Interviewer: You were named William after your grandfather Fenwick?

Bill: After my grandfather William Wood Fenwick. The name wood came from Mary Wood, the wife of William Wood Fenwick's great grandfather, John Fenwick.

Interviewer: So William Wood Fenwick=s father was John Warren Fenwick and where did he live before he came to Mt. Alto?

Bill: My great great great grandfather, John Fenwick, born circa 1750, came from northern England to this country. He died in 1790. His will was dated May 8, 1790 and was probated at the Albemarle County Courthouse on September 9, 1790.  My great great grandfather James Fenwick was born around 1775 and came with his father to this country. My great grandfather John Warren Fenwick, who built the Mt. Alto plantation house in 1845, was the son of James Fenwick. John Warren Fenwick was born March 15, 1800 and died Feb. 3, 1863. (Information added from the Fenwick Family Genealogy, compiled by William E. Norman, April 1, 1971.)

Interviewer: And his wifeB the woman he marriedB had lived near here.

Bill: Her name was Rebecca Moton Gilmore. Her family owned a large farm near Esmont, VA, I think.

Interviewer: Did I understand correctly that he came here to Mt. Alto because his sister had given him the land?

Bill: His wife=s sister, Elizabeth Gilmore, deeded the land to John Warren Fenwick and Rebecca Moton Gilmore Fenwick on Nov. 24, 1847. (The Fenwicks were married Dec. 29 or 30, 1841.)

Interviewer: And they built a house?

Bill: They built a house. Helen Fenwick always said that my grandmother said it was built in 1845 and that they didn=t receive the land from Elizabeth until 1847.

Interviewer: What did they farm? It seems just a little hilly for crops to me.

Bill: They had between 60 to 70 acres of open fields, the rest were woods and they had a small orchard. Certainly cattle.

Second Interviewer[Alan]: If you drive parallel to the mountain like I did last year you see that those fields are on the tops of ridges.

Interviewer: So is it good land then.

Bill: This particular land where Mt. Alto was located is not good soil. It= s highly acidic soil. You use a lot of fertilizer to get it working.

Interviewer: They were supporting themselves?

Bill: All that I have heard about is that they had huge gardens a peach and apple orchard, raised hogs and they had cattle. I remember my grandmother Mary Spicey Thomas Fenwick (who was the wife of William Wood Fenwick) who lived at Mt. Alto farm, telling me that they and other nearby families would mark their hogs' ears by so many metal hog rings so they might be recognized by the number of rights and then turned out of the pig pens in the fall to go to the forests of chestnut trees to live on the chestnuts in the month or so before butchering time. Mary remembered harvesting at least 15 bushels from  one old big tree for home use (roast and salt down) before the fungus blight killed the trees during the 1920's and 1930's. Also after the trees died, people in the area cut the standing hulks and shipped by railroad to Lynchburg for use at a leather tannery as a coloring agent. Some of the dead chestnuts were cut and split to keep the old chestnut rail fences maintained. The old fences were built originally from growing chestnut trees.

And at some time or the other I have heard my grandmother Mary Spicey Thomas Fenwick say they had sheep when John Warren Fenwick farmed the Mt. Alto plantation.

Bill: John Warren Fenwick was my great grandfather married to Rebecca Moton Gilmore and one of their sons was William Wood Fenwick. Actually he was married twice. First he was married Sally Johnson and that marriage did not last long and then he married Mary Spicey Thomas.

Bill: She was from the Hog Creek Thomases. (Hog Creek) is right down there-- it runs from the Rockfish to the ridge at Mount Alto. Her father was Joseph Washington Thomas and his father was Ralph Thomas and his father was Michael Thomas Jr. (Mary Spicey Thomas' mother Mary Spicey Coleman-Thomas was on the board which established the Baptist church on Mt. Alto. The church is not used but there is an annual homecoming. )

Interviewer: Did they all live there on Hog Creek?

