burley?
Mrs. Paige:	At Burley, when I first went, it was a [Mr. Shaw for a short time and then] Mr. Mobley, M.O.B.L.E.Y.
Ms. Lawrence:	M.O.B.L.E.Y., okay.
Mrs. Paige:	Mm-hm.
Ms. Lawrence:	Do you remember his first name? It doesn't matter. How was the change from going to the Esmont school to Burley?
Mrs. Paige:	Not good.
Ms. Lawrence:	Not good?
Mrs. Paige:	Not good.
Ms. Lawrence:	Why?
Mrs. Paige:	We lost a lot. (Laughter) Well, not - for one thing, I think we, in this area, Southern Albemarle County has always classified as the poor, underlying area. The other black high school was the other side of Charlottesville. And of course we got the people from Charlottesville which were considered the city children from Jefferson. So at first it was very hard. Here you are thrown in with these children. I in particular got in to classes that I saw no one from my area at first.
Ms. Lawrence:	Hmm. Why would that have been?
Mrs. Paige:	Just, I don't know except for, the classes I was taking for one thing.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh okay.
Mrs. Paige:	And uh -
Ms. Lawrence:	Were you taking more advanced classes?
Mrs. Paige:	I was. And at first it was very hard. They did not want to make friends. They did not want to be there with us. They wanted to stay in their nice little city school, or they went to school and they didn't want the country kids there. Or, you know -
Ms. Lawrence:	How did they make you feel that way?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh, by saying things and almost just completely ignoring you, you know. But after a while, I mean it was an adjustment for all of us. And now, I know why. Actually they were used to so much more in their school than we were and all of that. And I'm sure the school being in Charlottesville, it was more or less considered their school. They also had many more children coming than we did. But it wasn't a bad adjustment. I mean, we lived with it, and it was fine.
Ms. Lawrence:	Did you eventually become friends with some of those?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh yes. I still have good friends from the -
Ms. Lawrence:	But at the time?
Mrs. Paige:	At the time, well, it took a few months.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, yeah. So were there differences, visible differences, in clothing styles and, like accent, like really sharp country versus city or class -
Mrs. Paige:	Uh, some, but not as much as they thought it would be. I think they were looking for that big contrast in us, that we probably didn't have clothes and we probably didn't, couldn't do things.
Ms. Lawrence:	Right, they had this stereotype.
Mrs. Paige:	They had been exposed to of course more than we had. But not other things. I mean, our parents, especially in this town, worked very hard to keep their kids, you know, dressed properly, clean if nothing else. I was very fortunate. My mother sewed and we could show her anything in the catalog and she could make it. So, -
Ms. Lawrence:	Did she ever make clothes for other families?
Mrs. Paige:	Yes, she did. She sewed for other families too at times. But uh, she made all our clothes, and I had an aunt in Washington that worked, well she worked for the government PX they called it, where the WACS, the WAVS, they had them separate then, the women, and lot of times the old uniforms and stuff she brought down, my mother ripped them up and remade clothes for us.
Ms. Lawrence:	Wow, huh.
Mrs. Paige:	And at that time in our lives, fabric was cheap, so, you could take a nice piece of fabric and really make something nice with it.
Ms. Lawrence:	So she made most of your clothes. What other kind of, where else did you shop? Through catalogs or did you and your family go to Charlottesville for general things, or here?
Mrs. Paige:	We shopped through catalogs - Sears and Montgomery Ward were our main ones. There was a trip to Charlottesville every once in a while. Not very frequently, but you know, every once in a while. Because we had local doctors so we did not need to go. There was one in Esmont. There was one in Scottsville. So we did not need to go to Charlottesville unless you needed to go to the hospital for something. Which was a rare occasion because they did most things home. There was also sort of a general store you called it, in Esmont, and it was called Steed's store.
Ms. Lawrence:	Steed's? S.T.E.E.D.S.?
Mrs. Paige:	Mm-hm. And they sold a little bit of everything.
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh, was that a white owned or black owned?
Mrs. Paige:	It was white.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay.
Mrs. Paige:	But he sold fabrics, and shoes, as well as grocery-line things. So a lot of the shopping was done there.
Ms. Lawrence:	Was the owner of Thomas's was it, was he or she -?
Mrs. Paige:	That was black.
Ms. Lawrence:	Black too, oh, okay. Um, all right. Can you remember any incidents or can you discuss a little bit segregated life in Esmont when you were growing up? In -
Mrs. Paige:	Oh at the time I guess we never thought about it (Chuckle), you know. We lived in a black community per se.
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh.
Mrs. Paige:	I mean, everything was black. So -
Ms. Lawrence:	Everything?
Mrs. Paige:	I mean, all of them down here.
Ms. Lawrence:	Weren't there a couple white families, or no?
Mrs. Paige:	Not, not in here at the time. Now there are. But, when I grew up, there were no white families until you hit right here.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. This, whatever this crossroad is.
Mrs. Paige:	Well no, you didn't have to go to the crossroad. Right across from me here is a white family.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh, okay.
Mrs. Paige:	Then you go up that driveway there. And they were always there. But this was all woods. So -
Ms. Lawrence:	What was their name?
Mrs. Paige:	When I was there, it, when I grew up it was MacWilliams. Mr. and Mrs. MacWilliams.
Ms. Lawrence:	That's their full name, the last name?
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah. I don't know their first names, I don't remember.
Ms. Lawrence:	What were they like?
Mrs. Paige:	I don't know that much. From our home, you didn't see them, you didn't hear from them. I knew the lady in Esmont that worked for them. I saw very little of that family. There is a house behind that sort of, that, well, there used to be one, I understand, before, but when I really knew about it, belonged to Mrs. Donna Lloyd. And the lady that worked for her, I did know her, and I did work there some as a teenager.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm. Doing what?
Mrs. Paige:	Serving dinner or just helping with housework, etcetera. And she was a very nice lady, as long as you did your work. The house on the corner up there belonged to Coles family. And when I grew up it belonged to a Mrs. Lottie Coles and her daughter Charlotte Coles lived there. Now we saw them quite often because they at times came down to the church to give out gifts or bibles and stuff to the students and all that. And I understand many many years ago, before the black families had a school, it was not them but it was their family, had a little brush harbor, they called it, school up there under the tree at that place.
Ms. Lawrence:	Before the Esmont school?
Mrs. Paige:	Before the Esmont school.
Ms. Lawrence:	And they taught there, white teachers?
Mrs. Paige:	I guess they taught at that time, mm-hm. But uh -
Ms. Lawrence:	So your dad might have - no?
Mrs. Paige:	No, that was before his time too. He went, he started to school - the Esmont school that I went to, of course he went to that school but he started - there's a house, it's a house now but it was a school building, down a little further from the school. And it was a two roomed building and he started the school. And I have a picture, but they're up at the [Odd Fellows Hall], standing outside, but it's my dad's class, and young people when he was about seven years old.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay.
Mrs. Paige:	That's the first picture we have of the school.
Ms. Lawrence:	So, what happened in terms of your - you said it was an entirely black community pretty much and you just didn't even think about it - did that change when you went to Burley and saw Charlottesville more? More of Charlottesville?
Mrs. Paige:	No because you're still going with all black students. There were no integration there.
Ms. Lawrence:	And you didn't go to Charlottesville at lunch, during your lunch break or anything like that?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh no.
Ms. Lawrence:	You stayed at the school pretty much?
Mrs. Paige:	We stayed at the school. That was going to - you weren't allowed off the premises. Once you got off the bus and got into school, you had to have a written excuse even not to get back on that bus in the evening to come home.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay.
Mrs. Paige:	So it's not like it is now.
Ms. Lawrence:	Right.
Mrs. Paige:	Where the students go off. No, you went to school, you went to school. (Chuckle) But I guess, you know, living in the black community, I mean, I'm not saying we didn't know these white people were there, because people worked for them and all of this type of thing, but it was just not communication, really, with them. At that time if we really needed a telephone call we had to go and ask to use one of their phones or something because we had no telephones.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay.
Mrs. Paige:	I think the Thomas's store down the road was probably one of the first black families to have a telephone. For that sort of thing, and I said for the people that worked, and of course, up the road further is the Van Clief estate, which a lot of people worked for in the community. They probably employed twenty to thirty people from the community.
Ms. Lawrence:	Wow. At any one time?
Mrs. Paige:	At the time, yes.
Ms. Lawrence:	Gosh.
Mrs. Paige:	Because they probably had ten, ten or twelve in the house and then they had the farm, and then they had horses and then, you name it. So they had people of all ages and all capacities working. My father worked his later years as a night watchman for the horses up there. When he had stopped some of his farming and stuff. Nightwatchman for the horses. But up until then he had never actually worked for them. He had always worked for himself.
