November 2007 Interview with Mary Thompson Sterrett Lipscomb By Isabelle Chewning: [Items enclosed in brackets [ ] are editorial notes inserted for clarification] [Tape 4, Side A] Isabelle Chewning: Do you remember when Miss Trimmer left? Mary Lipscomb: It was while I was in college. I don’t remember her leaving, and things of that kind. Isabelle Chewning: So she was there when you graduated? Mary Lipscomb: Yes. She was there when I graduated. Isabelle Chewning: Did she give a graduation speech? Did you have a graduation speaker? Mary Lipscomb: Oh, I was the valedictorian! Isabelle Chewning: You were? Mary Lipscomb: Yes. I mean there weren’t but eighteen of us I don’t think, or something like that. I don’t know if Anne McCorkle was salutatorian maybe. We had outside speakers for -- I don’t know who spoke at my graduation. I haven’t the foggiest notion. But I remember you know, sometimes we’d have Dr. Gaines, who was the President of Washington and Lee, who was an outstanding speaker. We’d have Dr. Flick who lived in the Fairfield neighborhood who taught at Washington and Lee. He was very interested in education. I think he taught education at Washington and Lee. He would speak. And you’d have oh, outstanding speakers from Staunton or this, that, and the other for the speakers all the time, the graduation speakers. Isabelle Chewning: Do you remember the dedication of the new school building? Did you go to that? Mary Lipscomb: Oh, yes. [Laugh] We had to listen to it being built you know, all the time. I remember in the stucco building I had freshman English upstairs in the room that was, well, it was a square building, and there were maybe two classrooms downstairs. One on each side of the hall, and then they built on a cafeteria at the back. We didn’t have lunches for a long time. Maybe I was in the seventh grade or so when we had something like a lunch room and you could get soup or something of that sort, but it was nothing like cafeterias. And everybody mostly brought their lunch even then. But upstairs over these two downstairs classrooms were the home economics department and then on the left was freshman English. And it was at the front, and I remember Miss Trimmer and Edgar Allen Poe, and a few of these people, and this noise outside with the building of the new building all the time. I guess I must have been a sophomore or junior. I guess I was a sophomore when we first started in the new building, I suppose. Because I played basketball in that building. That’s the first time we’d had an inside gymnasium. And I must have been, I don’t know whether it took two years, whether I was a junior in high school when we first got into that building. I can’t remember… I think I had -- at the front of that building -- You went to elementary school in that building, didn’t you? Isabelle Chewning: Um-hmm. Mary Lipscomb: Toward the Asbury Methodist Church upstairs on the second floor I remember having trigonometry. Some kind of upper math in that building. And I also had English and Latin I think in that same room. And so, I probably was a junior when we moved into that building maybe. Isabelle Chewning: Was there a big ceremony, a ribbon-cutting? Mary Lipscomb: Oh, yes. There was a big ceremony. I remember we had some outstanding speaker, and I can’t remember who it was. But I don’t remember much about it. I must not have been much impressed. Have you ever recorded anybody’s vivid memory of it? Isabelle Chewning: No. I don’t think anyone asked Mrs. Whipple that. I wonder if she would remember. Mary Lipscomb: Oh, I expect she would, because she taught. During the Depression we had all kinds of programs that you could make a little money and we had a program called NYA, National Youth Association. And I tutored some kids in her fourth grade or something like that, and I made a little money with this NYA program. That was in that building. Oh, I must have been a senior when I did that, and I think she was teaching fourth grade. I’ve forgotten what we talked about, but maybe it was English or history or some of those things. I don’t remember what it was. I don’t remember who the kids were, but I remember the money I made. Twelve dollars or something like that. [Laugh] Isabelle Chewning: Did local people mostly build the new school building or were they-- Mary Lipscomb: I have no idea. I don’t know at all. It may have been outside contractors. I doubt seriously that they were local, but I don’t know. Isabelle Chewning: Was the bank always there in Brownsburg in your memory? Mary Lipscomb: Yeah. The bank came during Dr. McLaughlin’s time at New Providence. And he was gone by the time we moved to Brownsburg. He was instrumental in establishing a bank, and the Bank of Rockbridge. And it was always in that same place, and the telephone office was above the bank in my memory. And I suppose that’s the only place the bank ever was. [Coughs] Excuse me. The telephone office had been some other places I’ve read somewhere, but I don’t remember the telephone office being anywhere else. But yeah, the bank was there and Mr. Hugh Wade was the first banker I remember. And he lived – he had built, I suppose, the middle house of those three houses just as you come out on Sterrett Road [2597, 2613, and 2623 Sterrett Road]. Isabelle Chewning: And he was Margaret and Jen’s and Kate’s-- Mary Lipscomb: Uncle. Isabelle Chewning: Uncle. Mary Lipscomb: Their uncle, uh-huh. They lived out at Castle Carbury [34 Beard Road], which was their farm. Their father’s name was Hamilton Wade and they grew up out there. Isabelle Chewning: Was he the -- Did he have the mill down where Bill Dunlap lives? [803 Hays Creek Road] Mary Lipscomb: No. Isabelle Chewning: That was another Mr. Wade, right? Mary Lipscomb: Yeah. Mr. Walter Wade at the Kennedy Mill [55 Kennedy Wades Mill Loop], and his brother, what was his name? I’ve forgotten his name, but he lived in the house that Mary Patterson lives in [109 Kennedy Wades Mill Loop]. Those two Wade brothers must have inherited a farm right there and divided it. And Mr. Walter Wade lived in the mill house and then he evidently built that other big house or something. And I’ve forgotten what his name was. But his son, Harold, was the miller where the Dunlaps live -- it was called the McClung Mill [803 Hays Creek Road]. And somebody else had that mill in my first memory. Isabelle Chewning: But you always went to Wade’s Mill? Mary Lipscomb: We always went to Wade’s mill. We never went down there. Anne Buchanan McCorkle was a friend of mine, and I used to visit their house [763 Hays Creek Road]. This mill was the next door neighbor of the Buchanans, and there was another family who ran that, and the Wades came there sometime in my, maybe high school years even. I guess he was farming at the -- I wish I could think of the name of his father but I can’t. Isabelle Chewning: Were they related to Mr. Hugh Wade? Mary Lipscomb: They never talked about being related. They must have been somewhere back in the years, but… Isabelle Chewning: And then Mr. Bud Wade and Mr. Kite Wade were another whole family of Wades? Mary Lipscomb: That’s another whole Rockbridge Baths group, and they didn’t act like they were kin at all. They were always separate families. But Mr. Hugh Wade had a wife whom I very vaguely remember, and I’ve forgotten what her name was. But he was a widower most of the time that I remember. And then I don’t remember Mrs. Jen [Wade] Heffelfinger and Mrs. Eleanor [Wade] Marchant’s -- I don’t remember their father at all. He had died before we came, I think, to Brownsburg. But her mother, their mother lived with them, and they had a brother who died of pneumonia. He worked in the bank with Mr. Hugh Wade, his uncle, I suppose. His name was John. And he was a young man. He couldn’t have been more than 30 or so and had pneumonia and died. And people -- he was the last person that I remember who died of pneumonia. People after a while, you know after antibiotics and sulfur and those things, people didn’t die of pneumonia, but he did. And that was a blow to them all, and that left just girls and women in that family. And then they began to -- Mary Wade came into Brownsburg to keep house for Mr. Hugh Wade. I think she was the first one to move into Brownsburg. That was when her mother was still living. And then when their mother died, I think Kate and Jen both came. And Margaret was away mostly. Margaret Wade, teaching at Montreat College, and Eleanor was