Spirit Tree of Dr Jones
Updated July 13, 2010.
August 13, 2010.
Typed from DVD by Brenda Twiford in August 2010
Paul: I was born in the old Brumley Road house. Roy, Ed and I both were born there and the three girls were born in the old Brumley house on Cason Point Road, you remember where that was.
Roy: Yes I remember.
Paul: I was told that they moved there about 1918, of course I do not remember much about it until about the mid 30's when I was about 6-8 years old. That was about the time that causeway was built the first time, do you remember, hard surface?
Roy: I worked on the causeway, I remember that.
Paul: So you are older than I am.
Roy: A little bit.
Paul: That was built I think in 1936.
Roy: It was started in the last part of 1935 and went all the way through 1937.
Paul: That was hard surface at that time and the road on KI, the main Island here was hard surfaced about 1949 or 1950.
Roy: Around that time, I was not here then.
Paul: I guess you were still in the service.
Roy: Yes.
Paul: Anyway that is what I remember about the Road.
Roy: You remember there was only three houses on Brumley Road. Pud White, Ed Brumley, John Beasley.
Paul: There was only three up here and it was an old dirt road and half the time you had to pull the old model A Ford through it to get it in and out.
Roy: Right it always stuck there.
Paul: I don't remember now what kind of car your dad had at that time, "Pud".
Roy: He had an old, the best I can remember he had an old model T Ford, then he had an old Pontiac.
Paul: I remember the Pontiac, but I don't remember the model-T, he would get that thing through there, but I don't know how he do it.
Roy: There use to be a bridge running from the front of your house to the pond and sometimes high water and a hard rain would wash the bridge away and we couldn't get out, we would be stranded.
Paul: That pond was there when I was a little boy and then sometime in the 30's , in the WPA days they cut that ditch there almost up to the cemetery, out by the head of the Mill Cove.
Roy: It drained the whole woods there.
Paul: What it did was drain that whole pond. I don't remember who built that wooden bridge there, I guess we got that when the road was handed over to the county, I think the county built that bridge.
Roy: Yes, the county built that bridge.
Gary: You saying there was a bridge on Brumley Road.
Roy: Yes, there use to be a bridge there.
Paul: Yes it was close to where Marvin Cooper lives, there was a ditch there.
Roy: Pretty deep ditch. I remember one time when daddy got in that ditch, he had to get two mules to get him out, the old Ford.
Gary: So that was still in the 30's.
Roy: Back in the 20's even the ditches were there.
Paul: The ditch was there ever since I can remember, but it was grown up and stopped up and then this pond that Roy's talking about was in the front yard. Then when the WPA come through there sometime in the 30's they cut that ditch all the way through which drained all of the land around there and that pond did not hold any water after that because it run out through the ditch.
Gary: Where was the pond in relation to your house?
Roy: Straight west of it.
Paul: The pond was right in front of my house, as you were going up Brumley Road it would be on the left, where that culvert is when you get to Marvin Cooper's. Then of course our daddy's farm there was a horse and plow, single horse and they didn't do a lot of farming, they mess at it but they did not grow a lot because of wire grass and cut grass and all that stuff.
Roy: In those days they planted corn about 2 feet apart and the peas were about 3 or 4 inches apart, no fertilizer, they did not have any money to buy fertilizer those days so the corn yielded very little, probably about 10 bushels an acre or something like that.
Paul: You could probably grow as much on one acre of land then as Pud and my daddy grew on both farms, the yield was practally nothing. But do you remember how they use to have their gardens, I have often laughed about that, Momma's garden was down there off against your house where Pud lived and your Momma Essie, her garden was off against my house where Marvin lives now. I have seen a million times, Momma and Essie going to their gardens and they meet half way, she was coming up towards my house and momma was going down towards his house and I never could figure that one out.
Roy: Yes, they had them a long way from home, I don't know why. Momma say there was a little hill up there against your house and she liked that because it was a high hill sandy land and it didn't get to wet in there.
Paul: And I reckon Momma liked it down there because it was a little lower.