Ms. Lawrence:	And he did fairly well? Sounds like you had horses and -
Mrs. Paige:	Yes. Yeah, he did, you know, with the farm, doing that, and I said, he painted during the winter to get the base of the money. So it was fine. My uncle that stayed with my grandfather, now he worked for the Van Cliefs as a butler.
Ms. Lawrence:	Which uncle was that?
Mrs. Paige:	Hayes. My uncle Hayes, my father's younger brother.
Ms. Lawrence:	And he worked as a butler. Huh.
Mrs. Paige:	Mm-hm. And a chauffeur.
Ms. Lawrence:	Ah, wow. Did he have any stories he ever shared?
Mrs. Paige:	No, not really.
Ms. Lawrence:	I don't know -
Mrs. Paige:	He was sort of quiet, my husband tells more of those because his daddy worked also as a butler.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh, do you remember any of those stories?
Mrs. Paige:	He was head butler.
	(General Laughter)
Mrs. Paige:	So he was more or less the one that was really into it. Of course, my husband and I worked for the same family later.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh, okay, okay. All right.
Mrs. Paige:	For their children, not them.
Ms. Lawrence:	They're pretty nice family?
Mrs. Paige:	Very nice family.
Ms. Lawrence:	I think I've heard other people talk about them.
Mrs. Paige:	Very nice family.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh do you remember - it sounds like you remember, lots of your neighbors because they were mostly your relatives. But do you remember particularly special friends of your parents who were not relatives, other people that you -
Mrs. Paige:	Oh well our next door neighbor on the other side was not family members. It was a Mr. and Mrs. Lewis. They had one son which was much older than we were. He was away and we didn't know him, so this was just an elderly couple. But I do remember that she, every day, came to visit. And it wasn't a long visit. She came just to check on everybody and see how everybody was.
Ms. Lawrence:	How nice.
Mrs. Paige:	Uh-huh. And she just dropped in - we just knew this was going to happen, and any time it didn't happen my mother always sent one of us up there because she knew that either she wasn't feeling well or something.
Ms. Lawrence:	Ah.
Mrs. Paige:	She just came down, always just came down and coming through the field, she was always like picking flowers, wildflowers, like poppies or Queen Anne's Lace, or she would in apple season she would bring a few apples. Although she knew we had apples, but it was just a neighborly thing to do. So -
Ms. Lawrence:	And since they didn't have children it was easier for her to come here?
Mrs. Paige:	Right.
Ms. Lawrence:	Your mom didn't go there as much -
Mrs. Paige:	No.
Ms. Lawrence:	- except when there was that question?
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah, mm-hm.
Ms. Lawrence:	And were there ever times where you did go over there and she said, yeah I'm not feeling well, and -
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah, and if she did, you know, we'd ask what can we do for you and my mother would probably fix something to eat to send them and things like that. So, it was a very close neighborhood, you know. You can run next door and you can borrow something and you can take it back the next, end of the week or something like that, if you ran out. You didn't go to the store for every little thing.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm, mm-hm.
Mrs. Paige:	When you went to the store you got your staples or whatever, because we grew all of our fresh vegetables and my mother canned and stuff for winter. We had pork and beef and lamb that my father always killed for food, so it wasn't like going to the store every time you wanted something. We had chickens and this type of thing.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah.
Mrs. Paige:	But if you ran out of something during the week when you weren't going to the store you just went to your neighbor and borrowed it. And you carried it back when you got some more.
Ms. Lawrence:	Did your mom and Mrs. Lewis can together or do any of their things together?
Mrs. Paige:	No not can. Later I remember that there was a cannery, they called it, in Scottsville. And a lot of times when my mother had, like, bushels of green beans or bushels of peaches, my father got someone to take her down there to the cannery and, you know -
Ms. Lawrence:	Use their machines?
Mrs. Paige:	It was machines and you just put your stuff in and some way they packed them and you canned them in cans.
Ms. Lawrence:	Saved about 1500 hours of work! (Chuckle)
Mrs. Paige:	Right. But most of the time it was done at home.
Ms. Lawrence:	Did you ever help with that?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh yeah, I learned to can. Not that I like to can. But I do like to make jellies and that type of thing. (Chuckle)
Ms. Lawrence:	Plenty of sugar.
Mrs. Paige:	I'm not a canner, but I can do it.
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh, did you have a radio in your home or do you remember other people having radios in their homes?
Mrs. Paige:	I remember my cousin had one before we did, but we did eventually [own] one. I do remember when we first got electric lights.
Ms. Lawrence:	Ah, when?
Mrs. Paige:	Ah, well, I don't remember exactly the year -
Ms. Lawrence:	Well not when, but -
Mrs. Paige:	- but I was probably seven or eight years old. There was man going through wiring all the houses, and we're still fussing at my dad about some of the things -
	(General Laughter)
Mrs. Paige:	- you know now, you know you just have to have them -
Ms. Lawrence:	Fifty years later.
Mrs. Paige:	- rewired. But, anyway, I remember that this guy, his name was Jasper, that's all I can remember, I don't know if it was the first or the last but that name stands out. Because he would start your house and stop and go to somebody else's to start, like everybody does these days too. But he finally came back and connected our lights. You know, we had been waiting for this. And my dad was on a painting job and I can remember momma saying, 'go ahead and light the lamps' and stuff, 'because when he comes home and comes in then we're going to turn on all the lights.'
Ms. Lawrence:	Ohh.
Mrs. Paige:	And I remember that, when we got lights. (Chuckle)
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, did you celebrate?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh yeah, you know, it was a big thing. Everything was bright in the house, and this type of thing. But of course we didn't have heat, we'd only had wood and stuff, and when we picking up chips, they had something in the woods they called 'light wood' and my brother used to split up. It was a pine I think it is, and you split it up and it makes the fire go. We made lamplighters out of paper so you wouldn't use so many matches to start fires because you already had a fire going somewhere. You made the roll a certain way -
Ms. Lawrence:	Out of what? For the lamplighter?
Mrs. Paige:	Newspaper.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh okay, just a really tightly wound newspaper?
Mrs. Paige:	Well, you take a strip and you wound it a certain way. And, things like that. I guess, I'm thinking of another thing I really enjoyed as a little girl. My father had an icehouse.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mmm. I've never understood how those work.
Mrs. Paige:	Okay. It's a hole dug in the ground. And they had a nice house over it. They built a nice little house - my grandfather was a brickmason, and he believed that everything, his toolshed and his cornhouse and his stable and his icehouse all had to be just so. And we have an icepond that's behind the big house down there. There were much colder winters because the ice would thicken enough for them to cut. And they had picks, and they would take the horse and wagon down, and cut the ice off the pond, and bring it to the bank and load it.
Ms. Lawrence:	The bank? Oh the bank, of the lake, okay.
Mrs. Paige:	The bank of the pond. And you put a load of ice just down in this hole, and then they would haul a load of leaves, and keep doing that.
Ms. Lawrence:	In the hole, which was in the house?
Mrs. Paige:	In this little house, just a -
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh okay, not a home house?
Mrs. Paige:	Not a home house but a little house out in the yard.
Ms. Lawrence:	A little shelter house, okay.
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah a shelter house. And so that in the summertime you had all the ice you wanted.
Ms. Lawrence:	And the leaves, did they insulate it, or separate the layers?
Mrs. Paige:	They separated the layers and insulated.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay.
Mrs. Paige:	So, that being that far down in the ground too kept it.
Ms. Lawrence:	How'd you retrieve the ice from the very bottom?
Mrs. Paige:	Well, you'd go from the top to the bottom, you know?
Ms. Lawrence:	But I mean someone at the end had to jump in to get an ice chunk out?
Mrs. Paige:	Well, no, they had the steps or a ladder down in there and you went down and got it out by the bags.
Ms. Lawrence:	And you liked that as a little girl? That place?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh yeah. Plus it was cool in the summer.
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh, huh-huh.
Mrs. Paige:	And my grandfather and father had put layers in the earth around for shelves, where we could put our milk and buter and jello and all kinds of things in there as well as bring our ice up to the icehouse, so I never remember being without ice.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, a refridgerator, basically.
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah. I mean - yeah.
Ms. Lawrence:	Did other people have icehouses?
Mrs. Paige:	There were a couple around, but we sold a lot of ice to people.
Ms. Lawrence:	Ohh.
Mrs. Paige:	People came to buy ice.
Ms. Lawrence:	Wow.
Mrs. Paige:	Of course we had a truck that came through, selling ice, certain days a week. But we also had a lot of customers too.
Ms. Lawrence:	Did you sell for cheaper than the truck?
