Marah Stevenson Finney (1913 - 2006)
TRANSCRIPT EXCERPTS FROM 1982 INTERVIEW
INTERVIEWER: Okay. How about shipyards in Pocomoke, were they still
around then?
MARAH: No, not when I came back to Pocomoke. My mother’s father was part
owner, at one time, of Clarke’s Shipyard. I have a deed that shows it. He and
three other men, including Mr. Clarke, bought this land on the river for a
shipyard.
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
MARAH: And in fact, he was a ship’s carpenter, as well as a wheelwright. And
he moved to Pocomoke when he was a young man. And I’ve never known
exactly why he came here, because he came from New Jersey. His father died
when he was three years old, and at the time, he was apprenticed to a
wheelwright, then came to town when he was 18 or 19. So he probably heard
that there was need of ships’ carpenters in Pocomoke, and decided to come
here.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, were there any kind of medicines?
MARAH: (Coughs) ‘Scuse me. No, I can’t remember any medicines except the
ones that you use in Worcester County, Maryland.
INTERVIEWER: Okay. Do you remember any big storms?
MARAH: No, I don’t remember any while I was in high school. About two
years, I think, after I graduated from Towson, ’33 or ’34, they had a hurricane
that was quite bad. And I remember that where I lived on Winter Course, the
water came up to the porch.
INTERVIEWER: You lived by the golf course?
MARAH: No. I lived where … You know where the Chamberlain family lives?
INTERVIEWER: Oh, that, okay, that side of the river, okay.
MARAH: All right, and I lived three houses beyond where the Chamberlain
family lives, next to Mrs. Roger Langford.
INTERVIEWER: Okay, I know.
MARAH: And that was where we built our house when my father moved back
to Pocomoke. And that was the spot that was so low that the water rose so
high.
INTERVIEWER: All the way up there.
INTERVIEWER: Music when you were in high school, what kind of music, what was the favorite?
MARAH: We did not have a band, but we had a glee club. And we enjoyed
singing. Mrs. Willard Stevenson, who was the organist at the Methodist
church, you don’t remember her, I’m sure. But she was teaching high school
music and English, and she and Mrs. Warman had the glee club together. She
played the piano and Mrs. Warman taught the singing. And I don’t think we
sang for any particular functions, except graduation.
INTERVIEWER: How about the popular groups or records you played?
MARAH: Rudy Vallee (laughs).
INTERVIEWER: How about ice skating? Did you go ice skating?
MARAH: I went ice skating. I went ice skating in the marsh.
INTERVIEWER: (Laughs.)
MARAH: That was very convenient because if you were not very adept, you
had trees to hold on to.
(Both laugh.)
MARAH: And we did have a few ponds out in the country, people we knew,
farmers who had ponds, that we visited. Not too often. Now, when my mother
was a child, the river froze over.
INTERVIEWER: They didn’t skate on the river, did they?
MARAH: On the river, some of them went skating.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, really (laughs)?
MARAH: And she walked across the river once. But when her mother and
father found out, she did not do it again.
INTERVIEWER: (Laughs) I don’t think I could ever attempt that.
MARAH: No, that was very dangerous then.
INTERVIEWER: Did you ever hear of anybody falling in or anything?
MARAH: Seems to me I did hear a story of boys falling in the river because it
seemed to freeze much much more than recent years.
INTERVIEWER: I know I haven’t seen it freeze completely.
MARAH: I don’t know the year that this happened, but Mother was born in
1888, and it was probably around 1894, ’95. I don’t know. But it was probably
when she was a teenager.
INTERVIEWER: Right, can you think of anything else?
MARAH: No. I probably will, after you leave, but …
INTERVIEWER: Okay.
MARAH: Thank you for coming.
(Recollections from generations past continues next Saturday here at The Pocomoke Eye.)