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Tom Watson Brown (Thomas E. Watson's great-grandson) interviews Georgia Doremus Watson Craven about the details of the Watson homestead -- Hickory Hill -- during her childhood, when she spent much time there with Thomas E. Watson and Georgia Durham Watson. She describes each room, including decorations and furniture; the gardens and grounds; when particular parts of the house were constructed and how each room was used; visitors who frequented the house; and her childhood memories of life at Hickory Hill. Interspersed throughout are detailed stories about family members, as well as descriptions of their physical appearances, health, and habits. Georgia also discusses lifestyle during her childhood, including refrigeration and lighting, and Thomas E. Watson's printing plant. Near the end of the interview, Tom Watson Brown briefly discusses his perceptions of racial prejudice as a Southerner living in the North.

Transcript

Tom Watson Brown: Did Hickory hill have awnings on the upstairs windows?

Georgia Watson Craven:At least on the West windows.

Tom Watson Brown: Were they any particular color?

Georgia Watson Craven:They were green and white stripes.

Tom Watson Brown: Any trim on the house outside?

Georgia Watson Craven:Trim? The awnings must have had a few stripes of color.

Tom Watson Brown: What about the wood? Any color on the wood?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, I don't think so.

Tom Watson Brown: Just straight white?

Georgia Watson Craven:The blinds, of course, were dark green. The window painting __________

Tom Watson Brown: Brown trim on the outside?

Georgia Watson Craven:The blinds ____________

Tom Watson Brown: No trim up at the top of the house? Under the roofline or anything?

Georgia Watson Craven:No.

Tom Watson Brown: Any across the front?

Georgia Watson Craven:The little balcony.

Tom Watson Brown: That was it? Was it colored?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, it was white.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. It was just white.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't think there was any color on the house.

Tom Watson Brown: Did Tom Watson put the columns on?

Georgia Watson Craven:That's always been my understanding.

Tom Watson Brown: It was a big, square house?

Georgia Watson Craven:That's my understanding.

Tom Watson Brown: The columns and the porches were added by Tom Watson?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. I remember when the porches were added.

Tom Watson Brown: It was 1911 or 1912, something like that?

Georgia Watson Craven:Somewhere along in there.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. That's the porches that are there now?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: What about the walkway, like down to the fountain?

Georgia Watson Craven:He built that when we were getting a little older, around 1915 or 1916. It goes toward the road, the big road.

Tom Watson Brown: And the _________ walkway going down to the fountain?

Georgia Watson Craven:_________ where the fountain was. But, I'm trying to remember.

Tom Watson Brown: There was a lot on on-going stuff?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: The yard was just swept?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. But where those _________ go out past the front steps, and then it drops a step or so, and those two things there in that picture, those were there, and that was the end of the front yard. But this is a pre-Civil War house of a ________ that __________ between where the swept steps stopped. They may have gone more of a

Tom Watson Brown: Were the fountains put in all at the same time? I mean, the fountain and the lights. Were the lights put in?

Georgia Watson Craven:I'm not sure. They could have been.

Tom Watson Brown: The road then just wound on out to the main road. There wasn't any fence or anything like that?

Georgia Watson Craven:There was fence there as long as I can remember.

Tom Watson Brown: Tom Watson's fence?

Georgia Watson Craven:I think I remember when they had to rebuild it.

Tom Watson Brown: What kind offence was it?

Georgia Watson Craven:The same sort of thing, just planks.

Tom Watson Brown: He must have had that built I guess.

Georgia Watson Craven:He must have had it built. And also ________ stub your toe on _______ in the water. ______________ from where the edge of the road was on Lumpkin Street, on that walk going to school through the woods.

Tom Watson Brown: What's there now?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yes, and they didn't have any mailbox in it.

Tom Watson Brown: What kind of gate did Tom Watson have on the fence?

Georgia Watson Craven:As near as I can remember, and I think I'm right. ____________________________

Georgia Watson Craven:I knew it was still there. Somehow Walter told me he had to have it.

Tom Watson Brown: What kind of gate was down at the lower entrance?

Georgia Watson Craven:You mean, towards what was theߞ

Tom Watson Brown: Going back down Lumpkin Street, back towards town.

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, there were only two gates. There was one into the road that goes to the house and, I think, it was just a little swing gate of some sort.

Tom Watson Brown: No pillars or anything like that?

Georgia Watson Craven:No.

Tom Watson Brown: A lot of planting all the time out in the yard?

Georgia Watson Craven:The yard, the woods, everywhere.

Tom Watson Brown: Green stuff all the time?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. Mostly trees. He had a lot of trees that were deodara.

Tom Watson Brown: They call them beech trees.

Georgia Watson Craven:Beech?

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah.

Georgia Watson Craven:Well. Now we were talking aboutߞ

Tom Watson Brown: All the same ________ by now.

Georgia Watson Craven:A beech tree has leaves.

Tom Watson Brown: Well, these have leaves, what I'm talking about.

Georgia Watson Craven:No, they had needles on them some years ago.

Tom Watson Brown: Planted in a row?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yes, in a row.

Tom Watson Brown: Going towards Lumpkin Street?

Georgia Watson Craven:The cement walk that goes down from the East side. He had pecans cracked and put them out on the roofs upstairs outside.

Tom Watson Brown: To that cement walk?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah.

Tom Watson Brown: To the scuppernong arbor and then turns at right angles. You think it went all the way to the road?

Tom Watson Brown: No, it stopped where it stops now, which was almost in line with where the yard stopped in that

Tom Watson Brown: Over on the West side of the house, there is a big row of big trees.

Georgia Watson Craven:He had a row of...

Tom Watson Brown: They might be birch or something. It's that flaky bark.

Georgia Watson Craven:I think it is birch. They were beautiful, beautiful trees.

Tom Watson Brown: They are still there.

Georgia Watson Craven:___________ Walter told me once.

Tom Watson Brown: This row of trees - there are about eight or ten on each side.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know what they are. They are just beautiful trees.

Tom Watson Brown: They are as big around as I am or bigger. They've been there forever. And there are a couple of volunteer pines that have gotten in there that should have been taken out a long time ago when it was easy to get them out. Now, they are bigger around than me, which means it's going to cost a lot of money. But they've got to come out because they are interfering with this.

Georgia Watson Craven:What I have always thought was that he probably had to ride out. But if Tom Watson rode out on that grove like that, how would he ever get over the fence?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, I don't think he ever rode over there.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. He didn't ride around the house?

Georgia Watson Craven:He would come up from the lot and ride out the front gate, right straight in front of the house. Also, he had dogwood which have mostly died. Anyway, Avery had another couple down, and they went back with us. We spent the night, all four of us, at the Knox Hotel ________ stay with the Gibsons. Ecks was so enamored of those trees and the way Tom Watsonߞ

Tom Watson Brown: And the radius?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. The radius of the trees.

Tom Watson Brown: I guess the next thing would be the outbuildings?

Georgia Watson Craven:Okay. Now, let me be sure. We were talking about the path and trees.

Tom Watson Brown: Trees?

Georgia Watson Craven:The path and the trees. There were those two features that were beautiful. ________ a vegetable garden to represent the walk that went to the scuppernong arbor, between Charlie's house

Tom Watson Brown: There was a flower garden?

Georgia Watson Craven:Mrs. Watson had some flowers in there, but they were also, I don't know... The landscaping was mostly permanent beyond that trail behind that. That's where she had gorgeous magnolia trees. On the East side, right next to the house, there was a big cedar tree over there, right by the railing part that joins the West porch. But there were two tremendous Magnolia trees there, and, when kids were around, we would play hide and seek around them. We'd count "5, 10, 15, 20", and so on, and holler out, "Ain't all hid, holler out I". Who would understand that now? The West side though, that was where the yard was really clean swept more with white, nice sand. It was more open to groups above the ground than they were on the East side.

Tom Watson Brown: Where was it?

Georgia Watson Craven:That was almost on the edge of the West grove. That is opposite the kitchen door now.

Tom Watson Brown: Tell me about those. Was that more than one tree?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yes, it was two. I didn't ever know that until one time I was standing there when Walter had it. I asked him or something, asked him to take us down to Florida in the winter. I don't know how Avery wanted ...

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. What's next, back around?

Georgia Watson Craven:Behind that little garden, holding it in from the road, is the wall back outside. ______ and now I'm beginning to ... There were two water tanks. The bigger one was built about the time of the publishing plant opening.

Tom Watson Brown: Where it is now?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah, right behind ... I think a Magnolia.

Tom Watson Brown: Had Mrs. Lytle's place down there at the bottom always been there? Was it somebody else's first?

Georgia Watson Craven:I mean I never remember it being built. Now, it may have been ______

Tom Watson Brown: What about the corncrib, was it there?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, that was built during my day. I think about 1920.

Tom Watson Brown: What about the pigeon house?

Tom Watson Brown: The pigeon house was always there as far as I know, full of birds.

Tom Watson Brown: With pigeons I assume. The big tin garage... ?

Georgia Watson Craven:I vaguely remember when that went up because that was when they got the Chalmers automobile. There was also an old, closed-in carriage for bad weather, a surrey, and a matching small carriage.

Tom Watson Brown: What other kinds of automobiles did he have?

Georgia Watson Craven:The first one they had was, I think, the Chalmers. It was an elegant car. It didn't have any doors on the front door opening, and I'm not sure about on the back; but it had two little swivel chairs inside that couldn't be pushed ________ right away. It was black and had the kind of lights you had to get out and light.

Tom Watson Brown: What kind of light is that?

Tom Watson Brown: I don't know whether they were acetylene or what they were. I'm quite sure I'm right about that. You might ask somebody. It was only sort of driven on state occasions, and the ladies had these long linen dusters, and Cuzzie and I had on little coats and bonnets. I can just remember being in that car a few times. It was not used a lot. And they still used the horses and carriages. He had it for many years, and then after that, towards the end of his life, he had an Apperson Jackrabbit. That was a very snazzy car at that time. Cliff, the Negro chauffeur that you have heard about, he drove that, and he had that car in Washington. And in-between, there were buggies and carriages and so on.

Tom Watson Brown: Were these four-door cars?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yes I'm quite sure there were no doors on the front, and it seems to me that the gears were on this side and half out of the car and half in, so the driver could use this hand. I don't recall. but I Mill think they had to get out and light the lights. I may he just dead wrong about that.

Tom Watson Brown: Of course, there wasn't much paved road around?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't think there were any. None in town or out of town that I remember, and vv hen 111omson first got paving, I think they just had two blocks of Main Street to begin with.

Tom Watson Brown: Coming back up, you had a little shed next to Mrs. Lytle's and that would be fin. a carriage or something. It is a little open garage.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know what that was for to tell you the truth. I vaguely remember.

Tom Watson Brown: It's got an old wagon in it now, an old buggy in it now.

Georgia Watson Craven:Mrs. Lytle, I don't whether she had a car. The tin garage was for Grandpa's car, and then there was another car. I have a felling that they did call it Mrs. Lytle's car. I don't remember who drove it - some white boy that drove Grandpa's occasionally, and there may have been a garage put there for that. I'm just not clear about that. Then Cuzzie had, after she moved up there, a little Buick roadster, and I don't remember it in a garage or not. She had that when Grandpa died.

Tom Watson Brown: Did she drive around much?

Georgia Watson Craven:Did Cuzzie drive?

Tom Watson Brown: Uh huh.

Georgia Watson Craven:She could drive anywhere. She was a good driver. And before you were born or afterwards, she drove one of those. Aunt Jennie used to tell me about it, and I was there when Cuzzie drove it.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't think I ever saw her drive it, but she drove some big Army truck to help out during the ... well, the war was over, but it was to help the Red Cross or some military thing in Washington. She was not scared of anything, but, of course, that didn't help her drive. She was a skilled driver I would say. We used to ride in her old Buick. They may have bought that for her to go to school in Dearing that year.

Tom Watson Brown: She went to school in Dearing?

Georgia Watson Craven:She followed Mr. Ware down there. Mr. Ware had been the principal in Thomson for years and years and years, and the Wares lived in Thomson. But he had a reputation of being an old fashioned, rough teacher that beat the boys and that kind of thing. And he did get in some scrapes that I can remember specifically about, and that's why Grandpa wouldn't let us go to school in Thomson. He felt Mr. Ware was too rough.

Georgia Watson Craven:Then Auntie died in August as you know, and the Daddy died in April - the next April, and then, that next autumn, Grandpa decided to let us go to public school He had had teachers up Hickory Hill for us. And we were in the public school in Thomson one or two years, and then Mr. Ware was let go. There was something about some boy they thought he had overdone the old-fashioned schoolmaster.

Georgia Watson Craven:Mr. Ware went to Dearing to be the head of the school down there, and Cuzzie and I both liked him. I didn't try to go down there to school. I stayed in Thomson until I went to the Cathedral. But, I think - this is the kind of thing Mrs. Lytle engineered that was good. She brought for Grandpa and Grandma, I think they were silver cuff links, gold cuff links or something of that kind, for us to give to Mr. Ware. We did, and they appreciated it very much.

Georgia Watson Craven:They lived across town, near the Knoxes. And Cuzzie went down there to school and she may have gotten that roadster to do that. She had it when Grandpa died because the morning he died, she and I went to ride in it and talk about all kinds of things.

Tom Watson Brown: So she went to school in Dearing? Under this Mr. Ware?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Somewhere around 1921 or something?

Georgia Watson Craven:It could have been. They went to Washington in January of 1921 cause they - no - yes - they were still inaugurating the President and swearing in the Congress in January, so it would have been 1920/1921. It could have been 1919; I'm just not sure of that. But she loved that roadster, and there were very few around on the road. She could become skilled.

Tom Watson Brown: Coming back around the yard, you come to that smokehouse.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. Now, I told you about that. The bottom to that, the reason it slants, it was a little swimming pool for us. It wasn't too successful because it really wasn't deep enough, and we didn't really have anybody to teach us to swim, so the smokehouse was built over that. And I have a feeling, I was thinking a while ago, it could have been built about the time the corncrib was built.

Tom Watson Brown: So that would be about 19... ?

Georgia Watson Craven:I'm trying to see. The Washington thing was 1920 and 1921. I would say between ... 1912 we were only 6, and it was long after that. We must have been 10 or 12 years old maybe. Probably 1915 to '18. That's not very long, but it was very long to tell the truth. Between 1912 and 1915, somewhere in there.

Tom Watson Brown: Did they use it?

Georgia Watson Craven:We used it some, then they built the smokehouse.

