ALEX.: Yeah, she's a fine lady. She's ridden her
bicycle out to get the mail. That's, uh, you know, that's kind of a common thing, uh, some of these estates that
I knew of in
Virginia where you had to ride the horse out to the gate to get the mail or whatever.
HEVENER: You walk all the time.
ALEX.: Yeah, that's a long walk.
HEVENER: Whereabouts do you live?
ALEX.: I live in
Huntington, east Huntington, just off Washington Boulevard. We have a little farm,
uh, real small by these acres here over in Hurricane
just off the interchange, a ten-acre farm.
HEVENER: Have you ever met Bob Mayes*? Has the frozen
food place there at Hurricane? He lives in
Huntington but he has that . . .
ALEX.: No. No, no.
Bobby*: ____ Nifda*.
HEVENER: Yes, uh huh. Uh huh. That's theirs.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HEVENER: He comes up here a lot. In fact, he rented,
uh, leased the hunting rights on that little place where
you saw my sister down there. They're nice people. He
and his son, church group.
(Tape twisted, dialogue unrecoverable).
HEVENER: Something that may be interesting, that farm
we, they're having some kind of a thing. People that
have lived on the farm in the state and I just got a
certified copy of the deed mailed in, it was in 1849 my
grandfather bought that place down there and we've just been
selling timber off it. The second cutting, my father
cut it in 1917 or 1918.
ALEX.: Oh, 1917, '18.
HEVENER: Pictures up now, look at, look at this. He
took it off a book, you see.
ALEX.: Oh, my goodness.
HEVENER: And here's one
of the, one of the Shay engines over there.
ALEX.: Number 12.
HEVENER: Uh huh. Look at this. I'm real proud of
some of these things.
ALEX.: Oh, that's fantastic work.
HEVENER: Isn't that nice, though?
ALEX.: On that Shay. King of the Shays, largest
Shays they built 154 tons.
Bobby*: That ran on the
Elk River, didn't it?
HEVENER: Sir?
Bobby*: Ran on the
Elk River.
HEVENER: Yeah. Pulp and Paper Company.
ALEX.: Yeah.
Bobby*: Okay.
Woman*: I think what he's saying is it ran over the
hill.
HEVENER: Oh, over the hill, over to Elk.
Bobby*: It ran on the
Elk River.
HEVENER: Oh, yeah. It may have. Uh huh. I don't
know too much about these things. I, uh, here's another
one you may like to look at. These little kids, isn't
that.
ALEX.: Oh.
HEVENER: That was in
Tucker County.
ALEX.: That is a cute one, that sure is.
HEVENER: It'll take me just a second to set this up,
if you want to get a chair, but now I have a lot of
things that you all might be interested in if you want to
look at 'em while we're talkin'.
ALEX.: All right.
HEVENER: I'll get out some of my junk here. Here's an
old ledger. It was 1849.
ALEX.: Some
things, I'll look at that in just a second but here's a . . . Oh, tremendous. You don't
have to show me any further. I can see right now that I . .
. tremendous ledger.
HEVENER: Here's a letter
to my grandmother from Sears-Roebuck,
1909. There's a receipt from the Richmond Examiner, the way it was paid, but . . .
ALEX.: Yeah. Two dollars. Eighteen fifty-three,
the 20th day of November.
HEVENER: You know . . .
ALEX.: That's the kind of, that the kind of a ledger
that's, uh, something else, there.
HEVENER: This is a letter to our grandfather before West Virginia was a state. It was mailed at
Pocahontas, Virginia. Now that's Traveller's Repose where Jessie Powell
lives.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
HEVENER: And they didn't
even use stamps, you see. They just marked on it how much the postage was and,
uh, it's kind of interesting to compose the prices and how
some of this stuff in here . . .
ALEX.: Oh, sure is
HEVENER: The way they spelled stuff, pair of
shoes--pare. And, uh, chunk of tobacco. Let's see, that's a
bunch of spun cotton, but, uh, oh, a lot of this stuff is just, you just have to look at it.
*: . . . but there's a lot of this old stuff.
Here's an old Pocahontas Times we had, 1893. That I xeroxed that you may want to look at while I set this up. You
see, it's 1893. What gets me in this one, it tells
about dentist will visit
Pocahontas County. One of 'em said he'd visit in the spring and fall and this one says
twice a year. See the attorneys advertised? A lot of these
things are kind of interesting. Here's something that
looks kind of interesting. This old lightning hot* drop*
setter*.