away most of the time because she taught in various places. And then when they all came back in the summer, they’d come there to the house in Brownsburg [2613 Sterrett Road], and they did not open the house at Castle Carbury until Jen was married, I suppose. I don’t think anybody lived there for a long time. Isabelle Chewning: Did she live there for awhile? Mary Lipscomb: Yes, they lived there before they bought Level Loop [567 Hays Creek Road]. I don’t know how long they lived there. Their cousin, Miss Sally Reid McClung, and Mr. Morton McClung owned Level Loop. And they were the first people I ever knew to move to a retirement home. They went to Westover I think it was called, in Richmond. And they wanted to sell the farm, and so Bill Heffelfinger didn’t own Castle Carbury. The Wade girls all owned it together, the daughters, all these women. And he didn’t much like that, he wanted something of his own to do what he wanted to with. So he did that, a beautiful -- the first restoration we ever saw, really, in the Brownsburg area at Level Loop, and they moved there. I guess Grace [Heffelfinger] had -- I don’t know whether Grace was born when they were still living in at -- I know Steve [Heffelfinger] was with them at Castle Carbury because I remember picking him up to take him to Bible School sometime when I would teach Bible School in the summer. Either I was in college or teaching school. But I’ve forgotten whether Grace was born when they were living in Castle Carbury or not. I remember they came to a Christmas dinner we had during the Christmas season, it wasn’t Christmas dinner, when Jen was very pregnant with Grace. And I remember her sitting on the front porch trying to put on her overshoes or galoshes. [Laugh] They had to walk through the snow. She had trouble leaning over trying to put on her overshoes. But I don’t know whether -- I think they maybe were still living at Castle Carbury but I’m not sure. Isabelle Chewning: Am I making this up that he was a big football player? Mary Lipscomb: His father was. Isabelle Chewning: Oh, okay. Mary Lipscomb: A big football player. He was outstanding -- he went to Yale and was an outstanding football player, Pudge Heffelfinger, and everybody knew him during the era in which he went to college. He was outstanding. But they were-- Isabelle Chewning: And how did Mr. Heffelfinger ever wind up in Brownsburg? Mary Lipscomb: He came to the Special Services School at Washington and Lee and that’s how she met him, in the Army. And I think that Fannie Bosworth, who was Tom Bosworth’s sister -- Mr. Bosworth was married twice, and he had a son named Jim? I’ve forgotten. The older, and then a daughter named Fannie. And Fannie was very popular everywhere, and she always knew VMI boys, and everybody who came to Washington and Lee and everything, and I think maybe she introduced him to Jen sometime. I’ve forgotten how all that went. But I remember we didn’t have telephones at college in the rooms or anything of that sort. If you ever talked to your parents we had to go somewhere else, and I’ve forgotten where the phone was. It might have been in the matron’s office or somewhere in the main building. But there was this great conversation between me and Mother on this telephone about whether I should come for the wedding. Jen and Bill were getting married probably at Castle Carbury, I don’t think it was in the church. He had been married before. I think -- I didn’t go. I remember, you know, of course it was during the war and mother didn’t seem to think it was that important. I don’t think she knew it was going to happen, really. I think they must have been invited or been expected to be invited. I guess they went. I don’t remember anything about it at all, how that happened. Isabelle Chewning: Were the Heffelfingers considerably younger than they were? Than Grandmother and Granddaddy [Mc and Edna Sterrett]? Mary Lipscomb: Yes. I don’t know how much younger. Mother was Margaret’s age, I expect. Isabelle Chewning: And what was the order? Mary Lipscomb: Of the Wades? I think Mary was oldest, and Margaret was the next, and Jen was the next, and John was the next, and then Eleanor was the next. Isabelle Chewning: And Kate? Mary Lipscomb: Oh, Kate was in there, yes. She was probably older than Jen. Maybe it was-- Isabelle Chewning: So they weren’t that far apart in age then. Mary Lipscomb: No. Mary, Margaret, Kate and Jen probably. No they weren’t. But they weren’t as old as the Pattersons, and the Buchanans, and then Mother and Daddy. But I guess Bill was not a young soldier, really young soldier when he came to school with special services at W&L (Washington and Lee College] because he’d been married, and had a child. That child was living with his parents in Texas, I guess. I always get mixed up. Isabelle Chewning: And that was Steve? Mary Lipscomb: That was Steve, yeah, uh-huh. And his mother had died, I think. I’m not sure whether -- I know the mother died, but I don’t know whether it was before they were divorced, or whether they were ever divorced, or what. I don’t know much about her. But they were always -- these people were Mother’s very best friends, the Wade ladies. Saw her through the years that Daddy was away I’m sure. They supported her a great deal through all of that. Just being good friends. Oh you asked -- All of this was evolved from that question you asked me about the special people and I remember. And those were -- I sang in the choir at New Providence when I was in high school. And I guess this was when Daddy was away. Mother would drive me down to the Wades, or maybe Jen came for me sometimes because she picked up a Snider. What was her name? Stella Snider, I believe her name was who lived -- Is that house still there? I don’t.. you know the house where Boyd and Louise [Stuart] built, is there a house between that and the black people? Isabelle Chewning: I think it must be gone. That’s where Miss Bessie and Mr.-- Mary Lipscomb: Oh, yeah. Buford Swisher. Isabelle Chewning: Yes. Mary Lipscomb: Is that house gone? Isabelle Chewning: I think it’s gone. Mary Lipscomb: Anyway, that’s where these Sniders lived and we would take her to -- Jen would take us both to choir practice at New Providence. Isabelle Chewning: Was she the choir director? Mary Lipscomb: Uh-huh. Isabelle Chewning: So she was choir director up through when I was in high school. Mary Lipscomb: Is that right? Isabelle Chewning: Uh-huh. Mary Lipscomb: Mollie Sue [Whipple] played the organ, I guess, most of the years. Elsie Wade played the organ when I first -- This was Frances and Winston’s oldest sister. And then Elsie got married and moved away and Mollie Sue came about that time. Isabelle Chewning: Do you remember when the organ was a pump organ? Mary Lipscomb: I vaguely remember. I guess there wasn’t electricity in the church maybe. When I was a very small child, there was a black man named John Franklin who pumped the organ. It had- as you look at the organ, to the left, just as you come in the door from the other building, there was a piece of wood. Does it still stick out there? Isabelle Chewning: I know I’ve seen it. I don’t know if it’s there now or if I remember it. Mary Lipscomb: Uh-huh. And John used to pump that organ. He’d sit back there in that chair and pump the organ. [Laugh] But I must have been five years old or something like that when that happened, because I imagine New Providence got electricity pretty soon. Isabelle Chewning: Did you start to say something about Mary Monroe Penick? Mary Lipscomb: Maybe I thought about it, maybe I did. We had a period when she came out there and directed the choir. Maybe a year, I don’t know. She came every Wednesday night or whenever we practiced. That was very thrilling. She was never there on Sunday, but she would do the choir rehearsal with us, and did all kinds of things. We had a lot of people in that choir always. Isabelle Chewning: When did Daddy [Mc Sterrett] start singing in it? Mary Lipscomb: I don’t remember. Probably when I was in college. I just don’t remember at all. Isabelle Chewning: But you had a lot of men too? Did you have some? Mary Lipscomb: We had Mr. Gene Buchanan and Mr. Bud McCutchen were the bass. The room that’s now the Historical Room was the choir room. And we’d all get back in there and get dressed, put on our robes. Some of the Wades, I guess. Hamilton, yeah. This was one of -- Winston’s older brother. Those people were always musical. And