Tom Watson Brown: Did they use the smokehouse?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't think they used it very much. I just don't think that the thing functioned as well as the purpose they wanted it to, but they did try it some. Those were some turbulent years anyway. You know, Grandpa's campaigns and all of that.

Tom Watson Brown: The next house up is where we have Charlie's now, and Arthur stayed there before him.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know how it started life. But before we went to the public school, we were both out of school for so long. Grandmother and Mother felt I should actually be in school, so my mother sent me down to what is the Hospital House. Mrs. Stone had a wonderful boarding house and she had a lot of daughters. One of her daughters had been trained as a teacher. So Mama sent me to school to Miss Mattie Stone and I went to school in that old house. I just went an hour or two in the morning. I was past six years old. And then Auntie wanted Cuzzie to go to School, and Uncle got his niece, Mrs. Adele Boatwright, to come to Thomson to be Cuzzie's teacher. I don't know whether that worked out or didn't work out, and I don't know whether I went more than one year to Miss Mattie; but then Grandpa got a teacher - Miss Helen Rivers.

Georgia Watson Craven:Wait a minute, don't write that down because I may have the two families mixed up.

Georgia Watson Craven:Yes, Mildred, no - anyway, she came and taught us in that little school. We went to school maybe three or four hours a morning. It was nice. Grandpa bought two little school desks and two blackboards and there was a little wooden stove, a coal stove, in there. Just a tiny little thing like this. I don't remember whether Miss Helen taught more than one year or not, but then we had Miss Bertha Johnson, and I really didn't like Miss Bertha as much - but she was a nice lady.

Georgia Watson Craven:Miss Bertha's father, I have figured out since, was married to one of Aunt Dell's sisters - one of the Bussey girls. The lived in a house that I think later McCorkle lived in, down there near the old jail in that place back beyond the courthouse and Merica church. They lived on Main Street.

Georgia Watson Craven:Miss Bertha was a good teacher. Cuzzie and I teased her. We thought of these so-called cute things too. We had to have a recess and we had to have a bell and all that. We'd go eat all kinds of things in between. But anyway, Auntie died in April and then Daddy died in October and we went to the public school then, and they had what they called lower and upper grades.

Tom Watson Brown: Which year did your father die in - 1918?

Georgia Watson Craven:In 1918. Ann died in 1917.

Tom Watson Brown: When was the election that year?

Georgia Watson Craven:In 1918. That was when Grandpa ran for Congress and lost.

Tom Watson Brown: Against Carl Vinson?

Georgia Watson Craven:Carl Vinson.

Tom Watson Brown: When was the election though - November?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah.

Tom Watson Brown: So, it was right after your father died?

Georgia Watson Craven:Could have been. Right. He died in April, his birthday was in October. I'm sorry I messed you up on that. Auntie died in August and he died in April, so we had that summer in between, and Cuzzie and Iߞ

Tom Watson Brown: He died in April 1918, and the race started after that?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. I guess it started after that. Anyway, it was that year. Cuzzie and I went to Florida with Grandma that summer. She wanted to do something about the house down there. That was the only time I ever saw that Florida place.

Tom Watson Brown: That was the big place?

Georgia Watson Craven:That was the Hobe Sound one.

Tom Watson Brown: You never saw Las Olos?

Georgia Watson Craven:Oh yeah, I was in Los Olos several times.

Tom Watson Brown: That was where they had the big beach?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. It was a beautiful place and that was the one in Fort Lauderdale.

Tom Watson Brown: Why did he leave there?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know why. I don't know why he sold that, and I don't know why he sold the Virginia place. For some reason, I was more in love with the Virginia place. Maybe because I had spent most summers up there. Daddy liked to go up there because it was kind to all of his allergies of hay fever and that kind of thing. And there was something that those rolling green hills and grass, and there was a farm family there that took the cows to the mountain pasture in the morning, and I went with them in the afternoon to bring them home. That kind of thing. And the Florida place was beautiful with flowers.

Tom Watson Brown: Where was the Virginia mountain near?

Georgia Watson Craven:It was between Staunton and Charlottesville. Avery and I drove by it when they were asking him to come be the head of the Department at Charlottesville.

Tom Watson Brown: Between Staunton and Charlottesville?

Georgia Watson Craven:In was in that area. The post office was in Afton. We would go up there, and I think we had to change trains several times. Daddy would take his hound dogs and go back to the baggage car and feed them and give them water and that kind of thing. Then, we would stay up there all summer. The mountain man/farmer would come and drive us up in the surrey from Afton and - I think Waynesboro is the other place besides Staunton. It's right in that area.

Georgia Watson Craven:Grandpa sold that I think because there was a Roman Catholic monastery that had been build or was building that sort of joined alongside it. And I think that, I don't mean I ever saw where it was, but it was adjacent property, and I think that they bought it.

Georgia Watson Craven:Now when Avery went down there to interview at that time, we went right by that place, and I nearly jumped out of the car. I was so thrilled and so excited. I knew where the road came down. I knew the old fence, and it was just the place. We found out later that it was next to a monastery.

Georgia Watson Craven:But Cuzzie, for some reason, had more experience with the Florida place. But she loved that house. I enjoyed it and loved it. I remember the beach. On one side there was a row of coconut trees - an avenue of coconut trees that went to the beach, and it was very close. I would say that that avenue from this house to the back of my green out there, the bottom of the green, went right onto the beach. On the other side, it was a much closer thing to the river. And all the flowers in Florida were in the yard and so on.

Georgia Watson Craven:Around the river side, they had built mooring places and two boathouses. Now he didn't have a fancy boat, but he had a boat that was big enough to handle all of us. Sort of a cabin on it. And I remember once, when I was down there, my Mother and one of her friends from the North was there. They all went for a day up to the Everglades and came back with all these beautiful tomatoes and things of that kind.

Georgia Watson Craven:Grandpa was friends with those Indians in some way, and, for some reason, and one time when I was there, the Indians came down and camped on his beach - not on his beach, but on the river side for overnight. I'll never forget that because it was some young children, a couple of these boys. And we got some beads. We wanted some. Of course, they were scared we would get diseases... I'm skipping around too much for you.

Tom Watson Brown: How did the boat run?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know. Gasoline or something like that.

Tom Watson Brown: It had an engine on it?

Georgia Watson Craven:It had an engine, yeah. They used to go out around the end of the peninsula and way out there in the ocean to fish in it. I don't ever remember _______ anywhere.

Tom Watson Brown: Did he drive the boat, or did other people drive the boat?

Georgia Watson Craven:I'm sure he didn't drive it. He never drove any kind of engine.

Tom Watson Brown: That little house with the gingerbread and everything on it - That's next to what was your schoolhouse. Was that a dog pen always?

Georgia Watson Craven:That was a pigeon house.

Tom Watson Brown: It was? There were two pigeon houses?

Georgia Watson Craven:They could have had ... I'm quite sure it was aߞ

Tom Watson Brown: No, it's too low on the ground and it's got doors. It's a little, tiny house, right next to the schoolhouse.

Tom Watson Brown: But now that you've said it And it's fenced in.

Georgia Watson Craven:I can remember it. The only thing I ever remember being kept in there that was alive was peacocks. Those peacocks, they screeched so. And Grandpa got tired of their screaming. But that's where the peacocks were, and they had a fence around it and the fence went over the top so they couldn't fly.

Tom Watson Brown: But they could go in the house and all that kind of thing?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Did you all let them out to run around in the yard?

Georgia Watson Craven:I remember them at times in the yard. I think there were pictures in one of those Kodak books that I gave you that my mother took in her early years down there 'cause she was so fascinated with all this. I think there are some pictures of peacocks on that. but I may he wrong. I know there are pictures of brown and white turkeys that Grandma had.

Georgia Watson Craven:Incidentally, what's happened to Charlie? Did he go withߞ

Tom Watson Brown: He's with us.

Georgia Watson Craven:That's good. I'm glad.

Tom Watson Brown: I'll get you caught up on all that. We've come all the way around the house.

Georgia Watson Craven:Yes. Walter had a parking place just this side of that little thing you're talking about, and next to that, there was a beautiful Magnolia tree. Under that, Grandpa had one of those concrete things that ... it was just a form, that he must have had something to make the bottom and then poured the stuff, like putting a big plate in it to make the water things for the birds.

Tom Watson Brown: Bird baths.

Georgia Watson Craven:Grandma had ducks at one time, and I can remember the baby ducks on that. But that's all there was on that side of the house, and a little bit belowߞ

Tom Watson Brown: There is a tool shed there.

Georgia Watson Craven:That was the Delco place that made the electricity.

Tom Watson Brown: When did they get that?

Georgia Watson Craven:I'm not sure. They must have gotten that when they let go of the acetylene light system. I really don't remember when the electricity was put in and whether it came from town. And later, if he wanted to have his own output and put in the Delco. I just am not sure.

Tom Watson Brown: Before the Delco, it was acetylene?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember. If you look at the old chandeliers, which some must be still in the attic, they were still in the house when we were all growing up. They had two kinds of lights on the chandeliers. A light that you lit, and then I think they must have either bought of them that way or combined them with electricity when they had electric bulbs. Those acetylene lights were in the dining room, I think the living room and maybe the hall. I can't remember in detail. I know they had acetylene down in the house going to be Foundation headquarters.

Tom Watson Brown: About when did they go to electricity, would you know?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember. I remember that sometimes, the colored girls were cleaning the lamps kerosene lamps - and I remember the first time that we had sleet, and Cuzzie and I were spending the night with Grandpa. I looked out the window and the whole earth was covered with this almost white stuff. It was ice of course, and I thought, "Well Hattie (who was a housemaid) had poured acetylene all over". How she could have gone around and made all that I don't know, but I'll never forget that reaction. Grandpa, I think, used acetylene lamps in his study for years to read by.

Tom Watson Brown: Where would they have been? Table lamps or what?

Georgia Watson Craven:The ones that I am talking about are table lamps. I never saw them lit, but they had glass bottoms about this big around, shallow, and then some tops the way you do in the metric things now. To clean them, they had to let this stuff, which would burn down in some way, go out, and it looked like dirty magnesia, that kind of thing. Anyway, I remember the house girls had to do that. I don't ... I think Grandpa used that in his library. I don't know whether there were any of that downstairs that I actually do remember or not. Down there was a place we now call the foundation of the house. The back of ... it was a little long, made out of brick, kind of thing. It was not as wide as this couch and the back part of it was brick. I was always told that there was where he used to keep this light system for that house. Now I don't know whether any of those old chandeliers are there or not.

Tom Watson Brown: I'm getting confused between the lamps and the chandeliers.

Georgia Watson Craven:You mean what about them?

Tom Watson Brown: The acetylene, was it in both?

Georgia Watson Craven:Evidently that is the first house.

Tom Watson Brown: Let's stay back with Hickory Hill.

Georgia Watson Craven:They had them at Hickory Hill.

Tom Watson Brown: The lamps?

Georgia Watson Craven:The lamps.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay.

Georgia Watson Craven:I think that the chandeliers were in the ceiling. They had a place to light that too, but I never saw it lighted.

Tom Watson Brown: Which rooms had chandeliers?

Tom Watson Brown: The four main rooms. I think Grandmother's bedroom did, but certainly, the two living rooms up front. I'm sure they must have been in the hall. Maybe two of them in the front part and then the second part, and I would think in the room that now is the dining room. I don't know whether they were in the bathrooms.

Tom Watson Brown: What about the old living room that's not there now?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember anything in it until they had electricity.

Tom Watson Brown: Did they have a chandelier?

Georgia Watson Craven:That I'm not sure of. I think that that and the old dining room both had chandeliers.

Tom Watson Brown: Back to the chandeliers. So, we think there was a lot of chandeliers, then?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. I don't think they had floor lamps in the bedrooms.

Tom Watson Brown: You think there were electrical as you remember?

Georgia Watson Craven:They were electrical as far back as I can remember.

Tom Watson Brown: Which would take us back to at leastߞ

Georgia Watson Craven:1910. I would remember.

Tom Watson Brown: 1915, 1916?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't think it would be that late. I think 1912 I was 6 years old. I think I would have remembered lights before that if they were not electric.

Tom Watson Brown: Which would have meant wires coming down from the ceiling somewhere and switches on the wall?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah.

Tom Watson Brown: To turn them on and off' How did they work in the dining room? Didn't they have an overhead thing to move for flies, to keep flies away?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, they never had one of those - in my lifetime.

Tom Watson Brown: Really?

Georgia Watson Craven:What they had was - sometimes, a little black boy would do this with, not the country people had, but he put a piece of newspaper and cut these things ________, but Grandma had had made, that's why I can't find ______ with the peacocks because of the noise they made, and she had a long, this long, with peacock feathers in the end. The handle kind of looked like raffia or something like that, a woven kind of white stuff that made this long handle. I don't really remember. I can't tell you that I remember it well, but that was what it was for, to do this over the table.

Tom Watson Brown: So you just do it by hand?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: What did the chandeliers look like? Do you remember?

Georgia Watson Craven:They weren't pretty, but then that was not... The metal came down from the center and went around like this, and there were very pretty little sort of - my vocabulary went when I had a stroke - kind of saucer-looking glasses that fit over what would be the acetylene part, and I think over the electric too. I tried to save a few of those, but they'd been broken and gone and so on.

Tom Watson Brown: It would be two to three to a room?

Georgia Watson Craven:You mean chandeliers?

Tom Watson Brown: Chandeliers.

Georgia Watson Craven:No, I can only remember one chandelier in each room. But each chandelierߞ

Tom Watson Brown: How many of these globes would there be?

Georgia Watson Craven:I was gonna say... I would think there would be three or four, possible four each, of whatever I thought was separated. The electric parts were that big, kind of shaped like a tulip, to go over an electric light. The acetylene ones sat up like this - like this little bowl - so that the light was down below. The flame was below the sides of the thing, and the thing came up about that high. They were very nice for that era, but they weren't brass. They were a dark kind of metal that had a little look of copper on parts of it - sort of a mixed metal.

Tom Watson Brown: What was the, while we're taking about light, the fireplaces? We know there are six in the old part of the house that's still there -- four downstairs and two up. They were all brought in from Italy?

Georgia Watson Craven:That's what was said when you and I talked about this once.

Tom Watson Brown: Italian marble at least.

Georgia Watson Craven:We all thought they were Italian marble, but came from brownstones that were being torn down in New York at that time.

Tom Watson Brown: Is that what they did?

Georgia Watson Craven:I'm not sure, but I think that that is a possibility. I have a feeling that most of the pictures that he bought...

