This interview took place on a Sunday morning in December of 2006 at the Farmville assisted living facility where Mrs. Word, 87, makes her home. The interviewer, Alan Bruns of Fredericksburg, VA, had not met Mrs. Word until that morning, but they had had a lively correspondence for several years previously

Their common interest is Buckingham County and the Howardsville area. Nancy Bruns is along to see that the equipment functions properly. Nancy Bruns also is the transcriber.

Mrs. Word is the former Pauline Ellis Peters, daughter of Paul Bert Peters, a conductor on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, and Gracie Belle Robertson, his wife. Pauline was born and raised in the northern part of Buckingham, and was for many years a teacher and guidance counselor [at Buckingham Central High School and elsewhere]. Her marriage, late in life, was to Ben H. Word. She has survived him by 22 years. The interview begins:

Is that taping us now? (Gesturing at the tape recorder)

Interviewer: Yes, it is working.

Interviewer: We should say this is Alan Bruns and Nancy Bruns. Today is Sunday, Dec. 3, 2006, and we are in Farmville talking with Pauline Peters Word. Mrs. Word grew up a few miles from where I (Alan) lived a long time, at Dungannon (in Buckingham County, across the James River from Howardsville). She lived near Axtell. I think I have met most of her uncles. (Sam Peters, a farmer, and Joe Peters, a carpenter, were familiar figures in the neighborhood.)

Mrs. Word: Well I think the most I knew about you was that you and Kenneth Bryant and Roy Bishop took telegraphy from Mr. Anderson down at Warren, at the C&O. There was a little [train] used to come in there.

Interviewer: It [the Nelson & Albemarle Railway] was from Schuyler and the train came down and brought soapstone from the quarry.

Mrs. Word: I lived right across the road from Aunt Josie (Rose). You know Minnie Snoddy [Mrs. Eric] wrote an article about Aunt Josie. She interviewed her and wrote an article.

Mrs. Word: I wanted to finish writing up a story about her (Aunt Josie) and put it in the Farmville Herald, but I can= t get permission from the Charlottesville paper, The Daily Progress. That= s where Minnie was working. I can= t print something that someone else wrote. But I asked for permission to add some of the things that I know. I didn= t know Aunt Josie had had four sons. They died at birth.

Interviewer: I would certainly like to have a copy of that article if you can get permission to use it.

Mrs. Word: I know you would. Your mother and father would come down. One thing, I saw your mother cutting something or sewing something, sitting in the car. See, I was right across the road from Aunt Josie. Your mother didn= t go into the house... She was cutting something and sewing something, on Sunday.

Interviewer: Mrs. Mary Bruns?

Mrs.Word: Yes.

Second Interviewer [Nancy Bruns]: Was that not something you did on Sunday?

Mrs. Word: Yes, I remember when I baked my first cake on Sunday. I thought I was going to you know where. Things like that, you are raised in that type of tradition. You didn= t do anything on Sunday. You cooked everything on Saturday, the day before, except you did build a fire to make coffee or something for breakfast.

Mrs. Word [To Alan]: Well I remember you. Fanny Bishop, Roy= s sister, lives here at the home. (Miss Bishop later stops and is introduced.) She just lost her oldest sister. There was a big family of them. I never looked to see what became of Roy. You knew Roy?

Interviewer: Roy and I stopped a train one night. Well, it was really Roy. He fell asleep [standing up] holding the controls and stopped the Seaboard [Silver Meteor] right in the middle of the bridge over the James River. You had to change the light or the train stopped.

We had a big to-do over that. But the last time I heard of Roy he was a dispatcher. He rose right on up once he settled down.

Mrs. Word: I had a cousin at Wingina who was the agent. He was a Beard. He had epilepsy and one day he passed out and that was the end of his job. Of course he had no business having that job anyway. It runs in our family. I have to take a medication for a mild form.

Interviewer: I want to hear about you and your family and Buckingham history. But I would like to hear more about Aunt Josie Rose.

Second Interviewer [Nancy Bruns]: She was your aunt?

Mrs. Word: She was a colored lady and we just called her Aunt Josie. We called colored people aunt and uncle. It was a form of respect.

Interviewer: She was the senior African American lady in the community, the queen.