ALEX.: Lightning hot drop.
HEVENER: For anything that ails you.
ALEX.: Okay, fine.
HEVENER: ____ some of these things here.
*: Okay. Let's see if they're externally or internally used. ____.
ALEX.: That's from the Pocahontas Times and the,
Andrew Price was editor at that time. Andrew Price and
Dr. James W. Price. I want to look at this ledger here.
HEVENER: You want to get where there's more light in
there, Mr Alexander? You can sit in there. I'm gonna set
this thing up.
ALEX.: Right here?
(Noise on tape).
HEVENER: . . . takin' these pictures and writing down
what people said.
ALEX.: No, I haven't takin'* . . .
HEVENER: Beautiful.
ALEX.: Rural
Virginia?
HEVENER: Uh huh. I loaned it to some friends. I was
the one for it. I was just ready to go. It's down by Arbovale, but I'd like for you to see . . .
ALEX.: White House. Oh, yeah.
HEVENER: And, uh . . .
ALEX.: When was it published?
HEVENER: Oh, just recently.
ALEX.: Recently.
HEVENER: And there's a fellow, Herkendoff*, and ____
is makin' one about
West Virginia, now.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
HEVENER: He calls it
West Virginia,
U.S.A.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah. Entries in this ledger, uh, begin
in 1849, oh, in October and some of the names appearing
early in the ledger are Elizabeth Gumm*. Oh, Osborne Wilson and George Hammers and a Charles Hall, Margaret Shinberry*, and a Benjamin Wilfong*
and it continues with a very accurate account of the, uh, transactions
that have been carried on. And the ledger continues and
goes up through about, uh, 1852. Where's this church
located? Is this church . . .
HEVENER:
Battle*. They've taken it down now, but it was up where the battle of Top of Allegheny was fought at
about five miles up from here.
ALEX.: Yeah, right up from . . .
HEVENER: On the old
Stanton-Parkersburg Pike.
ALEX.: Yeah, and there must be 2 to 300 buggies.
HEVENER: A lot of 'em.
ALEX.: A lot of 'em, lot of buggies in that picture,
yeah.
(Noise on tape).
ALEX.: Deer Creek.
HEVENER:
Buffalo and Salsbury*.
ALEX.: Well, there's a . . . course I'm interested
in the lumber industry and, uh, I've been interviewing the,
what I call ol' timers. But I, I've lost some of them.
I lost three by not finishing last year all my interviews, but it seems like every place I go I turn up two or
three more, you know. And, uh, but Cecil Houchins back
on the hill, back that way, and Odey Cassell*. There's so many of 'em.
We talk about the woods, you know, but, now your family's been here for years and years.
HEVENER: Eighteen forty-nine,
we settled.
ALEX.: And it's mentioned in a lot of the records
the Hevener property, it's mentioned and some of the
materials I'm sure that I'm reviewing will include some accounts of people cruising the timber and, uh, probably
trying to make a determination of its value and that
sort of thing.
HEVENER: I think we all should o, have someone to
cruise it and estimate it more often.
(Noise on tape).
HEVENER: It was my own carelessness. There's a story
I thought, you're recording.
ALEX.: I'm recording, yeah. I'm gonna record.
HEVENER: I wanna tell you a story.
ALEX.: You want it off the tape?
HEVENER: No, no. Doesn't make any difference.
ALEX.: What I use this for is for my research
purposes and it may become a depository to the university after I'm finished, you see, after I do my writing.
HEVENER: But we have a lot of well, I would say
characters around here that, one fellow I wish you could have talked to, he's in a nursing home in Elkins, but his
mind isn't so good right now, is K. B. Wilmoth. Have you
heard of him mentioned?
ALEX.: I've heard the Wilmoth name before. The Wilmoth name appears here and I knew the Wilmoth that was superintendent over in Elkins.
HEVENER: I'll tell you a story. He, he's real good
with a good, was a good story teller and knew all this history and all. I just wish I'd recorded a lot of his
sayings but one thing he was tellin' me not long ago
about a minister rode around horseback preachin' at all these country schoolhouses and places, and he told K. B.,
said, "I'm just goin' up there and preach them one hell of a sermon
today." And course he carried moonshine in his saddlebags and some of the boys drank all his
moonshine and he said he preached everything but the
gospel.
(Laughter)
HEVENER: He told some funny stories. Okay, you go
ahead.
ALEX.: Well, uh, when was the timber on this
property first cut off, you know?