Tom Watson Brown: Let's stay with the fireplaces. I'll come back to the pictures. Would they have been the interior part of the fireplace? The functional part now is only about a foot, foot and a half wide, which means it was for coal. Could they have originally been bigger, and then have been closed in? You always remember them that size?

Georgia Watson Craven:I always remember coal and a small grate, as they call it, instead of an open fire withߞ

Tom Watson Brown: big logs in them?

Georgia Watson Craven:With logs. They did have some andirons. Brass andirons for the parlor on the West side of the house. Walter took those home when I moved over here and took a set of Tom's and that kind of thing. I remember he wrote me and said that he and Charlie polished this up and how beautiful it looked. That was the only set of that kind that I could remember. Most of the bedroom sets were black iron or some other kind of metal and used very commonly with the cold.

Tom Watson Brown: Do you think he put in back in the West parlor?

Georgia Watson Craven:I hoped they did. I have a feeling I may have seen it there since then.

Tom Watson Brown: I think so. It's something there that's. . . I'll just have to look at it again. How about the old dining room and the old living room in the back? What did they use for heat?

Georgia Watson Craven:They used... The dining room always had a fireplace.

Tom Watson Brown: There was a fireplace?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Marble?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, it was just a wooden fireplace - a nice one, but what was popular then. The living room had the same thing early but, the last years - I don't mean the immediate last years, but maybe... I don't know how old I was when they put in one of those big iron coal stoves. And that was the toasty place to be in the house.

Tom Watson Brown: That was the living room?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. It was a workroom. It was where the mail was brought in; it was where whoever wanted to talk to Grandma or to Grandpa, because sometimes they went upstairs to his place. It was an all-purpose living room - what a living room really is. The people didn't have living rooms then, and they didn't call them living rooms, but that was called a living room.

Tom Watson Brown: The ceilings have always been the same height, I assume?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: It looks like it. So, the chandeliers hung down a good ways?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: What was the treatment on the ceilings in these rooms? Were they paper or paint, or just plaster, or something?

Georgia Watson Craven:It could have been. I know that by the time that Mama and I lived there; there were leaks that had discolored the wallpaper that was on the ceiling and the sides. Leaks from the house and sun and the picturesߞ

Tom Watson Brown: So there was paper on the ceiling?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know. I just can't swear to that.

Tom Watson Brown: The floors. If you look upstairs, it looks like that sort of brown floor that's on the upstairs was laid on top of another floor.

Georgia Watson Craven:It could be, but I don't recall.

Tom Watson Brown: It's always been that way?

Georgia Watson Craven:I just don't remember any change. I don't know that there'sߞ

Tom Watson Brown: What I'm thinking, is that there might have been a more old-fashioned floor with the bigger boards and then the other was put down. Downstairs, you've got even smaller tongue-and-groove or whatever, with those pieces of inlaid stuff.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. Those are hardwood floors.

Tom Watson Brown: I guess we could get up under there and see what's under it.

Georgia Watson Craven:I suppose so.

Tom Watson Brown: Cause I have a feeling

Georgia Watson Craven:I'm quite sure that Grandpa put those hardwood floors in downstairs.

Tom Watson Brown: As opposed to pine and everything?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right, or as opposed to whatever.

Tom Watson Brown: Cause I'm think that underneath there, there is probably a more substantial floor in terms of thickness and all that kind of thing. But we can get under the house and look at that I guess.

Georgia Watson Craven:How about the general treatment on the walls in those downstairs rooms. 1 looked again just like you said, and clearly there was not any railing going around on which you hung pictures, because inside each of those rooms you got this kind of- it's not an arch or whatever you call it, but a window treatment.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: So you couldn't have had... How did they hang pictures?

Georgia Watson Craven:I'm gonna either contradict what I said before or question what you're saying. I remember when you asked me that question before. The part of it I remember you asked me was if they had any swags or those kinds of things - you know, curtains. And as far as I remember, there was never anything like that. There was sort of a thin - not lacy stuff that was too fancy, but what they called glass curtains. The light came through, but it just sort of was protective and quiet and all, and private, and all that kind of thing, and then the drapes came down the side.

Georgia Watson Craven:But I do remember, now that you say, that above the windows - and I don't think I'm mixing this • up - there could have been a decorative board over the top of the window that was - say this big, sort of a small triangle, and in the middle kind of a geometric thing, center, to do these. There was nothing fancy on those. But I think that around the top of these, going out from maybe where this thing stopped to down here. There was a kind of narrow ho-1d that they jut around and pictures were hung on them.

Tom Watson Brown: Oh really?

Georgia Watson Craven:But I'm not sure of that. I'm not sure, but it rings a bell. I've seen those so much sometimes that I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't think I mixed up much for you, but that could be possible.

Tom Watson Brown: There the pictures would hang. It would be something attached to that, and cords would hang down and the pictures would be on that?

Georgia Watson Craven:The picture frame cord would hang over a little metal thing that fitted over that small piece of wood and came down in sort of an "S" curve, and the bottom of the "S" would be where the cord to the picture went.

Tom Watson Brown: Were at the pictures now. Tell me about the pictures. You said you think some of those came from New York or whatever he had or what?

Georgia Watson Craven:Some of the things in the house came from New Orleans, and that would have been a fine antique market, but also I think a lot of them came from New York. They were in New York at the time they were buying Hickory Hill and it's just logical to think that.

Georgia Watson Craven:The reason I say in Europe because there were two or three small paintings that were Venetian scenes. I'm trying to remember what else the scenes might have been of. Of course! The one that I left out and the ocean one that was Cuzzie's. It's a swap-off between those two. Those were big paintings that I think came from there.

Tom Watson Brown: I think they both got stolen.

Georgia Watson Craven:They did? They both got stolen. But they didn't take the one I left. I don't know why - whether it was too big or what, but they took the ocean one.

Tom Watson Brown: I remember that. It was out in the hall.

Georgia Watson Craven:That Walter had outside of the front West room just north of the door.

Tom Watson Brown: Right, right.

Georgia Watson Craven:Walter later ... He and Ann bought a painting in Scotland that was several landscapes. It looked like it might - I don't know, I'm not gonna say. But my guess is that I sort of remember that oh, it sort of looks like heather, like a heather field or something of that type and style.

Tom Watson Brown: What is the picture that you left there that's still there?

Georgia Watson Craven:As far as I know, it's still on the West wall. It has a small, little rustic building on the right side and some great big trees that are contemporary - I don't mean contemporary, they were regular landscaped trees - and then, there is a lovely meadow with, of course - cows at that time there were always in pictures - a couple of cows, and a distant horizon that showed trees and so on.

Tom Watson Brown: There 's a mill?

Georgia Watson Craven:It could be.

Tom Watson Brown: People are kind of waiting sort of thing?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: That's still there.

Georgia Watson Craven:It was almost as wide as that ______ face thing there. It's a tremendous picture.

Tom Watson Brown: That's still there.

Georgia Watson Craven:Walter told me he had that cleaned and that he found a name there.

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah, it says Millseam, and I had assumed, at first glance, that it was some sore of ' European thing, but it looks more to me now like it's an American mill.

Georgia Watson Craven:But I don't know. At one point I was able to detect on that picture the word Felix. I tried for a long time to sort of find some painter by that name, and an Austrian friend of the Eustil's and mine - a lovely girl who worked in the upper Belvedere Museum in Vienna - gave me a book of the Austrian cessation which was a movement to break away from 19th century academy pictures and that sort of thing.

Georgia Watson Craven:I was reading in this one day, and it told about the opposition of the contemporary versus the staid, old academic thing, and mentioned the name of the man who had been elected head of the old group. Then he got kicked out. His name was Felix.

Georgia Watson Craven:This is the kind of paining that was going on in Europe in those late years. Some of those paintings have beautiful landscapes, but people got tired of them.

Georgia Watson Craven:I was sure I found the name of the painter who had done that, and it could very well be because of the whole flow of those pictures in Vienna in the l8th/19th century gallery of state thing. I told Walter this, and he said "Oh no. I found another name". He told me the name and I never got it down on paper so I don't –

Tom Watson Brown: I don't remember a name, but there is a little plate. A little marker kind of thing, about that big, that's sort of tacked onto the middle of the frame at the bottom, and I remember it says something Mill, meaning Millseam. I didn't catch an author 's name or painter 's name, but there might be one way over in the corner or something.

Georgia Watson Craven:I think I would have remembered if I ever saw a little plate like that.

Tom Watson Brown: This could have be done by ... I don't know.

Georgia Watson Craven:I mean, I don't know whether Walter had that done.

Tom Watson Brown: I'm sure we're talking about the same painting. It's kind of dark.

Georgia Watson Craven:It's very dark. Walter told he had something done to it and it became lighter with the cleaning. It was in the West room of the parlor, and it was over the fireplace. It had a wide gold frame, as all those particular paintings did in that period. I thought it was always lovely on that wall and I didn't want it to be moved.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know why I never saw any marker on there unless Walter found one on it at the back or something like that, or unless he got someone to identify it and had a thing like that put on it.

Tom Watson Brown: Could be. I don't know. I'll have a picture taken. Like we did on that other stuff and get it to you.

Georgia Watson Craven:I wish you would.

Tom Watson Brown: Any other particular painting you remember?

Georgia Watson Craven:I'm trying to remember.

Tom Watson Brown: I'm sure there are some. They were all around the house, right?

Georgia Watson Craven:They had a lot of oil paintings of the end of the 19th century and early 20th. I don't think any of them are famous. But they were scenes that were popular then. They were very pleasant painting. They were not anything to be ashamed of. They were nicely chosen.

Georgia Watson Craven:Another thing that they had a lot of in the house, this was most of the rest of what was, was engravings. Great big engravings, this big. Mostly Sir Lancelot and Tenneyson, that kind of subject matter. They were kind of flat, but they were over the mantle pieces for the most part. I think there was one of those in the other living room across the East room, and maybe in the dining room - I can't remember. But there were several of those, and I know that when things were given away - a few friends were given things - Miss Mae Gibson got one of those engravings. She loved it. She had taught Daddy and Annie when they were children. I think it burned up in the house when the Gibson house burned up.

Georgia Watson Craven:Anyway, those were frequent everywhere. Maybe Miss Myra McClain got one of those. She was one of Grandpa's close friends. They were the other large things besides the ocean and the landscape. The others - I can't remember the subject matter, but maybe one of Mother and one of Venice. I don't remember any flower paintings particularly. I think they were mostly landscapes.

Tom Watson Brown: Tell me about the little boy, the school boy?

Georgia Watson Craven:That was put on - I don't remember, not exactly when - but I remember when it got there. Mrs. Lytle got that. I don't mean she got it, but she found things like that and got them for all, and she put that there. It had quite regular lights on it at first, and then, for some reason - I don't know if it got half broken and some of the things that held more than one light - I don't know whether there is more than one light there now - but you could put a red light there to light the stairs at night.

Tom Watson Brown: And it doesn't look right?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, it's not right.

Tom Watson Brown: And the fixture isn't right. I looked at that - closely at that - those pictures you had taken in the `20's and `30's. One of them is a close-up, pretty close, of that thing, and it was a three-light thing like this. It looked more like what you imagine a Parisian streetlight would have been, but it doesn't do anything with the kind of light it has now. What I'm gonna try to do is get the fixtures films or whatever as best we can figure that would match what's supposed to be there and just leave the little boy there. It would have been brass I suppose - the light fixture?

Georgia Watson Craven:I just don't know what was there before the boy.

Tom Watson Brown: The boy is there, and there is a street lamp alongside him. But, instead of being a single ball and a red light, that's not what was there. What was there was a triple like this.

Georgia Watson Craven:Exactly.

Tom Watson Brown: It looks more like an outdoor light, and I assume it was brass.

Georgia Watson Craven:I just don't remember. It always looked like a dark bronze to me. A brown color more than ... it could have been brass and that dark, but I don't remember it as a brass in terms of the thing that's by you now, that little thing on the table.

Tom Watson Brown: For lights in these rooms, besides the chandelier, what else did they have? Did they have any other kind of lights?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, this is where I don't remember. I think that they did use lamps - kerosene lamps as auxiliary light because everybody had kerosene lamps then. I think I remember them being cleaned during the day. The chimneys being polished and the wicks being prepped and just having them cleaned up as part of the routine in the room everyday. I think that I'm more or less right on that.

Tom Watson Brown: They would have been all over the place?

Georgia Watson Craven:Any place. Right.

Tom Watson Brown: They were the kind you could just pick up and move them if you wanted to.

Georgia Watson Craven:But I also remember enough to know a table light that was in the back living room that was a metal - about this big - and it was an electric one. It was a period that was in style and nice. The frame was metal with strips of metal that went down to define the panel and the panels were a kind of an opaque glass.

Tom Watson Brown: But again, nothing sticking out from the wall or anything like that?

Georgia Watson Craven:But I'm not sure that there might have been in one or two of those - in the front rooms - sconces I guess they're still called - little lights that come out at the door, with maybe one of those little chimney, glass chimney, things. I just don't remember... I don't think so, but I can't be sure.

Tom Watson Brown: Between all this you've got plenty of light really. I didn't remember about the chandeliers. There are some chandeliers down there now, but they don't go right. They don't look right.

Georgia Watson Craven:No, they don't look right.

Tom Watson Brown: The ceilings are spackle stuff. I don't know what you call it, but it looks terrible. It ought to be smooth. It's that stuff you use so you don't have to paint it. I think they call it spackle.

Georgia Watson Craven:It sounds right.

Tom Watson Brown: It's all rough.

Georgia Watson Craven:That's the connotation of the word to me. But I don't know the word "spackle". Walter and Ann had the whole place done in a way.

Tom Watson Brown: That's what I'm talking about. It's done wrong.

Georgia Watson Craven:I would think so.

Tom Watson Brown: That's what I trying to get... We'll get into that tomorrow - what the walls looked like and what the rooms looked like and everything.

Georgia Watson Craven:One thing about the walls I hope you don't forget to say is, between the windows, at least in the front West room, the wallpaper was some sore of beautiful cream or something like that. Then there was a pattern in the wallpaper of the edges, let's call them lines, about that deep, that almost made a frame in the area further down. You had this formal, subtle, classic sort of shape. I think that the painting hung in between those - some of them at least.