oh, I don’t know who else. Mr. Austin Lucas from down at Newport, and I don’t know, some other men. I think there was a McCray from the Newport area and on and on. I remember the men more than I do the women, but I can’t remember those women. Isabelle Chewning: Mary Monroe Penick came out. I wonder why? Mary Lipscomb: They asked her, paid her something I suppose, and she just came. I don’t know. I remember she was there in the wintertime, but I can’t remember if she came all summer. I remember she -- you know the Elmer Huffmans owned the filling station [2712 Brownsburg Turnpike] at one point and they lived in Lexington. They were backdoor neighbors to Aunt Alice and Uncle John [Davidson]. I don’t think they ever lived in Brownsburg. They may have lived in that house attached to the filling station once. I think she went -- maybe they all went to the Lexington Presbyterian Church. I guess they did. And she [Mary Monroe Penick] knew them, and I remember she’d come out there. She was the law unto herself, and she’d eat raw oysters in Mr. Huffman’s store for supper or something like that. She’d come in early and have oysters in a tin can in the back of the store or something like that and then come on out there. [Laugh] But she’d drive out down there and drive back, I guess, after choir practice. Isabelle Chewning: You all must have been a pretty big time choir if you had her coming out. Mary Lipscomb: I think she liked Jen. She knew Jen and liked her; everybody liked Jen. Jen had such a pretty voice, and she always had her do the solo things and stuff like that. I wish I could remember who the other women were but I just don’t. There were a whole bunch of us young people like.. I can’t remember if any of the other Buchanan girls sang in the choir. They must have. There was one named Elizabeth who was just a little bit older than Anne; one named Eugenia. And I don’t know whether they sang in the choir or not, but their dad did. And Anne and I did, and by the time they got in there, there was Jimmy Wade and George Slusser, and I don’t know who else. I remember one time we sang a quartet, Anne [Buchanan] and Jimmy [Wade] and George [Slusser] and I. And what in the world was it… oh it was something awful! [Laugh] What is that thing about “your sin is whiter than snow”? [Laugh] But we weren’t bad. The music was pretty bad, I think. But New Providence had these fantastic Christmas programs, and fantastic weddings. For weddings, the young people -- Miss Carrie Lucas and Elsie Wade were the advisors for the young people for years and years and years. Miss Carrie lived in Newport. And for weddings, they would cut cedar trees and bank that church with cedar trees. Big, beautiful cedar trees all around. And then you’ve have this beautiful garden for a wedding! I remember one of the Locke White’s sons, I guess, was married there when the Whites were the pastor. And they couldn’t get over how everybody fell in and really decorated the church. It may have been at Christmas time or something, it seems to me. The first wedding I ever went to was -- there was a pastor before Dr. McLaughlin named Wilson, and what was his first name? Dr. Wilson. Anyway, he had a whole bunch of children, and there was one named Ellen who was -- all these pastors’ families were always really close friends of the Wade girls because they lived next door. All the McLaughlins were great friends of the Wade girls, and then all the Wilsons had been too. And this one named Ellen must have been about Margaret’s age. And she was married. I remember Dr. Wilson had left there but she – we were even up to Mr. Hanna by then I suppose. Dr. McLaughlin had gone, but she must have been very young when the Wilsons left New Providence. But I knew her really well because she would come back. She met a man named Chambliss and lived in Southside, Virginia. He was the school superintendent in one of those counties in Southside. Anyway, we sat in the balcony, and I couldn’t have been more than five years old or six years old. As you look at the front of the church it was on the left balcony. We were way up right at the corner. We looked right straight down on the bride and groom and all that stuff and it was so exciting. I’ve forgotten what the church looked like, but I remember Ellen had an older brother named Goodrich Wilson who was also in the wedding, and he was a minister. And Dr. Wilson was quite aged by this time and he forgot the ceremony during the ceremony. And Goodrich stepped in, and I remember this dear old man going around and sitting on the steps to the pulpit. It seemed so sad to me, but everything just went right straight on, because they sort of had expected this. They were quite prepared for it. Anyway, this was the first wedding I ever remember at New Providence. But I don’t think -- I must have been a part some time of this decorating. I’m sure I was, of this decorating churches for weddings. But I don’t remember. Also, it was equally, almost an equal ceremony, these Christmas programs that we had. And they would be fantastic things. Of course we now call them bathrobe nightmares! [Laugh] Nobody has these kinds of things anymore. Isabelle Chewning: You talked about having to hold your arms up for hours and hours. Mary Lipscomb: As an angel, holding my arms up for ages. We also at New Providence had very often, we had a wonderful junior choir. There were whole gobs of us my age, and we would fill up the corner, the amen corner in little white robes and you all had a junior choir when you were that age. Isabelle Chewning: We did, but I don’t think it was that big. Who directed yours? Mary Lipscomb: We would have -- I don’t remember who was the regular director. I don’t even know who played the piano for us. But we had -- I guess they were interns. They came from the School of Christian Education, these women who would come in the summertime as interns, I suppose. And they would be – we had one named Crane one time. And then one named French, or something like that. Two or three of these women who came in the summertime and they would direct this junior choir and we had quite a good one. I remember we did that “Joy, Joy, Joy” thing and three or four of us sang from the balcony, did the echo from the balcony. It was really pretty. Isabelle Chewning: Oh my goodness. Mary Lipscomb: But that was with one of those fulltime summer people. And I suppose she directed the Bible School too, you know? I’m sure that was part of her job. Isabelle Chewning: How about the Chrysanthemum Shows? Were you involved in that? Mary Lipscomb: Oh, yes, yes. But mostly as a teenager. You know the school closed on that day. Isabelle Chewning: It did? Mary Lipscomb: It did. We didn’t have school at Brownsburg and everybody worked at the Chrysanthemum Show. We served meals from maybe eleven o’clock in the morning until two o’clock in the afternoon or something like that, and then there was a skip, and then there was the dinner hour. And finally I got old enough to help, and I helped in the – you went upstairs to what is now the Session Room where they served dessert. They didn’t serve dessert downstairs. You could have cake and ice cream and various things, and I worked there. I must have been in high school. I think the Chrysanthemum Show was not in existence when I was in college. It must have ended with the war maybe, you know, somewhere along in there. Isabelle Chewning: Did you grow chrysanthemums?. Mary Lipscomb: No, we didn’t. Isabelle Chewning: Who showed chrysanthemums? Was it a judged show? Mary Lipscomb: No. Isabelle Chewning: Oh, it was just sort of an exhibit? Mary Lipscomb: No, it wasn’t a judged show like we know flower shows today. But they would have those on the third floor, what do you use those two large rooms for, have they been divided? Isabelle Chewning: They’re Sunday School rooms. Mary Lipscomb: They are still Sunday School rooms? Isabelle Chewning: They’re still big Sunday School rooms with little rooms off of them. Mary Lipscomb: Well sometimes they would do like a Japanese garden or something. I remember a little bridge over water or something once. Isabelle Chewning: Who would do that? Mary Lipscomb: I don’t know who would do that. I know some of the people who grew chrysanthemums were -- There was a family named Zimmerman and I don’t know whether they came to our church. I never remember them in our church, but they were in the Newport are between Newport and Middlebrook or somewhere