Oral History Interview with Kate Ellis

JUNE MEYERS: Tell me a little bit about yourself?

KATE ELLIS: I was born February 12, 1917, in Scott County, Virginia. When I was thirteen, we moved to Harlan County and my family was a farm family. My dad worked in the coal mines, so we followed the coal mines, but we tried to get a house out somewhere where we could raise a pretty good-size[d] crop to keep cows, chickens and things like that. We didn't have any electricity back then, we always would kill chickens in the late evening, then we would put them in salt water so that we could put them in a glass bowl and put it on a plate and keep them in salt water till the next morning so we could fry chicken.

JUNE MEYERS: You didn’t have any [a] refrigerator?

KATE ELLIS: No, so we always put the chickens in saltwater cause, if you didn't put them in salt water, they might not keep. That’s the only way you could keep meat back then but, we always killed our meat in the fall of the year; and we cured it in the smokehouse with salt, then we[‘d] wash that down and hang it up on a plank and we would have meat to slice and sometimes you had to slice off the outside fat because it would get old. We always raised a garden and we always canned. My mother preserved stuff in salt back then, like in a barrel of pickled beans and pickled corn and we put up what we called mixed pickles, it was really good with mashed potatoes. You didn't salt your mashed potatoes much because you had your salt in your pickles, so we would put everything that could be pickled in salt together in a big barrel.

JUNE MEYERS: How long have you lived here in Whitley County?

KATE ELLIS: I've lived in Whitley County forty-five years, but I lived up next to Williamsburg the first three years. I live down here in what they call The Flatwoods I guess, here on top of the ridge they call it Midsprings prescient (??).

JUNE MEYERS: How old was you when you had your first child?

KATE ELLIS: I was twenty-four when Mescal (??) was born. I was married when I was twenty-three and she was born 9 months and 25 days later, and I had nine children. My last baby was born dead because I fell down the steps. I carried it but, I had to stay in bed the whole time. I was trying to lose it the whole time, and it had been six years since I've [I’d] had a baby, we used no birth control. We talked to her doctor after Mescal was born, because Albert decided that the mines weren’t working like they have been. The only job that he knew to work at was his farming. We didn’t have a farm but, we bought one working out the money to make the payments. I would always make me a potato patch and gardening [garden], can at home, milk the cow, feed the chickens, gather eggs, things like that. I always

made my own quilts, any way that I could help him, I helped him, and two, years I taught school.

JUNE MEYERS: Did you breastfeed?

KATE ELLIS: I breastfed every one of them and I breastfed the first year and I give plenty of milk.

JUNE MEYERS: How did you go about weaning them?

KATE ELLIS: My grandmother said, and my mommy always said the way, they did it

they always said, "when the signs are in the feet--start weaning your baby" and it would only cry about one night then it would be alright. Because I was feeding them from the table anyways at first, I just fed them the yoke of the [an] egg or something like that and then later on, I would start feeding them oatmeal and things like that that are soft. I was afraid to give them much grease, I was afraid to give them a 1ot of sugar because I always heard if you give a baby a lot of sugar it would hurt their teeth, I don't know if that was right or not, but I

did it anyways.

JUNE MEYERS: You always had enough food?

KATE ELLIS: always had plenty, because we raised it that way. We knew that we would have it, he worked in the mines anyway. He always worked at some kind of a job the biggest part of the time, so we would have a little money to replace whatever wore out or tore up or getting something a little bit better than what we had.

JUNE MEYERS: Were your Kids ever really sick?

KATE ELLIS: Yeah, my children would have all the childhood diseases cause they had lots of cousins, neighbors, and people that we associated with. We didn't do anything for the measles except, pull the curtains and try to keep them quiet and keep it dark or it would hurt the kids’ eyes. When they had the whooping cough, we didn't do anything about that

but, you had to watch them close because they might lose their breath, so they had to be attended real[ly] good then. My bunch had the whooping cough about three different times because the first ones would get over with it but, then you would have more babies.

JUNE MEYERS: Did you have home remedies for the croup?

KATE ELLIS: If they had a cough, I always put a tablespoon full of honey, [a] tablespoon full of lemon juice and a tablespoon full of vinegar. The vinegar is important because it cuts the tickling in your neck.

JUNE MEYERS: Did any of them ever fall or have an accident?

KATE ELLIS: Yeah, they fell. Yeah, Pascal fell over a cliff and broke his leg. He fell off of a horse and broke his shoulder and we had to take him to a doctor and have a pin put in it. Later on, we had to take the pin out because it was irritating the [to] him. Beverly had surgery when she was seven. She had a cyst attached to her appendix and it didn't show up as appendicitis we took her several times to the doctor and he doctored her for worms, but when that busted, they knew what it was. Sometimes she would go out and play and she would lay on the concrete. When had surgery, they didn't think she would live, but she did. They had special nurses with her night and day. I stayed with her the first three days and nights without a bath or changed clothes or anything.

JUNE MEYERS: Did you have doctors with your kids?