HEVENER: First cut I know of was in 1917. I believe
it was. My father took it out.
ALEX.: About 19, uh
huh. And pretty much during the earlier days when Cass jobs were running, this timber
remained untouched.
HEVENER: Yeah, it went to the North Fork Lumber
Company. It was mostly taken over to, Greenbrier River over at Nottingham. They sawed it over there below
Durbin. They had the, the railroad went through here, up
through North Fork, you see. A lot of it was taken out
through there and there were others, a lot of us cut at Hosterman, too. That's way back west of Almar*.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
Took it back, then next to Back Mountain, there. Nottingham comes down off of Back
Mountain.
HEVENER: Uh huh. That's right on the river. Excuse
me for just a second.
ALEX.: Uh huh. Oh, yeah.
HEVENER: This was first taken out, Mr.
Alexander. There's a picture of an engine that blew up right on Little Mountain, right on top of the mountain.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
HEVENER: It was, the water was low in the boiler.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
HEVENER: And when they got to the top of the hill, it
went up into the flues which, they were hot in front and
it blew up and it killed one man, crippled another one.
But we find a lot of pieces still.
ALEX.: Of that old engine.
HEVENER: Scattered around up in there, yeah.
ALEX.: I declare.
HEVENER: That was just a
picture taken at the lower farm, my grandfather's funeral. Mrs. Beard gave it to
me that day you were up there.
ALEX.: Is that
right? Oh, isn't that wonderful. That, you know, they could be preserved. That's what
I'm saying, not the funeral, but . . .
HEVENER: Yeah, these pictures.
ALEX.: Wonderful, that they could be preserved.
HEVENER: I just thought
you'd enjoy seeing that about that old train.
ALEX.: Sure, sure. I'm interested in all these
things of, uh, historical documents and so on.
HEVENER: I don't know how many feet my father took
out, but I know when I was small, uh, they lived at one of
the camps. I was just a baby and they stayed there when
they logged it. It was in 1914 through '15. They were loggin' that but most of it went out late.
ALEX.: Did he have his own crews logging, or did
they sell the timber and other crews come in?
HEVENER: No, they logged it.
ALEX.: They logged it. They didn't sell it on the
stump, then.
HEVENER: Another thing that'd be interesting is Mrs.
Cassell, Mrs. Willis Cassell, has an old, uh,
shingle mill we used to have. I can remember makin'
shingles for all the buildings and things.
ALEX.: Is that right?
HEVENER: Take the logs and make these shingles. Did
you ever see it?
ALEX.: No, I've never seen it. I've seen the guys
take the fro* and make the shingles.
HEVENER: Well, this is right near Odey's place, over
there and they still have that thing. But it worked
all right. It worked good. I can remember it made a lot of
shingles.
ALEX.: So about 1917 and worked from thirteen to
fourteen.
HEVENER: Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, all
through there, I guess.
ALEX.: Finished most of it.
HEVENER: Uh huh, and then
this is the second growth that we've been cutting.
ALEX.: Well, there's a lot of acres in here to cut
at that time, wasn't there?
HEVENER: Was about 3,400 acres, farm down there. But
they took a lot of it out North Fork.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
Where'd it go, then, when you say it went up North Fork?
HEVENER: It went all the way toward Sidey*. We call
it Notthingham, Sidey*.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HEVENER: It's, uh, over on the Greenbrier River.
ALEX.: Yeah. When you say, you speak of the
Siding,
though, as the railroad
siding.
HEVENER: Yeah, but that's what they always called it.
ALEX.: Yeah.
Oh, sure. Yeah. Well, uh, can you tell me anything else you remember
about the companies, other companies, operating within the area?
HEVENER: No. I don't know too much about it.
ALEX.: Yeah. Just you, you do know that the timber
was here, was good timber and there's some good second
growth timber.
HEVENER: Uh huh. Yes, some of this that was cut in
19, I'd say, 15, let's see, I better not tell you that
story. Trees, I think they said there was one tree that was
in the skin now, you know, where they'd skin it.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
HEVENER: Had, I believe they said, 1,750 feet in it.
It was cut in 1915, you see, 60 years ago.
ALEX.: Is that right?
HEVENER: White pine really does better than oak.
ALEX.: Yeah, grows faster. Well, there's a lot of
white pine in this area.
HEVENER: Most of it's cut out.
ALEX.: They cut a good bit of it out, I guess,
before the Cass. Cass was the principal ____.