Bill: Back as far back as Ralph Thomas and beyond him I do not know where the Thomases lived. Records show that Thomases purchased land in Albemarle and Nelson counties.

Interviewer But was there a little neighborhood [Mt.Alto] hereB say when you were a child?

Bill: Apparently the way things were going they were trying to form a little community. Maybe this was to be instead of Howardsville. They had their own school and they had a Sunday School in the school for about 10 or 15 years and two miles away they had a Sunday School in the church. ( Addition by Bill: The Fenwicks donated an acre of land to the county of Albemarle upon which a public school was built and still stands in 2007 and also, a Sunday School of the Methodist persuasion, was to be held in the school building. And it was held there for 13 years. On March 30 1890 a Sunday School was organized and 42 people enrolled. Sunday School was held most Sundays until it closed, July 26, 1903 when only 16 of the 22 people enrolled as members were present. of interest is the fact that just two miles away at Howardsville was a Methodist church build in 1854 which operated until 1983 when all memberships were transferred to the new Faith Church at Schuyler, VA. The Episcopal church was allowed to hold services once a month in the Howardsville United Methodist Church until it closed.)

Interviewer: Once when you said something about the schools you said something about 1929B was that the end of this school up here?

Bill: The only date I am sure of is when they discontinued this Sunday School. I don=t know when the school stopped. I do know that my mother, Evelyn, went there for the first grade.

Interviewer: Up here on the ridge?

Bill: Yes the Mt. Alto School.

Second Interviewer [Alan]: A little earlier today, we were talking about running water. That= s one thing we did have over on the Buckingham County side was running water. No electricity.

Interviewer: But you all had running water over here didn=t you?

Bill: Well let=s see they built that house in 1925. My father Curtis Vernon Giannini and my mother Evelyn Virginia Fenwick were married in 1924 and they built a house in 1925 up on Mt. Alto. My niece, Sarah (White) has the house now and the first thing I remember about water was that my father put this tank up on legs outside the kitchen and he would go to the cabin on Kings Hill, owned by Dr. Margaret Nolting, who would spend her summers there. And Dad and Joe Peters cut the pine poles and Joe built that cabin there for Dr. Nolting.

Joe had put a big tank up in the air with a little one cylinder gasoline engine and that pumped water from the well. The well was about three hundred feet deep.

Dewey Goolsby=s father, Tom, and Jasper Harris hand dug the well and it was 300 feet deep. All of our wells here [on Mt.Alto] are 300 feet deep.

Dad would take the wagon and go get barrels of water from that tank and then hand dip it with a five-gallon bucket into the tank outside the kitchen. And there was a spigot running into a soapstone sink in the kitchen.

Interviewer: And that was the cooking and washing water?

Bill: Everything.

Interviewer: And you got hot water by heating it on the stove?

Bill: There was a wood stove in the kitchen and there was a hot water compartment.

Interviewer: A reservoir?

Bill: (Agreeing). Some time after we got electricity in the 40'sB the extension was added on in the 1940's.

Interviewer: You studied by oil lamps?

Bill: Oh yes.

Dad put a well in the mid-40's. He had it drilled and the first one was dust all the way. This zone of rock is terrible for wells. It must have been between 1940 and 1946 when he had the first well and another well immediately afterwards with a pump that set into the ground and supplied water to the house.

Interviewer: What did you run the pump with? Oh you had electricity by then.

Bill: Yes. We got electricity in 1939 or around then.

Interviewer When you got the electricity what is the first appliance your family bought?

Maybe fans? Radio? A refrigerator? A washing machine.

Bill: I don= t remember.

Interviewer Alan: A washing machine was the big thing at our house.

(Alice who has been preparing dinner joins the recording session and says that Mrs. Giannini took the laundry out to Fanny White to be done and then picked it up.)

Bill: I= d forgotten that. That= s right. They were Tom and Fanny White. They lived about a half mile down.

