INTERVIEWER: Let me see. Something about your brothers and sisters.
KATHERINE: I had three brothers and two sisters. There was six of us. We had a very nice home. Our mother was always delighted for us to have friends to come in. She had parties for us. It was a house for everybody. I remember my sister said one time, she had this one person that came to see her so often, and I heard my sister say, “I wish she would stay home so I could go to see her.” She was always at our house. We had a very nice home.
INTERVIEWER: Did you raise your own food?
KATHERINE: No, not to any great extent.
INTERVIEWER: What were the businesses in town?
KATHERINE: I imagine they would like to know about the businesses that are not here now. They used to make barrels in Pocomoke, because the farmers shipped their potatoes in barrels, so they had a barrel factory. And they had a basket factory where they made baskets for the tomatoes. And that was at the Schoolfield Mill, and the Schoolfield Mill was out near the, it was on Clarke Avenue, where the first railroad station was, the early one. They had shipyards. In one shipyard that made boats, and I mean real sure enough boats. And they used to launch the boats and that was a big time in the town when they would launch a ship. Many times the ship that they’d launch reached the entire width of the river. I mean that was the size of the ship. They had lumberyards. They had a bottle factory at one time. I remember that when I was a little girl. Somebody was talking about it one day and they said, “I don’t ever remember a bottle factory.” And I said, “I do.” I remember I looked in the window one day and they were making bottles and bottles on kind of a belt, carrier belt. It was down on Clarke Avenue. I think when I was a child, I explored all the time, I mean I was always looking for something. My father had an ice cream manufacturing. He manufactured ice cream. He had a factory down on Railroad Avenue. There was a soft drink factory in Pocomoke. They had glass smiths. We had three glass smiths shops in Pocomoke. Of course, horses then. Automobiles changed all that. They had wheelwrights and cabinetmakers. I remember Mr. Farlow was a wheelwright. He had a shop. I used to, we lived not too far at that time to Mr. Farlow. And I used to go over to his shop in the morning and he would use a wood shaver, I guess you would call it, they would come out in curls, you know? And I used to pin the curls all around my face. They had a sausage manufacturing place, where they made sausage. The man’s name was George Johnson. They had oyster bars where men used to go in. I don’t think women ever went in an oyster bar in Pocomoke at that time. Where they just served not anything but oysters, serve them all different ways. They had a carriage factory in Pocomoke, where they made carriages. Livery stables. They had three livery stables. A millinery where they sold hats. Shoemakers, they had a bakery, and we had an electric plant right in Pocomoke where they made the electricity. The Presbyterian Church was the first church lighted by electricity, I think, on the shore, because the man that owned the electric plant was an elder in the Presbyterian Church, and I think it was through him. We had millers, flour mills. Two flour mills where they made flour. And they had an ice plant. There are some of the things …
INTERVIEWER: It sounds like Pocomoke was pretty big.
KATHERINE: It was. I don’t think the population of Pocomoke has changed too much. At that time when I was growing up it was around three thousand. It’s four thousand now. It may be around four thousand, but I’m not sure.
INTERVIEWER: It sounds like there was more industry then than there is now.
KATHERINE: There were more industries. And people used to come to Pocomoke to shop from all the surrounding, all the area, the Virginia part of the Eastern Shore. Now the livery stables, we had five hotels in Pocomoke, and as I told you, three livery stables. And salesmen used to come down. Of course, the transportation then was train mostly. And they would come down on Monday and go to the hotel and stay. Then they would hire a horse and carriage from the livery stable and go down all the area around. But Pocomoke seemed to get most of those travelling men, instead of Snow Hill or Princess Anne. I think maybe it was because they fed them so well. But many of them came here. Our five hotels, we had the Parker House, the Clarke House, the Ford House, White Hotel and then there was a River Hotel down by the river. I don’t know who stayed there but it was a very low-class hotel. The River Hotel.
INTERVIEWER: Did you have a policeman or sheriff?
KATHERINE: We had one policeman. His name was Mr. Stroud. And Mr. Stroud also delivered ice.
INTERVIEWER: You must not have needed to be protected.
KATHERINE: We lived at Hartley Hall and one time, this one time in my life I remember. Everybody left home and looked around for a front door key so we could lock the door, and we didn’t have one. And we had to have one made. Our front door wasn’t locked for years and years and years, day or night. So, you can imagine…
INTERVIEWER: When you lived at Hartley Hall was that sort of out of town then?
KATHERINE: At one time when Dr. Murray wrote his history of Pocomoke, that was in 1840 something, I think. The boundary of Pocomoke, your church was in the country. Your church, the boundary started there. Linden Avenue that was all woods and swamp. We used to skate out there sometimes.
INTERVIEWER: When the swamps were frozen?
KATHERINE: Because there was a little bit of water, but it was enough water to freeze, you know.
(Continues next Saturday here at The Pocomoke Public Eye.)