Mrs. Paige:	I'm sure they did. I'm sure they did. But of course, the trucks sold the block ice from the ice companies, and so if you put that in your old-fashioned iceboxes it would last longer because ours weren't that thick. But we had a lot of customers.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm, mm-hm. Did you get a newspaper or journals or, from the, from the outside world? Something like that?
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah. We did, and I don't remember, but I think it was one from Richmond or Charlottesville that came out there at the time. But yeah, my parents did have a newspaper. It was probably like once a week, or something like that, but there was a newspaper. And then of course, I said my uncle worked at Van Cliefs so sometimes they brought papers home of various things, because they, people were traveling. They would always pick up papers or have papers and everybody saved them and passed them around.
Ms. Lawrence:	Really? In the community?
Mrs. Paige:	Mm-hm. A lot of times you gave your papers because the other thing I can remember that when we still, we did start taking the paper on a regular basis, as a teenager, now I think we were probably taking the Richmond Times Dispatch at that point. But Mrs. Lewis that came down, we saved our paper from the day before to give her, and she took it home the next day. And my mother would always tell us, 'don't mess the paper up too much now, Mrs. Lewis will be after the paper.' And then what we did was divide it with her after she read it. She would bring some of them back because we needed paper to start fires and stuff. Then she kept some of it to start fires.
Ms. Lawrence:	Nice. Um, did you have any relatives or friends who lived in Proffit?
Mrs. Paige:	No.
Ms. Lawrence:	No, okay. Uh, and did you ever visit Proffit, or Scottsville?
Mrs. Paige:	Scottsville, but not Proffit.
Ms. Lawrence:	How often did you visit Scottsville, and for what?
Mrs. Paige:	There was also a grocery shop and stores in Scottsville. But Scottsville was always somewhere we went to do what we had to do and come out of there. (Laughter)
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm, what does that mean? (Laughter) I feel like there's a subtext there.
Mrs. Paige:	Well, Scottsville was just Scottsville. It was a very segregated town and you didn't want to be there.
Ms. Lawrence:	Hmm, especially alone.
Mrs. Paige:	Alone, with somebody. So you went for business and that's it.
Ms. Lawrence:	With you parents? Did you always go with one of your parents?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh yeah, oh yeah. Get your stuff and go. My father did go because being a painter, he had to go after supplies and W. Polette, he always believed, carried the best paintbrushes there ever were. So we went for supplies and stuff like that, and we went to feedstore down there, something like that. And I used to like to go in there because in those days the feed came in colorful cotton sacks, and you wanted those to make a blouse, you wanted that. So dad would let me go pick the color I wanted.
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh, uh-huh.
Mrs. Paige:	So, that was, you know -
Ms. Lawrence:	A perk.
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah. Because I stayed with my dad a lot. I like outside and I liked the farm animals, which my sister didn't, she liked inside. So he never got to do a lot with her. But I stayed with him a lot. My mother told me once I was going to freeze myself to death, but then I know she made me this beautiful blue wool snowsuit so I wouldn't get cold out there going with him.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh, ohh. So you went out and did chores with him on the farm?
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah, because he had a horse and buggy too, and like on a really snowy day a lot of times we'd go, where we'd call to the mill, to get corn and wheat stuff ground. Daddy liked to do things the old way. And he had one of these fancy buggies with the top to it. So, we couldn't go to school on a day like that, but he could take the horse out and we could go to the mill. And what he would do, when it was bad, the next day before, he'd put bricks on the back of the stove, and let them heat all night, and then he lined the bottom of the buggy with the bricks. So when I put what they called the laprobe over you, the heat would come up so you'd be nice and warm. And my brother and dad built an A-shaped sled, so we used to go around and clean people's paths. They didn't mind the driveway because they didn't have cars but, you know, past the house, and then we loaded up with kids because the more weight you had on it -
Ms. Lawrence:	So the sled actually was used to clear the path?
Mrs. Paige:	Right.
Ms. Lawrence:	You didn't even get out? You just used the sled itself? Oh, that's clever.
Mrs. Paige:	You wanted to sit on it because the weight helped pushed the snow.
Ms. Lawrence:	And your horse would draw it?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh yeah, we had friendly horses which you could do most things with. But going to the mill was a great thing on a real snowy day, get nice and warm, everybody said 'how are you keeping that child warm?!' And then he said, 'oh, she's nice and warm, feel in here.' The bricks would do it.
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh, uh-huh. Did you see other people - was that a point where you came into contact with a lot of other people from the community, at the mill?
Mrs. Paige:	No.
Ms. Lawrence:	No?
Mrs. Paige:	No, because not a lot of people were using it then. Just a few, you know, I said my dad's held on to a lot of the older things for a long time because he didn't like tractors in his garden, things like that. He liked to do it with the horses.
Ms. Lawrence:	Which church did you and your family attend?
Mrs. Paige:	New Green Mountain Baptist.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. And were there other community events besides Field Day that you remember?
Mrs. Paige:	Yes. One of the other big community things was - they had a club around here called the Progressive Club, that were farmers and homemakers, etcetera, in the area. And they met like once a month to discuss whatever neighborhood, how to grow this, politics or whatever was the concern. But also they had a big exhibit every Fall, and you displayed your canned goods, your vegetables, or even you put your chicken in a cage if you had a nice looking one. You walk your cows down. And all this was judged by an Extension Agent.
Ms. Lawrence:	From where?
Mrs. Paige:	From Charlottesville.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. Do you remember the name of that agent?
Mrs. Paige:	Uh, it was, I remember - the first one I remember was a Mr. Greer.
Ms. Lawrence:	Black or white?
Mrs. Paige:	Black.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. And any home demonstration agents? They were kind of the female equivalent, right?
Mrs. Paige:	Right. At first we did not have those.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay.
Mrs. Paige:	No, I think, I don't think they came along until almost my time because I remember working, I learned to upholstery through one of those.
Ms. Lawrence:	Like, the forties or something like that? The 1940s?
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah, well, fifties.
	(tape side one ended)
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay, we're back, side two, and you were just talking about Mr. Greer.
Mrs. Paige:	Okay, he was the person that I remember. But in the end we had Mr. Butler, James Butler.
Ms. Lawrence:	B.U.T.L.E.R. Mr. ?
Mrs. Paige:	Uh-huh, James.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay, Mr. James Butler.
Mrs. Paige:	He was later supervisor for Albemarle County.
Ms. Lawrence:	And he was also black?
Mrs. Paige:	A supervisor in the end. In the Samuel Miller district I think he ran. He was one of the Extension Agents out here too. They displayed everything considering homemaking. Sewing, cooking, cannings -
Ms. Lawrence:	One day?
Mrs. Paige:	One day, all day long. They even dismissed school classes to come up to look at the exhibit. And then they went into the night after all the judging, and who won the most blue ribbons, etcetera, they would play bingo and some of the people would have gone to stores in Charlottesville, had some excellent prizes to give away.
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh.
Mrs. Paige:	So that was always a big event here.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah. Was there a dinner or -
Mrs. Paige:	All day long they served food.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay.
Mrs. Paige:	You know, you could buy hot dogs, hamburgers, all full dinner. So all day long they served food.
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh. Any music?
Mrs. Paige:	Sometimes they would have a radio or record player or something, but mainly just the neighborhood together. They were talking and comparing things - how did you make this, and how did you make that? And for a long time they carried on that tradition. The club is no longer functioning. But back to Mr. Greer, his wife Mrs. Greer started our first Garden Club out here, which is still in existence and meets tonight! (Chuckle)
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh! And where was that held?
Mrs. Paige:	At the Odd Fellows Hall but they . . . .
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah what about fraternal organizations, House of Ruth?
Mrs. Paige:	We have had Odd Fellows and Household of Ruth for, back to early 1900s, because that's when that hall was built, the Odd Fellows Hall, and the Household of Ruth. Then later I suppose, forties and fifties, they had masonic lodges to come in.
Ms. Lawrence:	Were you a member of the Household of Ruth?
Mrs. Paige:	I am a member of the Household of Ruth.
Ms. Lawrence:	Ah okay.
Mrs. Paige:	And I -
Ms. Lawrence:	When did you join? I'm sorry.
Mrs. Paige:	Probably in the late fifties, but as a little girl I had been what they called the Juvenile Division to it.
Ms. Lawrence:	A little girl? Before your teenage years?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh yeah, youth. You know, youth, between I think it's eight and sixteen, you're in a group called the Juvenile, that's the young people's division of it.
Ms. Lawrence:	Girls and boys?
Mrs. Paige:	Mm-hm.
Ms. Lawrence:	What did you all do?
Mrs. Paige:	Just little activities. You know, little meetings. They more or less were instructing us how to meet. We had little parades with them when they - the second Sunday in May, they always had what they called their day, and you had to be all in white. You went to one of the churches for a service, which we thought was very boring then, because they talked for hours and all of that. But that wasn't part of it.
