February 28, 2010.
Typed from DVD by Sue Austin in February 27, 2011
Roy: I’m a native of Knotts Island, born and grew up on the Island,
birthday was in 1918. Things I remember about the Island and big
changes on the Island amount to quite a bit. When I was a boy the first
car that I ever seen in my lifetime was brought on the Island by
Charlie Capps. I was at the store and that was in 1924 and they took a
ride down the road and in those days the road was cart paths and not
automobiles over here so this car was going down the road warbling back
and forth and once turned over on its side. They got out and turned it
back over and kept on going. Back in those days the only way we could
get a car on the Island was by barge. There was no road here we could
drive a car on. In my day I had been across the old corduroy road by
horse and cart. The road was made of first cut side of logs. Back in
those days most of the Island was commercial fishermen in the winter
months and a little bit of farming in the summertime. There were 52
commercial fishermen on the Island and you could only have 110 yards of
net and they fished mostly for chub, which is bass today. And then they
would take them down to south end and ship them out on the old
CURRITUCK boat that came into the south end a couple times a week. Mr.
Otma Bonney ran the pier at the south end and that’s where you got rid
of the fish. Then in the dead of the winter the duck hunting came in
for the Island – 3 months of duck hunting. Several people on the Island
were either guides or out hunting for their own use. It was a lot of
Clubs and a lot of people came down from places like New Jersey, New
York, and down in North Carolina, Greensboro, to hunt the ducks and
they used to stay down for a week. There were several Clubs on the
Island – the Currituck Shooting Club was one of the big Clubs, Ed had
come over in the early 1900s and built on the Island, somewhere on the
Beach and the hurricane had torn the Club up. My daddy had a Club
called Pud White’s Hunt Club. He had five rigs going and mostly booked
up all during the winter. There were New Jersey people, and some
Norfolk and Richmond people. A. C. Ward was one of the hunters and had
a big store on Ward’s Corner and owned most of the property at Ward’s
Corner. Albert Wescott owned a coat and towel supply, Harry Holland was
mayor of Norfolk, all of those came down hunting. During the summertime
we didn’t have much to do on the Island but go soft crabbing or go out
with a cane pole and fish for something to eat or get in the fields and
chop corn or gather corn or stuff like that.
Gary: How about your
schooling on Knotts Island?
Roy: I didn’t start to school until it came time for my brothers to go
to school. Me and my brother – he wouldn’t go to school unless I went.
I had to start school when I was 5 and he was 7. We started in the old
white schoolhouse which was, at the time, where the Methodist
preacher’s Parsonage is now. It was a three-room schoolhouse and the
best I remember there was only two teachers there, but could have been
three. Then in 1925 Mr. Knapp built the original school that is there
now for the Knotts island people and give it to them. And then we had
four teachers. I was in the second grade when I started that school and
that was in 1925. Mr. Cory bought the piece of property, half of the
Great Marsh and put his Club there in 1920 I believe. He had an
automobile and about 1924 he wanted to be able to drive his car to his
Club so he brought a dredge down and dredged a bank and built a road
bed to his Club. Mr John Munden was running a store on the Island up to
the North End. He went to see Mr. Cory and got him to send his dredge
on to Knotts island. The dredge only made it to Goose Pond and that’s
where it broke down and that’s where it is to this day. It’s still sunk
there and you can see pieces of it still sticking up. Then Mr. John
Munden went to Currituck and talked them into sending a dredge to bring
our road to Knotts island. The road didn’t actually come to Knotts
island until about 1924.
Gary: What do you consider the Goose Pond?
Roy: The Goose Pond is where you get to the big curve, where the Club
used to be on the right hand side (leaving Knotts Island). It is an
open body of water north of the Causeway. Just before you get there, on
low tide, you can see those pieces sticking up from the old dredge.
During the war the the scrap metal got expensive, so somebody, I don’t
know who, went there and took the old steam engine out of it and sold
it for scrap. Up until then the whole dredge was there. Then after Mr.
Cory did that, and helped the island do that and Mr. Munden, Mr. Knapp
built him a road so he could drive his car over to Mackay’s Island. He
shelled his road. Before he did that, our road, we couldn’t get off the
Island by anything hardly. And if it rained, cause it was so muddy, it
was a bit of a mud road. And Mr. Knapp, after he got his road finished,
he put his crew out there and dredged in the Currituck Sound oyster
shells up and shelled our road to Knotts Island. Then we had a pretty
good road. We had three bridges on that road at that time and all the
water would go through those bridges and filter out through the marshes
and kept the water clean in those days, we had clean water. We used
that road until 1935, actually ’36 when he got started on it. The State
built the old Causeway up and hauled dirt on it and built it up and it
was a paved road and was finished in 1938. Then they also come over to
Knotts Island and paved most of the roads on Knotts Island up to
Blackfoot. I think that is where it ended. Then later on they paved the
whole thing. Before that we only had a horse and cart road. When it
rained we got stuck and everything in the mud.
Gary: What about your
childhood Victor? Any memories?
Victor: I think he just about covered it all. I know the road he was
speaking about, the Causeway, the road was so bad my grandmother died
and they had to bring the coffin around to the south end. They couldn’t
get across the road.
Gary: How many students were in the school back then?
Victor: Just enough to raise cain.
Roy: When I started to school in the
new school there was 125. Up to about two years ago, we haven’t gained
too many people.