Roy: Back in those days that be a lot of illegal hunting, the coots be down in the spring of the year and a lot of people go out in their motor boats and run into them and shoot them, you could always sell those things for about $.25 a piece and that was big money in those days. One time Cabsil Capps and I was out there shooting Blue Peters and we had about 20 of them and we come in and some reason I grabed the coots and put them in the hen house and when I come back down to the shore I seen old Atkins and the federal game warden coming and he searched our boat and dock, he seen us killing the Blue Pete's, but he couldn't find any Blue Pete's, no evidence so he couldn't do anything about it, of course he said it would be another day but so far he hadn't caught me and he's gone now.
Paul: What was that about the late 30's, early 40's?
Roy: That was about 38, it was before I went into the service and I went into the service in 1939.
Paul: I don't know when Pud use to build those boats but he use to have the fastest boats around Knotts Island. He was the first one to put a V8 engine in one.
Roy: That's right he built inboard boats, flat bottom boats, built several of them, probably about 10 of them around the Island for different people, first ones he built he put a Star motor in there (most people don't remember the Star car), that would run about 15 to 18 miles an hour, that was fast in those days. Then they came out with the model-A Ford so he got one of those and put the Model-A Ford in there and that was a little bit faster and then they come out with the V8 motors so Elliott Barnes had a old V8 that he was carrying mail in and was worn out so he got that motor and put it in the boat and of course that thing probably do about 30 miles a hour. Then Elliott Williams and two or three more people, he built Elliott Williams boat and built Elliott Barnes boat and they use to have boat races, they were fast boats, all ran about 25 miles an hour and of course that was a big thing cause half of Knotts Island would be down there watching the boat races.
Gary: Where were the boat races?
Roy: Down on the South end of the Island, where the road use to go to the public landing, that was before they took it away from us. That was one of the big things on the Island in those days, we didn't have anything to do on the Island so anything that you could come up with, ball game are something that the school had, anything that would draw the people, just about everybody on the Island would go to it. Paul: Were you gone or home the time that your house burned?
Roy: I was gone.
Paul: That house burned, I don't remember when.
Roy: 1945 it burnt, I was in Philadelphia at the time. That burnt and he was worried about getting the lumber to rebuild it but after the war was over he rebuilt it in 1946, it is still standing but unoccupied. Paul: When a house caught fire on Knotts Island that day and time all you could do is get your things out of it , all you could and let it burn.
Roy: So far we haven't had much luck with houses, most houses caught on fire on Knotts Island completely burnt down because we have good fire department but by the time these wooden houses catch a fire in the fifteen minutes or so that it takes the fire department to get there it's too late. The same thing when Fred Waterfield's house burnt down, I was right there and the fire department was there in probably in 10 minutes, Knotts Island, but by the time they got there the fire was all the way down the top of it.
Paul: The older homes we grew up in had open walls, a cat could go from the bottom to the attic so when they caught fire it didn't last long.
Roy: Also in those older homes had wood ceiling into them instead of sheet rock or plaster, they had wood inside and outside and that ceiling was real dry so a matter of 10 minutes an average house would be gone.
Paul: You were talking about that old house I grew up in, I was told that a portion of it was moved from out there on that hill to the north of the house.
Roy: I think that's right, that's Bunkers Hill.
Paul: That's what I was told.
Roy: Yes I was told that too, I am pretty sure that's right, fact your daddy told me it was.
Paul: I don't know whether he remembered it or not.
Roy: I don't remember who owned that house beside Mr. Cason, Cason owned it when your daddy brought it.
Paul: I think he owned both farms.
Roy: Yes he did, but I don't remember who brought it before him.
Paul: Was it a fellow named Colonial Jones?
Roy: Colonial Jones owned both of them at one time, but I don't know if he built the house or not.
Paul: I don't know about that. He had a bunch of slaves there I think.
Roy: That's right, Old Doctor Jones is buried there on daddy's old farm where a bunch of trees are, the cemetery, tomb stone is still there the last time I was in there it was still there and he died I believe in 1857 so he must been born in the 1700's.