Ms. Lawrence:	In a different church did you say?
Mrs. Paige:	It's two diff - well, yeah, they used to go from one church to the other. One year at one and one year at the other.
Ms. Lawrence:	And you would just all go to the church together in your white -
Mrs. Paige:	And have that service. But then otherwise you met twice a month. I think we met in the afternoon after school. It was just sort of a learning period of how to conduct a meeting, how to do things like that.
Ms. Lawrence:	Wow. How to conduct a meeting, that sounds kind of grown up?
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah, but they were teaching you about motions, whatever, this type of thing.
Ms. Lawrence:	Political stuff?
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah, mm-hm.
Ms. Lawrence:	Interesting.
Mrs. Paige:	That's sort of what a fraternity is. You know, and they have their little goals and you paid your dues and you, some of it was to help people in the community that needed help.
Ms. Lawrence:	Even the Juvenile Division dealt with that kind of stuff?
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah, mm-hm. The Widows and Orphans they called it and they asked you to do stuff like that.
Ms. Lawrence:	Were there a lot of widows and orphans?
Mrs. Paige:	No not a lot. When you live in a very close community that's the one thing I miss a lot of, it was the closeness and togetherness. Now, I don't know even half of the people in the community anymore, you know?
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, yeah.
Mrs. Paige:	But I think, growing up, everybody knew everybody.
Ms. Lawrence:	And when you share butter and chickens -
Mrs. Paige:	Sugar and -
Ms. Lawrence:	- and all that stuff -
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah.
Ms. Lawrence:	- there's something really interwoven, yeah.
Mrs. Paige:	Mm-hm.
Ms. Lawrence:	Did people know the people who received help from the church or the community - these community groups?
Mrs. Paige:	No.
Ms. Lawrence:	They didn't. So that was kind of kept private?
Mrs. Paige:	Yes. That was always a big thing, that if you were doing it it was private. You did not discuss it. You did not make it public.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm, mm-hm, interesting.
Mrs. Paige:	Because there weren't a lot of federal funds and all of that then. So, -
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah.
Mrs. Paige:	- you had to help each other.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm. Or there were, just not for African Americans as much.
Mrs. Paige:	Well, that's true. We didn't know that back then, I would say.
Ms. Lawrence:	Did you ever go to the movies?
Mrs. Paige:	Not until I was a teenager.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. In Charlottesville?
Mrs. Paige:	In Charlottesville. And then, well, I guess I could say eleven, twelve [years old], somewhere in there, because my cousin Ted and I, he had an older brother that moved back home, and then started dating a lady in Charlottesville. And he went in every Thursday and Saturday - every Thursday and Sunday - to see her. So a lot of times, if we could get someone to give us enough money, we would catch him in and we would go to the movies. And then he would pick us up afterwards.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm. That was handy.
Mrs. Paige:	So that was transportation to the movies.
Ms. Lawrence:	That sounds good. How old was he?
Mrs. Paige:	At the time I guess, at that point, let's see, he was probably in his early thirties.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh, that's much older.
Mrs. Paige:	Mm-hm.
Ms. Lawrence:	I was wondering if the boys were treated a little differently in terms of supervised dates, from the girls?
Mrs. Paige:	No. I guess in the end they were, but (Chuckle), not -
Ms. Lawrence:	Everyone got close supervision I guess.
Mrs. Paige:	Mm-hm, yeah. For starters.
Ms. Lawrence:	I want to ask you, specifically, did you know the Benjamin Yancey family at all?
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah, they're cousins of mine.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh okay.
Mrs. Paige:	But, I didn't know the older ones that well, you know? I remember Mrs. Harriet Yancey, which was the wife of Benjamin Yancey. As a youngster, she was still living in the area. I do know her son, which was Judge Yancey in New Jersey, and she had a daughter named May Yancey. Then they brought her children here. And, which actually, one of my cousins in New Jersey saw one of her daughters the other day.
Ms. Lawrence:	Hmm.
Mrs. Paige:	(Chuckle) So I do know who they were.
Ms. Lawrence:	How were they related to you exactly?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh it's way back cousins.
Ms. Lawrence:	(Laughter)
Mrs. Paige:	Back then everybody was cousins with somebody, I can't connect it in there, but, they were cousins.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. Um, what was your just general impression of the Yancey family or Mrs. Harriet Yancey?
Mrs. Paige:	The normal Esmont family. No particulars stand out. They were an educated family. They aspired very hard. My father and her son apparently were in school together, and I remember my father saying, 'yeah, he needed to be a judge or something, he always could talk his way out of anything.'
Ms. Lawrence:	(Laughter)
Mrs. Paige:	You know, so they were schoolmates and stuff. They always stayed in touch as long as - of course, Judge Yancey died long before my father did. My father was 96 when he died. But -
Ms. Lawrence:	But pretty standard?
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah pretty standard family, but I said that they were here not during my growing up years. They had moved away and only she was there.
Ms. Lawrence:	I think maybe this will be it for today.
Mrs. Paige:	Okay.
Ms. Lawrence:	And we'll continue another time. Is that okay with you?
Mrs. Paige:	That's fine.
Ms. Lawrence:	Do you have any story that's just leaping out to tell right now?
Mrs. Paige:	No. (Laughter)
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. You'll come up with it tonight. Okay.
	(end part one of interview)
	(second part of interview)
Ms. Lawrence:	Today is February 14, 2002, and Sarah Lawrence is here with Mrs. Lorraine Paige in her home in Esmont for part two of our interview. Good afternoon.
Mrs. Paige:	Good afternoon.
Ms. Lawrence:	How are you doing?
Mrs. Paige:	I'm fine.
Ms. Lawrence:	Good. Okay, we are going to continue with a little bit about community life in Esmont as you were growing up -
Mrs. Paige:	Okay.
Ms. Lawrence:	- and specifically I'm wondering how holidays operated in your family, if there was any special event around holidays that you can remember?
Mrs. Paige:	Always special events on holidays. My mom liked to celebrate everything, so Valentines, St. Patricks Day, although we were not Irish there was always to wear green to school or red on Valentines, or Easter egg hunts and anything that - and of course Christmas was the big day and I always marvel now that they put up all the Christmas decorations so far ahead of time. We never even saw our Christmas tree until Christmas morning, decorated.
Ms. Lawrence:	Really? So they hid it?
Mrs. Paige:	Well, they didn't do it until we went to bed Christmas Eve.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. Had they cut down the tree already?
Mrs. Paige:	They'd cut down the tree. My father of course, being on the farm we always had a cedar tree which made the house smell so good.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mmm.
Mrs. Paige:	And they would put the tree up but never decorate it. So when we came down Christmas morning we saw the tree decorated as well as our gifts for the first time.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. But before the tree had just been in the house?
Mrs. Paige:	Just in the house.
Ms. Lawrence:	And it was in the house?
Mrs. Paige:	Sometimes.
Ms. Lawrence:	It was probably a big tree?
Mrs. Paige:	Yes, it was always a very big tree.
Ms. Lawrence:	(Chuckle) Uh-huh.
Mrs. Paige:	Because we, you know, sort of lived in a big old farmhouse.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah.
Mrs. Paige:	So we had room for a big tree.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh okay, pretty high ceilings then?
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah.
Ms. Lawrence:	How high?
Mrs. Paige:	These were eight foot, they were probably nine or ten, ceilings.
Ms. Lawrence:	Wow, okay. And what kind of decorations?
Mrs. Paige:	Beautiful glass balls and everything was glass. We had garlands, the silver garlands my mom put on it, and we had some that came from her family, and some from my dad's family. They were all really, you know -
Ms. Lawrence:	Precious.
Mrs. Paige:	Precious. I'm sorry I didn't get over a couple of our original ones, and my husband has a couple from his family, very old ones. And we still decorate our tree traditional. Not, one color.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh! Not one color, or, one color.
Mrs. Paige:	Not one color.
Ms. Lawrence:	Ah, okay.
Mrs. Paige:	Well some people go with the one color bit.
Ms. Lawrence:	Naw.
Mrs. Paige:	We don't do that -
Ms. Lawrence:	I'm not into that either.
Mrs. Paige:	- because we prefer -
Ms. Lawrence:	Texture, color.
	(phone ringing)
Mrs. Paige:	Oh no.
Ms. Lawrence:	That's the phone.
Mrs. Paige:	Just let it ring.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. Um, so Christmas was the biggest holiday?
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah I would say Christmas was the biggest holiday.
Ms. Lawrence:	Did that mean in terms of relatives also, friends, joining you?
Mrs. Paige:	Yes, yes. Relatives and friends always came around on Christmas, and in and out, neighbors, friends, children, grown ups. So we always did a lot of celebrating in those days.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm, mm-hm. Can you describe some of the activities?