Tom Watson Brown: The way certain things are set up in the downstairs hall, it looks like you've got these ... well, they're columns, but they're kind of like non-functional column facades. It's all over the place downstairs. Going through that hallway there are several of those that just contribute to this sort of formal look. Some corners will have something sticking out, even on the porches. They clearly aren't functional, but it will be that with kind of curly-Q to it.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember that on the porch, but I do remember the more or less archway between the front part of the downstairs hall which kind of marked off the two front rooms from the rest of the hall. There were parts of a classic column at the bottom, and then the fluted part went up. I know now, and then the bottom - what do they call it when they build from the floor up there this high and have wooden paneling instead of plaster?

Tom Watson Brown: I think we've done all the outbuildings pretty well and all that stuff, so let's talk about the house itself. If we come up Hickory Hill and come into the front door, those screen doors have been there forever, haven't they?

Georgia Watson Craven:As long as I can remember.

Tom Watson Brown: You step from the screen door and you come to some part that's kind of tile.

Georgia Watson Craven:It is tile or is it marble?

Tom Watson Brown: Marble, with marble squares and things.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. Those marble squares, they also had them in both of the downstairs bathrooms. The one on the West, I don't know why it was never used _____ or added a wall or something. I have a feeling it was used as - Cuzzie may have had it as part of her room when she lived up there. They made the second –

Tom Watson Brown: Where?

Georgia Watson Craven:At Hickory Hill, after Annie died. She was up there most of the time. Once in a while she would be with Uncle someplace, but they made what is now the dining room into a bedroom for Cuzzie so that she could be downstairs on the floor where Grandma was. I don't know how she used that little thing, that little room. Of course it's been a breakfast room from some years, but that room and the bathroom off Grandma's bedroom, I think had the same sort of marbled tiles as that little front entrance.

Tom Watson Brown: Did she stay with my mother there? Just a second now that had been a music room, hadn't it?

Georgia Watson Craven:The room that she stayed in, which is now the dining room, had been a music room.

Tom Watson Brown: That was sort of a bathroom behind it, right?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. But I can't ever remember it working as a bathroom.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay, but the one on the other side did, didn't it?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Did they have indoor plumbing and everything?

Georgia Watson Craven:As long as I know.

Tom Watson Brown: You come in the front door and here's that wooden inlaid stuff and everything that Tom Watson had put in. You're looking at the stairs. To your right is the parlor? Living room?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yes. That room changed hats every now and then when I was a child. It was sometimes sort of a second - it was never - the West room was always the most palor-ish. The one on the East was sort of a second room that was used more informally. I don't know why. I never thought of it having a lot of use because of that back living room.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. The back bedroom, living room?

Georgia Watson Craven:Then there was one time when I was quite little, that Grandpa had his bedroom down there in that front room Then after that, after he was upstairs - and I don't remember the move or any specific time - it became this sort of living room in a way. It was never - I don't want to use the word elegant, but there's a difference really. It was more of an informal living room, but it could be called a parlor too.

Tom Watson Brown: What kind of furniture was in it?

Georgia Watson Craven:That's what I'm trying to remember. It was not . . . I can't remember really what kind of furniture, specific furniture in either one. I remember some things on the West, like those two sort of French-painted cabinets that Walter has with that fancy coffee service and that kind of thing. I think that Grandpa may have had - and I may be mixing this up - his shell collection in one of those in that space between the two rooms. They closed those two room up I suspect because his bedroom was there. In the front –

Tom Watson Brown: Let's go back to the room on the East. Let's finish it up. What kind of furniture would have in there -just tables and chairs?

Georgia Watson Craven:Chairs and old fashionedߞ

Tom Watson Brown: Sofas?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember sofas, but there must have been some. I wasn't in there a lot because it wasn't used a lot. But you kind of think like old fashioned bookcases, not real antiques, but bookcases with glass doors - tall ones, nice. They would be considered antiques today. And just places to sit.

Georgia Watson Craven:When somebody came to see Grandma or Grandpa, they were apt to sit in there instead of in the room across the hall. In that room they had, over the fireplace, one of those engravings that I mentioned earlier.

Tom Watson Brown: Were there curtains on the windows?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah, there were curtains.

Tom Watson Brown: Then, across the hall on the West.

Georgia Watson Craven:As long as you know that there were curtains. She also had - I think across that room, I'm not sure about this other side. What are these drapes that's hung like this over that door that opens so wide? You know, those are sliding doors?

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah. There was a curtain over that too?

Georgia Watson Craven:Now that may have been because it would have been a bedroom, but they were heavy damask kind of things. My feelings about the room, and it may be one reason I don't remember it, was it was kind of somber and dark. But they are colors that are coming back. You know, deep colors. The other room I always remember lighter. It probably got a lot more light because it was on the West part where there wasn't as many trees.

Tom Watson Brown: What was in it, the West side room?

Georgia Watson Craven:I can't remember specific furniture.

Tom Watson Brown: Again, it was more formal?

Georgia Watson Craven:It was more formal and there probably was a horsehair couch in there. I hated those horsehair things. They always stuck me right above the knee and stuff.

Tom Watson Brown: Typical furniture, whatever?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. It would be mahogany - well, I say it would be mahogany. It was that kind of thing. I think the other room might have had something that was stained more. The closest thing I can get is kind of a red - more like that bedroom set that's in the upstairs Northwest bedroom. That kind of look.

Tom Watson Brown: In both these room - what about carpets, rugs?

Georgia Watson Craven:They had rugs.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. Not wall-to-wall, but big rugs?

Georgia Watson Craven:No. Because the showpiece of the rooms was the parquet floor.

Tom Watson Brown: What kind of rugs were they? Do you remember?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't think they were real India or –

Tom Watson Brown: Oriental?

Georgia Watson Craven:-- Eastern. Oriental rugs, but they were reproductions of oriental rugs.

Tom Watson Brown: Again, each room had a chandelier, and they looked about the same?

Georgia Watson Craven:The chandeliers... I think they were the same also.

Tom Watson Brown: Same thing. In those little alcoves between that room and the next room, in one of those cabinets, you've got that pink for two set. Is that tea or coffee?

Georgia Watson Craven:I think it's coffee. I think because of the way the pot is made as near as I can remember.

Tom Watson Brown: The cups look real small, so it probably is - it's like that heavy coffee, that heavy kind of coffee.

Georgia Watson Craven:It's a real strong coffee. Yea. That's the kind. I think he might have bought it in New Orleans.

Tom Watson Brown: Then on another cabinet in the alcove, there are still a whole bunch of shells from a shell collection, which I suspect was even larger. I suspect there were more shells.

Georgia Watson Craven:I'm not sure he had... where he had the shells. I know Walter had them there, but Cuzzie had another coffee service I think. I think it was coffee. It could have been cocoa. It had jonquils on it. Is that around?

Tom Watson Brown: I don't think so. I've seen a kind of vase with jonquils on it. You know, a fairly tall thing like that, but I'll look. I'll get to the silver and china here. There is another cabinet with little thin drawers which I always assumed had something to do with sheet music, but when I pull it out, there are slots for silver and it's got velvet in there. It's a cabinet that sits about this tall off the ground.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know what you mean. What's the outside of it look like?

Tom Watson Brown: It's two little doors that open out and then it's kind of painted over. It's got some kind of –

Georgia Watson Craven:design on it.

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah. Design or scene or something.

Georgia Watson Craven:It could have been for music, but you think now that it belonged to theߞ

Tom Watson Brown: Now I'm confident it's for silver because it's got that thing in there with the slots, so it couldn't be for music.

Georgia Watson Craven:I've got that one fork I told you that has GW on it. Then I saw that Walter had bought for himself a whole set in that pattern and I don't remember when they used that. I remember the silver I didn't like. Mrs. Lytle bought a whole mess of hotel silver from one of the hotels that her father managed and closed. It was cheap stuff. Now, maybe theyߞ

Tom Watson Brown: Heavier?

Georgia Watson Craven:A little heavier. I think that some of it is still around. It sometimes had a number on it and I don't know whether it ever had initials on it. But that was used and mainly because the blacksmiths handled things like real silver or walked off with it or this, that or the other, but I've never known where they had any good silver. Now they must have had something better and different from that.

Tom Watson Brown: I think. I hadn't really pursued that heavily, but I think there are little odds and ends of silver. Sometimes there'll be a GW. There is some that was my grandmother's because it will have an "A."

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. Agnes.

Tom Watson Brown: Yea, that's right. An "AWL" or something. But I'm sure they did. It's inconceivable they didn't have an awful lot of silver. I don't know what in the world would have happened to all that. There are some porcelain that's French that I have. It's two or three service bowls and it's my understanding that those were my grandmother's.

Georgia Watson Craven:I'd have to see them to know, and I might not know then.

Tom Watson Brown: There are red borders with little gold trim.

Georgia Watson Craven:Oh. I think they were Annie's, Agnes. Yeah, I think you're right about that.

Tom Watson Brown: Missy thinks she's got some too, so we'll get that together, but it's just odds and ends. It's not enough for a whole thing, but that would be another question. What happened to her silver? I'm sure she would have a full set of silver too.

Georgia Watson Craven:I would think so.

Tom Watson Brown: That's gotten scattered or gone or something or other. The problem is, down there you open these drawers and there'll be a batch of stuff thrown together that shouldn't be. Some are and I'll do that. Next time I'm down there I think I will extract anything that clearly belonged to the family and put it up front in the silver cabinet for preservation purposes. Pop bought a set of silver that I know what you're talking about. It's not anybody's initials. It's somebody else, like JSB, or something like that, but it may be the same type.

Georgia Watson Craven:The only time I ever saw, it could have been when Walter bought some silver in Spartanburg. But I wasn't ... it was Ann that would set the table and I wasn't looking for that kind of thing. But one time when we were leaving and they were leaving Thomson to go back to South Carolina, there was a big silver chest on the dining room table. I looked at it. I didn't pick it up or anything, but I realize it was a pattern of this one fork that I've got. I saw the B. Now I don't remember. I probably didn't question theߞ

Tom Watson Brown: No, it's something he bought. He bought it somewhere.

Georgia Watson Craven:I think he bought it in Baltimore probably. That's the center of old. I've got that in my head.

Tom Watson Brown: But it wasn't his initials. It wasn't anybody's initials.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't think I even looked.

Tom Watson Brown: It's around. I've seen it.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't even know what the first initials were, but I'm sure that I thought it was Brown because of the B that you mentioned.

Tom Watson Brown: In the ... We'll come back to the music room in a minute. In it's present state, I'm standing in front of a fireplace now. Visualize me in front of the fireplace, over here next to the door that goes out to the porch, you've got a pretty good sized cabinet with glass. It's a wood cabinet with glass. There are a lot of odds-and-ends and pieces of silver in there. Would that cabinet have been there? It's a good sized cabinet about this tall.

Georgia Watson Craven:Does it have columns on the outside?

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah.

Georgia Watson Craven:I think that was ours. My mother, we always had in the JD Watson house and wherever we went a cabinet like that to show off cut silver and special pieces of--

Tom Watson Brown: What you had - it's got a flat back. Then you got two sort of quarter rounds like this, that are glass.

Georgia Watson Craven:I've forgotten what--

Tom Watson Brown: Then the door bulges out some more, and it's glass. So you can see it from all around.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember that ours had a bulging door. The one that we had, Walter had upstairs at one time at least as a bookcase. It could be a bookcase or it could be a china closet. He had it in the hall upstairs on the west wall.

Tom Watson Brown: There is a glass door on the west wall. There is a glass door bookcase with books in it.

Georgia Watson Craven:That was the one that was ours.

Tom Watson Brown: And it was straight, like a rectangle.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. Does this one that's bowed or curved mean anything to you? I have a feeling it's a Tom Watson.

Georgia Watson Craven:It might have been Annie's. I think she had some like that.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. Again, I'm still in front of the fireplace. There is a dining room table. That doesn't pertain to anything, does it?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, unless that's what Walter brought back.

Tom Watson Brown: From where?

Georgia Watson Craven:I thought Walter brought back the dining room table from somebody.

Tom Watson Brown: It's a big table with kind of square legs. It 's. just a very, functional-looking table.

Georgia Watson Craven:I just about remember the details of the dining room table.

Tom Watson Brown: It's kind of an oval-shaped table with a bunch of leaves, and then it's got legs that are kind of square. I'll take a picture of it and send it to you. I seem to remember that too - that he said he had gotten the table back. There are some chairs there they bought. He never would work out a deal with Mrs. Gibson to get the real chairs back. I am told by Rusty who seems - where does he come from anyway? Is his family from Thomson that you know about?

Georgia Watson Craven:Far as I know they are from that area. They were certainly Southern people and seemed to know the area.

Georgia Watson Craven:When Mama lived in the little house that Walter had on Lumpkin Street, they lived and maybe even - no, I don't think they built it, but if you got up Lee Street, you know that goes right around the corner, there was a brick house - a conventional, but big, brick house, split in the middle with doors and so on. Miss Marion Wilson and her husband, whatever his name was, built that, I think. The Lovelesses lived there then.

Georgia Watson Craven:Now when Rust's father was a little boy - he was younger than us and his parents were friendly, nice people, extremely so. They were good to Mama. They sent her things out of their garden. He was as great a gardener as Rusty is. I think his father planted the pine trees that are on that corner. I hope they're still there. It would grow into a lively pine thickening. I don't think they lived in Thomson before that, and what their time in Thomson was and where they come from, I truly don't know, but he has all the friendliness of his parents.

Tom Watson Brown: Was the father in the jewelry business too?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't think so. He may have been at one time. I don't know what his business was.

Tom Watson Brown: I'm just curious. Anyway, he reports that Mrs. Gibson ______ who has died, that her daughter has them, but there is no telling. Something may happen to her or they are gone for good.

Georgia Watson Craven:You mean she's got the chairs?

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah.

Georgia Watson Craven:Her mother was the one that had the chairs.

Tom Watson Brown: That's right.

Georgia Watson Craven:Why they were separated from the table and all, I don't know. I'm quite sure the original table in the dining room went with the sideboards that you've got now. I don't know what happened to that table, but Mrs. Lytle was always buying and changing and doing this kind for thing. It is the table that you're describing as having the straight legs that was put there afterwards, and the chairs at the Gibsons' house must be the ones that went with it, if you understand what I mean by that phrase, theߞ

Tom Watson Brown: The original table.

Georgia Watson Craven:The second table. The original chairs that really matched the sideboards, I don't know where they went, even in Grandma's day. They may have broken in too much and they needed more chairs or something. But they were a quite different design.

Tom Watson Brown: So the Gibsons' chairs came along later.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. I don't know why I have the feeling that the sideboards and the table and chairs were from New Orleans. I just don't know why I've got this New Orleans thing in my head.