like that. And it seems to me they were some of the exhibitors. I grew some chrysanthemums one year because I remembered learning all about disbudding, and I had a big bucket with manure water in it and I watered them. I don’t remember exhibiting them, but they were wonderful. I learned a lot about chrysanthemums. It was fun! But there were people in Pisgah, it seems to me and all the growers, it seems to me to be sort of in the Pisgah-Newport area but I’m not sure about that. I don’t know whether Mrs. Whipple did it, or Miss Faye [Thompson]. I would have thought some of those great gardeners would have. But I don’t really remember. And they sold them I think, you know, they sold these plants at the show. But the room would be all banked with these beautiful, beautiful chrysanthemums. And they were all the big football kind. We didn’t seem to grow the daisy type much, and the hardy kinds of chrysanthemums in those days. These were all potted things. Isabelle Chewning: Oh my goodness, I didn’t realize that. Mary Lipscomb: That’s why all this disbudding all the time, you know, one or two big blossoms. I wish I could think of who the other growers were. But it was a great occasion, and I guess it was just one day. I can’t remember if it was two. But I remember they always closed the school. And then some people would be -- I remember people would gather bittersweet, and be outside like where we used to drive up to the front and park all the time. And on that fence outside toward the cemetery there would be people selling various things. And people came from Staunton. That’s a good location because it draws from both Lexington and Stanton and a lot of people in between. And it was always a great event. They would make the ice cream – there’s a room under the choir. They had big freezers in there. [Tape stops momentarily after a knock on the door] Isabelle Chewning: You were going to talk about when you moved back to Brownsburg. Mary Lipscomb: Oh, that’s right. In 1983, we began to realize that we were sort of taking up the main house of the farm [3808 North Lee Highway at Timber Ridge Dairy]. And so one time I asked Mc if they really did want the house [Mulberry Grove], if he would be willing for me to have the house. And he and Anna talked about it, and they said that yes, we could do that. I really wanted the house, and I was scared he was going to -- He had said “We’ll put some older couple in the house sometime.” I didn’t know what might happen. And I didn’t know whether he ever really understood the importance of that house in the area, and that made me fearful. But we sort of really needed to get away from the farm at Timber Ridge and I really did want the house. And they agreed. When Mother and Daddy died, he got the farm and I got some money. And so I had some money to work on the house to put into the house, too. We moved over there -- Well, we began the work on it in December of 1983, and we had Mr. [Henry] Ravenhorst come, and look at the structure. Mr. Ravenhorst’s greatest forte was he was a really good engineer. He was a local architect in Lexington. And he looked over the house and around it and all sorts of things and decided you know, what needed to be done structurally and what could be done without things falling to pieces or tearing up anything. And we all agreed that one of the major things that needed to be done was insulation, because Mc had said in the last years that Mother had lived there, he said to me one day, “Please come and get Mother because the heating is about to break us up and we’re heating the out of doors.” So we knew that lots of insulation needed to be done, and I knew that the wiring was 1939 age. We knew that needed to be done. We hired Clinton Irvine who came out there and looked at the house. The house was not in bad structural condition at all. It just needed a lot of refurbishing. And Clinton realized that this was -- I remember he was coming down the steps from upstairs and looking at that woodwork. It’s the floor of the stairs landing, that interesting woodwork as you come down the steps, and he said, “This is so important. You’ve got a treasure here,” and things of this sort. He was so interested and then his main carpenter, a man named -- I can’t think of it all of a sudden. I’ll think of it in a minute. Jim… something. He lived out near House Mountain. And he was, I’ll call him a real woodsman and he knew wood, and they took all the plastering off the living room and what was Mother and Daddy’s bedroom and insulated it. I looked at a lot of people’s houses in the Brownsburg area, and other areas to see how they had insulated. And some people had not taken the woodwork off and had sort of set the insulation and the new wall out on the woodwork, and I knew I did not want that. So they took off all the woodwork, the mantel and all the woodwork in both those rooms. And they never broke a piece of it. They put it all back. You know, they numbered it all and put it all back like it was, and got those rooms insulated. And of course, what happened is now you can see it in the window sills that everything is an inch and a half smaller in the room I suppose because they added a little bit around the windows. But all the woodwork sits like it should, and none of the wall comes out on the woodwork. And that’s what I was so particular about because I think the woodwork in that house is interesting and an important part of the house. We always figured that our great-great-grandfather, Samuel Willson, had some money in the 1830s, in that period when he built the two big rooms when he added the brick addition. And he was watching people build their Georgian houses with big columns and things of that sort outside, and what he had was a little primitive house, and he did the important things inside. The mantels particularly. The mantel in the living room, the mantel in what is now the dining room, and maybe -- we always thought that the mantel that’s in the library had been at one time in what is now the dining room. And then he changed them around because what is now the library was the back of the house, and he moved that mantel to a lesser room. And made his 1830’s mantle in the dining room. But that may or may not be true. But that’s a supposition because the mantel in what is now in your library looks older than the mantel in the dining room. But they worked in some of the coldest weather we’d ever had, I think, from that Christmas on until the next summer. And we moved there in the summer of ’84. And we’d redone the floors. Maryanne Foster helped me with a good deal of it and then I used Mary Gale [McNemar] in Lexington with some of the drapes and things of that sort. The only difficulty we had that really scared us was when we redid the floors. And we came upon all this beautiful flooring in the bedroom that had been covered with black paint, and we didn’t know that we had so many woods and different things. And Mr. Williams, the main carpenter, knew that some of that flooring, the main part of that flooring is chestnut and it was before chestnut was worm-eaten. It was real chestnut. And then the rest of that flooring was left over heart pine, and obviously two rooms. And we knew it had been two rooms. But when we re-plastered and redid the walls, we got rid of the division in the ceiling, but we could tell the division in the floor had indicated there were two rooms. And then I talked to Jim Alexander who remembered, and he and I put together the memory of his grandmother, Ida Willson Fultz, who had said, and had told Mother, and I remember this, that that had been two rooms, what is now the library. And the room next to the hallway had been a pantry, and the lady of the house would go across the back porch which is now the front porch, or the servants would come from the old kitchen across the back porch, and she would hand out the supplies of the day from behind the locked door into the hallway from that pantry. And the front part of that room was probably the bedroom of the lady of the house because she nearly always had a downstairs bedroom and particularly Sallie Willson after her mother and father had died. Well maybe that was her father’s bedroom, and where she cared for him, Samuel Willson, her father. But we also had never seen the floors upstairs in what I used for a guestroom -- the room over the dining room. The ones in the hallway had been refinished. But we had this man named -- what