Mrs. Paige:	Well mainly Christmas Day it was the big thing to eat and go to the neighbor's house, whoever got to houses first to see what the other got. Probably then to visit your grandparents - you know, my grandfather was alive when I was young. And then, if there was snow, to go play in the snow awhile before a big dinner with the family. There was always an all day long thing, and one day that you could eat when you wanted all day long. (Laughter)
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh! (Laughter)
Mrs. Paige:	So it's like saying, you know, that your parents had no objections if you go into the stock and eat the oranges or apples or whatever was in there, the canned goods, you know, any time of day and no one's home, but you can't have that now sort of thing.
Ms. Lawrence:	Other times they would say that?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh yes. Other times you had to do it according to meal time. But Christmas, no one seemed to bother anybody about what you were eating.
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh, uh-huh. And, you exchanged gifts?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh yes, we always exchanged gifts. There were always lots of gifts. I had an aunt and cousin that lived in Alexandria that, at the time, she had the one child, and she had no children, so they always, usually, came and brought all kinds of gifts, and I remember one year in particular they brought me a big teddy bear which I named Clubby Joe -
Ms. Lawrence:	Clubby Joe?
Mrs. Paige:	Clubby Joe. Which I still have.
	(General Laughter)
Mrs. Paige:	But that was grand. And I do remember them bringing all three of us like, red boots with the white cuffs and all filled with candy. They were like plaster of paris or something of that type, and I still have those because my three children used them.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh that's great.
Mrs. Paige:	My brother and sister never took theirs, so, since I was the one that had the three children it worked out perfectly because I could have the three boots. (Chuckle)
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh great.
Mrs. Paige:	And they used them for a long time on the fireplace.
Ms. Lawrence:	So it's like a really sturdy stocking basically.
Mrs. Paige:	Mm-hm, yeah.
Ms. Lawrence:	All right. Was there any music on those days?
Mrs. Paige:	Of course, there were always Christmas carols. My younger days we had an old Victrola type thing that you wound up and would play records. So we would always play the Christmas carols. And of course later with the radio, and whatever, or to sing - my mother played piano, so sometimes we would just gather around the piano and sing the Christmas carols.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh nice. Along those lines, what other community celebrations happened, or events that you can remember?
Mrs. Paige:	During the Christmas holiday?
Ms. Lawrence:	No not holidays necessarily, just, you know, entertainment, fun stuff.
Mrs. Paige:	Well, not big community, probably, celebrations. Revivals were always a big cel - well, not really a celebration, but a time for the community to get together -
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah.
Mrs. Paige:	- because no church had the revivals on the same Sunday.
Ms. Lawrence:	Right.
Mrs. Paige:	And so there was a big feast day that the ladies cooked a lot of food and people would come from as far as they could get, from almost to -
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, how far?
Mrs. Paige:	- that service. Well, depending on what transportation you had, you know. If you lived within a couple miles, you walked. And then some people had cars that would pick up other people. So I would say, in a radius of at least fifteen miles they were coming, which brought in a lot of people because they came to that day, particularly to eat and fellowship. So, that mainly was during the summer months, going from one church to the other, with that. We had a fraternity here called the Odd Fellows, and the ladies' branch is the Household of Ruth. And they always had a big celebration every Mother's Day, which was a big affair, and when the Esmont School had a band for a while, which our parents paid for a band instructor to come out on weekends, on Saturdays -
Ms. Lawrence:	From where?
Mrs. Paige:	From Charlottesville.
Ms. Lawrence:	Ah, okay.
Mrs. Paige:	And their thing was that they had to - someone had to go get him and bring him, take him back.
Ms. Lawrence:	Right.
Mrs. Paige:	And then they each had to pay for the instructor's fee. And so that band played for the march. Once the band got established they always did a march, whether, whichever church it was at, to march to it to have their celebration. So that was another big celebration day. I think I said before, schools always had a Field Day or a Play Day each year.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm, right, mm-hm.
Mrs. Paige:	So that was another family or community get together time.
Ms. Lawrence:	And did you go to other communities' events, like, certainly Revivals I guess?
Mrs. Paige:	Not too much that wasn't locally, let's say within ten miles, because there was not a lot of transportation to get, when I was growing up.
Ms. Lawrence:	You had a horse and buggy, is that right?
Mrs. Paige:	We had a horse and buggy, but that didn't, we didn't use that for church, etcetera, because we walked, you know. We were a mile from the church and we just walked to church. Like we walked to school, which was two miles, because the bus that came through came from Covesville in North Garden, but they did not pick up the Esmont group, so we all had to walk. Although we used to laugh about them coming to our school, but we were the ones that had to walk to the school.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, hmm.
Mrs. Paige:	Then, my father arranged that on a rainy day, there was a gentleman in this area that sort of drove taxi around and he always picked us up.
Ms. Lawrence:	Hmm, in a car?
Mrs. Paige:	In a car. If it was raining. Take us to school -
Ms. Lawrence:	Just you, or all of the kids?
Mrs. Paige:	All, well, my sister and brother, when they were going, and when he sent after to me I always brought my friends with me, you know, that lived on this end of the road. And then my neighbors across the road, their father had a car, so sometimes he would tell this guy, 'okay, I'm going to pick up the children today. You don't have to go after her, I'll bring them.' So whoever got there would bring us home.
Ms. Lawrence:	So it sounds like the fathers kind of organized the transportation?
Mrs. Paige:	The fathers organized the transportation for rainy days, but otherwise you walked.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay, mm-hm. You were better in shape for Field Day for it!
Mrs. Paige:	I know.
	(General Laughter)
Mrs. Paige:	Lots of exercise.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah! Do you remember traveling shows, anything coming through Esmont?
Mrs. Paige:	No.
Ms. Lawrence:	No? Circus, or anything?
Mrs. Paige:	No.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay.
Mrs. Paige:	They had them in Charlottesville, once in a while in Scottsville. But as I said, Scottsville wasn't a place we went that often.
Ms. Lawrence:	That's right.
Mrs. Paige:	So, no traveling shows to Esmont.
Ms. Lawrence:	Can you talk about how your family dealt with your health care?
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah mostly home remedies. (Chuckle) As I say, we were fortunate in this area. We did have a doctor, in Esmont.
Ms. Lawrence:	What was his name or her name?
Mrs. Paige:	Dr. Early. And there was one in Scottsville, a Dr. Harris. And so, if you had major illness, you know, something that didn't go away in two or three days, then you went to the doctor. Otherwise, you know, your parents sort of knew what to do, if you got a stomach ache or if you got a toothache or something like that.
Ms. Lawrence:	Can you describe some of the things you did to take care of those?
Mrs. Paige:	Well, there were all - we used to have traveling salesmen to come around. And they sold things like chlorine salve for cuts and stuff. They sold linament that would rub for cuts or aches. I think they sold like cough syrups and stuff like that. Or, I don't know, can't remember what the thing was, but Vick's salve, a type of salve thing that you rubbed with the mentholatum in it. And so, basically, if you had a cold, they rubbed you down with that. I don't remember a mustard plaster. My husband does, that they made what they called a mustard plaster and put on you if you had a real bad cold. I don't remember my mother doing that to me but I remember the Vick's salve and all that, being rubbed down and putting in a nice warm bed and cover up and say, "sweat it out." Hot tea, with lemon and honey. And in the spring and all they made different teas that were supposed to be good for you. There's one, my husband had a root the other week and said he was making sassafrass tea. And they used to get it locally. It grows out here.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah. What's that supposed to do?
Mrs. Paige:	Well it's just a good, like, tonic. And especially in the spring. They - you know, after the winter months, they said you needed energy and they made these different teas and made that for you.
Ms. Lawrence:	Well they certainly keep up with that now.
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah, you can buy sassafrass tea, I understand, on the market. Of course it was a big thing, in the spring you took a dose of castor oil to clean you out after the winter. (Chuckle)
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh really? Kind of a ritual?
Mrs. Paige:	A ritual thing.
Ms. Lawrence:	Did the whole family do that?
Mrs. Paige:	The whole family.
Ms. Lawrence:	Did they do it together?
Mrs. Paige:	Not necessarily. (Chuckle) You know, you never knew when your parents were doing something like that, but you know, they, most of the families gave it to the children and then they passed back and forth 'this is wrong with my child, what can I do', you know, sort of thing.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm, mm-hm. Yeah.
Mrs. Paige:	But I remember in school also, they had a clinic thing for a while, instead of the traveling dentist office like they have now to come to the school. They took some of the children, there was a Dr. Jackson in Charlottesville - I'm sure we didn't know what was going on but it's probably with some kind of grant with the school system even then that you got to go in and get your teeth checked etcetera.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm, mm-hm. Were all of these black doctors?
