Oral History Interview with Guelda Cloud

HUBBARD: Tell me a little bit about yourself?

CLOUD: My name is Guelda Cloud. I was born in Tenessee and I was one of seven children. I had five sisters and a brother. We lived in the country when I was a child. My father worked in timber and in sawmills.

HUBBARD: You got married at what age?

CLOUD: I was nineteen when I was married. I had my first child when I was twenty.

HUBBARD: Back when you got married at nineteen, was that considered a young age?

CLOUD: No, that wasn’t considered very young, because a lot of the girls I knew then were married at sixteen or seventeen. They didn’t consider me too young.

HUBBARD: How many Kids did you have?

CLOUD: I had eleven, I raised ten of them. I lost one little girl when she was a year old.

HUBBARD: Did you have any miscarriage[s]?

CLOUD: No, never had a miscarriage.

HUBBARD: Did you have all your children at home, or did you have them in the hospital?

CLOUD: They were all born at home.

HUBBARD: With midwives?

CLOUD: Well, most of them were [with] midwives. I did have a doctor with about three of them, the doctors that made home visits.

HUBBARD: Did you breastfeed your babies?

CLOUD: Only two of them, I raised the rest of them on the bottle.

HUBBARD: Did you see a difference in your breast-fed babies than in your

bottle fed babies?

CLOUD: Well, my first one she was a fat healthy baby, but after that I had my kids too close together and the doctor said that was the reason, so I had to put them on the bottle. One other I did try to put on the breast, but she didn’t do too well. So, [at] a early age I put her on the bottle too.

HUBBARD: At about what age did you wean your babies?

CLOUD: About a year old.

HUBBARD: Did they have any solid foods before you weaned them?

CLOUD: Oh yes, I fed them from the table. I would give them soft eggs, gravy, mashed potatoes stuff like that.

HUBBARD: Today Kids got like a hundred different kinds of toys. Did any of your children have any hand make toys or special toys that they liked to play with?

CLOUD: They liked rag dolls. I made rag dolls for them, and my mom did too. She would take these little empty spools. She would make little look [a-like] like wagons for the boys.

HUBBARD: Was [Were] there any special nursery rhymes you remember singing to you kids or anything like that?

CLOUD: I wasn’t much of a singer. I use[d] to tell them little stories like “The Three Bears.”

HUBBARD: They liked to be read to?

CLOUD: Yes. We use[d] to tell them stories instead of reading to them.

HUBBARD: Was [Were] there any particular things they wore, like the little boys and the little boys?

CLOUD: Then the little boys wore dresses. Most of the girls--me and my mother together would make them little dresses, even some of their under clothes.

HUBBARD: Did you have any cribs, playbens [playpens], walkers anything like that?

CLOUD: No, the only thing I can remember is a home-made highchair we had.

HUBBARD: Did you have anybody besides yourself to help with the kids?

CLOUD: No, not hardly ever.

HUBBARD: Do you think the modern things we have today are better than back then?

CLOUD: Yeah, I[‘d] say it’s better, it makes it easier on the mother. I enjoyed raising my kids, I really got a joy out of it.

HUBBARD: Did any of them have colic, diaper rash, diarrhea, colds, or anything like that that you had a remedy for?

CLOUD: They had Just the normal things that babies have. For diaper rash, I would use powder or maybe scorched flour. Colic, you just let them cry it out.

HUBBARD: When your kids were sick did you think you had to take them to the doctor?

CLOUD: I only took my [mine] if they were really sick, like running a high fever or something.

HUBBARD: Were there doctors back then that came to the house?

CLOUD: Well, when we I lived up in a mining camp, that doctor would come to your home if they were real[ly] bad, sick.

HUBBARD: Can you remember the Depression?

CLOUD: Not too much.

HUBBARD: When you Kids were young did you try to Keep a garden?

CLOUD: I always had a garden.