Victor: That’s the first school I started to.
Roy: The first car that I bought, not too many had money on the Island
and of course I was messing around hunting and trapping. In 1935 I got
a 1931 Ford and it cost $130. And I had to bring that over by barge. I
couldn’t drive it across at that time.
Gary: Was that the Model T or A?
Roy: Model A. It was a good car but it didn’t last too long ‘cause the
roads were so bad. The cars in those days would only last about 20 to
25,000 miles before they’d be tore up. They were in the mud all the
time and stuck and on bumpy roads.
Victor: I did help to hard-surface
the Causeway. I did work on it.
Gary: Was that a WPA project?
Victor: No. My brother worked there, on it, and then he had the
opportunity to go to the Shipyard. So I went down the next morning and
took his job over.
Roy: When they built that road I drove a dump truck hauling sand from
this end of the Causeway onto the road as we hauled dirt we built it up
higher. We kept building it up higher until we built the road all the
way across. They had a sandpit on each end – one on the other side but
I worked on this end (Knotts Island end). And during that time if we
had any rain when we were building that road up, we pulled automobiles
across by tractor. You couldn’t drive, it was like mud on there.
Gary:
Did you have a log road?
Roy: No, the old road started, there was two log roads on those days.
The North End people and the South End people didn’t get along so there
was a road left back along by Mr. Munden’s North grocery store, Mr.
John Munden’s went across and it come out by the Goose Pond. And if you
look at the Goose Pond where the dredge is, at low tide you can still
see the puncheons or pilings where that road was sticking out the
marshes on that road. The other road from the South End went across the
end of the Indian Creek . In them days there was a house out there on
one of the knolls across Indian Creek in the marsh . Best as I remember
the man’s name was Gordon that lived there and of course from the time
that I remember going across with daddy, he’d stop (he had a mule then)
and water the mule there at the well. And went on across and of course
the canal wasn’t there then. We went around back creek. Then straight
across. If you go across the Causeway and look to the south, you can
see a line of trees where the old road used to come out at. It’s still
a line of bushes on the ridge where the road was.
Gary: So there were two roads to Knotts Island?
Roy: Yes, there were two roads to Knotts island at that time.
Gary:
Through the south…?
Roy: One to the south probably about 200 yards where the Game Warden’s
road is now and the other came out where the road is now. They both
came out together. And then of course that road turned more into the
nearest river/sound/inlet waterway, the old road did, from Munden’s
Point and that’s where the train was. And if we had anything to ship,
on the high land, we had to go across that road to the train. If we
wanted to go to Norfolk, I never remember going on that train but one
time. Mama and daddy, I think there were three children at that time,
we went to Norfolk and had our pictures taken. Picture is still around.
We rode that train to Norfolk and rode it back from Munden’s Point. Tom
Waterfield had a store at Munden’s Point and had a little Stable there
that you could leave your horse in, mule or whatever you had. Most
people on the Island had mules. I don’t know why most people used mules
over here. The horses on the Island didn’t live too long was one
reason. They would get what was called the Blind Staggers. After three
or four years most time they would die. A good many of them did. At
that time there was about a 100 families on the Island when I was
growing up. In fact we counted the houses one day. And back in those
days, there was about 101 houses that we could remember.
Gary: That was
about 1920?
Roy: In the early 1900’s.
Gary: have about 500 families now.
Roy: Yes, at least 500 now.
Victor: I spent a lot of my time with Mr. Harry Capps on his farm. Ten
cent an hour and all you could eat at dinnertime. But I mean it was
good living.
Roy: When they built the road, the wages were 25 cent an
hour. All the truck drivers got 25 cent an hour. And most time we got
10 or 12 hours a day. So that was pretty good money – best money we had
ever made here on the Island. The boys you know, it was about 15 of us
had a job down there driving trucks and they had a crane on both sides
and a drag line that would load the trucks. A fellow named Bill Ball
was a crane operator, Fred White was a mechanic on the road
construction for the crane and everything.
Gary: Did they scoop the dirt out of where the canal is alongside the
north sides?
Roy: Yes, at the same time they were hauling dirt they were using the
drag line on the ditches.
Gary: How long did it take to do that road?
Roy: Started surveying in ’35 and finished it in 1938. All the roads,
they worked on them, the whole thing until 1938. And back then, the
electricity there wasn’t any on Knotts Island and everyone used
kerosene lamps. And we had one telephone that I knew of on Knotts
Island and that was at Eddie Munden’s Store. And if people wanted
anything you had to go to the store and get him to call for us – for a
doctor. And later on---
Gary: What year did you say the telephone came out?
Roy: Oh as far back as I can remember there was a telephone in that
store. I don’t know what year it came here. I think it came here around
the 20’s. A fellow named Ed Johnson owed a Club , a private Club down
in the south end of the Island. He built/brought the telephone line to
Knotts Island.
Victor: I worked for him.
Roy: And Garland Waterfield was a blind man
and he was a telephone operator. And of course you had to ring a long
and a short and he’d answer the phone and connect you to wherever you
were calling to.
Gary: So actually the road and the telephone we owe to
the early hunt Clubs.
Roy: Actually we do. Had it not been for Mr. Cory
and Mr. Knapp, we probably wouldn’t have had them as early as 1935/1936
or ’37 whenever it was and you could drive across it.
Gary: Thank you
both for coming.