was his name? To come look at the floors about how to refinish them. They’d all been sanded, and you could see their natural woods, and all the ones in the upstairs hallway are poplar, and poplar is not very pretty. Sort of has a greenish tint, it’s a light wood, and I said to the man, “I would like the floors to show their distinctive wood, but to look alike.” And Maryanne Foster was there with me and she said, “We’ve chosen a stain that we think will do that.” And he would not pay any attention to us. “Oh, Mrs. Lipscomb you’ll be really happy with what we do. Whatever I can do with this, I will. And I’ll get it just like you want.” “But this is the stain we want,” we would say. And this just went on and like water off a duck’s back. He paid no attention to us at all, and all we could do was really pray that this would come out like we wanted it, and it did! Every floor showed its original look, but all the floors were sort of a light walnut color, and that’s what I had wanted. I certainly didn’t want them to be a light color. And the downstairs, in the hallway, Mr. Williams told us was something called black oak, and the two major rooms are- or the one major room is beautiful heart pine and the ones upstairs are heart pine in the old section. And I think that in the section that my father did over in the 30s, they probably put a new floor over top of the original floor and if anybody ever wanted to tear out those walls and dig up those two rooms, because in the closets upstairs, those rooms, there are the original floors. In the bedroom I used, you could see a lot of that original floor. And in that closet, that little linen closet in that hallway you could -- I think that’s true in there too. And when they did that work, people were not sanding floors and doing all this kind of thing so they just put that new flooring over top. But we moved in in the summer, around the 4th of July of ’84. And Alex was not -- his hands had gotten so bad [with arthritis] that he couldn’t carry buckets for help with the calf feeding, things of that sort. But it was good that he didn’t have to think about that, and it was good for him to be away from [his sons] Alec and Joe who were running the farm, and not be there all the time. But he always, all summer long he went back and he mowed Joe’s grass and Alec’s grass. And Alec and Mary Lynn [Lipscomb] lived in the Dutch Colonial house [3808 North Lee Highway] right after we moved. They moved from their house that they eventually sold up to the Dutch Colonial, and they lived there for maybe two years. I’ve forgotten how long. And Joe and Julie [Lipscomb] were living in the green house across the road [3775 North Lee Highway]. Tom Biggs came to see us, he was the pastor at New Providence, and asked us about joining the church and we decided we really did want to continue to go to Timber Ridge [Presbyterian Church]. But that made us a little strange in that community because we didn’t go to church in the Brownsburg community. But the people in the community were very nice to us. And I also came with a garden club of my own, and didn’t belong to the local garden club, but the people at the Green Hills [Garden Club] would ask me to judge every now and then. And I got to know the people in that group, the garden club pretty well. And the [Fred] Whipples were friends of ours from way back, and we didn’t really know very many people. But the thing that we enjoyed about it, that I enjoyed about it so much, was that it kind of put you with a different group of people, to own and restore a nice older house. People wanted to come see it and people wanted to, you know, I wanted to be a part of the [Rockbridge] Historical Society. I had time in. And the APVA [Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities]. And with the help of the APVA, about five of us wrote the nominations for the houses for Virginia Landmarks and the National Register and it was listed on the Virginia Landmarks and the National Register. Aggie [Sterrett] helped me a whole lot with this because she took zillions of pictures which we had to submit for the nomination, and it was nominated for its architectural value. You can be nominated for your historical value or… there are a couple of other things on the landmarks. But this was the architecture and of course we talked about, in the landmark application we talked about what was built in the 1790s and what was built in the 1820s and ‘30s and how it was used. The social structure of its being used with slaves, and how that showed in the architecture of the house. That obviously there were slave quarters outside of the house for some time, and then the kitchen was outside of the house. And then later the kitchen was brought into the house, but it had no entrance into the main part of the house, and therefore all slaves or servants had to go outside to get to the main part of the house, come across porches, and things of that sort that were interesting. And then I had to list a whole bunch of things about how I had gotten all this information and I listed people like… people who had told us things, because I had to do a bibliography. It took me a year to do all this I think, nearly. But people like Dick Anderson worked with us with the legal-ease part and we worked sort of as a group, these five people that worked with these nominations over the county. I’ve forgotten where the others were, but one of them was the Kastner’s house [1093 Forge Road] and one of them was in Natural Bridge, and I’ve forgotten where the others were. But it was a help to have people to talk with as you’re doing it. But it was a lot of work, and I went to the AVPA not long after that and I said you know, as much time and work I’ve put into this situation, I know it cost me over a thousand dollars, maybe we should talk about hiring people to do these things rather than our doing them ourselves. And somebody who knew about this said, “Well the Fraziers charge five thousand to six thousand dollars for doing it.” And I said, “Oh well I don’t think it cost me that much.” But we changed the yard some and did some… my friend Sarah Lanford gave me four English boxwoods that she had already started. In fact we had to heel them in at Timber Ridge for one whole winter before we moved them while the building was going on and everything. And we moved them to Brownsburg, to Mulberry Grove in I guess the spring of ’84. And they’ve done so well. I have a drawing that Art Lipscomb did for me, for Aggie and me some years ago, that shows the boxwoods being so small. Now they’re so big. But the house was open in ’92 for Garden Week and I worked and worked and worked really to get everything very beautiful and that day it rained five inches and people came from everywhere all day long. But I always felt like it was a grand and glorious success because there were some weed patches in the yard that I never could conquer and so people really couldn’t walk around the yard too well. [Laugh] They could look out the back windows at a really pretty bed of pink tulips, and everything bloomed at the right minute. The old pears all bloomed, the old crabapple bloomed, the new crabapples bloomed, and everything -- It couldn’t have been really more perfect. But right in front of the flower beds was a horrible weed and I never did really get it. And I only saw one couple walk out there and really look at the flower beds or anything. But the tulips, I really worked on having late daffodils and early tulips and they all bloomed right, and the Virginia bluebells bloomed right, and the dogwood was blooming I think even then. Maybe dogwood hadn’t bloomed quite, but the forsythia was gone. But it couldn’t have been better. And I was not sorry about that rain except for the poor garden club ladies. But we did have to do the upstairs hall floor over again. We had polyurethane on top of the stain and people -- I had nasty little gravel on the driveway, and it tracked into the house a good deal. And it scratched that the upstairs floor. And Mr… I think his name was Swink, who did the floors came and re-did the polyurethane. That’s all we really had to have redone. But I borrowed things from Braehead people, Graham and Thelma [Stephens]. Some of the Braehead things they lent me. What were they? Fenders and things of that sort, I think, they lent me for Garden Week. Then it was opened again in 2001 for a Christmas tour, for the Brownsburg Christmas tour. That