HEVENER: See, when they floated it down the river on
those rafts to Ronceverte, that's when they had a lot of it, you know.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HEVENER: Before Cass came in.
ALEX.: Yeah.
I talked with Mr. Buckley over at Buckeye. He said his father was a, uh,
pilot on one of those arks down the river. I don't know where they . .
.
HEVENER: I've seen a lot of pictures of 'em,
but those . . . pretty dangerous occupation, I'd say.
ALEX.: Yeah.
Well, the principal, uh, work that you've done here in, has been, I guess, to graze sheep
and cattle.
HEVENER: Yeah. Used to raise purebred
hereford.
ALEX.: Is that right?
HEVENER: Uh huh. I quit farmin', though.
ALEX.: You, you were gone from here for a period of
time.
HEVENER: No, no. I've been here all my life.
ALEX.: No? You've been here all your life, yeah?
My goodness. How, what's your date of birth? You look
young!
HEVENER: (Laughs) I'm not. I was born in 1913.
ALEX.: Nineteen thirteen? You look awfully young.
HEVENER: Well, thank you. Thank you.
ALEX.: This
weather up here must, I keep interviewing these people, you know, as old as they are and look
as you as they do, I'm moving up here (Laughs).
HEVENER: Be glad to have you.
ALEX.: Start
looking for a place for me 'cause I'll be here soon.
HEVENER: We'll fix you right up. I've been dabbling
in real estate now for about, I don't know, some
time. I buy and sell. I enjoy it, meet a lot of nice people.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HEVENER: This land, if you wanted any land, you
should've bought it. Two or three years, it's just goin' up
everywhere.
(Tape Distortion)
ALEX.: Well, no, you know the . . .
HEVENER: This stuff kind of goes along with your
business there, but . . .
ALEX.: Well, you see, not only that, but I'm
interested in all the, all the, uh, the livestock growing. I
interviewed Walter Jett down here, you know.
HEVENER: He's a good fellow.
ALEX.: I've done
just about everything, but, uh, I still, I still just have to dig, dig, dig, you know.
HEVENER: Now, this was 1877, this deed was made.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
It's probably on file. Let's see, the county existed then. It's probably on file at the
courthouse then, isn't it?
HEVENER: Let's see, if it's been . . . let's see, is
this . . .
ALEX.: See if it's
recorded. Yeah, uh huh. Oh, yeah. Says deed, uh . . .
HEVENER: Tells you the page and . . .
ALEX.: Yeah. So the, uh, this deed is recorded in
book Number 14 at Page 488. Yeah, it's an old one all
right. And Snyder, now there's a Snyder down here that's
in the deer tanning business. Probably same family?
HEVENER: I'm not sure.
ALEX.: Not sure. It was made the 20th day of June,
the year of our Lord, One Hundred and Eighty One. Huh.
That's an old one. That's an old deed. You got
others?
HEVENER: Well, these aren't just some, they haven't
been recorded.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HEVENER: Just some surveys and things.
ALEX.: Yeah, those are interesting.
HEVENER: I just don't know too much I could tell you
that really . . . these other folks know a lot more about
it than I do. She's forgotten more of this stuff than
I would've know.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HEVENER: Oh, she knows
all this history and families. I can hardly keep up with my own, but she knows 'em
all.
ALEX.: Yeah. Course if the, the chronological order
of business is one of the things I'm interested in, a
journal like this is a valuable source. It tells you, uh,
something about, well, good times and bad times and the
period of history and it tells you something about
pricing, tells you something about families and . . .
HEVENER: What's interesting in
there, you notice ginseng was sellin' at 30 cents a pound then. You know
what it is now? It has been up as much as 80 dollars a
pound.
ALEX.: Is that right?
HEVENER: And that was only 30 cents.
ALEX.: They dug it out pretty cheap, then.
HEVENER: We still have a lot of folks that dig it now.
ALEX.: We have a
man on our geography department that is attempting to grow it commercially.
HEVENER: Uh huh.
ALEX.: Yeah. He's, uh, he's gotten quite interested
in ginseng and he's growing it. Got a lot of it
planted, and he's hoping to be able to grow it.
HEVENER: It doesn't bring as much, though, as the
wild, does it?
ALEX.: No, no. No, it doesn't. Huh uh. What are
you going to do with, say, a document like that journal
there?
HEVENER: Well, sir, I want to . . . They been wanting
to talk about, me, wanting me to give it to the
museum down at Marlinton. You got it? Come on, you've got
two white ones on the bottom, buddy. Look on the
bottom.