Mrs. Word: Yes. The latest thing. Aunt Josie had done so much for us. I first remember her when my oldest brother (Carl E. Peters) was born. They took the baby away from Mother because they thought that she had diphtheria. Aunt Josie came and took care of us. We had a little four room cottage right across the road. My sister says that Aunt Josie made a little bed for him (Carl) in my red wagon and that she slept on a cot in the dining room with him in the little red wagon.

Two things I remember and they are both connected. She had one of these little Sterno stoves and she used to heat his 2 o= clock feeding on that. That was the first time I had seen condensed milk. Eagle brand. Later mother used to spread Eagle brand condensed milk on biscuits and put them in the oven to heat and then give it to us. Those are the two things I rememberB Eagle brand milk and the little Sterno stove.

But going back to Aunt Josie. You see she stayed over at our house and took care of the baby until they found out Mother didn=t have diphtheria. Of course she was back and forth all the time.

The thing I knew she was so proud of was that she had a brother who lived in Philadelphia. He was a policeman. And she went to Philadelphia and took training in how to take care of sick people. One thing they had taught her, how to feed diabetics. That was what she learned. She was so proud of having a brother from Philadelphia. [She was also proud that her mother was born free.]

So when Dr. McCulloch moved to Lexington my father helped him and he gave him some things for helping. There was a little bed I used to sleep in [that] was Nancy McCulloch= s bed. The bed couldn= t be sold. It had slats and the slats were too far apart and a child could have slipped through so it couldn= t be sold. (The bed was given away.)

Well, going back to Aunt Josie, she used to work for all the doctors, and for Dr. McCulloch. And they sent for Aunt Josie when General Pershing visited Dr. McCulloch in Lexington. She was very proud of that. [He needed a special diet].

I sent in an article about that (referring to the stories of Aunt Josie Rose)... but it hasn= t come out yet.

I used to take Mrs. Minnie Lee Snoddy (a long time Daily Progress correspondent) around to events. She didn=t drive. A lot of meetings and things we both wanted to go toB so I would take her around.

Interviewer: Did she live close to you?

Mrs. Word: She lived down where you turn, where Dr. McCulloch= s house was, and you turn and go to what we called Snoddytown. Down in there where the Stegers and the Snoddys live. Then you come out somewhere between Goshen Church and Warren. You know the place the road comes out at Centenary?

Interviewer: You know Snoddys bought Algoma. And then one of the young Snoddys has married the lady who bought the old Crews farm. So Snoddy land comes all the way up [to the main road, Rt.602].

Mrs. Word: My goodness, they have gained everything that Dr. McCulloch owned.

The name Snoddy derives from the Scots pronunciation of Snowday, a name taken long ago by a fugitive to Scotland from England.

Mrs. Word: But going back to something I was saying, it was about my grandson. I don= t have any but step-grandchildren, but they are just as precious.

The day I got married I got a husband (Ben H. Word), four sons, four daughters in law and 12 grandchildren. So I got a ready-made family...

(There is a discussion of purchase of a bed and gift of the flower of the month and the work of nieces and grand-daughters in packing up for the sale and move to the home.

One son was a doctor at Martha Jefferson Hospital, in Charlottesville. The names of the Ben Junior= s children are Charlotte, Jo, Nancy, Liz, Ben. Mr. Ben Word Sr. died in 1985. He had been ill for about three years.

Mrs. Word also describes an earache which was the result of sitting with her back to window with cracked glass, getting chilled, and treatment for that.)

Mrs. Word: But getting back to Ben Jr., you could always tell when he came down the hall by the way his foot struck the floor. I have known what that was called but I don= t remember now.

Interviewer: Before I forget I wanted to ask about the house that Robert Main built from bricks from another house.

Mrs. Word: That was the Averill house and it was in 1926. That was the year after my oldest brother (Carl) was born.

That fire (a forest fire that burned the Averill house) burned right up to our back porch. Daddy was on the railroad and he wasn= t home. All the neighbors followed that fire and kept that fire from burning (our house).

Interviewer: She [Mrs. Averill] was a constant visitor at Algoma. Her name was all the way through the Algoma Logbook as Louisa (The house that burned was the home of her parents, the Bookers), then suddenly she was Mrs. Averill.