Mrs. Paige:	Yes.
Ms. Lawrence:	That you're talking about?
Mrs. Paige:	No, they're - the local, medical ones were not black doctors.
Ms. Lawrence:	The Scottsville - Mr. Harris, Dr. Harris and Dr. Early. Okay.
Mrs. Paige:	And the Esmont. Nuh-uh. There was one black doctor that I remember, the first black doctor, was actually a cousin of mine. Was Dr. Robert Nelson. And he was in Charlottesville. But he left Charlottesville and went to Washington because he was not allowed to - he could send his patients to the university, but he could no longer [treat] them once they went there. So he left to go to Washington where he could also follow up his patients.
Ms. Lawrence:	Right, of course. Okay so he was your cousin or your aunt's cousin?
Mrs. Paige:	He was my cousin.
Ms. Lawrence:	Your cousin, okay. Nelson? N.E.L. -
Mrs. Paige:	N.E.L.S.O.N. Robert Nelson.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay, wow. So there was some kind of clinic - dental clinic - in Charlottesville that the Esmont kids went to?
Mrs. Paige:	Yes, from school. You got involved in that from school. So that was mainly your health care. Surprisingly, I can't remember anybody being that sick around here.
Ms. Lawrence:	In your family?
Mrs. Paige:	No.
Ms. Lawrence:	Well good for you!
Mrs. Paige:	Not over a day or two. You know, they usually stomach viruses and colds and no extended illnesses.
Ms. Lawrence:	It's all that walking. (Chuckle)
Mrs. Paige:	(Chuckle) But I can't remember anybody really being, having any chronic diseases.
Ms. Lawrence:	And even your neighbors?
Mrs. Paige:	No.
Ms. Lawrence:	Wow. Wonderful. What about birth? Did you all have midwives? Or I guess -
Mrs. Paige:	I was born with a midwife. I don't know - I mean I don't know anything about when I came along because the child my mother had after me, she went to the hospital.
Ms. Lawrence:	Ah, okay.
Mrs. Paige:	I remember the morning she went. Didn't know what was wrong but I -
Ms. Lawrence:	Of course not. (Chuckle)
Mrs. Paige:	- but I was - well, in my time I'm sure all of us were born with midwives.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm, mm-hm.
Mrs. Paige:	I knew the lady that delivered me.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah.
Mrs. Paige:	She was an aunt.
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh.
Mrs. Paige:	And she was a registered nurse.
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh, what was her name?
Mrs. Paige:	Alice Nelson.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay.
Mrs. Paige:	And, um, but I know, you know, that she delivered me and actually was my Godmother after that.
Ms. Lawrence:	Did you have a close relationship with her?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh yeah, I did. She, you know, didn't have any children. Well she had one son who was killed in the service but, that I didn't know. But, you know, she was an older lady, but I remember, you know, doing things and going to the house and giving me trinkets and rings and various things. So yeah, I've heard of many midwives in the area actually knew many of them, of the older generation.
Ms. Lawrence:	You did?
Mrs. Paige:	I knew them. There was one named Mrs. Fannie Johnson that I've heard some of the older ladies talk about. They delivered their children. Actually my stepgrandmother was a midwife.
Ms. Lawrence:	Hmm. What was her name?
Mrs. Paige:	Pearl Cosby Bolden. She was an aunt of Bill Cosby's.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh my goodness! (Chuckle)
Mrs. Paige:	(Chuckle) But um, she was a midwife because (telephone rings) I, you know, remember when I had my first child, she was really into telling me what to do and what I shouldn't do and all these kinds of things and carry over from mid -
Ms. Lawrence:	Sure, sure.
Mrs. Paige:	So I knew some of them but I didn't, you know, I don't know of anyone that had, in my time, had their babies delivered at home.
Ms. Lawrence:	That had one for themselves, mm-hm, okay. Did the midwives - so there were I guess three or four you might have just mentioned - did they all live in Esmont?
Mrs. Paige:	Yes.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh, wow. That's a lot. And did they treat other people for other things aside from births?
Mrs. Paige:	Not that I know of. No, they were strictly birth mothers. (Chuckle)
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, yeah. Can you just describe - I guess, maybe, you know, you didn't have one, but, if you overheard or have a sense of what their - what it was like, like what the whole process was. Did they, at three months -
Mrs. Paige:	With midwives?
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, when a woman found out she was pregnant would she go to a midwife and talk about the baby growing inside her or was it the kind of, the day of the delivery that -
Mrs. Paige:	I just, I don't think they went. I mean I think what, from what I could understand they did was to tell them when the baby was due, sort of, when they thought the baby was due, and that's the contact then. And the midwife would start having everything ready. And tell her what to have at home for her to be prepared for when she got there. I do remember that, I've heard talk that, two, well it's a cousin and another guy and this Mrs. Fannie Johnson was delivering them and they were born the same day, one in the morning and one in the evening -
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh.
Mrs. Paige:	- and they always laugh that, 'You had to be waiting -'
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh. (Chuckle)
Mrs. Paige:	'- until I was born before you could be born because you needed the midwife.' So I think that's sort of what they did, it was just that day -
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, okay.
Mrs. Paige:	- that you, you had the midwife.
Ms. Lawrence:	And would they follow up with -
Mrs. Paige:	They followed up after the baby was born. Now, my grandmother told me, for a month.
Ms. Lawrence:	A month?
Mrs. Paige:	The first, at least the first, unless you needed the help longer. But they came in on a regular basis the first week, to check you and the baby. And in those days you were supposed to stay in a month.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm, right. Well -
Mrs. Paige:	You know they didn't let you do anything, for one month.
Ms. Lawrence:	Did that work?
Mrs. Paige:	Uh, yes, it did. I remember one lady that had quite a few children and she said, 'Oh, that was my month's vacation!' sort of.
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh! (Chuckle)
Mrs. Paige:	'My husband had to cook, or get someone to do it.' But the neighbors, you know, sort of always came in, you know, those were the days when the neighbors really helped each other. So if you have a new baby then I will go carry your food or -
Ms. Lawrence:	Right.
Mrs. Paige:	- help with your other children or whatever.
Ms. Lawrence:	Right, mm-hm.
Mrs. Paige:	So um, they did do the month.
Ms. Lawrence:	But the husbands took on a lot as well.
Mrs. Paige:	They took on a lot. Of course they were working, so the, most of the ladies were at home, you know, in that day. So, they were the ones that ran back and forth to see about their neighbors and see what they needed. But I remember hearing "the month of care."
Ms. Lawrence:	The month of care, that's what it was called. Okay. Uh, do you remember what kind of payment was rendered the midwife if any?
Mrs. Paige:	No, I have no idea of that.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm, okay.
Mrs. Paige:	I never heard them talk about that.
Ms. Lawrence:	Did you hear them ever talk about birth control?
Mrs. Paige:	No, no.
Ms. Lawrence:	No? Okay. So, do you think that was because they didn't deal with that at all or they wouldn't share that with you?
Mrs. Paige:	Well probably a little of both, you know. You know, they didn't talk much about those things back there and I don't know how much they dealt with it, you know, or how much they knew to deal with it.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm, mm-hm. And the traveling salesmen who came by, do you remember if they were mostly men?
Mrs. Paige:	They were. They were men.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay, all right. So, because I'm wondering about "female problems", you know, there are all these things back at the turn of the century that dealt with just female concerns, um, menstruation, things like that, even, even some birth control. I'm wondering if there was anything like that that you remember?
Mrs. Paige:	I don't remember anything like that being in what they were selling, you know. Nothing at all.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm. Okay. Um, what else here. World War II. Can you talk a little bit about the effect of World War II on Esmont, the community, and then maybe personally.
Mrs. Paige:	Um, I can't tell you too much about that. I know it affected the community because there were a lot of the young men from this area that were in the army and two or three of them were killed in the army from this area. I know that our church in particular had what they called an honor roll that they placed the names of the soldiers on there. We also have a memorial at the cemetery with the names of the deceased from that war. I was quite young and so I do remember my mother belonging to a Red Cross group that met down at the Odd Fellows' Hall once a week and they made quilts to send to the men.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm, where would they get the material?
Mrs. Paige:	Scraps from old pieces or new pieces. You see, my mother sewed, so she saved every little scrap that she had and I think all the ladies did. And of course if they had a worn dress or something that had enough to take a nice piece out, then all of this. But, I remember seeing some beautiful quilts etcetera they made and they sent to the men. I also remember them baking cookies every once in a while, to make boxes of cookies. I don't remember a lot about the ration part, when they had the stamps etcetera. I do know, you know, our family didn't get that many because three children and two adults didn't get you that many but it got enough for what we needed. But there were other families in the area that had more children and again, the community shared. You know, if you needed a stamp for something -
Ms. Lawrence:	Really, you would share the rations?
