ROCKINGHAM - Mrs. Mary McKinnon of the Beaverdam Community in the northern region of Richmond County has seen more history than most. At the notable age of 95 (she will be 96 in December), “Miss Mary” remains sharp in her recall of her early days in the area.
“We worked all the time, we didn’t have much, and we walked everywhere we went.”
Work consisted of picking and grading peaches from the many orchards in the area; washing clothes for the more affluent families (for $1 a day); chopping grass; digging potatoes; making “scrub” brooms; raising hogs; cooking on wood-burning stoves; making lye soap; doing laundry in a #2 tub with a washboard; applying a “fire iron” to get out the wrinkles; taking grain to Gibson’s Mill for grinding into flour for bread; etc., - certainly not the type of tasks that the young people of today are accustomed to.
“Everywhere” wasn’t really much – getting away from the house for any reason other than school, church, or work was a rare event. But on occasion, Mary and her thirteen siblings (yes, thirteen – farming families of that era were often, if not indeed normally, comprised of a significant number of “field hands” otherwise known as “children”) did have some “free time” to kill.
So how did a little daughter of a poor sharecropper have fun in Beaverdam in the 1920’s? She remembers making “mud cakes” and playing with homemade dolls. She and her brothers and sisters were also allowed to venture off for a bit of pleasure every now and then, usually on a Saturday.
One of the destinations of which Miss Mary seemed most fond was John Baxley’s store in Roberdel. “Mr. Baxley was always nice to us young-uns,” she recalls. “He would give us free candy ‘cause he knew we didn’t have much money to speak of.”
Other trips were made with her father to Roberdel Mill and the gin mill farther up the road (at the intersection of Roberdel Road and Rockingham Road about where the Bread & Butter Convenience Store is now located). And yes, they walked there, too.
But there came a time when they did get to ride. “Our first car was a (Ford) Model T,” Miss Mary recalls, “but we didn’t go nowhere much.” “We would only go to town (Rockingham) once a year, when the fair came in October.”
Mary indicates that, although the area was mostly just farms and wide expanses of fields, local people maintained a relatively close-knit community relationship. Families in Beaverdam included Baldwins, Capels, Covingtons, Gibsons, Loves, Pembertons (Ann, Hattie, Hal, etc.), Sneeds, Steeles, Watkins (J.C. “Clyde”), and others.
Mary’s own family was comprised of her father (who farmed all of his life as a sharecropper), her mother, her four brothers and nine sisters (total of fourteen kids), all living in a three-room house.
Her maternal Grandfather Lewis, who died the same year that she was born (1922), remembered his years as a slave and had shared stories of how life was in the 1800’s. These tales were passed down to the younger generation and were sufficient to make Mary thankful for the life that she had. Although such might be considered quite harsh by today’s standards, relatively speaking, it was a tremendous improvement over what her ancestors had suffered through.
Church and school were major facets of life for the McKinnons in the 1920’s and ‘30’s. Every Sunday was dedicated to the Lord and was mostly spent at the Mt. Zion Church. Although limited, some semblance of education was made available to the black children in a one-room school near the church.
So yes, life was hard for Mary and her family, but they were able to make do. “We only had two dresses, one for the regular week and one for Sunday,” says Mary. “We had to put pasteboard inserts in the bottom of our shoes – they were always falling apart, especially if they got wet.” It was unusual to have more than one pair at a time so a lot of effort was put in to trying to “patch ‘em up.”
But no matter how difficult times were, Mary and her family persevered and went on to raise families of their own. Hopefully, the lessons that can be learned from Miss Mary and others of “her generation” won’t be lost of the young people of today, i.e., be thankful for the life you now have and the conveniences of today’s world; no matter how bad you may think it to be, it’s a hell of a lot better than how it used to be. If you don’t believe that, just ask Miss Mary.