KATE ELLIS: We lived in the mining camp at first. We always had a family doctor but, we usually had good faith in [the] doctor. He had a few things that we didn't have except home remedies. He had a few things he used that could tell us if we needed to go to the hospital. Back then you didn't go to the doctor unless it was real[ly] serious. Even though the men worked in the mines and paid his salary, you could go over there to the doctor’s office anytime we wanted. It was about a mile I guess, because the mining camp was pretty large and we had to walk because, we didn't have no [any] way to go, nobody hardly did back then, you didn't have roads to go on. If you did have a car, in the mining camp there wasn't no [any] way you could keep horses because, there wasn't no [any] place for them. Then we brought a house up in Williamsburg, we lived up there three years. Then we moved from Williamsburg and brought [bought] about five raised our own food and kept a cow. Then we decided that wasn't big enough, cause we couldn't keep our calf there, we couldn't keep the pair of horses. Which he liked. So, we brought [bought] this farm and moved down here.

JUNE MEYERS: Have you ever used things out of the wood[s] for remedies?

KATE ELLIS: Yeah, a lot of the times, we have used things out of the woods. My mother always made a tea for a fever out of black snake roots, that will break a fever but, she didn’t give it to a baby, she gave it to the children anytime they had a fever. We used trail in our butus (??). Its leaves look like pear tree leaves, and it runs in the woods and in April, it blooms pink. It's green all winter and we would make a tea out of that for Kidney stones. It will just cure it right up if you want to go to the bathroom every few minutes or the kids wet the bed, it will cure it right up.

JUNE MEYERS: What about diarrhea?

KATE ELLIS: When the baby has [had] diarrhea, we would give it pennyrile tea, it will stop the cramps and it will stop the diarrhea in one days’ time. If

your bones ache, we would make bone seth (??) tea. When I lived in Virginia, we always used that.

JUNE MEYERS: Did you have any complication[s] when your baby died?

KATE ELLIS: No, I didn't, I had it at the hospital. He was working a[t] Ford Motor Company then, and we had insurance but, if he didn't. I would of [have] went anyway, cause I had complications all the time before it was born, and all my other children were born at home.

JUNE MEYERS: When your babies were born, did you stay in the bed for a few days?

KATE ELLIS: Yeah [I] always stayed in the bed, but when I had a doctor, he told me not to walk around for ten days and so I didn't get up. I had three sister[s] and one of them would stay with me or my mother and they would do the work for me.

JUNE MEYERS: Did your kids have--bought toys or did you make them?

KATE ELLIS: They liked some things that they made better than when we brought [bought] it for them. He did work in the mines, and we did have money and we tried to give them one toy for them for Christmas. Once he bought the biggest wagon Sears and Roebuck had. My children got up in the garage, he had an old late model car. He had some grinding compound for when he worked on the motor, and they put that on the axels and cut the axels right out of that big wagon.

JUNE MEYERS: What did your babies play with?

KATE ELLIS: They would play with little, tiny dolls, rattles sometimes. I made rag dolls for them. I would sew wool on their heads, then take the scissors and cut their bangs and hair and kindly style it for them. I played with my children and told them all the nursery rhymes that I

could remember. One time I got a yard of material with lots of nursery rhymes, and I made a baby quilt out of it but, then we would get little books. They would have little nursery rhymes in them, we taught them prayers and always read the bible off the table when my husband was gone to work. Me and my children would be sitting at the table, and I said, "before we do anything we’re going to read a chapter of the bible" and they all sat at the table. It was James told me he said, "if you had a chapter out of the bible read to you about all your life, that you would learn a few things.”

JUNE MEYERS: Did you start out reading to them when they were real[ly] little?

KATE ELLIS: Read to the babies when they were real[ly] little. All my children, I'm proud of them, they have done well.

JUNE MEYERS: Did you have a playpen, walker, stroller, or anything like that?

KATE ELLIS: No, I didn't have a playpen, but I had a baby bed with my first baby. I kept it all through my children, it was a store-bought baby bed and it lasted [very] good, I took care of it. I did have a stroller with my last baby, but I didn't have walkers. I was always afraid that they would turn over.

JUNE MEYERS: Did they take naps of the day?

KATE ELLIS: Yeah, they took naps when they was [were] little.

JUNE MEYERS: Did you have anybody to help you with the baby?

KATE ELLIS: No, I did it all by myself until the children got bigger, but we

did it by ourself[ves].

JUNE MEYERS: Did you have diapers?

KATE ELLIS: Yeah, I had diapers with my very first baby. I ordered them from Montgomery Ward’s. I firt had two dozen of the Birdseye diapers, I then sent an order to them, and by mistake, they sent my [me] two dozen gauze diapers, so I Just kept them.

JUNE MEYERS: Did you have soap powders or did you make your own soap?

KATE ELLIS: Well, we made soap, but we also bought soap powders.

JUNE MEYERS: Do you have any remedies for diaper rash?

KATE ELLIS: I’ve heard that old people, that they used brown flour. My mother said, "one of her babies got the thrash [thrush] and she gave it boil[ed] sage leaves and washed it[s] mouth in that.” I've heard that clay mud scraped out of a chimney helped the diaper rash. I also heard that if you were the seventh son of a seventh son, you could blow in the baby’s mouth and that would get rid of the thrush.

JUNE MEYERS: Your husband was always working, so he really couldn't help?

KATE ELLIS: He helped me cook when it would be [on the] weekends. He was really good to me. We've had our little things, but [in] 1980 I lost first my father in January, then my father-in-law in March and the 14 of October, Albert died with cancer.