Tom Watson Brown: Both those sideboards are definitely the right ones with the marbled top and everything?

Georgia Watson Craven:Absolutely. They were in the regular old library - I mean the dining room.

Tom Watson Brown: In the corner. I'm still in front of the fireplace. In this corner, there is a corner cabinet. I--

Georgia Watson Craven:That was not Grandma's.

Tom Watson Brown: I'm pretty sure that was my mom's, her stepmother – Ruth's.

Georgia Watson Craven:Could be.

Tom Watson Brown: I'm pretty sure it was and that he just appropriated it. I assume this room also - which was a music room and then my mother's bedroom, had a carpet too. I mean a rug. Same kind of thing?

Georgia Watson Craven:Oh sure, it had some sort of rug there.

Tom Watson Brown: And curtains on the windows?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Of some kind and all that. Was that door out to the porch always there?

Georgia Watson Craven:I think when the Epps __________. They would make that and the porch was built on. Otherwise that would have been a solid wall. I think I'm dead right about that.

Tom Watson Brown: I think you are too because there's something--

Georgia Watson Craven:Cause it wouldn't go out to the ground.

Tom Watson Brown: And it doesn't look quite right. It's not quite - you know, there's a little something. I think you told me that in the music room there was a big stand-up music box with great, bigߞ

Georgia Watson Craven:It was not stand-up, but it was big like this. When I remember it, Grandpa, for some reason, had - the things went back and forth, but he had a partition at that time in that little archway between the two rooms that made a back-like wall. The East one of those, if you are looking at Tut's room, it would be the arch on your right next to the hall. It stood up to maybe your waist or mine, and that's where this thing was. It was a box, one of those old music boxes. It was not played all the time. Cuzzie and I could play the pianoߞ

Tom Watson Brown: Did it haveߞ

Georgia Watson Craven:It has those big metal plates

Tom Watson Brown: Kind of a plate thing?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right, plates. That's right.

Tom Watson Brown: And you'd put them in there?

Georgia Watson Craven:You didn't put them in. They had cuts where you'd put it on top of this thing in some way. The pattern of little holes in the thing was what brought the music.

Tom Watson Brown: And it went around horizontally?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Where there a lot of 'those plates?

Georgia Watson Craven:Frankly I don't remember.

Tom Watson Brown: But more than one?

Georgia Watson Craven:More than ten. One time, Aunt Addie - I always heard he loved Aunt Addie. She was a little older then he was. She visited from South Carolina and she was an invalid, a wheelchair lady, and I think she had the sense of humor that Aunt Julia and some of them didn't have. But I always heard that she was Grandpa's favorite, though he loved Aunt Belle Ursthrew (?) too. He gave that to Aunt Addie. He played it. I remember the time she came for dinner with whichever sister - probably both sisters were there, Belle and Julia - they came and it was Summertime, and they played that and Addie evidently loved it and he gave it to her. And I've often wondered whether any of her family in South Carolina had it. They lived in - is it Abbeyville? I think that's where they lived and I can't remember her name. I'm trying to think if anybody's alive who was older than I was who might remember her name.

Tom Watson Brown: We can track that down. It's not worth--

Georgia Watson Craven:That would be easy to find.

Tom Watson Brown: What else was in the music room?

Georgia Watson Craven:On the west wall, north of that door you are talking about, was a piano, a regular piano. On the wall where the big sideboard is now, which was the east wall, there was a player piano.

Tom Watson Brown: On the east wall?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah. There's a long stretch from the door that goes into the hall down towards the bathroom off the breakfast room. I know there were chairs you could sit in, and I think there was a little sofa of some sort - half wood and half stuffed. I have one memory that, you know, one really wonderful visual memory, of being in that room when Addie played the piano and Grandpa played the violin and I don't know whether anybody else - Cuzzie may have played that piano later. But all we did when we were kids was run those thing through the player. I don't know what was down there by the door that goes into the breakfast room.

Tom Watson Brown: How big was the piano?

Georgia Watson Craven:They were regular-sized upright pianos.

Tom Watson Brown: Upright piano?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. And then we had a Grand - that was Cuzzie's.

Tom Watson Brown: Anything else in there that you remember?

Georgia Watson Craven:I'm trying to remember what was in the middle of the room, but I don't seem to remember. Somehow I have in myself that one memory of Addie and Grandpa playing together, sitting on a smallish couch - settee it would be called now. It held about two people and was not long enough for three of four.

Tom Watson Brown: Now, you were talking about. . . I think you had gotten to the edge of the music room and towards the hall.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. Tell me about that again.

Georgia Watson Craven:The edge of the music room?

Tom Watson Brown: Yes.

Georgia Watson Craven:What I remember is the two pianos, one to the left on the west wall when you came from the front room...

Tom Watson Brown: And the player piano on the east wall?

Georgia Watson Craven:The player piano was on the east wall to your right as you came in from the hall. Then I'm not • sure of the other furniture that was in there.

Tom Watson Brown: Do you know the brand of either the upright piano or the player piano? No, I really don't know.

Tom Watson Brown: The player piano had all of those paper scrolls?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Just put them in and go to town. Did anybody else play anything besides Tom Watson playing the violin and Agnes playing the piano?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't ever remember. Well, my father didn't play. He may have played something when he was young, but never when I knew him. And Cuzzie was too little to accompany Grandpa. She accompanied the man who was head of music at National Cathedral. When he would give a concert to the school, she turned the pages for him.

Tom Watson Brown: But the two of you played the piano, learned the piano - you and Cuzzie?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah. I think I had a complex because Cuzzie was so good and I didn't like to practice. I had a good touch.

Tom Watson Brown: Who was the teacher?

Georgia Watson Craven:Miss Mary Pauls. Mary Curtis Pauls. She was THE teacher in Thomson. A few tried to get in, but she was from a very dominant family. See in the Methodist church, they just ran the Methodist church and they also had the undertaking shop - two of the brothers did - and they were a nice family. But there was something about the Curtises that was very bossy and people wouldߞ

Tom Watson Brown: And that's the funeral home people, I assume?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Then, beyond the music room, was that little bathroom?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. And as far back as you can remember, Miss Watson was there?

Georgia Watson Craven:That was Grandma's room.

Tom Watson Brown: And iron beds with an extra iron bed for you?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Or for whoever, I guess.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: I think I told you those beds were around.

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah. That's good.

Tom Watson Brown: What else was in the bedroom? One of those rugs on the floor?

Georgia Watson Craven:I would think so; I'm not sure.

Tom Watson Brown: And anything special about the furniture or anything?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well now, the chest. It's a plain chest, but it's got drawers to go up to hit maybe about here, and a mirror that's not on it now because the mirrors were reflecting each other and drove you crazy. We put the mirrors in the back room and it screws on. It moves in with two pieces and then, in the middle. it moves back and forth. It's all together and that'll be the one that I send to Thomson.

Tom Watson Brown: So that's here?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah. That's the one upstairs. I'll point that out to you again, but that was in there, and the two beds took up a lot of space. I even bet that that one big bed that you got was the one that was Mommy's and Daddy's that I put down.

Tom Watson Brown: Well, I don't know about that. The iron bed, you mean?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah, she had one. That piece of furniture that I got was looking out towards the screen porch, and there's a window in the middle of the wall and that was on the right next to the door that goes to the porch. The big iron bed, which is similar to this one, was between the window and the north wall. It was on the east wall. And then that little space - well I don't know how little it is because Walter got a huge four-poster there - but that was where there was a small iron bed. And when Cuzzie and I would sleep there, we slept in the big bed and Grandma slept in the little iron bed.

Tom Watson Brown: So, that was against the north wall?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: And was it more than one chest?

Georgia Watson Craven:I can't remember. But I don't remember what was on the wall by the bathroom close to her bed. It must have been something. But on the west wall - well, let's stand the way you did in the dining room.

Tom Watson Brown: The fireplace. To my left was the west wall.

Georgia Watson Craven:To your left, the wall on the south, right next to the fireplace, (grandpa had those closets put in. I'm sure he did. And on the west wall, as you entered the room from the hall, the southwest wall, she had a big wardrobe and private wardrobes that weren't together. I don't know, people felt closets were easier to use, but they lost a lot of nice furniture. I bet she had... She may have had two wardrobes. I know there were wardrobes all around.

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah. There would have been one on the west wall.

Georgia Watson Craven:Yes, definitely.

Tom Watson Brown: You know, before you got to the closets.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. And I don't know what else was in there.

Tom Watson Brown: Now, we've got… There 's one big wardrobe like that upstairs, but I think it was J.J. 's and Nanny's. I think the furniture in that room was theirs.

Georgia Watson Craven:It was. Walter told me that because I loved that sleigh bed. He said that J.J. bought that in Atlanta. I have a feeling that he didn't buy it in a store, that he bought it from somebody who was getting rid of furniture and so on.

Tom Watson Brown: Anything else you can think of in the bedroom? The chandelier in there too?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: All right, so then you could come back out of that bedroom into the main hall of the house, and that the hall that takes you on back to the living room.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: How was the hall fixed up? Anything in particular to the hall?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, starting... Let's do that end of it first. The stairway took up part of it; after the stairway, looking north, there was a door that went into the kitchen; and, still in the hall...

Tom Watson Brown: It would have going into the dining... into the living room?

Georgia Watson Craven:Into the living room, right. I don't know whether they moved the telephones, but the telephones for so many years were just by that door that goes into the kitchen now. And I don't know whether Walter moved them out, or we had to move them when we took the other thing off.

Tom Watson Brown: It was a telephone that hung on the wall?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, it was ... yeah, it was one of those black telephones, and there was a little table under it and so on.

Tom Watson Brown: Then you ... Now you're in the living room. Was there anything out in the hall in the terms of pictures or rugs or anything? The hall coming in from the front door, was there a carpet or a longߞ

Tom Watson Brown: --Runner kind of thing, and that could have been figured at different times and cleaned at different times.

Tom Watson Brown: And there was carpet on the stairs, I assume?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Any particular furniture in the hallway? I know there was a table that's there now. It folds up. One leaf folds up because he had his picture taken by it.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. That's the only thing I can remember. I think there were a couple of chairs - straight chairs, several other metal chairs. I'm getting that mixed up with things that are there now.

Tom Watson Brown: There's a chair there now that the decorator says is what they called a hall chair, and it doesn 't have arms. It's a straight back with kind of a velvet type of fabric on the back and there's nothing on the seat. It's something like a waiting room kind of chair that you'd expect where you were going to sit temporarily. You are not going to sit there and read a book.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. I don't know, Tom, what was there in the way of chairs, but you could sit down in the part toward the front porch. You know, if you wanted to sit there for a cool breeze. I don't think it was often done, but I think there was a chair or two in that hall.

Tom Watson Brown: Anything on the wall?

Georgia Watson Craven:Frankly, I don't remember.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. So we go on through there and we're back at the door to the living room, and now we are in the living room. The telephone was inside the living room or ... It was inside the living room?

Georgia Watson Craven:The telephone that I keep talking about, mentioning about, was way at the other side, next to the old dining room.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. So it's way at the end of the living room?

Georgia Watson Craven:I have the couch to the left and then I had the telephone where Walter had it. And it could be that Avery and I had to move the telephone.

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah, that makes sense. It would be much more logical to have his telephone down in the living room. Okay. Now this living room, we've got it on that blueprint. Did it have – Could you get into it from the sides?

Georgia Watson Craven:It had doors that went down on the east side and on the west side. There was a porch on both sides.

Tom Watson Brown: What kind of doors? Did they have glass?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't think they did. Well, I don't know about that room because - the main part of the house, the doors in the bedrooms and so on, were all solid, and unless Grandpa put them there--

Tom Watson Brown: That's interesting, because they are glass now.

Georgia Watson Craven:From the bedroom to the hall?

Tom Watson Brown: I say that, and I'm confident that they are. I'm pretty sure that it's ... It's like a great, big, solid, panel door, except you cut out the top paneling and there 's a huge sheet of glass in there and it's the same over there on the other side on the west side. But these would have been solid doors then? In the living room, the old living room?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, I think that room was the living room that was added on by Grandpa instead of the original house, that they would have been more likely to have glass than in the old part of the house, and they would let in light.

Tom Watson Brown: Do you remember one way or the other?

Georgia Watson Craven:I really don't remember. I mean, since I've had the children... I don't remember, but I would have said that they were solid.

Tom Watson Brown: Just like the front doors are glass?

Georgia Watson Craven:That's right.

Tom Watson Brown: You know what I'm talking about. Again, it's wood and the glass at the top to let in light and

Georgia Watson Craven:The thing that I'm questioning is, I don't think into the bedroom they would have a piece of glass at the top, and that would only mean Grandma's bedroom.

Tom Watson Brown: Well, the door doesn't quite come into her bedroom.

Georgia Watson Craven:From the hall?

Tom Watson Brown: No, I'm talking about that little out door - the outside door.

Georgia Watson Craven:Oh, you mean the outside! Yeah. Well I said there was one entrance to that little area between the front parlor and her bedroom. I'm sure that those must have been glass - for light if nothing else.

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah, like they are now. I'm sure that's right. But then, over on this old living room, the doors coming in from the porch is what I'm talking about. You don't remember one way or the other?

Georgia Watson Craven:I tend to don't know. They probably were glass.

Tom Watson Brown: Were there windows?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah, there was one. Wait a minute. There was a window between the telephone and that door you were asking about.

Tom Watson Brown: That's on the east side.

Georgia Watson Craven:I think, but I'm not sure about that. Maybe there wasn't a window there. I'm trying to remember what furniture was there. I know there was a little table with a lamp on it next to the door and it could ... I just am not sure. Does it show that on that blueprint?

Tom Watson Brown: Doesn't show windows.

Georgia Watson Craven:No. Well, that was the only way to have gotten light in that room was by the two doors that went onto the two porches because the north side of that room was the dining room wall.

Tom Watson Brown: And so there's no window over on the west side either?

Georgia Watson Craven:There's not now. I don't think we put a window in or anything.

Tom Watson Brown: So, it might have been there then. It's right over there. They are little, tiny windows - small windows and they are over the sink now in what is now the kitchen which was the living room.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. Those two little windows over the sink weren't there. But I can't believe there weren't...

Tom Watson Brown: There had to be a window.

Georgia Watson Craven:There was one east and one west that may have given all the light. I just don't know. But the fact that they are there now makes me wonder whether my memory is right in saying that they did have windows.