Paul: That was the grave yard that I was always afraid to go by going to the landing.
Roy: That was the grave yard that all of us were afraid of, get around the store those people like Grady Capps and Emma White and all were telling stories about it, all kind of ghost stories, So going home at night I could run about 10 miles an hour but I would do 20 when I come to that grave yard. Albert my younger brother had bad eyes, he couldn't see very good and he use to ride the bicycle so one night he was at the store and they were telling all of these ghost stories and going home daddy had a bunch of cows in the field so this old cow was laying in the road in front of the cemetery and when Albert got there he run the bicycle into the cow and he fell over on the ground and the cow said moo and Albert broke the door down when he got to the house running.
July 13, 2011. Picture and comment from Rod Mann: Another interesting note is that our friends who lived there had "eerie" experiences in the house. One was nearing Christmas and when they went to decorate they couldn't find their ornaments, but the next morning they got up and found them spread out in different places in the house, one here and one there. Another story was that they were upstairs in bed and heard a tremendous crashing noise that sounded like a pantry shelf had fallen or something. They decided just to go back to sleep and take care of it in the morning, but when they got up the next day there was nothing wrong, nothing out of place.
Gary: Is this the KI cemetery you're talking about?
Roy: No, this is a cemetery up Brumley Road.
Gary: Is it still there now?
Roy: Yes, it is still there, there are 7 people buried there.
Gary: Where is it located?
Roy: Around a bunch of trees on the right hand side, in front of a house. White owns the property now.
Paul: It's just before you get to Roy's house.
Roy: We have a lot of cemeteries on the Island, a lot of them have grown up and most people don't even know where they are. All my people buried up in the Neck, what they called the North Neck, they use to call it Simpsons Neck because Simpsons owned the property at one time.
Paul: Well wasn't it one time I heard years ago the vaults would float up down there in wet tide, right at the ground, I never did see them but I heard.
Roy: That was up in the Neck too, up there where my grandfather is buried. You get a heavy rain like we had three weeks ago down here they say sometimes they would have to re-bury them almost, they would just float up, but when the water went down they would go back down.
Paul: Uncle John Beasley had that house just before you got to the Brumley house, I don't know how old that house is.
Roy: That's an old house too, that is one of the older houses on the Island.
Paul: I think his parents lived there didn't they?
Roy: Yes they did, Uncle John, I called him Uncle John too, he wasn't really my Uncle but I use to think the world of Mr. Beasley, one reason, he get me to bring the old mule down there sometimes to plow his garden up and he would give me a dollar. Another thing is Mr. Beasley always made wine, wild cherry wine or grape wine whatever he could get. I use to go to the old sailboat and take the sail there and put it under the grapevine and beat the grapes off, he would make the wine and every time I go by there he would want me to test his wine and of course I could look in the keg where he was making the wine and I could see all of the bugs in there and I would have a hard time swallowing it. One time Mr. Beasley decided he would make some home brew, that probably about 1935 they come out where you could buy malt to make your own home brew so I helped him, he made 5 gallons of it and he brought the bottles and brought a capper. He capped them after he put the beer in there, he didn't know it had to ferment so two nights later the guns starting going off in his old smoke house, every bottle blew up, lost every bottle, We use to have a time with Mr. Beasley, all of us boys, he thought the world of everybody, he was a good old man.
Paul: I remember one time he went out to the store and the prices was going up on things and I don't remember what he wanted, but anyhow he would ask Eddie for a pound of so and so or what the price of it was and it had gone up a few pennies since the last time he brought it so he said put it back John (talking to Eddie Munden), said too much for old John, I not going to pay that.
Roy: Yes, he was real tight, he was real stingy, he had a little bit of money in the bank and then when they had the crash in 1929, I don't know how much.
Paul: He had it in US Steel in stock.
Roy: He couldn't get any of that money out, I don't know if he ever got any it.