Bobby: The bottom doesn't count.
HEVENER: Yes, it does.
Bobby: No, it doesn't.
HEVENER: Yes, it does. I have two of
'em. The other one was in better shape and I loaned some up, about,
less than two years ago and I can't remember who I let have
it and I didn't get it back.
ALEX.: Yeah, that happens.
HEVENER: I can't keep up with my stuff, but, uh . . .
ALEX.: How'd you come by it?
HEVENER: Well, I'll tell you the story. We built that
new house where Mother lives in 1930, and we gathered
up all the old stuff that was in the old house and put
it in boxes and we just dug that out about two years
ago. We just dug these things, didn't look in these things
until about two years, and found all that stuff.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah. Yeah. They were all stored in
those boxes.
HEVENER: And we even found an old muzzleloader in
there. Just dug it out recently. I'll show you, in here, my
son claims it. This was the one our grandfather had in
the Civil War.
ALEX.: My goodness.
HEVENER: Eighteen sixty three.
ALEX.: Boy, that's a beautiful rifle, isn't it?
HEVENER: We haven't had
it cleaned up or anything. We thought we'd leave it just like it was.
ALEX.: Oh, I wouldn't bother.
HEVENER: But he was captured and, uh, he took a pistol
from one of the guards and escaped and, my brother has
the pistol, has several notches on the handle of it.
ALEX.: Huh. Is that something.
HEVENER: But that thing, there was two of 'em
down there and they'd been stored away in the old house.
ALEX.: I'll tell
you one thing, you'd be tired if you packed that thing.
HEVENER: You would be. Wouldn't you hate to depend on
savin' your life, protectin' yourself with that thing,
reloadin' it.
ALEX.: ____. That was his father's weapon in the
Civil War.
HEVENER: My grandfather.
ALEX.: Grandfather, grandfather.
Bobby: Did he live through it?
(Taping Problems)
ALEX.: And so it was in the box down there. Took two
of 'em, then you say?
HEVENER: But we have a
lot of old books that may be, excuse me just a minute. You don't have that thing on
. . .
ALEX.: What does it make, used to make?
HEVENER: I don't know. Someone, people over here at
Boyer had one, said, "Bet you've never seen one of
things," and I said, "Well, I have one." (Laughter) I don't
know where they found it, but, uh, that's an old thing.
ALEX.: Yeah. Looks like it had something to do with
some sort of
spinning.
HEVENER: We have several spinning wheels and things
like that. I have another thing I want to show you, and then I will quit.
ALEX.: Okay. This is an interesting publication
here. The ads are interesting. Here, the old Dodge truck for dairy routes and so on. Steinway Piano. Pictorial
geography.
*: Where did they sell those ____?
ALEX.: Home 297 Atlas Brothers.
HEVENER: I take this out when company comes, but I
have to tell you the story about one of these now. I have
a friend from D.C. that comes down here. He bought
one at a sale up here and he paid about 2 1/2 to 3 dollars
for it, and I just made all kinds of fun of him for buyin'
it and now I have one. (Laughter) I'll bet when he sees
this thing he's gonna really give me a rough time.
We're gettin' ready to clean it up and put a new top and
stuff on it.
*: You know what it is?
ALEX.: Sure, it's a chamber pot.
HEVENER: Yeah.
*: Well, I've never seen one before.
HEVENER: It's only the second one I've ever seen.
ALEX.: Yeah. I've never seen . . .
HEVENER: The only one I need.
*: Where'd you find that?
HEVENER: It was in one of these old houses my father
had.
*: Really? Huh.
HEVENER: Just what I need. (Laughter)
ALEX.: I'm tellin' you, that's got a lot of good
design on it, hasn't it?
HEVENER: Yes, sir.
*: His sister took a sociology class . . .They
called it a thunder mug.
(Taping Disturbance)
HEVENER: I'll be glad to.
ALEX.: Well, I was just . . . No, when this farm was
cut over, you indicated when and where the lumber went
and, course I was interested in this journal. Uh, these kinds of documents
we try to preserve in our archives of our library, where they'd be on permanent file.
HEVENER: I'm sorry, I can't let that one go. If I
could find the other one, I wouldn't
mind so much,
but . . .
ALEX.: No, if you . . . Any kind of business ledger
of this kind I would be very interested in for our
library. I'm not interested in 'em, but I am interested in 'em,
but I'm interested in 'em for our library, you see.
HEVENER: ____ turn it off?