Mrs. Paige:	You could share the rations. If I have too many for sugar this month then you're welcome - I'll buy the sugar and you could get it from me.
Ms. Lawrence:	Was that something due to wartime or was that the way the community had operated in the past?
Mrs. Paige:	I think it was always a sharing community. And, you know, so I think that the war, that part of it didn't affect you too much because you were so used to sharing with your neighbor, until you know, okay, this family may only have one child or two children, so they cannot get that many stamps for this or that or the other or whatever they might need. So if I have too many I'll ask, "Do you need this?" you know, sort of type thing. And I think, I've always known, it's a very sharing community. And it's, it still is. None of my family, immediate family, you know cousins etcetera were in the war, but not, you know I didn't have a brother or a father didn't go or anything like that, so.
Ms. Lawrence:	The people who came back from the war, the men who came back, did they have stories that they shared with the community about their war experience?
Mrs. Paige:	Not a lot. I find that most people in the war like that, they don't really talk that much about it. I guess they try to block it out of their minds or something. So if you're thinking that we had sessions where they came in and talked about it, no. I don't remember being at any of those that they actually told what went on in the war.
Ms. Lawrence:	Did they seem changed at all?
Mrs. Paige:	Well that's hard to say because as I say, I was very young and I don't remember what they were like before they went and the few that I remember afterwards I can't say if they changed or not.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, of course. Good point.
	(General Chuckle)
Ms. Lawrence:	Now when did you get married?
Mrs. Paige:	In 1953.
Ms. Lawrence:	And your husband's full name?
Mrs. Paige:	Benjamin Franklin Paige, Senior.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. And you had three children?
Mrs. Paige:	Three children.
Ms. Lawrence:	And can you describe a little bit, we got onto this last time, your experience with integration in the schools, or rather your son's in particular you were talking about?
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah, it started really when my children were in elementary school when the big thing came up of - first we had "freedom of choice" - that's the way the county decided to go with it. And so they asked that [which] students would do better or would we send to a different school and I did change my older and younger sons to all white schools.
Ms. Lawrence:	You mean the county told you we want to recruit your best and brightest, is that how they -
Mrs. Paige:	No, they didn't tell us that. They said we could have freedom of choice they said. If you would like to send your child to a different school, you may.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay.
Mrs. Paige:	Now, I don't know what would have happened if all of us had said, we're going to send our children. But of course that wasn't going to happen because some people said, no, I'm not sending my children. And -
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm. And why did they say no do you think?
Mrs. Paige:	Because one reason we were so used to our school, the other reason was, they were a little fearful of what might happen. It was not going to be a easy time for those children and I don't know if I would have done it if I had to do it again. You know, hindsight's always better than sight. But having, well I sent my younger son for the help I thought he would get at the school, which worked out fine. He was very contented - he was a very outgoing person, so he was able to survive you know, with no problem. My older son is entirely different personality, and although he would have been considered later a very gifted child, he had difficulty. And I may have, you know, ruined his chances to be that nice, bright student that he would have been because he sort of went into his shell for a while.
Ms. Lawrence:	Hmm. Being at the white school?
Mrs. Paige:	Being at the white school, I think that triggered it more than anything else.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah. What was the ratio?
Mrs. Paige:	Probably one to fifteen to twenty.
Ms. Lawrence:	Whoo! Okay.
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah, see, so you weren't, it was not that many people that took advantage of the freedom of choice.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, clearly.
Mrs. Paige:	Even some people said they were, but they they didn't. You know, but then that only lasted one year or two at the most -
Ms. Lawrence:	And that was in Charlottesville, those schools?
Mrs. Paige:	No, one of them was in Scottsville and the other one was in, well it was actually in the county but you had to go through Charlottesville to get to it.
Ms. Lawrence:	Was that Jack Jouett?
Mrs. Paige:	That was Jack Jouett. And the one in Scottsville was Scottsville Elementary School.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay.
Mrs. Paige:	But, the next year became, you had to integrate. So they divided the children as to where you lived. And that meant that they had to come back.
Ms. Lawrence:	Right.
Mrs. Paige:	And of course the older son then got put in Scottsville in Junior High, he couldn't go back to Jack Jouett, so he had to go to Scottsville. So he was just actually moved three times, you know, year to year to year, and that's not good. And I said my younger son was much different - "who cares where I am, I don't really want to go to school anyway" so, you know!
	(General Laughter)
Mrs. Paige:	- "who cares where I am" - but, -
Ms. Lawrence:	So those were then integrated schools?
Mrs. Paige:	Those were then integrated schools after that year.
Ms. Lawrence:	Why did you not send your daughter to the all, the newly opened freedom of choice school?
Mrs. Paige:	I don't know. Number one she said 'I don't want to go.' She's very outspoken all the time. Number two, I thought it was good to separate all three of them. They're only a year apart and very close. And so, I just thought maybe it was good to separate them and let them get a feel of things on their own.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm, mm-hm. Good idea.
Mrs. Paige:	Well, I don't, you know.
Ms. Lawrence:	Independence.
Mrs. Paige:	I mean it was good for them at home to be that close, and going out it helped a lot growing up to have three of them and they always said, the older two, they said they got cheated because the younger one got to go and do things so much earlier than they did because he just went with the crowd. (Chuckle)
Ms. Lawrence:	I beg to differ.
	(General Laughter)
Ms. Lawrence:	As a youngest. (Chuckle)
	(telephone rings)
Mrs. Paige:	But yeah, he would say, you know, that's what their thing was, that 'oh he gets to do so much more than we did' at his age, you know. Because I'd say 'oh you can go with them,' and I'd say 'well, it's up to you all to take care of him.'
Ms. Lawrence:	Right, right. Yeah, yeah.
Mrs. Paige:	Which he didn't ever need taking care of.
	(General Laughter)
Mrs. Paige:	So that was my reason I guess for not sending her, I just thought she would do well staying here. And as I said, in the end, it all came back that you had to do, send them to schools where they said to send them anyway.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, yeah.
Mrs. Paige:	You know, we always wondered why, when you gave us freedom of choice, if you still wouldn't let that child go.
Ms. Lawrence:	Right.
Mrs. Paige:	But I can't, the rules said when they redistricted, that you divided, you had to go in your district.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm, mm-hm. Hmm. Was there any political activity around that issue that you remember? I mean integration or other political activity in Esmont?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh, there was a lot of political activity around that. You know, there were meetings and -
Ms. Lawrence:	Beatings?
Mrs. Paige:	Well yeah there were meetings, because -
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh meetings, okay I thought you said something else.
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah, meetings. No, meetings as to what this was going to do to your children and how did you feel about it and things to guard against and be aware and I remember the first year they integated in Scottsville. I'm sure it was the same everywhere. They had already selected their P.T.O. staff and apparently they thought about that if they were going to integrate, what happens when you have an all-white staff at the P.T.O. and you have all these black parents. So I was one of those called to serve, and so the first year of integration, I was secretary for the P.T.O. in Scottsville.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm.
Mrs. Paige:	And I must say that the President, um, Ray - no, I can't think of his last name. Couldn't have been Carr, Raymond - But I remember his first name was Ray. He couldn't have been nicer.
Ms. Lawrence:	Hmm.
Mrs. Paige:	And we used to, we had to go to Scottsville to the Executive Board meeting, and the first time my husband said, 'I'm driving you and just waiting in the car.'
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah.
Mrs. Paige:	But afterwards I said you know, 'I'm fine.' You know, they always had it at someone's house, etcetera, so you know, 'it's fine, I'm okay.'
Ms. Lawrence:	How many - how many black parents came from Esmont? Or from the surrounding areas?
Mrs. Paige:	To the P.T.O. meetings?
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah.
Mrs. Paige:	Um, I suppose maybe the first meeting I remember fifteen or twenty being there.
Ms. Lawrence:	And how many whites?
Mrs. Paige:	There were probably double over that many white.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. So, and they met in people's homes?
Mrs. Paige:	Well no, the Executive Board. No, the P.T.O. met at the school.
Ms. Lawrence:	At the school, but then -
Mrs. Paige:	The P.T.O. meetings, and then the Board's at the homes.
Ms. Lawrence:	At the homes. Hmm.
Mrs. Paige:	It went very well. Well, it was just sort of everybody walking - the older people would say "on eggshells" -
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm.
Mrs. Paige:	You know, sort of really not doing much, not saying much -
Ms. Lawrence:	Who, you?
Mrs. Paige:	Everybody.
Ms. Lawrence:	Or everybody, yeah.