Tom Watson Brown: What it could have been, it could have been a big window like you have in the other places in the house, and that when they put the kitchen in there, they took the sink up to this level and they may have then put a straight piece down and put two little windows in there because they don't look like the right kind of windows.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't think those little windows were there.

Tom Watson Brown: Well, let's keep talking about the living room as it was. Was there carpet in there? Same sort of' thing?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right a rug carpet, not a big carpet.

Tom Watson Brown: And a chandelier?

Georgia Watson Craven:And a chandelier.

Tom Watson Brown: And what kind of furniture?

Georgia Watson Craven:There was a library table. Not a fine one. Hewn oak I think it was, and some kind of stuff they were manufacturing in those days, and then there were divans in the middle and that rocking chair that you gave me permission to give to Jeremy was in there. And there may have been - I don't know how to describe it - it was an ugly period of furniture. It may have been what... The back let down a little, and it had arms. I'm not sure about that. I think there were rocking chairs that were kind of like that wooden porch-type rocking chair.

Tom Watson Brown: So, there were a couple of rocking chairs?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Sofa?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, there was no sofa in there.

Tom Watson Brown: Any kind of easy chairs or stuffed chairs with arms?

Georgia Watson Craven:There was that rocker, and then there was another rocker - almost like the porch rocker today and the rest of the chairs, I just am not sure of. But I can remember, in the winter they had this stove. I can remember Grandpa sitting back there with friends now and then. On the right of the fireplace - the fireplace was on the north wall - the outdoor fireplace is part of that now - was a great, big roll-top desk. That is were Grandma kept all her business stuff.

Tom Watson Brown: And that was on the right of the--

Georgia Watson Craven:That was on the west side of the fireplace.

Tom Watson Brown: But it was on the north wall?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. And I thought Walter told me that he found that and brought it back.

Tom Watson Brown: No.

Georgia Watson Craven:Mr. Cotton used to come and stand there and talk toߞ

Tom Watson Brown: And that's where your grandmother kept her stuff?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Anything else you remember in there? Tables? You know, little end tables or anything?

Tom Watson Brown: Well, there was a telephone back in there. There was really no room between the fireplace and stove until you got to the door that went in the dining room, which was north, and then just enough table space - about like this - to finish that wall going east. Then under that, you had to have room enough to get out the telephone. And this is why I think there might have been l window there. There was not a lot of space there. It's the same space that's there now. And before you got to the door that went to the porch, there was room for this smallish table - like this - with a lamp on it. And they were not the kind of tables that anybody would want to keep except for utility association.

Tom Watson Brown: Now, let's talk about it like it is now. You got the kitchen, and there 's a wall which separates you from a thinner room, which is sort of like a large pantry or something.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: The thinner room, the smaller room, has windows and it has a door that 's sort of a modern door.

Georgia Watson Craven:Is there a toilet in there?

Tom Watson Brown: Yes, there's a servant's toilet in there.

Georgia Watson Craven:Servant's toilet. Okay. You have to go back to the one you described facing on the west wall I think. On that side of the room.

Tom Watson Brown: No. If I'm coming in today, I'm coming in this hallway from the front, from the staircase and everything. To the left is the sink. You know, along that wall, it's along the west wall and there 's an older door there to the porch which looks like it belongs. Now over to the east, you've got a door and you go out into the ... this pantry-like room, and the servant's toilet is back to your right, to the south side of the room. And then there is an older door that takes you out to the porch, and the wall where the door is has windows in it.

Tom Watson Brown: I'm confused about that side. I knowߞ

Tom Watson Brown: So, my question is, was the servant's toilet there then? And it couldn't have been.

Georgia Watson Craven:No. Avery and I put that in.

Tom Watson Brown: You put that in. Did you build this wall in the room? And I think you did.

Georgia Watson Craven:I'm thinking I probably did.

Tom Watson Brown: Because it doesn't seem to belong there.

Georgia Watson Craven:No, because of the servant's toilet.

Tom Watson Brown: But, if you pull that wall out, you have the basic dimensions 0f the old living room, would you not?

Georgia Watson Craven:I would think so.

Tom Watson Brown: I'm sure that's the case.

Georgia Watson Craven:I am too.

Tom Watson Brown: And then because its door looks like it belongs. The inner door is a more modern door. It doesn't suit with the rest of them.

Georgia Watson Craven:Now keep standing in the door coming from the front hall. To our left, which is the west, there's some sort of pantry or closet, unless Anne and Walter changed it. The roof was ... It was under the stairway then. Now, that's the closet that's on the west. Since it had to have a wall, it made what is now the kitchen wall, narrower at that part of the house. You're in the front hall, and you walk into a narrower part of what is the kitchen, and then the room pulls out to go onto each porch. It's not a wide room anyway. So, we understand that?

Tom Watson Brown: Right.

Georgia Watson Craven:The wall of that thing is to bring the stairway, to close the stairway. On the east, what Avery and I did do, was to put that toilet there.

Tom Watson Brown: And you had to have put this wall there.

Georgia Watson Craven:We had to put that wall there to close it. Now you think there is another room there that is a little pantry thing?

Tom Watson Brown: No, but this wall separates the kitchen from the toilet all the way to the end of the room.

Georgia Watson Craven:Okay. That was to ... We put that there I'm sure to separate the toilet. And the real reason the toilet couldn't have been put more than what it was was that it would butt into the real toilet Grandma's.

Tom Watson Brown: That's right.

Georgia Watson Craven:So you're right about that. That should come out except if you want to save the toilet.

Tom Watson Brown: Now, well, if we get Charlie's room, house, back in active duty, that ought to take care of that problem. So we 're in there. So as I visualize it, and of course we'll get an architect to check it and all that kind of thing, that wall would come out?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: And you 'd be back to where you were because it doesn't seem to support anything, including the other door. That makes sense.

Georgia Watson Craven:Just like this wall in there. It made the whole, made the room. . . Well, it doesn't make it narrower, but that part of the kitchen is almost a passageway.

Tom Watson Brown: So we are back in the now kitchen, old living room?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Think of it as the old living room. And there is a door to the east that puts you on the porch; a door to the west that puts you on the porch and a door to the north alongside the fireplace, or near the fireplace.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. That puts you in the old dining room, or on the terrace.

Tom Watson Brown: It was the old dining room, wasn't it?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. It went in through the old dining room.

Tom Watson Brown: Now tell me about the old dining room.

Georgia Watson Craven:It was ... Did you want me to tell you where the doors were first? Anyway, as you walk it, the east wall is on your right. After a very short space, there is a door that goes into the old pantry. I think there was a step down right there.

Tom Watson Brown: Was there a step up from the living room?

Georgia Watson Craven:No.

Tom Watson Brown: There's a door?

Georgia Watson Craven:There's a door.

Tom Watson Brown: To take you to the pantry?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. Let's leave that. We've come into the dining room. Any more doors in the dining room?

Georgia Watson Craven:On the northwest corner, there was a door that - it may still be the same door; I have a feeling of familiarity - that went into a little vestibule, just a tiny thing. And that went out to the ... I think I'm wrong about this. I know there was a vestibule there and maybe there were steps that went down from that, which are the west steps off the terrace now, but I'm not sure. But I know the vestibule is there.

Tom Watson Brown: That makes sense because the steps are still there.

Georgia Watson Craven:That's right. It's where the present steps are, I think.

Tom Watson Brown: That on the northwest?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Did the dining room have windows all the way around?

Georgia Watson Craven:On the west wall ... Is that where you want to go now, back from the vestibule, or do we go from the door?

Tom Watson Brown: When you say vestibule, you are talking about like a hallway or entrance?

Georgia Watson Craven:It was boxed in some way. Or maybe beyond the dining room original walls that went down these steps. If you want to go back toߞ

Tom Watson Brown: But the steps are out in the open?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: But the vestibule led to the steps down there?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: What was in the vestibule?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember anything.

Tom Watson Brown: It was just a way to come into the dining room?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. It wasn't used very much. That's why I'm a little vague about it.

Tom Watson Brown: Then you came into the dining room from that direction?

Georgia Watson Craven:From out there?

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah.

Georgia Watson Craven:All right. You are on the west coming through the vestibule. You've got to turn south and you're on the west wall now. There was a small space there and that's were Grandma had the piece o (' furniture that Walter brought back. It's kind of a serving table. I think it has the marble top. They have it in the present dining room. That's where that was.

Tom Watson Brown: This was the wall that does not have the inlaid plate with Saint somebody on it?

Georgia Watson Craven:The inlaid what?

Tom Watson Brown: Porcelain.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know whether it was. I would have said it was a marble top, but I'm not sure.

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah, a marble top. There are two marble top serving pieces and they match each other. They go together.

Georgia Watson Craven:That's strange. I don't remember but one.

Tom Watson Brown: Except one has a wooden back with upper marble tops on the corners supported by little things and like a headboard of a bed, and right in the middle of that, is a round something that has a plate in it like a dining room plate, and the plate is Saint somebody kneeling with his knightly stuff on, holding a horse, and there is a vision he's having of a cross and a lamb andߞ

Georgia Watson Craven:I think that he was Saint George. Now that's the big one, isn't it?

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah.

Georgia Watson Craven:That's the big sideboard that's on the east wall. And the smaller one doesn't have a wooden back.

Tom Watson Brown: That's right. On the East wall. So they faced each other?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: In between them was the dining room table?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: How many people do you think it could seat?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know whether it could seat a dozen or not. It may be one reason they gave us the old table. That it might not have seated as many as this.

Tom Watson Brown: But about a dozen?

Georgia Watson Craven:I would think so. I don't remember there being many people at one time, but there was always quite a table full.

Tom Watson Brown: What else was in the dining room in the way of furniture?

Georgia Watson Craven:The west wall, which we are not doing yet, but passing the small serving table, that was where the bird-thing was and I'll tell you about that. That would take up the west wall and bring you back to the part of the south wall west of the fireplace. The fireplace was right to the left as you came in from the living room, and in that space was my big sideboard.

Tom Watson Brown: So we've got a lot of sideboard?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: What was next?

Georgia Watson Craven:The fireplace, then the door to the living room.

Tom Watson Brown: Then that takes us around to the east wall.

Georgia Watson Craven:Okay. The east wall. Right after you go in from the living room, I don't think there was space enough there for anything but a chair, if that, because those doors were _____. Then you came to that, it was a swinging door that went into the pantry out there that I thought had a step down, then further on the east wall was your big sideboard.

Tom Watson Brown: That's right. Then we've hit the corner and we're on the north wall.

Georgia Watson Craven:We haven't done the north wall at all. The two corners of the north wall, there were duplicate built-in little china cabinets. Between the two, there were window seats, and those little china cabinets were very nice. They would have some wood like you would have around the top of a living room. It was either scooped out with something or ... there weren't any carvings unless they were little medallions at the corners. But they had glass in the doors, and they came up to about here on me I think, and went up above where the window sill was. So they wereߞ

Tom Watson Brown: It reached almost to the ceiling then?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, a little higher than that fireplace behind you.

Tom Watson Brown: Oh. That's all?

Georgia Watson Craven:That's all. They probably had two or three shelves in them and probably a drawer at the bottom. I'm not sure about that, but I know they weren't big things to open.

Tom Watson Brown: So there was a countertop on top of that, or a top?

Georgia Watson Craven:A top? I don't think there was anything like this. I think it was just straight. But it was ... I can't think of the names to describe these wooden things anymore. It was not just a plain plank. It was something that was decorated that might have been the molding around the room, top or bottom.

Tom Watson Brown: But you could put something on top of them?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yes.

Tom Watson Brown: On these cabinets?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. I don't remember anything big.

Tom Watson Brown: Above that, it was clear all the way up?

Georgia Watson Craven:All the way to the ceilings.

Tom Watson Brown: Where was the window?

Georgia Watson Craven:Between those two things and above the window seats. And that ... I can't remember anything, but it seems to me that it was almost all window.

Tom Watson Brown: Were the windows just big glass windows or was it some of this business with a cross?

Georgia Watson Craven:Big glass windows. I don't know whether there was any decorative stuff at the top or not.

Tom Watson Brown: But windows then that were pretty much like the rest of the house?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. They were clear glass windows.

Tom Watson Brown: Curtains?

Georgia Watson Craven:There were no drapes, but there might have been at different times those glass curtains. And yet somehow I feel that those windows had a good view of the trees and stuff outside.

Tom Watson Brown: This window seat. Was there anything under the window seal?

Georgia Watson Craven:I have a feeling that the top lifted up so you could put stuff in and store it. I'm not sure. I know we had those in our house and it may be I'm getting them mixed up, but I don't think that was wasted space.

Tom Watson Brown: No. It's not logical.

Georgia Watson Craven:There were no big doors that led out. It was the type that came up.

Tom Watson Brown: Was there a cushion on it or was there just the wood?

Georgia Watson Craven:There were maybe two or three long cushions.

Tom Watson Brown: Any particular fabric or decoration that you remember?

Georgia Watson Craven:I somehow remember a nice red, about like your suspenders, but I might be wrong. It was just a heavy wrap-on. Something appropriate and nice, but not a terribly expensive kind of thing. They had an awful lot of things. I mean they had nice things like these china/coffee sets and things, but a lot of the fabrics and things were utility things.

Tom Watson Brown: You said there was a chandelier in this room too?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: That takes us around to the bird-thing I guess. Where was the bird-thing?

Georgia Watson Craven:The bird-thing was between the vestibule, which was northwest, and the south wall. It was really, I would think construction-wise over those steps that came up from the basement. I haven't reallyߞ

Tom Watson Brown: But the porch ran by it?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, the porch stopped at the end of the kitchen. It stopped at the back of the dining room wall. The porch, you're talking about the little west porch?

Tom Watson Brown: Yes.

Georgia Watson Craven:I think we must have opened that because that was taken down, but that was a dead-end porch. The kitchen wall came out and ended at that. The dining room kitchen.

Tom Watson Brown: The dining room wall?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: The living room was like this, and then it comes out for the dining room wall.

Georgia Watson Craven:It was like this.

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah. As you come up the stairs to the living room, back when you come up the stairs on the west side.

Georgia Watson Craven:You mean the outdoors stairs?

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah. Outdoor steps to the living room. If you didn't go in the living room, you could turn left and go up the hallway until you ran into the wall of the dining room.

Georgia Watson Craven:If you come up the west steps, that put you there, didn't it?

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah. Where the living room was.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. Which is the west porch of the present kitchen.

Tom Watson Brown: That's right.

Georgia Watson Craven:Today you can go on through from that porch to the terrace, but in my Grandma's day, that little porch stopped right at the end which was the back wall of theߞ

Tom Watson Brown: dining room.