Paul: Yes, don't you know he went for several years and didn't get a dividend on that little bit of stock and when they started paying him they paid it retroactive and when he died my daddy settled the estate, he brought that little bit of stock about $1,700.00 and when momma died she was still drawing a little bit of dividend off of that US Steel, wasn't much about $20.00 a quarter, it paid dividends I reckon for about 75 years.
Roy: Mr. Beasley, I never known him (of course there weren't any jobs on the Island) to have a job on the Island, but he use to eel, that was his main thing, eel. He spend half the summer tarring his eel pots, tarring his boat, instead of painting his boat he used pine tar on it. Then the fall of the year he use to go out and set his pots out here in the bay. He had eel car, he had two cars the best that I remember, in the fall year he use to get me to help him get the eels out and put them in the barrels and ship them off to New York. One year we sent 4 barrels up there, he did, he was waiting for his money and when he got the letter that he owed $2.58, I never forget that, it was shipping, that's what it cost to ship them up there, the man didn't give him anything, he couldn't sale them.
Gary: Were they shipped live?
Roy: Yes, they were shipped live, what he do is get a little bit of ice, I think he get a block of ice from Pungo when he got ready to ship he chip some ice off and put on top of them, he would fill the barrel about 2/3 full and put just a little ice on top of them, just a wooden barrel and you put a burlap bag and pushed the ring around the barrel and that is the way they shipped them out.
Gary: They arrive alive?
Roy: They claim that they were dead that time and they could not sell them, usually they arrived live, depend how they shipped them, they probably got held up some place that time.
Gary: Were they shipped by rail?
Roy: Those times the boat was still coming in here and we went down to the South End and put them on the boat.
Paul: Well I imagine they were put on rail in Norfolk.
Roy: Yes, the rail in Norfolk, I think they were put on the old Baltimore Steamer and probably put them on rail there in Baltimore and carried them to New York.
Gary: What year was that?
Roy: That was in the 30's, the early 30's I remember he got the bill, because I wasn't grown, I was a boy, he was a person that I like to hang around with because sometimes he give me a quarter or a dollar or anything.
Paul: When you were growing up around here in the 30's did you ever see any cottonmouth moccasins around your land?
Roy: We didn't have any cottonmouths on the east side of Knotts Island those days because our water was blackish and moccasins can't stand the salt water.
Paul: You remember 1933 when the water was as salty as the ocean from that over wash and remember the late 30's how many bass we had around there, how much grass and how many ducks and as the years went on it got less and less because they put a sand fence up and stopped the salt water from coming over. I don't know if that was the cause of the fish and ducks diminishing or not but I do know that the water was salt because the ones like Pud and my daddy would have to pull their boat up 3 or 4 times a year and to get the barnacles off of it and ducks and fish were plentiful.
Roy: The bay was so thick with grass that when my daddy left the land in the morning I could tell which blind he went to, that old 400 horse power motor boat.
Paul: If the wind didn't blow it would stay there 2 or 3 days.
Roy: Back in those days we didn't have a sand fence and every year we get a wash over even if we didn't get a hurricane, of course those days we got a hurricane pretty near every year, it wouldn't be a bad one but in 1933 we got a bad one. The 1933 storm actually killed our bay for a couple of years. The bay was just like the ocean, it was full of salt water fish and everything.
Paul: But when it started to clear up the bass most have gone up in the creeks on the left side or something, they come back fast.
Roy: I use to take fishermen out for the day, they give you 4 or 5 dollars a day as a guide, in those days the freshman pond was pretty deep because the sea tide cleaned it out good. We didn't keep them but we caught over 100 bass in one pond, as fast as he could pull them in.
Paul: I remember one time I took a party up in those creeks up there in Carova, it was called Martins Point. My daddy was fishing ahead of me with two men and I was about 40 or 50 yards behind him and when we fished out those two creeks I had forty some bass and he had forty some. Wasn't much difference in the number of what I caught and what he caught and I was fishing behind him.