Mrs. Word: The Brown house was right there. There was the Bruns house, Dungannon, the Forsyth house (which was then called Restalrig), and it was purchased by the Crewses.

Interviewer: Restalrig was a [village, now a] section of Edinborough where the Logans lived for hundreds of years. We spent a week in Edinborough and went there and walked around.

Mrs. Word: Is it Edinborough, Scotland, you are talking about? Is it a Forsyth home?

Interviewer: It is an original Logan village. I told the lady who lives there now about the name of Restalrig.

Mrs. Word: Mary Scott (a Buckingham County resident and mutual friend) can= t get it straight how come her ancestor was born there. [The Scott family built the house and Gen.Logan later bought it.] That was an old [possibly 1790] section of Restalrig [the house] and it was built onto.

So anyway I would like to have something to prove that the Forsyth home was named Restalrig [She subsquently found a reference to it by that name in a Farmville Herald publication].

Did Gen. Logan give that land to them?

Interviewer: I think it was first to his son, Jimmy Logan, and then it went to the Forsyths. I think Jimmy Logan had one son, Tommy Logan, and I think he was left the low grounds. Then Mr. Allen Beattie (now the owner of Dungannon) bought it. When we lived at Dungannon there was a whole strip of low grounds that belonged to Tommy Logan. He came up to visit once, I think. I remember seeing him.

Mrs. Word: ... Well General Logan set up a school. He and his daughter Meta. He said girls ought to be educated too. Back then, only the boys were educated and the poor families, they had to work the crops and they could go to school a few months a years, but then when time came to plant the crops they had to stay home and work the farm.

And Uncle Sam= s (Samuel Peters) boys. Did you know them?

Interviewer: I thought they were twins.

Mrs. Word: No, not twins. It was Wilson and Woodrow. Wilson was older than Woodrow. Wilson and Woodrow all down the way. Those two could amuse you...They were out in the cornfield hoeing the corn. They were throwing clods of dirt at each other.

Uncle Sam saw a little cloud of dust like flying around, and first thing you know, Uncle Sam was down there. And he had both those boys. I don= t know whether you= d say lickings. I don= t know how much they got. You called them lickins in those days.

The other one is my aunt -- Aunt Lizzie. They moved around and farmed other people= s farms.

Interviewer: Who was that?

Mrs. Word: That was Uncle Sam. He went around and lived in different houses and farms. The last I remember he lived in Miss Courtney Irvings= s house. He didn= t own that. He was just renting it, I suppose. But you know, Dr. Margaret Nolting and Miss Courtney Irving, they had really looked out for our family. They went to see my Great Grandfather Brown. One or the other of them (the Browns) was sick and they went to see about them. You know they were just very caring people.

Interviewer: Your Grandfather Brown had Brown= s shop?

Mrs. Word: Well that= s where Uncle Willis -- Cable Brown.

I have thought of something else about Aunt Josie ... I am going to pick her up again.

Interviewer: Now the McCulloch house burned? When did it burnt? That was after Dr. McCulloch moved? (Dr. Charles McCulloch, the physician who delivered Pauline Peters Word, practiced medicine in Buckingham County from 1901 until 1922. At that point, he established a horse farmB Little DornochB near Lexington, VA. Mrs. Word had written earlier in a letter to Alan Bruns that Dr. McCulloch was the son of Frederick Hugh McCulloch who had been secretary of the treasury under Lincoln and again under President Garfield. The McCulloch family moved to Virginia from Ft. Wayne, IN, after the Civil War. )

Mrs. Word: I don= t know (when the McCulloch house burned). There was a family of Moons living there. Then my uncle Curt Peters lived there a long time. He used to go home and get lunch when they lived in that house. The little two-room school our parents got together and built was up the road. It was a wagon road or a buggy road or something where people cut through and it came out at Goshen Church. That was Beesville School.

Interviewer: Scott, my brother, and my sister went there for a couple of years.

Mrs. Word: Beesville School. Well I have a copy of [a picture of] that school.

Interviewer: You sent me a copy of that and I shared it with my brother. [Lois Main. Louisa Averill= s daughter who married the son of an Oho family that bought Algoma, taught at Beesville school].