Georgia Watson Craven:Dining room to the south, end of the south wall was the dining room.

Tom Watson Brown: In that place was where the bird-thing was?

Georgia Watson Craven:The bird-thing was between the vestibule on the northwest and where that was.

Tom Watson Brown: Where the wall that we are talking about that cuts the porch off?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Stopped right in there.

Georgia Watson Craven:It was most of the west wall of the dining room. I'm not sure that that was there when they first built the dining room or whether that entrance to the basement necessitated - well, I shouldn't say that. I'm just mixing up the plans.

Tom Watson Brown: Tell me about the bird-thing.

Georgia Watson Craven:The bird-thing stretched for that space on the west wall. I think it was a concrete floor and I think it was a few inches down from the dining room floor. That dining room floor was not parquet. It was pine by the way. I have a feeling that the glass that surrounded that might have been the kind that you're talking about. I don't know when Grandma started on the bird-thing.

Tom Watson Brown: But this glass like that kept the birds from getting out into the dining room obviously. So, right on acrossߞ

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't think that was on the dining room side. I think it might have been on the outdoor side. There are many pictures of that taken from outside that you could tell about that.

Tom Watson Brown: What did you see from the dining room?

Georgia Watson Craven:You saw an open space. I think it was screened with things that you could pull back. It kept the birds out of the dining room - whatever they had there. I don't think it was glass, but it was a neat space to see the birds flying around. There were lots of little parakeets running around in there. There were never any parrots. The parakeets are the only things that I ever remember.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. No canaries or anything else?

Georgia Watson Craven:You had to go in there to feed them and to clean up, so there was some sort of screen doors.

Tom Watson Brown: I've got the idea of where it was, but there is a wall between it and the dining room.

Georgia Watson Craven:I think that what happened to the wall, it became a screen wall. The outside part was glass.

Tom Watson Brown: I thought we had a sideboard on the west wall?

Georgia Watson Craven:We do. We had what a call a little serving table and that was between the birdhouse - the bird-thing was like this. Next was the little serving table and next, was the vestibule.

Tom Watson Brown: So the bird-thing didn't run the whole length of the wall? It was an indentation, like a closet?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Screens so you could hear the birds and see them zipping around.

Georgia Watson Craven:And get in there to feed them and clean it.

Georgia Watson Craven:Did it go all the way to the ceiling?

Tom Watson Brown: Right. They used to bring pine trees from the woods. They were never painted I don't think. I think they were put in like Christmas trees and the birds would fly around and use those. I don't remember when, but I think when she put those birds in, that was not an original thing I don't think. I think that came later. She loved the birds. Mrs. Lytle was the kind that could engineer that kind of thing. Get it done. Make a dream out of just the light and so on. I'm not sure what she ... She took a part in getting a lot of things done, I would say that.

Tom Watson Brown: That definitely had to be something done later. It wouldn't have been done when they build the dining room. Anything else in the bird-thing? You just had birds in there as you found them and what-not? Parakeets, anything else?

Georgia Watson Craven:I can't remember anything else.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. No canaries or anything?

Georgia Watson Craven:No canaries. There might have been, but the parakeets were the successful ones.

Tom Watson Brown: What did they feed them?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know.

Tom Watson Brown: Birdseed? Corn?

Georgia Watson Craven:Birdseed I think.

Tom Watson Brown: But you'd be eating, you could hear them chirping and see them flying around there?

Georgia Watson Craven:I would have thought they'd have drove Grandpa crazy, but anyway.

Tom Watson Brown: Back to the dining room table. Where did he sit?

Georgia Watson Craven:He sat at the head, which was towards the west. For some reason, I have - well, I'm sure the table was at right angles to the walls, but his back was to the west end.

Tom Watson Brown: So the birds would be over his shoulder?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. He wasn't looking at the birds. Grandma sat at the east because that was closer to the pantry door. The girls from the kitchen, or boys, would be coming in carrying the food, and she would communicate with them without having to roam all around.

Tom Watson Brown: Any other furniture? Did he have a little table? Didn't you say one time that he had aߞ

Georgia Watson Craven:Grandpa did, and that's the one that's right up there. And I would like for that, if there is ever a chanceߞ

Tom Watson Brown: Your Grandma had a table where she was?

Georgia Watson Craven:It's really a very fine table. It's heavy. The leaves in that are this thick, solid wood and probably that's why she bought it - as a functional table for the dining room because they were heavy enough to hold a tray or several food dishes that might be added. It has two tiers. The top can fold up to this wide. I showed it to you and Ann. You can go up thereߞ

Tom Watson Brown: I'm looking at it, right?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. The lines of it are beautiful.

Tom Watson Brown: Any other pieces? Did he have a thing up where he was?

Georgia Watson Craven:Not that I remember. I think they took fruit and nuts and those things off the serving table which was behind him by the whatever thatߞ

Tom Watson Brown: What were these bigger ones that we've talked about? The three sideboards?

Georgia Watson Craven:The smaller one that you have.

Tom Watson Brown: Anything else in the dining room?

Georgia Watson Craven:We've got all the wall space.

Tom Watson Brown: All the way around?

Georgia Watson Craven:All the wall space taken, and the table and the chairs. I don't know whether any of the chairs that were in use were taken away from the table. I don't remember. And it wouldn't have been much place to put them.

Tom Watson Brown: From there we go on out the pantry door into the pantry. The pantry was at the end of the porch that runs down the east side?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: From the pantry, we go on through to the kitchen, right?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. But there is one door and the stairs go down to the basement.

Tom Watson Brown: Where was that door?

Georgia Watson Craven:The door that... It was on the east wall with the pantry and it led into a little room that was used in many ways. I don't even know what it was called. It was the breakfast room at one time, and they had a little pass-through from the kitchen that Mammy used to send pancakes through there. That I remember. Somebody told me it was called Stanley Lee's room, so he might have stayed there sometime. It was a nice little room.

Tom Watson Brown: It's kind of between the pantry and the kitchen?

Georgia Watson Craven:The pantry was sort of an odd shape because of the way the house was. The kitchen was separate from the house, not separate, but not the same building really, and they were perpendicular, at right angles to the house. The south wall of the kitchen was the north wall of that little room. I don't know what Wic had got it down as. I had Wic do that drawing, that photograph.

Tom Watson Brown: You say somewhere down there is steps that went down to the basement?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. I can tell you exactly where they were. If you come out of the dining room and go left on the west wall of that area, where I have a second sideboard - it wasn't used much, but they call that kind of thing country furniture. I just don't remember. I don't know what was in there whether it was ever used or whether it was just there. On the north end of that room, whatever it was, it was the steps that went down to the basement and I'm quite sure there must have been a little landing in the middle that took you down to some little hall thing, to the door to the first part of that office room. You entered the office room from what I would call the east down there. After you got off the stairs, you made a little turn and went in from the east looking towards the west. That room had ... that was below the dining room windows, below the north dining room windows.

Georgia Watson Craven:They always had trouble with moisture down there. I think that was where most of his work was done and it was a larger room. Across that room when you came in, the room was narrow and the next room took up part of that space, as near as I remember. You entered that room through a door that was on the east side and that was the small room, maybe not much bigger than this room, but it had a fireplace in it.

Tom Watson Brown: In the basement?

Georgia Watson Craven:It must have been part of the fireplace that was the old living room and _____ terrace.

Tom Watson Brown: In the basement?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: How about the entrance from the west side?

Georgia Watson Craven:That was where the steps came down and went into the west side of the north room there. Of course, when it rained, that entrance down there could get flooded.

Tom Watson Brown: These other steps you're talking about from the east side, did they go into the south room in the basement, or did they go into the same room, the north room?

Georgia Watson Craven:They angled sort of between the north side and the south side.

Tom Watson Brown: And they've been sort of covered up?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know what they did with those.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. I'll tell you the way it looks now. You can't get in except from the west side. You go down those same steps and you go in the door and there is a room that's like a double room. Pop's got two old desks sitting in it and everything faces towards the west side steps. I haven't seen any trace of an east side entrance, but I haven't looked that hard.

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, you would have to look close.

Tom Watson Brown: Back in the pantry on the east wall, there was a huge refrigerator.

Georgia Watson Craven:Electric?

Tom Watson Brown: No, they didn't have electric refrigerators in those days.

Tom Watson Brown: Icebox?

Georgia Watson Craven:An icebox it was - held a huge hunk of ice.

Tom Watson Brown: So, the iceman came?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yes, the iceman came.

Tom Watson Brown: You say it was huge. How big?

Georgia Watson Craven:It was at least as wide as the plaster part of that, between that door and where the chimney ends over here.

Tom Watson Brown: That looks like about five feet.

Georgia Watson Craven:At least. I think it was more than that.

Tom Watson Brown: Six feet.

Georgia Watson Craven:Six or seven feet. Six feet.

Tom Watson Brown: How tall? My height?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know whether it was quite that tall. It was between five and six feet.

Tom Watson Brown: How deep?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, it had to hold a big hunk of ice. I don't know how deep.

Tom Watson Brown: Probably three feet anyway.

Georgia Watson Craven:Around in there. There may have been a small refrigerator too, but I do remember that big one.

Tom Watson Brown: What all did they put in it? What'd you keep in there?

Georgia Watson Craven:Whatever food was in danger of spoiling.

Tom Watson Brown: Milk, refrigerated type foods?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know where Grandma got our milk, but they never had cows and there wasn't a milk wagon that I know about.

Tom Watson Brown: What was the pantry made out of?

Georgia Watson Craven:You mean the icebox?

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah, the icebox. Wood?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, it looked like it could have been that painted metal, but it looked like oak wood.

Tom Watson Brown: Probably was. The ones I've seen that are all oak with a tin interior.

Georgia Watson Craven:Exactly.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay, what else was in the pantry?

Georgia Watson Craven:On this side, you have my small sideboard. On that side, you had that big refrigerator, and I don't know why, I think there might have been either a little safe - you know, an old fashioned safe that you put kitchen stuff in - or there might have been another small refrigerator. Then, next to that - this was all on the east wall - there was a door into the breakfast room.

Tom Watson Brown: What wall was that on?

Georgia Watson Craven:That was on the east wall.

Tom Watson Brown: Let's finish up the basement. Now we've come to the fireplace. Could you go around the fireplace?

Georgia Watson Craven:No.

Tom Watson Brown: That was the end of the basement?

Georgia Watson Craven:_______ wall.

Tom Watson Brown: That was the end of the basement?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yes, but it was a little west of where you came down the stairs. But there was no wall beyond that. No space as far as I know beyond that. I would say that it was under what is the edge of the terrace now.

Tom Watson Brown: That's fine. But nothing, because now, if you go around past that, there is a room to the right where they've got a deep freeze.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right, and that's the room I'm talking about.

Tom Watson Brown: That's on the west side.

Georgia Watson Craven:It was on the west side, but the fireplace part was on the east under about where the current kitchen - not under the kitchen, but where the kitchen ends and the formal dining room began.

Tom Watson Brown: But I think you can go past that to where the boiler is and all that kind of thing now.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know.

Tom Watson Brown: I'll check on that. Did they have offices down there?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Moisture problems. They wouldn't have had much in the way of furniture or anything.

Georgia Watson Craven:No.

Tom Watson Brown: Just kind of work in there. Okay, that gets us back to the kitchen. The kitchen was big.

Georgia Watson Craven:Huge.

Tom Watson Brown: Windows?

Georgia Watson Craven:The windows. It's hard to describe. When you came in sort of at the southwest corner of the room and the kitchen spread out to the east and north, you came in right at the west wall. If you walk above that, pretty soon, you came to a door that went out onto a little back porch - a very small, little porch. From there around to, not this far, and then you went down some steps, called the kitchen steps to outdoors. Then, inside again, to the edge of that door, still on the west wall, there was a fireplace. I don't remember anything still on that west wall. It could have some built-in cabinets or that kind of thing.

Tom Watson Brown: Sometimes they had stuff hanging.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember anything of that kind. I think I mightߞ

Tom Watson Brown: Was the fireplace for cooking or for heat?

Georgia Watson Craven:It was for heat. I think Mammy sometimes made kitchen soap back there.

Tom Watson Brown: Was it a wood or a coal fireplace?

Georgia Watson Craven:Wood.

Tom Watson Brown: Wood? This would be the only wood fireplace in the place.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. It was not a big fireplace at all and Mammy used to make stuff and whitewash it. Sometimes she would put red clay in it to make it a pretty color. But that was there. I think thatߞ

Tom Watson Brown: Was there a mantle piece?

Georgia Watson Craven:If so, it was only a shelf. I really don't remember it.

Tom Watson Brown: Tell me again about your grandmother's china.

Georgia Watson Craven:I have no idea what kind of china that was.

Tom Watson Brown: You told me it was withߞ

Georgia Watson Craven:Rather delicate andߞ

Tom Watson Brown: With the rosesߞ

Georgia Watson Craven:Thickness. The roses wereߞ

Tom Watson Brown: Small.

Georgia Watson Craven:Very small. I mean, I trying to make a small place on my finger to show you. They were pink. It was a nice pattern.

Tom Watson Brown: Like the tip of you finger?

Georgia Watson Craven:Not as big as that.

Tom Watson Brown: Not as big as that?

Georgia Watson Craven:They were... I mean, a little bunch of roses was almost as small as a postage stamp. I know there was a rim, and I can't remember what was in the middle of the plate. They were pretty in there and nice, but they were real fragile. They were real china of some sort. Every now and then, at some antique place, I've seen something similar.

Tom Watson Brown: You don't know what kind that was in terms of Spoede or Wedgewood or what?

Georgia Watson Craven:I wish I did.

Tom Watson Brown: English probably.

Georgia Watson Craven:Probably. If you've got one piece, you ought to be able to see.

Tom Watson Brown: My mother's was Spoede with a Florentine.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. It might have even been named something back then, butߞ

Tom Watson Brown: The color was blue?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, it had blue and a kind of... I don't want to say a rose pink or pink either, but a nice pink. And it must have had something that was sort of yellow or tan. Now, I've not seen any of Cuzzie's silver in years.

Tom Watson Brown: But she had a silver pattern too?

Georgia Watson Craven:She had a silver pattern too. I don't know how much of that she ever had.

Tom Watson Brown: Now we're in the kitchen still. What else would have been in the kitchen? We 're over at the fireplace.

Georgia Watson Craven:We finished that wall because I put some cupboards up, built-in cupboards on the west wall. I think I'm right that they were there.

Tom Watson Brown: Built-in cupboards?