Interviewer Alan: Ruth Jones used to do a full day= s work at our house and then carry the laundry on her head to her house at Axtell and carry it back the next morning at the crack of dawn and start working all over again.

Interviewer: When they got electricity, they must have gotten lamps. Lights for inside?

Bill: Oh yes. They wired the house with the metal covered cable. Frank Wells helped Daddy.

Interviewer: I remember that cable.

Alice: I remember the first appliance my family bought. We bought a refrigerator at Piggley Wiggley in Charlottesville and it was a Norge. There was a Norge appliance place up on top of the store. I remember going with Mama and Daddy to get that washing machine.

I am awfully glad they got a washing machine.

Interviewer: What about a radio? Did you get a radio?

Bill: I remember the first radio. We had a battery pack radio. Ever ready. You had to put up an outside antennae with little clear glass insulators and run your line through that.

Dad got the radio from Sears and had it hooked up with the Ever Ready batteries. On a Saturday night the Martins from over on the corner would come over and listen to the Grand Ole Opry in the room there with the tin heater going I remember in the winter time especially.

...

And the next radio I rememberB Helen ordered an electric radio from Montgomery Ward and they sent her two. She got in touch with them and they said keep it and she gave it to us. Airline? Streamline.

Interviewer: Did the Martins still come to listen?

Bill: No, but it was like television when people used to come and watch TV at other people= s houses.

People got tired of it I guess or they got their own.

Interviewer: So who are these Martins?

Bill: Well all I know is Charles Martin. A little short fellow. He had about five or six kids. The first I remember hearing about them is that they lived out on the other end of Mt. Alto near the river in a log cabin and he used to go everywhere in his wagon. I guess he got tired of living out there out of the way of everywhere and the Fenwicks rented him a house on the corner here near the intersection. He lived there until she died and he died.

************

Interviewer Alan: When I was in the first grade at Howardsville School, Margaret Trice was also in the first grade, but they put her in the second grade because she could read. I was the only first grader...I don= t remember the other people from that year...

Interviewer Nancy: Were you all in the same school? No, you were in the Mount Alto School?

Bill: No, I was at Howardsville School. I must have started in 1937 when I was seven years old and I went there until they closed the school down. (Alan and Billy attended the same school for a couple of years.) In the middle of the sixth grade they shut Howardsville School down.

Interviewer: And then you went to Scottsville School on the bus? Wasn=t there a terrible fuss?

Bill: I don=t remember that. We transferred to Scottsville in the middle of the year, and we all finished the second semester of the sixth grade and then we took the sixth grade all over again. Country bumpkins I guess. There was one personB Dewey GoolsbyB who told me he got to go on to the seventh grade. ...

(The interviewers and Gianninis discuss houses in the area and it is noted that Highland Farm is now a subdivision and that nearby Monticola is also to become a 10-acre lot subdivision.)

Interviewer: Was Monticola the largest house around here when you were growing up?

Bill: That and West Cote (Summer Hill) and Algoma, Dungannon, Locust Hill. Selma, the old Irving place that later burned.

Interviewer Alan: Despite the fact that I lived right across the road from Locust Hill in the first grade, I don= t remember ever being in that house. Katharine Hancock lived there, and she was a teenager in those days...

Bill: Mrs. Omohundro lived there. Her son had bought it. Dad and I used to go down there and buy corn from her.

Interviewer Alan: Dungannon was deceptive. The house itself is not as large as it looks. They originally had intended to have porches on the side where you drive up.

Alice: I liked Algoma. If I could ever have afforded an old house to fix up like it should be fixed up that would have been it. That= s where I first met Bill= s mother (Evelyn Giannini).

Bill: We went to a big dance. A three-piece orchestra playing and hoop skirts and everything. It belonged to the Onks family then.

Alice: There were two familiesB the OnksB and they moved here. One couple bought the Cobbs house and the other bought Algoma. One couple had two daughters and I was friendly with one of them.