time we didn’t open the upstairs, but for Garden Week the upstairs was open as well as the downstairs. But that was fun. One of my garden club ladies came and helped me decorate and she loved doing it. She made the prettiest Christmas tree with everything I owned on it and Alex not living then, but he would have died. He said “You’re overdoing that Christmas tree” all the time, with the Christmas trees. But we had absolutely everything we owned on that Christmas tree. It was very pretty. And it was open for two days, all day Saturday and most of the day, half a day Sunday. And it seems to me it was pretty cold. Did you sit on the front porch? Isabelle Chewning: It was cold. Mary Lipscomb: It was cold. It wasn’t as cold as the year before when I had been at Dick Barnes’ as a hostess in Brownsburg. That was the coldest day of my life, I think. Anyway, that was a pretty day. Those were pretty days, and people came, and some of my friends from Roanoke came, and I had some sandwiches upstairs that they could eat for lunch and a few things of that sort. But I really enjoyed those years living at Mulberry Grove. Makes me cry. [End of Tape 4, Side A] Isabelle Chewning: You had just mentioned that doing the library was the most challenging. Mary Lipscomb: We had an open house the first Christmas we were there. And it was a Sunday afternoon, and it was a beautiful day. And Mc had said, “I don’t know whether anybody will really come or not,” because they were having a Christmas program at New Providence. Well, I think all of New Providence came. And I’ve always wondered if they all didn’t come to see what we had made into the library, because Mother never let anybody into that bedroom. I don’t think anybody in the Brownsburg neighborhood had ever seen that room. But that room was the most challenging of all. We had to re-do the hearth because it had sunk and the bricks were all different. And the fireplace in general. We put dampers in both of the chimneys, both the living room and the dining room. But in order to do the -- I think we redid the hearth in the living room too -- we needed old brick. We took them off the tops of the chimneys. And I’ve always been so disappointed in that work. The bricklayers did not look at the depth, the size of the mortar in the chimneys. And they made the mortar thicker where they added bricks. We bought in bricks from Locker Brick Company, and it was made like old brick, it was to look like old brick, to put back on the chimneys. But it was the bricklayer’s fault that they didn’t, and I didn’t catch this until it was done. The mortar is thicker on this new part that we added. The bricks look good. It looked pretty much like the old bricks but there’s all this difference in the height of the mortar on each of the chimneys, and I was oh so upset about this, and just hoped that nobody looks at those chimneys too hard. But anyway, that room, we lived in that room. We used it for a television room and put in nice bookcases and we enjoyed that room, and it was warm. Our redoing and buying a new furnace and a few things like that. That room was always cold and Mother was trying to get warm when it was her bedroom. But part of it was the insulation and part of it was stopping up the chimneys and a few things. A whole lot of it was insulation, I’m sure. But we had no trouble heating that room. I was always scared to death it might be cold. She was always trying to heat that room. So, but lots of people came for that open house and Alexander and Robert, my grandchildren, were… how old were they? They were probably in maybe the fourth and sixth grade, or a little bit less. They went upstairs and got under the bed. I had two double beds, they were maybe three-quarter beds. Two beds in the guest room. They got under the beds and listened to what people said. [Laugh] And they-- Isabelle Chewning: They listened through the register into the dining room? Mary Lipscomb: No, no. People came upstairs. The whole house was open. Isabelle Chewning: Oh. Mary Lipscomb: The people who came in the room. The people who came in the room. They were under the beds all the time. [Laugh] And all the beds had-- Isabelle Chewning: Did they report everyone’s comments? Mary Lipscomb: They talked about one couple. I won’t mention that on tape. But you know, our friends came from everywhere. That was a pretty Sunday afternoon, and I think Clinton Irvine had given me, this is the contractor, some really pretty flower arrangements that were hither and yon. And I did pretty things on the mantels. And it was, you know, the house just looked lovely, and it was -- That first year we had a cedar Christmas tree because I said, you know, we’re in an old Virginia house, we better do a Virginia thing. And so we had a cedar tree from the farm, from Mulberry Grove farm. And I had to make decorations. I’d never had a tree that big, and I never had another cedar tree after that because they’re just too hard to deal with. But we borrowed from Mc and Anna the dolls that were Mother’s and put them under the tree. Anna had had them redressed and put them under the Christmas tree. We had hostesses around and about in most of the rooms I think. But not like the garden club hostesses, but we didn’t know as much about history, I guess, of the house then. We knew a lot of what we had done to it, and all those things. That was a pretty Christmas party. And I always said I think I had the best refreshments I’ve ever had at a party from then until now. Penelope Ferguson, and Mary Kay, what’s her name… at the Rees Farm? Isabelle Chewning: Mary Kay. Mary Lipscomb: Mary Kay. They were doing catering at that time, and they had the best food. And it was just wonderful. They had a bean dip, it was hot, in the library. They had food in all the rooms, and food on the dining room table. They had a crab dip that was out of this world. I’ve forgotten what else. Oh, I’d asked them for sweet potato biscuits with ham, and they did those and they were so good. No wonder people came. But I’ve forgotten what kind of punch we had. We may have had… I can’t remember. I don’t know whether it was a Christmas type punch or Jen Heffelfinger’s good punch that’s in your cookbook [Historic Brownsburg Recipes]. It might have been that. But they may have done a -- I don’t think it was hot, but I can’t remember. I always thought that was one of the best parties we ever had. We had a lot of parties while we were there. Remember the time I made you come -- I’ll feel guilty about this forever. Why were we having, was it when John and LeeAnn… no, not that party. We had a party when John [Sterrett] and LeeAnn [Hovious] were married. But that’s not the time we had cheesecake? It was some smaller get together and I made you cut the chocolate cheesecake that had the top. I was going to cut one and you were cutting the other. And the chocolate cheesecake, the chocolate was so hard it was impossible to cut, and I felt so guilty about that for ever and ever. Now I’ve forgotten what kind of party that was. Isabelle Chewning: I don’t… Mary Lipscomb: Alex had cancer while we were there in the fall of ’89 I guess it was. Yeah, because [Mary’s grandson] Will was -- No it the was in the fall of ’88, I guess, and the winter of ’88 and ’89, because Will was born in ’89. No, that’s not right. Will was born in ’86. It must have just been before Elizabeth was born. Because in the summer after his cancer, we had a big lawn party, and Julie was very pregnant with somebody, and I think it must have been Elizabeth. Because Will was born just the day after Mc [Sterrett] sold his cows from the dairy farm [as part of the Federal Whole Herd Buyout Program]. Because Julie came over there, so I remember that was in ’86. In the spring of ’86, when is his birthday? April. Joe came to help Mc with whatever, they had to tattoo the cows, or ear tag, them or do something, and help him with the cows. And Julie went down there once I remember to watch and I think Will was born the next day after that. Will was born on a Sunday, and I think that probably was the next day. And that was in ’86 and we had only been there a couple of years. He was really in the dairy business just about two years while we were there, and then he sold the cows and went out of the business. Oh, back to Alex and the cancer. So he had cancer in the winter of ’88, I suppose. He took chemo and lost his hair and the doctor, local doctor Crews, his internist, said “You’ll come