Interview Date :
July 11, 1976
MOATS: Oh, yeah. They come in, come in from up here.
From there to up here, you see. Winterburn had two big
mills up there. Milltown had a big mill. And their was
a turntable up there.
ALEX.: In what years would that have been?
MOATS: Well, that would
have been back about forty, forty-five years ago.
ALEX.: Is that right?
MOATS: Yeah.
ALEX.: So you've been here . . .
MOATS: I've been here around fifty.
ALEX.: And your name is Raymond
Moats. M-O-A-T-S.
MOATS: M-O-A-T-S. I think it's a German name.
ALEX.: Yeah. Forty-three years at the Pocahontas
tannery in the Howe's Leather Company.
MOATS: That's right, yes sir.
ALEX.: You say this old boarding house existed right
down the street?
MOATS: Yeah. This was all boardwalk down through
here.
ALEX.: All boardwalk right down through here. Who'd
you say owned that boarding house?
MOATS: A woman by the name of Miss Haie.
ALEX.: Miss Haie. H-A-I-E?
MOATS: Yeah. She,
uh, went there along the street and picked up an old fellow and kept him all her
life and he ended up killing her.
ALEX.: Is that right?
MOATS: I ended up helping hangin' him.
ALEX.: Is that right?
MOATS: Damn right.
ALEX.: Were you on the jury?
MOATS: Yes, sir. She was a good woman and I heard him
say he was going to kill her and he just tore that woman
all to pieces.
ALEX.: Is that right?
MOATS: It's the gospel truth. Best old woman ever
was.
ALEX.: When about did that occur?
MOATS: Well, that's been way back in the years ago.
They hung him in Moundsville.
ALEX.: They hung him. Death by hanging.
MOATS: Yes, sir.
ALEX.: What was his name? You remember?
MOATS: Frank Harr.
ALEX.: Frank Harr.
MOATS: Uh huh. She picked him deliberately up off the
street.
ALEX.: Yeah.
MOATS: By God, that's where he ended up.
ALEX.: What happened now, you say the loggers came in
out of those mountains there to stay at this boarding house?
MOATS: Yeah.
ALEX.: You stay there in the summer and worked in the
winter.
MOATS: Worked in the winter. That's the way you do
that. Yes, sir.
ALEX.: ____ was running then, you say?
MOATS: Oh, yeah. Full blast. Cass, all them old loggin' trains. You been down there?
ALEX.: Yes, sir, I have.
MOATS: Awful, isn't it?
ALEX.: Yes.
MOATS: There's another old fellow around here to tell
you all about it, if it appeared.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
MOATS: A fellow by the name of Charley Cromer. He was
the engineer.
ALEX.: Did he live, he's dead isn't he? Is he still
around?
MOATS: He's not dead. He's still around here.
ALEX.: Yeah.
MOATS: Charley is.
ALEX.: Yeah.
MOATS: He lives down yonder at the corner.
ALEX.: He, uh.
MOATS: Turn, go up there.
ALEX.: Blackhurst had his name in his book two or
three times.
MOATS: Yeah.
ALEX.: Yeah, some of these others.
MOATS: Good, interested in all this stuff. All this
about terrible places.
ALEX.: Yeah, Blackhurst, Blackhurst did all of this.
MOATS: Yeah, he did all of that.
ALEX.: What did Cromer do? What was his . . .
MOATS: Well, he was an engineer.
ALEX.: Was an engineer on a railroad?
MOATS: Yeah.
ALEX.: Yeah. Western or C & O?
MOATS: For this loggin' company.
ALEX.: For the loggin' company.
MOATS: Cass.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah. What's his age?
MOATS: All them brothers.
ALEX.: What's his age?
MOATS: Oh, I believe he told me he's gettin' up in the
nineties, eighty-four or nineties.
ALEX.: Where, where's he live?
MOATS: He lives down around the corner there. Just go
up to the old shack he's got up there. He can tell you
some of the awfulest stuff you ever heard.
ALEX.: I'll try to go find him. Well, I appreciate
your spending a little time with me and chatting with me here
today and, uh . . .
MOATS: Fifty years ago, boy, this place was . . .
ALEX.: And you work for a Durbin Merchantile for about
six years.
MOATS: I'll be there about six years.
ALEX.: That's been a fine store. A lot of service for
the community, hasn't it?
MOATS: Oh, yeah. Our business is good. They're busy
on the roads all day.
ALEX.: Yeah.
MOATS: Busy hauling stuff all day. When I first come
here the business was slow. And then it increased.
ALEX.: Yeah.
MOATS: The one who got
through this pass up here first got the right to go on up there to Thurble*. And the C
& O, got in there some way and put two men in there on
Saturday nights.
ALEX.: To get that business.
MOATS: Uh huh.
ALEX.: Someone tells me that the Italian labor, uh,
did a lot of the grading from
Ronceverte on up here that C &
O furnished the ties and rails. Someone told me that. The
railroad man. They still got that station open, you
know, down at Marlinton. I talked to that fellow. So.
MOATS: They have a man stationed here, too.
ALEX.: They have a man stationed here, too, huh?
MOATS: Yeah.
*: They're not going to do away with this
railroad.
*: Oh, yeah.