So the aunt and the uncle who owned Algoma decided to have a big dance and they invited a group of young people. There were about 75 young peopleB if you had one you had to have them all-- and then they invited a group of older couples too. But for the young people it was semi formal. The young women all came in long dresses and it was the days when hoop skirts and those stiff petticoats were back in and it was Christmas time. They had a big Christmas tree and the fireplace was blazing and the double doors were opened and that made it into a double parlor. Going there was like walking into the pages of a novel about the Old South.

Interviewer: Do you remember what you wore?

Alice: Oh yes. My grandmother picked it out. It was maroon satin with a fitted bodice with a bertha that just came down over the shoulders and the waist came to a V and then there was a full skirt. The girls all thought they looked so good until the Onks= daughter who was a model from New York came down the stairs. It was likeB forget it. She was a blonde and she was wearing this almost strapless white satin dress and platform shoes. With ankle straps. And we= d just never seen anything like that before. She looked like something out of a magazine.

Bill: Was that the party a guest came to in his uniform?

Alice: Yes he went to VMI and had on his military uniform. His dress uniform and it had a cape which he threw back over his shoulder.

Interviewer: And what did you dance? Did you waltz?

Alice: We did the Paul Jones, some round dances and some country dances and the Virginia Reel, and Curt and Eckie danced. Bill= s father was an awesome dancer and they did a square dance.

I=d never met Mrs. Giannini before, but I knew Bill= s dad Curt.

Interviewer: And did you know Bill then?

Alice: We went together. We= d met at Scottsville High School when I came back to Scottsville to live after the war.

Interviewer: What did you wear Bill?

Bill: I don= t remember. I know my shoes were shined.

(All are laughing.)

Alice: He had on a suit. He looked nice.

Interviewer: I am asking really whether the party was formal?

Alice: It wasn=t really formal. The girls came in evening gowns and the boys came in suits or uniforms. The adults were dressed up, but the women didn=t wear long dresses.

*******

Bill: Another thing that= s different when you think of today= s situation. During the war young men were scarce B 17, 18 on up. Living at the end of the line, my brother (Curt) drove the school bus and a bunch of Trices before him. Then after my brother was drafted Ted Watson drove and then when I became 15 and a half I got my license and I started to drive the school bus.

I drove for two years.

Interviewer: Well you could reach the pedals and it was wartime. People did what they had to do.

Bill: I drove on gravel roads and I never had an accident.

Were you (talking to Alan) on the bus that morning it went over the bank just before you get to Boiling Springs and Ted came around there and got too close to the corner and the bus went over. Everyone was crawling out the windows to get of there.

Interviewer: What happened?

Bill: They sent another bus. No one got hurt.

******

Interviewer: What happened to the people who had the Christmas ball?

Alice: They just sort of packed up and went back to Tennessee and I=ve never heard from the one who was my friend. We were very close.

Interviewer: What happened to Algoma, the house?

Bill: The Snoddys (Eric and Minnie) bought it. Then sold it to his brother and sister in law (William and Betty Snoddy). It had two beautiful long bathtubs. I was there just two weeks before it burned and Bill took me on a tour that went up to the attic. They had a lot of fruit jars up there and it seemed like they thought the sun came in on those fruit jars and started a fire.

Interviewer: Algoma though was a later home. I am thinking of West Cote and Monticola as being 19^th century brick mansions and Algoma being different and later.

Bill: It was a summer home.

Interviewer Alan: After the Civil War when rail transportation got easier [a railroad was built on the old towpath from Richmond west] several Richmond families moved up here. Gen. T.M. Logan and his wife Kate Virginia Cox, (Alan= s great grandparents) rented Monticola for a while so that he could watch Algoma being built. Then later the (Otto) Noltings bought Monticola. Monticola was built by a man named Hartsook. And Hartsook= s daughter married the Brown who built Social Hall. Joe Irving and his wife and their daughter Dot lived at Social Hall. (See Dorothy Irving Rosenberger oral history.)

Recent picture of island forming in the James taken by Bill Giannini.