Mrs. Word: ... Jimmy [Lois= son] died but I think Bobby is alive... Jimmy and my youngest brother, Bert, were pals. Bert is still living. Of course all we had was double beds and they slept in the same bed. He told me I told them, don= t put your head under the cover. You= ll get consumption or tuberculosis or something. You see my mother= s mother had died with that and I guess I had got the idea of fresh air.

Interviewer: How old were you then?

Mrs. Word: I don= t know somewhere over 17... I was 17 when they took Mother to Staunton. Bert was born in 1932.

Interviewer: Was your grandfather Jefferson Averett Peters?

Mrs. Word: Yes. Grandfather had a house and it was like a compound, with Uncle Joe living up here and Uncle Curt down here, and Uncle Sam on another hill. Grandfather= s home was surrounded by them.

When my mother and father married they went to live with Grandfather. I was born there in Grandfather= s house and the kitchen was detached and was a log cabin, and I used to tell people I was born in the log cabin. But it wasn= t true. My sister said to stop saying that. You were born in the house, not the log cabin. So much for my 15 minutes of fame.

Now I will tell you the rest of the story.

Mother was pregnant. Daddy had a sister who couldn= t speak and couldn= t hear. They sent her to Staunton to school but she cried so much they brought her home. So she was the boss of the house.

Mother had evidently gone out for a walk and when she got back, Aunt Edna was prowling in her trunk.

Interviewer: Aunt Edna was the sister who couldn= t speak?

Mrs. Word: Yes that was her name... and mother just flew at her or something and here Hazel was due in about two more months. And Edna just fought her back.

They moved mother and me up to Uncle Sam= s and that= s where Hazel was born.

Interviewer: Did it cause the birth to come early?

Mrs. Word: No, Hazel, was all right.

Interviewer: But they fought?

Mrs. Word: I guess so. I guess whether Mother hit her or did anything. I don= t know whether they hit each other or what. But they give Mother credit. My aunt Bertha, the youngest one, gives Mother credit for getting her out of there and to Richmond. They had no education. They could read and write, but girls weren= t supposed to get any higher education. They were supposed to stay at home and do the work. And if they got married, we called them baby factories.

Now let= s get back to Aunt Josie. Do you have any questions?

Interviewer: Did they use newspaper for wallpaper? I recall a room papered that way.

Mrs. Word: I don= t remember what was in the house because I never went down there... when at Uncle Joe= s and I would walk down there with my cousins, we would walk down to the spring. They didn= t have a well up on top of the hill.

Interviewer: Where Josie Rose lived was very small?...

Mrs. Word: Aunt Josie= s home was two stories high and had a pretty brick chimney at one end.

The house we lived in had been built by the McCullochs for the Catholics to educate the colored people. I always wanted to saw a door in it. It was two houses. The priest had lived on one side in two rooms.

Another little tale. Mother wanted to set a hen and there was this huge box over in the old school B the building. My cousin was visiting us from Fluvanna and I showed her that big old box and I told her that= s where Jesus= mother slept.

It was a big old box with lots of excelsior and it was big enough to put a person in. In fact, we put a mattress on top and Carl slept on top of that box.

My father gave that house and five acres to Goshen Church.

Interviewer: I was wondering about Logan Forsyth. I didn= t know you knew him.

Mrs. Word: We never met. It was just like you. I know who he is...

Interviewer: Logan let me borrow a box of letters and they included a set of letters from your Uncle Sam to Albert Morrill about the condition of Algoma, after the Gen. and Mrs. Logan died, Aunt Lily [Morrill] was supposed to inherit Algoma. I don= t think she ever lived there. She lived in [Cincinnati] Ohio and later at A Enniscorthy,@ in Green Mountain.

The funniest thing in that box was a letter from Douglas Forsyth saying after the panic of 1929 he had been wiped out. My grandfather, Dr. Henry D. Bruns, wrote back expressing some sympathy but saying it was good for the nation to get the economy cleaned out.

Interviewer Nancy: A very medical approach. He was a doctor in New Orleans. .. Mrs. Word: Your great grandfather Logan was once called the youngest general but there later turned out to be another one who was younger.

Interviewer: There was one in North Carolina. I guess the general= s daughters didn= t know about that one. I think you can say he was ONE of the youngest generals in the Confederate army [who survived the war].