nearer dying of pneumonia than you will this cancer. Stay at home and don’t go out and shake hands with people where you’ll catch a cold or something.” So we pretty much did that in the winter of ’88 and ’89. But we had a supper group that we entertained. We had done this before we left Timber Ridge, with a family named Whipple, a man and wife, Fred and Mollie Sue, a couple named Fox, who was a local doctor in Fairfield, Trudy and Dr. [Kurt] Fox and Libby and Tate Alexander. And Alex and I were in this group. Because all the guys had February birthdays. And we rotated each year to have the birthday party. And my year came the year that Alex had cancer. And I was really glad to -- people came to see us, but they were careful not to have a cold or anything when they did come to see us. But Jane Mackey had knitted Alex this cutest little toboggan, because he had no hair. And if you walk in old houses, from one room to the other, you have a breeze. And so he wore that toboggan all winter long and we have pictures of him. Jane gave it to him about Christmas time, I think, and it had a red tassel and a green tassel and he wore it during the Christmas season. It had a white tassel also, and there are pictures of him at the dinner party. We always did an elegant dinner party; got out our best tablecloths and great- grandmother’s huge napkins, and I had to iron all those things and all that stuff. One year I had leg of lamb and one year I had.. it must have been the leg of lamb year. No… one year Fred didn’t come, and that was the year, he was catching a cold or something. That may have been the year, because he didn’t want to give Alex something. I’ve forgotten. And that’s the year I had leg of lamb, and it was really so good and I was so sorry because Fred raised sheep and they always.. anyway. We always had a good time and listened to Dr. Fox and his funny stories about birthing children under water that people wanted to do or something. It was a fun time, and Alex got along fine with the chemo and we finished the chemo in March. We began it on Halloween day in Roanoke; went to Roanoke for the chemo, and finished sometime in March. They extended it a little. It was very, very hard. The first of it was very, very hard for him. It made him really sick and terrible. So they lessened the dosage and extended the time. So instead of maybe the six months or something, I think it went on eight months or so, but it was a good long while. But he never was as sick as he had been those first dosages. So after, about April or May, he was declared definitely in remission, and, you know, after five years they declared it was a cure and he lived that long, and longer. But anyway, we decided that we needed to have a party for all the people who’d been so nice to us all winter. And so in the meantime I had been to, while he was going to chemo, I went to a weight thing in Roanoke and lost a lot of weight. And so we had a coming-out party. And we had big tents in the yard, and Aggie [Sterrett] took some wonderful pictures that are just fantastic of the house and the yard, and all these sorts of things. We had lots and lots of people. Isabelle Chewning: And a perfect day. Mary Lipscomb: And it was a perfect day, just a beautiful day with pretty tents and friends from all over. And it was – Dr. [Hunter] McClung came out in the morning and brought roses, and I put them in the house. He called me some day after that and asked me where the roses were at. [Laugh] Did I ever tell you that? I was so horrified. But a lot of people went in the house. I think most everybody went in the house really. I said “Oh Dr. McClung, I thought they were too elegant for outdoors!” I was so horrified. The worst boo-boo! The yard was pretty and everything, so you know, we really had a good time. It always bothered me so much that at Timber Ridge, everybody came in the back door, and I was so happy to move to Brownsburg and get a front door once more. Isabelle Chewning: I like that too. Mary Lipscomb: I didn’t have to feel like Mildred Thompson who lived at Church Hill [78 Sam Houston Way] who kept saying “We have to keep the kitchen looking like a reception room all the time because everybody comes in the back door.” [Laugh] I never was a very wonderful kitchen person, so I was delighted to have a front door. And we always enjoyed that wonderful front porch. And when Alex died in ’96, my friend Jeanette Mackey appeared the day he died, I suppose. He died on a Saturday night. I think it was a Sunday afternoon, the next morning. “I’m here and I’m going to do all these things,” and with that, she kind of took over. And she [Jeannette] came the next day and said, “I’m going to take this food home, and this food home and do thus and so with it.” I ordered some tables from the rent-all place in Lexington with cloths and chairs, too, I guess and everything to sit in the yard for lunch after the funeral. The funeral was at eleven o’clock at Timber Ridge and we came back and people had sent azaleas in pots, and she had changed the kitchen furniture all around and had everything all fixed and these beautiful tables on a pretty sunny day in the yard with the white cloths. And she had set the azaleas on, one on each of the tables. So people could eat out. But the mistake we made – but it couldn’t be helped -- was it was so sunshiny in the front yard that if you sat out there you couldn’t talk to anybody, couldn’t see anybody next to you because the sun was at the wrong place at the hour we had lunch. But she made an elegant lunch out of the stuff that people had brought, and it was just so nice you know, that here’s this gal that can do these kinds of things, and make it look elegant and stuff. I didn’t lift a finger. [Laugh] All I had to do was talk to the people. But people had brought all sorts of really lovely things. Mary Stuart Gilliam brought some wonderful little cupcakes, yellow cupcakes with caramel icing, and I took them upstairs and put them in my closet because I loved them. Sometime during the morning, Jeanette said “Where are those cupcakes?” And I said, “You can’t have those cupcakes!” They were not big cupcakes, they were little cupcakes. Mary Stuart had – the day that the house was open for a garden tour, Mary Stuart had brought a huge, big, flat basket like this with food. It was the day before, when everybody was there making such a mess and fixing flowers and all that stuff for people eat -- for people for their lunch. And then Adelaide [Simpson] brought wonderful -- I had for the garden tour that day, we had food on the lower back porch. I locked the old kitchen, and we had food on the lower back porch for any of the hostesses who wanted to eat and Adelaide had brought all these wonderful chicken salad sandwiches. I don’t think I did much for that. People had said “I’m going to do so-and-so, and I’m going to do so-and-so.” And Mary Stuart had brought a lot of – the Blue Ridge Garden Club ladies had brought food, too, for that. And in this pouring down rain, people sitting there on the back porch, but looking at the pretty tulips and all that stuff. [Laugh] So all those interesting things went on while we were living at Brownsburg. Isabelle Chewning: I’m going to have to rush out. Mary Lipscomb: Yeah, it’s time to go, isn’t it? Isabelle Chewning: Thank you so much! [End of Tape 4, Side B] Mary Thompson Sterrett Lipscomb Index A Adams Family · 12 Adams, Elizabeth "Aunt Lizzie" Wilson · 12 Adams, Hugh · 12 Alexander, Bobby Tate · 57 Alexander, Jack · 78 Alexander, James "Jim" · 26, 77, 78 Alexander, Libby · 104 Alexander, Pat · 78 Alexander, Sarah · 77 Alexander, Tate · 78, 104 Americana Villa · 10 Anderson, Alden · 4 Anderson, Annie Laurie · 77 Arehart, Johnny · 74 Arehart, Ted · 74 Associate Presbyterian Church · 12 Automobile Hupmobile · 26 Model A · 8 Model T · 8, 41 B Bailey, Dr. · 52 Barnett, Scott · 78 Beard, Porter Threshing Machine · 18 Beard, Richard · 39 Benton, Brookie · 78 Biggs, Tom New Providence Minister · 100 Black school Rockbridge Baths · 59 Blackwell, Rebecca · 48 Blackwell, Virginia · 48 Bosworth, Fannie · 91 Bosworth, Tom · 51, 63, 91 Braehead · 10, 12, 13 Brown, Ethel · 34, 58 Brown, Ida Third Grade Teacher · 29 Brown, Jim · 34 Brown, John · 29 Brown, Lucille · 34 Brown, Lum · 34 Brown, Margaret · 29 Brownsburg Barbershop · 43 Black School · 60 Cannery · 60, 61 Doctors · 52 Huffman's Store · 94 Move to, in 1927 · 2 Paved roads · 42 Whipple's Store · 24, 42 