Mrs. Paige:	You know, it's, you could feel the underlying tension there, you know, for a long, long time.
Ms. Lawrence:	Well how did conflicts get resolved, in that first year?
Mrs. Paige:	Never got resolved I don't think in that first year. And I'm not sure it's all the way resolved yet. There's a lot of tension sometimes.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm.
Mrs. Paige:	There's a lot.
Ms. Lawrence:	I'm sure.
Mrs. Paige:	That's not really been in the open and things. Because some blacks feel they lost their identity in moving into integration because you went into another world.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, yeah.
Mrs. Paige:	And some of it that you knew nothing about. And you weren't able to take a lot of your world with you.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm. And what happened when you tried?
Mrs. Paige:	Well, with the children, it wasn't even a matter of what happened when I tried because you're not just taught things. You know, and I liked at the time - a certain amount of black history and all was always brought into it, and you were used to the role models being black and what you - And when integration went in you had very few black teachers in the schools so you didn't have a role model there of your culture. And there was - except for when they started the February thing for black history you never heard anything about black history.
Ms. Lawrence:	Right, right.
Mrs. Paige:	And then getting into different denominations which, you must be aware that most black people are Baptist, or, a few Methodist, but mainly, you lost that identity. You couldn't do things that we had been used to doing or celebrating at school.
Ms. Lawrence:	Like what?
Mrs. Paige:	Christmas now the kids can't even celebrate at some schools because of different denominations saying you can't do it because we don't do this and we don't do that.
Ms. Lawrence:	Right.
Mrs. Paige:	So a lot of holidays, a lot of things you can't do. You got to skirt around and do it another way and things like this. And so a lot of the black identity was lost I think.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm, mm-hm.
Mrs. Paige:	And, it's really nobody's fault. We needed the better schools, we needed to get together, and we needed to be bigger schools because as it was, the black school being the minority race, we could never build up to the amount of students it took to have an accredited school.
Ms. Lawrence:	Hmm, mm-hm.
Mrs. Paige:	That's one reason Burley was formed.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay.
Mrs. Paige:	To bring enough blacks into one school to get the accreditation because the local black schools, the three which was Esmont, Albemarle Training, and Jefferson High in Charlottesville, they didn't have enough children in any of the schools, to be accredited.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay.
Mrs. Paige:	So the idea was to build us one big school and put them all in together.
Ms. Lawrence:	Right.
Mrs. Paige:	And after that didn't, you know, that worked for a while, and then the government said you had to integrate so, you had the school, which Burley of course is still a county school, but it's in the city.
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay.
Mrs. Paige:	It's a Junior, yeah it's a Junior High.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mrs. Paige, this has been wonderful. I wonder if you have any, um, any other things you want to add that I haven't covered. I mean, there's plenty, there's your entire life!
	(General Laughter)
Mrs. Paige:	Yes.
Ms. Lawrence:	You know, any, any miscellaneous stories, you know, anything from your memory that - what, what's a family story that comes up every Christmas or something - (Chuckle)
Mrs. Paige:	(Laughter) Oh in this house, or in my early childhood?
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, your early childhood.
Mrs. Paige:	Oh I don't know. I guess, my favorite one was that my parents always saw that I had oranges. I was an orange freak.
Ms. Lawrence:	(Laughter) Huh.
Mrs. Paige:	You know, that wasn't something that you bought everyday like the kids have now. They think nothing of it. So, they, they saw - but I don't know of any particular stories except for when I was young, I think my biggest thing was I had a dollhouse made out of paper, but it had all the rooms and you went in from the back. And we didn't have the space all year to keep it up. But at Christmas time I was allowed to put it up for maybe a month or two.
Ms. Lawrence:	Ah. That's a long time.
Mrs. Paige:	And I think that was one of my big things, that I could have my dollhouse up and work it with it.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, what did you do with it?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh you played, you know, from the back, and you moved the people around and redecorated and furnished it and everything. In the front it just looked like a big house but in the back it was open so you could reach in and do all the different things. And my mother reupholstered my furniture you know, made little slipcovers and -
Ms. Lawrence:	Oo, for your tiny furniture?
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah and you know, clothes for my people that were in there, the little dolls etcetera there.
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh. How big was the house?
Mrs. Paige:	Um, it was probably about three by five or something -
Ms. Lawrence:	And two floors?
Mrs. Paige:	Two floors, yeah. And like three bedrooms to it and -
Ms. Lawrence:	Three bedrooms?
Mrs. Paige:	Three bedrooms, kitchen, dining room, living room. Not sure it had a bath because back there, they didn't have baths and everything so-
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh, huh-huh. And how big was the little family?
Mrs. Paige:	Um, oh it was just the mother, father and two children.
Ms. Lawrence:	Two children?
Mrs. Paige:	You know, that was the ideal family, two children, yeah.
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh, uh-huh. Did someone build this for you?
Mrs. Paige:	No, my cousin bought it for me. You know, it just came in a box and you had to put it together. My brother actually put it together for me. But you know, after it was put together a couple times I learned to put it together myself.
Ms. Lawrence:	I just have to ask, were the little people black or white - in the family?
Mrs. Paige:	You know, we painted them black.
Ms. Lawrence:	You painted them black?! (Gasp)
Mrs. Paige:	(Laughter)
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh! Good for you! (Chuckle)
Mrs. Paige:	Well, my dad was a painter. We always had paint around.
Ms. Lawrence:	Wow.
Mrs. Paige:	Because the other thing I remember when, was a checkerboard. And my father said, 'Oh, why spend the money for a checkerboard? I can make you a checkerboard.'
Ms. Lawrence:	Of course.
Mrs. Paige:	And I wonder to this day where it is. I just wish that we had kept it. But he took a piece of plyboard I guess you would call it now. It was just spoolboard to us then. And he put a little finishing around it, and then he'd paint the squares black and red on it. And then, I said my mother sewed, so he took spools, and he painted them black or red.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh.
Mrs. Paige:	And those were our checkers.
Ms. Lawrence:	Great.
Mrs. Paige:	And so, you know, it was fun things like that you know. Then we thought, oh you want the new checkerboard. But then, now you think about how special that was.
Ms. Lawrence:	Oh definitely.
Mrs. Paige:	You know, to have it, you know.
Ms. Lawrence:	Yeah, yeah.
Mrs. Paige:	And the other thing was, I said, we played a lot was Chinese checkers.
Ms. Lawrence:	With the marbles?
Mrs. Paige:	With the marbles. And we stood it - well it wasn't tile but it was like linoleum we had on our floors.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm.
Mrs. Paige:	And so we drew circles and played marbles in the house when it was wet.
Ms. Lawrence:	How'd your mother feel about that?
Mrs. Paige:	Oh it was fine because we did it with crayons and we could wipe it up when we finished. (Chuckle)
Ms. Lawrence:	Okay. (Chuckle)
Mrs. Paige:	And we had a hallway that was just perfect for it. (Chuckle)
Ms. Lawrence:	Uh-huh, uh-huh. (Chuckle) That's great. When you were talking about painting for some reason I thought about make up and I wonder if you, if you remember your mother using any cosmetics and beauty parlor, was there a beauty parlor in town she went to?
Mrs. Paige:	No.
Ms. Lawrence:	No?
Mrs. Paige:	No, she washed her own hair and tended - My mother didn't wear make up, no. Maybe a lipstick.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm, mm-hm. Did a lot of the women?
Mrs. Paige:	Yeah, some of them did. I think back there was Pond's most of the time everybody was using around here. But my mother wore lipstick sometimes, but not, not make up. And she was fortunate to have "good hair" so she could just wash it and - As they called it then, and, but I do remember the straightening combs and all that the others were using.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm.
Mrs. Paige:	And the sterno stoves that they used to heat them in or put them under the regular cookstoves and heat your iron to straighten your hair.
Ms. Lawrence:	To straighten your hair, wow. Did you do that?
Mrs. Paige:	No, didn't have to. (Chuckle)
Ms. Lawrence:	You didn't have to - Oh okay.
Mrs. Paige:	The Indian blood gave me some hair that I didn't have to straighten.
Ms. Lawrence:	Ah, all right.
Mrs. Paige:	But (Chuckle), but I do know my friends that did it, you know. And I do know of trying to curl your hair and all, but we couldn't afford curlers and stuff.
Ms. Lawrence:	Mm-hm.
Mrs. Paige:	The first thing I remember was what they called the kid curlers, but they were like leather with a little wiring that you roll your hair, and they just tucked over.
	(Tape ended, interview over)
Copyright Information: Virginia Center for Digital History, University of Virginia This interview is publically accessible Text and images © copyright 2001 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia.

Interview of Lorraine Paige by Sarah Lawrence of the Race and Place Project on February 7, 2002 and February 14, 2002. (Oral History)