Mrs. Word: My aunt Bertha, she used to crochet for Gen. Logan= s wife. She would hook up the horse to the buggy to take the things to Mrs. Logan and my grandfather wouldn= t let her go. He said the horse had to rest on Sundays. I don= t know how she got the things to Mrs. Logan.

I knew that Mrs. Morrill. Her husband was connected with Kroger Grocery Stores. They went to Cinnicinati.

...Benjamin Harrison Word has come down many years. His father was David and his father was Benjamin Harrison Word of Horn Quarter. It was close to the Buckingham County [line] but in Cumberland County. (Mrs. Word explained that Horn Quarter was where they blew the horn to let the innkeeper know how many guests to prepare for, this being the stage route from Richmond to Lynchburg.)

The names of Harrison and Lockie have come down in the Word familyC that= s as far back as I have gone. I have too many irons in the fire.

Interviewer: When Kenneth Bryant was born, Jo Rose was the midwife.

Mrs. Word: Well, she was probably the midwife for mother too.

Interviewer: But the birth certificate was filled out by Dr. Harris. ...

Mrs. Word: Hugh McCulloch grew up with Aunt Josie. My sister Ruby was living here in Farmville when Uncle John (Aunt Josie= s husband) died.

You know when there is a death, they keen. It= s a high pitched shrill soundB keening is what it is called. And I heard this noise and went out into our front yard and there was Aunt Josie standing in her yard keening. I walked to her to see what was wrong because I knew that wasn= t a normal sound and she said John has fallen out of the bed, and I went with her into the house to help.

When I got there he was dead. I picked up his feet and she picked up his head and we got him back on the bed. Then I said is there anything else I can help with and she said no she could do the rest herself...

So getting back to Hugh McCulloch. He Hugh (Dr. McCulloch= s son) was living here in Farmville and I got him word through my sister Ruby to contact him when Uncle John died. He came as soon as he got word. He kept up with the family. You see Aunt Josie used to work with different ones (doctors) all over the county.

The last one was one over about Boyd Tavern. Dr. Irving, Charles Irving. He was a doctor for the C&O. And he gave Daddy a big old black dog, January.

But getting back to Aunt Josie. She would give my youngest brother (Bert) a couple of postal cards and she wanted him to write how Uncle John was. I heard her say he never would write anything, he just wrote that Uncle John was going fine. She wanted him to fill up the postal card.

She= d bake a birthday cake for him every year.

Bert brought his first child (home) and we had him on a little quilt in the side yard and we were all standing around watching him and Aunt Josie came over. She saw the car and she came over and grabbed Bert around the arm and around and around they went and all of a sudden she left... when she came back, I said, Aunt Josie, why did you leave, and she said I couldn= t pick up the baby with a dirty apron on. She= d gone home to clean up and come back to play with the baby. She was always watching over our family.

Interviewer: And when did she die?

Mrs. Word: Well, I was in college when she died. I knew where she was buried there -- there was a great running rose which had run over and covered up so many graves. And the last time I could remember seeing it, I could see the metal marker from the funeral home, and so I had always wanted to do something. I was away in college when she died and I decided I was going to get a tombstone for her and Uncle John, and so I did. And I went down there the day they were supposed to bring the tombstones down there and everything had been cleaned off. Uncle John= s nephew had cleaned it all off. He was excited because he didn= t know what I was doing and I didn= t know what he was doing and we all had just come together on the thing. And he was there that day. One of his aunts I had taken to Charlottesville. I used to drive for the Cancer Society.

... another story about that rose vine. You said you went to school with one of Uncle Sam= s children.

Interviewer: Margaret Peters.

Mrs. Word: Margaret, she= s dead now. But when she graduated I made her a corsage of white rosebuds for her graduation.

Interviewer: She never came back to the reunion. We meet every June.

Did she have a sister named Nancy?

Mrs. Word: Yes. Nancy I think that= s the one I made the corsage for. ...

Grandfather= s house wasn= t very big, and so when Miss Emily Nolting stayed there when my father was ill with typhoid fever, she hung a sheet across the end of the room and she stayed there and took care of him.

He did survive. I think he was about 17 years old at the time.

We loved to go down and play in the creek. Well, when he found out we were doing that, he raised up and he wouldn= t allow us to play in the creek. Evidently he had been drinking out of the creek and that= s how he got his typhoid.