Brownsburg School · 84 Academy Building · 28, 85 Basketball · 40 Bus · 27 National Youth Association · 88 New Building · 87 Buchanan Family · 27 Buchanan, Anne · See McCorkle, Anne Buchanan Buchanan, Eugenia · 94 Buchanan, Fanny · 32 Buchanan, Gene · 35, 55, 94 Buchanan, Marjorie · 35 Buchanan, William "Bill" · 32, 55 Byrd, Harry · 56 C Camp As You Like It · 67 Camp Briar Hills · 69 Cannery · 61 Chittum, Marjorie Ann Whitesell · 39 Christmas · 8, 52, 101 Cistern · 75 Civil War · 10 Battle of Fredericksburg · 12 General Crook · 17 Hunter's Raid · 16 Civilian Conservation Corps · 4, 43 Vesuvius Camp · 44 Cox, Eugene · 84 Cox, Harvey · 84 Curry, Gay · 69 D Davidge, Mrs. · 32 Davidson, Cornelia · 54, 77 Davidson, Frank · 54 Davidson, Jack · 54 Davidson, John · 4 Davis, John Pastor at Timber Ridge · 9 Davis, Suzanne Morton · 9 Democrats · 35, 54 Byrd Democrats · 56 Young Democrats Group · 55 Depression · 4, 25, 26 National Youth Association · 88 Dice, Charlie · 35 Dice, Margaret · See Updike, Margaret Dice Dice, Mrs. · 31 Dice, Robert · 35 Dice, Walter · 35 Diseases · 51 Dousing · 57 E East, George · 70 Electricity · 71 Ervine, Adelaide · 31 Ervine, Bill · 31 Ervine, Ellen · 29, 31 Ervine, Hope · 29, 31 Ervine, Mr. · 31 F Farming August slow-down · 38 Butchering · 23 Canning · 23 Dairy · 74, 104 Hay Making · 18 Horses · 15 Lambs · 21 Mulberry Grove Barns · 14 Separating cream · 50 Sharecropping · 18 Threshing wheat · 18 Fauber, Benny · 29 Fauber, Ralph · 29 Federal Land Bank · 4 Firebaugh, Don · 83 Fisher, Mariah · 32 Flick, Dr. W&L Professor · 87 Fox, Dr. Kurt · 104 Fox, Trudy · 104 Franklin, Dan · 58 Franklin, John · 93 Franklin, Virginia Bell · 48, 58 Franklin, Zack · 58 Fultz, Ida Willson · 15, 17, 99 G Gaines, Dr. W&L President · 87 Gallier, Mr. CCC Superintendent · 44 Gibson, John · 12 Gibson, Mary Adams · 12 Gilliam, Mary Stuart · 106 Godwin, Mills Governor of Virginia · 56 Goodman, Mildred · See Thompson, Mildred Goodman Green Hills Garden Club · 100 Green, Dr. · 52 Grimm, Hugh · 32 H Haliburton, Maggie · 19, 72 Haliburton, William "Dude" · 17, 44, 58 Hall, Lucy · 10 Hanna, Betty · 38 Hanna, Charles · 38 Hanna, Margaret · 38 Hanna, Rev. C. Morton New Providence Minister · 37 Heffelfinger, Bill · 36, 90 Heffelfinger, Grace · 90 Heffelfinger, Jen · 36, 78, 90, 94 Heffelfinger, Pudge · 91 Heffelfinger, Steve · 90, 92 Hickman, Troy · 69, 83 Hickman, Virginia · 70 Howison, Helen · 11 Howison, John · 12 Howison, Mary "Mamie" · 11 Howison, Mary Graham · 11, 25, 84 Howison, Nannie · See Stephens, Nannie Howison Howison, Nannie Morton · 10 Howison, Robert · 12 Howison, Samuel Graham · 10 Huffman, Elmer · 94 Huffman, Isabel Leech · 29 First Grade Teacher · 28 Huffman’s Store · 94 Hunt, Willie · 2 I Integration · 57 L Lanford, Sarah · 101 Lawhorn, Mr. CCC · 46 Leech, Thelma · 30, 40 Level Loop · 36 Lipscomb, Alex · 68, 77, 100, 104, 105 Low Moor · 78 Lipscomb, Bruce Alexander III · 11, 102 Lipscomb, Elizabeth · 104 Lipscomb, Mary Thompson Sterrett Birth · 7 Gatlinburg honeymoon · 80 High School Valedictorian · 87 Longwood College · 50, 58, 63 Marriage · 77 Move back to Brownsburg in 1984 · 100 Move to Brownsburg in 1927 · 13 Piano Lessons · 83 Riding teacher in North Carolina · 66 School · 28 Second Grade · 27 Tonsilectomy · 54 Lipscomb, Robert · 102 Lipscomb, Will · 104 Lotts, Jess New Providence Sexton · 39 Lotts, Mary Stuart · 40 Low Moor Iron Company · 78 Lucas, Austin · 94 Lucas, Carrie · 38, 95 M MacCorkle, Tork · 78 Mackey, Jane · 104 Mackey, Jeannette · 105 Martin, Frances Bell · 38 Martin, Sidney · 38 Martin, W.L. "Bud" · 58, 86 Mason, Mary Moore · 33 Massanetta · 31 McClung, Andrew · 79 McClung, Brainard · 79 McClung, Dr. Hunter · 7, 105 McClung, Mary Frances · 79 McClung, Morton · 36, 90 McClung, Sally Reid · 36, 90 McClung, Sonora · 79 McCorkle, Anne Buchanan · 28, 39, 55, 87 McCorkle, David · 39 McCutchen, Bud · 94 McLaughlin, Dr. Henry · 88 McLaughlin, Henry · 69 McLaughlin, Sam · 69 McNutt, Hugh School Bus Driver · 29 McSwain, Isabel · 78 McSwain, Mac · 78 Milk separator · 50 Mish Antique Shop · 80 Mitchell, Dr. · 54 Montgomery, Ann Thompson · 8 Montgomery, Miss Biology and History Teacher · 85 Moore, Ellabell Gibbs · 4 Moore, John · 4 Morton, Charles Read · 9 Burial in Brazil · 11 Marriage · 10 Missionary · 10 Morton, Mary Thompson · 9 Death at Braehead · 10 Morton, Suzanne · See Davis, Suzanne Morton Movies · 41 Mulberry Grove · 2 Barns · 13 Christmas Tour · 101 Dairy · 16 Dormer windows · 49 Furniture · 80 Garden · 63 Garden Week · 101 Icehouse · 22 Indoor Plumbing · 73 National Register Nomination · 100 Office · 15 Orchard · 22 Purchase by Madison McClung Sterrett, Sr. · 4 Renovation in 1983 · 98 Slave Quarters · 100 Smokehouse · 15 N National Youth Association · 88 New Providence Presbyterian Church Bible School · 37 Choir · 92 Christmas Pagents · 40, 95 Chrysanthemum Show · 96 Junior Choir · 95 McNutt Chapel · 37 Pioneer Group · 38 Pioneer Society · 31 Pisgah Chapel Sunday School · 37 Pump Organ · 93 Weddings · 94 P Patterson, Ag · 79 Patterson, Ellen · 79 Patterson, John · 35, 55 Patterson, Rosenell · 35, 85 Patterson, Rufus · 35 Patteson, Pauline · 84 Penick, Mary Monroe · 93 Peters, Carrie Teacher at Black School · 60 Pleasants, Clarence · 58 Pleasants, Edna Haliburton · 19, 59 Pleasants, Leo · 61 Pleasants, Willie Howard · 58 Polio scares · 52 Powell, Mr. Professor at Smith College · 32 R Rees, Walter · 72 Robertson, Willis · 44 Rockbridge Alum Springs · 26 Rockbridge Baths Black School · 59 S Scott, Mary Powell · 83 Shepherd, Anna · 78 Shoultz, Bill · 34 Shoultz, Bob · 34 Shoultz, Frank · 34 Simpson, Adelaide · 106 Skeen, Joseph · 5 Skyline Drive · 27 Slusser, George · 39, 69, 94 Smiley, Della · 72 Smiley, Tuck · 72 Smith, Margaret Howison · 11, 25, 54 Snider, Stella · 92 Stephens, Bruce · 25 Stephens, Graham · 25 Stephens, Nannie Howison · 10, 25 Dunsmore Business School · 27 Fredericksburg Clerk of Court's Office · 27 Stephens, Wallace "Steve" · 25 Chief Park Ranger Skyline Drive · 27 Park Service · 27 Sterrett, Aggie · 81 Sterrett, Anna · 78 Sterrett, Anna Laura Smith · 3 Matron at Union Seminary · 3 Sterrett, Bill · 80 Sterrett, Edna Watkins Morton · 3 Birth in Brazil · 10 Fredericksburg Normal School · 12 Marriage · 9, 13 Teacher at Rockbridge Baths · 3 Teacher in King George, VA · 12 Typhoid Fever · 12 Sterrett, John D. · 75 Sterrett, Madison McClung · 2 Sterrett, Madison McClung, Jr. · 2, 70, 78, 85 Birth · 7 Teeth · 69 Sterrett, Madison McClung, Sr. · 2 Civilian Conservation Corps · 43 Construction work in Newport News · 50 John Marshall High School · 3 Marriage · 8, 13 School Board · 56 Sterrett, Tate House of Delegates · 55 Strickler, John · 18 Strickler, Ollie · 18 Supinger's Store · 43 Swisher, Bessie · 92 Swisher, Buford · 92 Swisher, Hen Sheep Shearing · 21 T Telephone service · 6 Thompson, Ann · See Montgomery, Ann Thompson Thompson, Charles Edwin · 8 Thompson, Davenport · 8 Thompson, Edna · 7, 9, 79 Thompson, Edwin · 7, 79 Thompson, Faye · 48, 84 Thompson, Horatio · 7 Thompson, Isabel Sterrett · 2, 3 Thompson, Lewis · 9 Thompson, Mary · See Morton, Mary Thompson Thompson, Mildred Goodman · 8, 105 Thompson, Samuel Givens · 9 Thompson, Stuart · 1, 2, 80 Death · 14 Thompson, William · 9 Timber Ridge Dairy · 25 Trimmer, Osie · 84 School Principal · 30 U Updike, Margaret Dice · 29, 31 Nurse at UVA · 31 W Wade Jen · See Heffelfinger, Jen Wade, Bud · 43, 89 Wade, Eleanor · 48, 90 Wade, Elsie · 38, 93, 95 Wade, Frances · 38, 72, 80 Wade, Hamilton · 89, 94 Wade, Harold · 89 Wade, Hugh · 35, 48 Banker · 88 Wade, Jim · 38, 94 Wade, John · 90 Wade, Kate · 48, 90 Wade, Kite · 89 Wade, Margaret · 48, 67, 90 Wade, Mary · 48, 90 Wade, Walter · 89 Wade, Winston · 38 Walker, Maggie · 33 Walker, Tom · 33 Whipple, D.W. · 48, 84 Whipple, David · 43 Whipple, Fred · 56, 69, 100, 104 Whipple, Mollie Sue · 30, 56, 85, 93 Whipple’s Store · 24, 42 Whipples Republicans · 35 White, Dr. Locke New Providence Minister · 79 Whitesell, John Layton · 39 Whitesell, John Miley · 57 Whitesell, Marjorie Ann · See Chittum, Marjorie Ann Whitesell Whiteside, Josephine · 47 Willson, Robert Tate · 15 Willson, Sallie · 4, 15, 99 Willson, Samuel · 4, 16, 99 Wilson Springs · 26 Wilson, Ellen · 95 Wilson, Goodrich · 95 Withrow, Earl · 73 Withrow, Jim · 73 Woltz, Frances · 78 World War I · 63 World War II · 61 Blackouts · 65 Casualties · 69 Civilian watch program · 66 Rationing · 66 Special Services · 64 USO · 64 V-12 Program · 64 Victory Gardens · 62