Roy: Those days there was a lot of bass. As far back as I can remember we had chub in the bay, there were 52 commercial fishermen on this Island and in those days we had a county rule that you could only have a 110 yards of net, so most of the boats were one man to a boat, a couple of them may had two men, but most of the time it was one man in a boat. They would fish for chub and they could sell them in those days, they ship them, Ottma Bonney and Paul Jones would buy them, and even when they brought them they ship them out on the boat. The bay at that time Daddy use to say was 22 percent salt, why now they claim if we get any salt in here we won't have any bass.
Paul: Well we know they were here with salt water because we remember it.
Roy: People made a living, that was one of their big incomes in the middle months were bass.
Paul: There were plenty perch, plenty mullets.
Roy: Plenty of everything.
Paul: Plenty of all kinds of fish and the water was practically salt, salt enough to grown plenty of barnacles.
Roy: They said you could grow oysters there back in those days.
Paul: Remember when we use to find little clams out there, I recon they were called mussels, they were in the shape a clam black, the water had to be fairly salt to grow them.
Roy: It was salt, our water was really salty, we got a wash over nearly every year, even if it was a Northeaster we still got a wash over.
Paul: In our life time Roy the bay was better when it was salt.
Roy: Yes, if our bay could be salt again we would have plenty of fish, plenty of ducks and plenty of everything.
Paul: Then why is it that nobody will listen to you, we know it was that way.
Roy: The officials in Raleigh don't think we need salt.
Paul: That's because they are so young they don't remember to start with, they have to get it out of books.
Roy: All of the older people back as I can remember even in Back Bay everybody wanted to get salt in, everybody wanted salt.
Paul: Has any of those officials come talk to you.
Roy: No.
Paul: They don't talk to the older people.
Roy: Even if they did they won't listen to you.
Paul: They got it in their head that salt will kill the bay and I recon if you dumped a box of salt in it you would get arrested.
Gary: Paul was your father a Magistrate.
Paul: Yes, at one time he was like they called the Justice of the Peace. I think Jerret Ansell was Sheriff part of the time, Clyde Wade was Sheriff over there about that time and he held court on Saturday nights, you remember that (talking to Roy).
Roy: Yep.
Paul: There would be so many people there you couldn't get in the house you had to open the windows and the court room was what we called the front room and everybody would gather around the windows and listen.
Roy: That was one of our big show pieces on the Island, the court, every time they had court, I don't think there would be over two men on the Island that were not there. They would either be in the house or standing outside like Paul said. I never got to be in the front room inside but one time, I was just a boy but I got to be a witness one time when Fred White and Bill ? built a road and they got into a fight, it was a friendly fight and Ed threw it out. I was about as scared as I ever been because I never been in front of a judge anything, to me he was a judge even though I knew Ed good you get in a court in front of a man it makes a difference.
Paul: That was a real show on Saturday nights.
Gary: What were some of the cases, fights?
Paul: There were fights, disturbing the peace and things such as that. I remember one time a couple came there about a warrant. They both were drunk and each wanted a warrant against the other. My Daddy was not going to to get out of bed at 2 or 3 on a Sunday morning and write warrants. So he told them to get out, go home and come back the next day. He never saw them again. They went home sobered up and probably didn't remember coming there.
Roy: About 10 men on Knotts Island that use to drink a lot every Saturday night and about once a month at least one of them would be in court.
Gary: There was only about 500 people around.
Roy: About 500 around then, yes.
Paul: It wasn't over 500.
Roy: I think they said when I was a boy they said there was about 560 some people on Knotts Island.
Gary: Half of them were at court on Saturday night, huh.
Roy: That 500 and some people were babies and all.
Paul: I don't know if you were there for the 1936 election or not, but they had to get the State Troopers over there to keep order.
Roy: Yes.
Paul: That was a hot election wasn't it.
Roy: I can't remember who was running in 1936.
Paul: It was Ed Johnson and Chester Morris wasn't it?
Roy: Oh yes, that was over in Currituck.
Paul: Yes, but people were hot about it on Knotts Island too.