People weren= t too careful about how they disposed of things.

My mother= s mother died of consumption and no one ever ate a meal at our house.

Aunt Josie would come and you would give her something and she would take it home. She would never sit at the table with us.

Interviewer: She was afraid of getting something?

Mrs. Word: She was afraid of getting consumption. We had to boil every dish. People who cut the wood and kept the garden we had to feed them. And we boiled every dish...

Interviewer: Do you remember Willy Radford?

Mrs. Word: I know the name since you reminded me but I didn= t know him.

Interviewer: We have a chair that his brother made [from oak] and it is almost too heavy to pick up.

But Willy was a great philosopher.

And he had some colorful expressions, like mountaineous@ country. My mother used to enjoy him.

My mother was a city girl and she didn= t know anything about Virginia race relations and she said my father lectured her on what was proper. When Willy came she could serve him coffee, but she couldn= t sit at the table with him while he drank the coffee.

That was her lecture.

Mrs. Word: I have people from all over the world with genealogy but there was only one person in all the years I have been a little nervous with. He was interested in three dimensional stuff.

What else can I tell you.

Interviewer: How did you met your husband?

Mrs. Word: When I moved to Buckingham I went to the Enon Church and he was a member of that church.

Interviewer: He was somewhat older than you were?

Mrs. Word: Oh yes, he was about 25 years older.

And so I knew him and I knew his wife too. When I would visit my sister and we would visit around and I got to know them as a couple. But she got sick and passed away.

And he worked in the cafeteria at the high school selling ice cream and I knew him through that.

Then one time I went to Staunton to get Mother to take her to her sister= s in Fluvanna and I must have had to stop in Charlottesville at the cafeteria, and I met her waiting for her ride home.

Ben Jr. had just opened his office there in Charlottesville. She was a real sweet person. ...

Interviewer: And then when were you and Mr. Word married? Did you have a big wedding?

Mrs. Word: In 1969. It was just a small church wedding. Somebody else decorated the church for something else... that was an ordeal that day.

Interviewer: Why was that?

Mrs. Word: I had to go down in the basement and stay until they came after me.

See, the back of the church is where Ben and his sons stayed since the bridegroom is not supposed to see the bride until she walks down the aisle.

Someone came for me and then said, A go back, go back.@ I was a nervous wreck.

Our preacher= s son played the big old antique organ, and I had asked him to play. I hadn= t even noticed that there was no music.

But he was late because of road construction he hadn= t counted on.

Eventually, they came and got me and I got midway down the aisle C and I said, I= m not supposed to walk this fast. I was just so nervous. Then I remembered I wanted to change something in the wedding ceremony. I wanted my sister= s name added when they asked who gives this bride to be married.

I had chosen Johnny my sister= s husband to escort me and I wanted him to say both her name and his.

Interviewer: What did you wear?

Mrs. Word: I made my own dress. It was an A line dress. When I left home it was in the closet and it was yellow with age. (It had been white.)

And I had a little cap. It wasn= t all the way back. It covered my ears.

Interviewer: Did it have a veil?

Mrs. Word: No I did not want a veil.

Ben would not give me the names of who he wanted at the wedding. He told me afterwards that he was afraid he would leave somebody out and there would be hurt feelings. I know now I could have had as many as I wanted.

Then I had planned to stay there at Ben= s house the night of the wedding and I had my suitcase packed. Before that I had stayed in a little cabin nearby.

Interviewer: I wanted to ask did you have a reception after the wedding.

Mrs. Word: Yes and that goes back to the night before the wedding. I was hemming my dress the night before the wedding. I hadn= t finished it. And Mrs. Gillespie was worrying because I hadn= t finished it.

I said, I have another white dress I can wear, and she said, A No, you are going to finish that dress.@

The women at the Methodist Church had got together and made me a wedding cake, and I wasn= t sure [it would serve the guests]. I thought I would stir up a pound cake to have in an emergency, in case we need it.

All of a sudden I saw a big black cloud rolling out from the kitchen. We were sitting in the livingroom.

I had used the wrong kind of flour... and it came over the pan and started smoking. So Mrs. Gillespie insisted I make another cake. I was a nervous wreck.

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