Roy: Well Mr. Knapp he voted for Chester Morris, of course all the people that worked for Mr. Knapp was for Chester Morris and all the people near us was for Ed Johnson. Ed Johnson had been the, kind of the Commissioner, State Representative and everything, before that, he got out of those politics for 30 years and opened up a store, remember he had that store on the water (talking to Paul), then he was getting back into it.
Paul: That's right.
Roy: My daddy was for Ed Johnson, half of the Island was.
Paul: It was about evenly divided.
Roy: About evenly divided, yes. Of course those days every man on the Island voted, I don't think there a man on the Island that didn't vote.
Paul: Everybody voted.
Roy: Everybody voted, it was not like it is today, I couldn't wait to get that age to vote but once I got old enough I wasn't even anguish, after you get away from the arguing on the Island I lost interest in it, politics, right much. Paul: If you remember about that time one fraction would not buy anything from Eddy Munden and the other fraction wouldn't buy anything from Herman's so they go to Ed's. They wouldn't even associate with each other.
Roy: Mr. Knapp use to deal with Eddy all the time but at that time he had all his people stop dealing with Eddy, of course they went down to Herman's or Paul.
Paul: Then when the election was held they had to get the Troopers over here to keep all of the men straight.
Gary: Who won the election?
Roy: I don't even remember who won the election.
Paul: I don't either.
Roy: It was all over after the election.
Paul: Oh yes, a month or two after the election they just about forgot all about it.
Roy: It was just something to argue about on the Island, like I said they did have nothing to do on the Island so they had to do things like that, that's what they lived for, just to argue with each other, you go into the store and two or three people would be in there arguing the store sometimes about something, how many ducks they killed, who shot a duck when they weren't suppose to.
Paul: Talking about ducks I saw your daddy one day, he was in the blind next to me and he had two men out there, sportsmen and they shot and shot and I didn't see any ducks much fall so I figured that Pud wasn't shooting, then late that afternoon there was a bunch of redheads come by there, canvas or something and anyway I figured that Pud was shooting, it looked like he dumped a cart load of bricks in the water.
Roy: Yes, daddy was a good shot.
Paul: I mentioned to him that night at the store and he said yes I got tired of sitting there watching them miss ducks all day and being embarrass because I didn't have any. He said I wanted to carry some in with me, so he got them. I think he said he killed 15 out of that bunch.
Roy: That probably about right. My daddy when he was a boy worked for Tully Williams, Tully Williams was a market hunter for Back Bay, that was the first job he ever had he told me, he was the man that looked after those batteries, those battery rigs so he was the boat operator. So one day Tully got sick, he was waiting on Tully, so he wanted daddy to deal with the box and let him get in the boat so daddy said he knew when he put him in that box if he didn't make every shot count then he was never going to get in that sink box again, so he said he made sure that every time he pulled that trigger two ducks fell. After that daddy was always the man in the box because if your market hunting the more ducks they got and Tully never could shoot real good and they didn't waste no shells then. Even in my day when I go out with him and a bunch of ducks come through I never seen him, if he didn't have anybody in the blind except me and I was shooting ahead of him I don't think I ever seen him shoot at least two ducks a pull on the first shot. Paul: Did you ever hear about the story the time he killed a Blue Pete's and the Game Warden got kind of close behind him and he beat him up to the shore, well the Game Warden who was catching muskrats at the time, did you hear that (talking to Roy).
Roy: I know I was right there. Daddy was out shooting Blue Peter's and Jerry Ansell was the Game Warden so Jerry was following him on into the shore and took his Blue Peter's and ? Ferguson had a little house that daddy built next to him so they got Jerry in there and gave him two or three drinks, Jerry put the Blue Peter's in his old ford for witness you know so Mary my sister stepped in there and got the Blue Pete's. When Jerry came out the Blue Peter's were gone and he didn't have any evidence.
Paul: Pud told me that if he had known he had the time he did, that Jerry was going to stay in there that long, he would have gone and skinned the Blue Pete's and taken the meat and skinned the rest and taken the hinds but he was afraid that he get caught.
Roy: Yes, Jerry had a time with that, he was hot man that night.
Gary: I would like to thank you for coming.