Georgia Watson Craven:Shelves. You know, cupboards with little doors. That was all that was on the west wall with the fireplace and those little shelves. Then you come to the north wall, and turning the corner of the north wall, there was a window. I don't know what was between the two windows on that when I was little, but in later years, quite late, there had been a huge stove - like a hotel stove - and that was on the east side and they put a smaller stove between the two north windows. There must have been some kitchen work tables, maybe a kitchen work table on that wall.

Tom Watson Brown: Why did they go to a smaller stove?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know whether there fewer people around in those years to need a stove

Tom Watson Brown: This was while Tom Watson was still alive?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah. In later years, the house wasn't as full of people all the time.

Tom Watson Brown: What did they burn in these stoves?

Georgia Watson Craven:Wood mostly.

Tom Watson Brown: Then a work table out in the middle of the room?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: That would take us around after the stove was moved from the east and the north with the smaller stove. What went on the east wall?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't ever remember the big stove being taken out.

Tom Watson Brown: They just left it there and switched and used the other.

Georgia Watson Craven:And that took up. . .There was a window on the east wall, the north side of the stove. Then, when you went past the stove, there was a door that went outside to a little landing that put you in the wellhouse. Avery put this brick little thing around the well.

Tom Watson Brown: But the well was there all the time?

Georgia Watson Craven:The well was there all the time.

Tom Watson Brown: But Uncle Avery, he built that, the brick thing?

Georgia Watson Craven:The well... where you entered the well, was at the kitchen level, and the kitchen was high off the ground. The ground must go down from the terrace to the road. So, the well was entered from the kitchen level and built down, or built up from the ground to that level. It was an open house. It was aߞ

Tom Watson Brown: --wooden, just ordinary wood.

Georgia Watson Craven:The whole thing, about this big, that made a kind of little porch that you could stand on to draw the water, and then, above that, there it was just screen or maybe even open, I'm not sure.

Tom Watson Brown: But it was just... It wasn't like a spring-house where you'd store food?

Georgia Watson Craven:No. It was just a well house.

Tom Watson Brown: So, when all that was taken off, that left you with this hole in the ground and Uncle Avery built this well thing?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Anything else about the kitchen? Where did Tom Watson do this with these watermelons? You said they used to stack up the watermelons.

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah. Well, we really haven't gotten that far yet. In the kitchen, after the well house, there was a small space before you turned to the south wall again. In the south wall, on the extreme east end, was that little window that went from the kitchen to what we call the breakfast room or Stanley's room. Then, along that wall, I know there was an old-fashioned wooden safe that I would have saved if I'd been around and older somewhat. It's the kind of thing that would have been nice in the first house. Just solid wood. I don't remember anything. . . Of course, there were miscellaneous chairs in there, but what they were, or whether they were nice, old country chairs, I just don't know. And that's the kitchen.

Georgia Watson Craven:Then, if you want to go back in the breakfast room that had windows kind of all around it and a concrete floor porch. I can't remember whether that porch, it was on that room pointed east and west. The narrow part was east and west. In other words, it was a little longer than it was wide. The east wall, I'm not sure whether that concrete porch turned the corner to the well house or whether it stopped at its south end looking east, but you got out there, even from the pantry or from the living room door - which is now the kitchen door - and it was a concrete porch that went right along this room this way, and it must have turned and gone to the well house, but I can't remember it going into the well house itself. But that was where they used to put the watermelons, on that concrete floor, and Grandpa would come down in the afternoon and cut one.

Tom Watson Brown: It would be on the porch?

Georgia Watson Craven:On the porch.

Tom Watson Brown: Outside?

Georgia Watson Craven:That porch ended at the north end of Grandma's bathroom.

Tom Watson Brown: Like it does now?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: The banisters on those porches right now are very simple. They're just square, you know, run down. Is that the way they were? Because the ones on the front porches are more ornate and everything.

Georgia Watson Craven:I'm not sure, but I would guess that they were all kind of square.

Tom Watson Brown: I think so because all the ones back there are square and then, around that terrace that you built, the banisters are square.

Georgia Watson Craven:I couldn't remember whether there were banisters there or not.

Tom Watson Brown: As opposed to the front porch, which is all a more ornate kind of thing. That does just about everything except the attic.

Georgia Watson Craven:I loved the attic.

Tom Watson Brown: Tell me about the attic.

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, first of all, I started to get hay fever every time I stepped off the step because it was dry and musty and dusty. You entered those from the upstairs hall of course, and it was mildewed. There wasn't a laid floor all over the whole thing, so you had to walk where the plank had been. Two rooms were floored and, after you got to the ______ of it, you were looking south at that whatever kind of window you call those in that kind of house that's over the balcony and looks out towards the fountain. But I never walked up there because you had to get off the beams and onto the ceiling and so on. But you turned and there was... I think they had some sort of railing to close in the stairwells so you wouldn't fall off.

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah, it's there.

Georgia Watson Craven:There was a room on the south and the chimney went right up into the middle of the room and it was ... in other words that room was part of the two east rooms downstairs, and then behind this railing on the stairway, was the west room. It was the same thing.

Tom Watson Brown: With the chimney coming right through it? That's right.

Georgia Watson Craven:What I loved about those rooms was - this is a childish thing, real small - that the wallpaper for the walls was papered with scraps of former wallpapers. I don't know whether Walter ever changed that or not. We didn't.

Tom Watson Brown: So, it was all kinds of odds and ends?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right, but it was charming in a way. And, of course, a kid likes to get intoߞ

Tom Watson Brown: Oh well, that's great. Because if that's the case, we can get clues from that as to the wallpaper that was used downstairs.

Georgia Watson Craven:Now I couldn't identify all of those papers, but some of them I would know where they were to begin with.

Tom Watson Brown: All the walls were plaster, weren't they?

Georgia Watson Craven:I think so. There were no wooden walls.

Tom Watson Brown: And there certainly were no fiberboard or anything, that kind of stuff?

Georgia Watson Craven:No.

Tom Watson Brown: So, presumably all these would be the old construction where you had wood like this and then you plastered on top of that wood, those thin strips of wood.

Georgia Watson Craven:If you get off into where the roof comes down, it's not very high. I would think you could see the sunroom walls. I've gone in those doors before many times. The last time I was there, Walter even let me or told me to go upstairs for something, and off the west room and the north room, there was a little door your could get in by leaning down.

Tom Watson Brown: Still is.

Georgia Watson Craven:And I went in there and I had asked Walter when we were talking about the French one time... I've got one of the chests - it's in the back room - that Grandpa's papers were in from Washington. I wanted it because it was a memory thing and part of his life. And Walter says, "Oh, no. I don't want that. We've got three of them," or something like that Well, when I went into that little north eave, I saw, I think, two of those. And I wonder, you should have at least one, and I wondered whether you wanted me to send mine. I would kind of like to keep one if you've got enough.

Tom Watson Brown: No, no, you keep it. What kind? Are you talking about these big, old, hump-back chests?

Georgia Watson Craven:No. It was something that the government built. It looks like ... You go in the back room and look at it.

Tom Watson Brown: Like what we call a footlocker?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. It's back here?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right; in the back room back there.

Tom Watson Brown: I'll look because there is still stuff in those places, but there is not much else in those rooms. What was up there then? Were there beds and things up there?

Georgia Watson Craven:There were all kinds of things.

Tom Watson Brown: Odds and ends?

Georgia Watson Craven:It looked like junk. That's why a kid liked it.

Tom Watson Brown: Anything else of note in the attic? People could stay up there?

Georgia Watson Craven:Nobody ever slept there. It was very musty and dusty.

Tom Watson Brown: One of those descriptions talks about the extra bedrooms up there and everything.

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, there could have been.

Tom Watson Brown: I don't know. It'd have to be an emergency, because you 'd have to use a chamber pot and the whole works.

Georgia Watson Craven:Maybe it'd be charming if you spent a fortune, but the way it was, it was not a good place to sleep.

Tom Watson Brown: No, it'd be like if you had a real overflow; you'd put a younger person up there and come on down first thing in the morning, that kind of business.

Georgia Watson Craven:Once, when Walter volunteered to take the stuff in the garage, there was an old fashioned - l didn't mean to keep it. There was a picture of my Aunt Allie - Mary Alice Milligan. She married one of the Westbrooks, which was one of the old Dutch names. She didn't have any children. She was a beautiful woman. When Walter saw this, it was a photograph of maybe the late 1800s kind of thing, not an early painted portrait or anything, Walter wanted to know who it was and I told him and he said something and made me ____________ the frame ultimately. And I said well I don't know whose it is if you want to take it and use the frame. He kept trying to find out who she was and I told him.

Georgia Watson Craven:Anyway, he took it and when I went up there that time and saw the little chest, I saw Aunt Alice's picture still there. So, if you ever want to use that frame, that's were it came from. Nobody will ever know who Aunt Allie is after I'm gone, but that's who that lady is in the picture. It was a portrait of about this big and the frame makes it about this big. I don't know anyplace where you would use it, but you might.

Georgia Watson Craven:And there is a series, maybe he gave me one, that was taken of me and from Augusta. A total series of _________ Cuzzie and a series of me and J.D. Watson _________ I was sitting in front of a fireplace, and above the fireplace, you can see just the bottom part of that etching that is in Grandpa's bedroom. It's a dome cathedral and some of the Dreamsk (?) cousins or Milligan cousins gave it to Mama and Daddy when they were married. But that was ours and it was always hanging over that place. I didn't have a place for it and I was ready for it to go down there. I think it's in Grandpa's bedroom now. It's a nice etching.

Tom Watson Brown: So, I believe this gets us to the bedrooms upstairs.

Georgia Watson Craven:_________ hadn't done downstairs.

Tom Watson Brown: I think we got them all downstairs.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't think we did.

Tom Watson Brown: Upstairs. If you come up the stairs, the first room to your left is to theߞ

Georgia Watson Craven:East.

Tom Watson Brown: And that was his bedroom, right?

Georgia Watson Craven:That was whose bedroom? Nobody's bedroom. That was just a bedroom.

Tom Watson Brown: I'm talking about to the east.

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah, on that side of the house. If you come upstairs, the east is this way, and that was the bedroom. That little back closet there was supposed to be a bathroom, but it never was. I don't know whether it was fitted in as a bathroom, but it was supposed to be. It was just a closet kind of thing. For some reason, the plumbing wasn't right.

Tom Watson Brown: So, this was just a guest bedroom?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. Just an extra bedroom. Now, it might have been Mrs. Lytle's room. I don't know.

Tom Watson Brown: Were the closets put in by you?

Georgia Watson Craven:No. Grandpa put... yes. Now wait a minute, Tom, I have to think about this.

Georgia Watson Craven:Grandpa put the closets in the downstairs between the two front rooms, and these were different on both sides of the upstairs. The upstairsߞ

Tom Watson Brown: Well, the one in this room that I'm talking about, let's stick with the one room. The room I'm talking about on the east side. It's got a cedar closet.

Georgia Watson Craven:Okay. Now Grandpa put that in, but he didn't put in any cedar - unless Walter put it in.

Georgia Watson Craven:I know what the difference in that one was - what Avery and I did. What was Grandpa's study, which was the southeast room, that was his library. It had no closet, and if there was a closet, it was on the outdoor-side of the door, on the very east, outside wall. We put the two bathrooms • between, so that each of those four rooms would have access to a bath and bathroom.

Tom Watson Brown: In this guest bedroom, was there anything in particular there?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, I just don't remember the furniture. It was not distinctive at all.

Tom Watson Brown: So, that gets us still on the east side up to his study and it had those bookcases around the walls with the glass doors.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. Those wonderful bookcases.

Tom Watson Brown: What else? He had that table.

Georgia Watson Craven:It had the table that's in the back room. You recently sent me a picture of that, and I had sent you a picture long ago that included that table, and told you - or maybe it was Walter; it was - to keep it so you would be sure to identify that table. So, that was in the middle, and it was what you called a library table with everything on it. Also in that room, was the desk that Cuzzie wanted that was stolen the drawer out of at Hickory Hill. Then, in that room were some of those bookcases that go around. You've got one in the upstairs hall and there were, I think, at least two of those probably. I don't think they were exactly the same size.

Georgia Watson Craven:There was a wicker chair that my family gave Grandpa for Christmas once. He is sitting there, in one of those pictures at least, sitting in it. It's the one that has a place to put a book in the side. It's probably downstairs from the ________. But that was the desk we gave Grandpa.

Georgia Watson Craven:Then there are pictures with chairs that I don't remember and I don't know where they are. Just one chair that I just can't quite remember. It was different from other chairs, but it was not any distinctive difference that I know. It might have had leather on it some. It was nothing like what we call an easy chair or a wing chair or anything of that kind.

Tom Watson Brown: What'd they have for light?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, they had another one of those things in the ceiling.

Tom Watson Brown: Chandelier?

Georgia Watson Craven:I really don't remember how the lights were in there. I think one of those pictures has a green light, but I think it was acetylene. I don't know how you have that separate from everything else, but it might have been a light from Grandpa's bedroom, I mean from that study, but I remember Hattie cleaned it. I don't remember those lights being turned on downstairs. He may have just liked that kind.

Tom Watson Brown: Anything else in there? The same kind of rug?

Georgia Watson Craven:The table to the laundry room. Most of the walls were taken with the bookcases and Cuzzie's little desk, I think was, at least at one time I know, it was to the left of the fireplace, right in that little niche that the other side was the cedar closet, other side of the wall in the back bathroom. But the table and that, and chairs, and burly book thing - I took it. There are probably other chairs that I don't remember.

Tom Watson Brown: What about the floor?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember the floor. I'm sure there was a rug under there, but what it was, I don't know.

Tom Watson Brown: Across the hall, on which should be the southwest side that was his bedroom?

Georgia Watson Craven:That was his bedroom.

Tom Watson Brown: What all was in there?

Georgia Watson Craven:That bed was in there.

Tom Watson Brown: The bed that's in there now?

Georgia Watson Craven:It was a modern bed. It wasn't an old bed.

Tom Watson Brown: It's the bed that's in there now?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah; at least the last time I saw it.

Tom Watson Brown: Four-postered?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Light wood?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. It was dark because of age. I don't know whether Walter and Ann had it redone or not.

Tom Watson Brown: Let's make sure we're talking about the right bed now because what's in there now is a tall, four poster that you have to get up on something to get into.

Georgia Watson Craven:No. Walter put that there.

Tom Watson Brown: That's what I thought. The one you're talking about, I think, is back in this other bedroom, and it's dark wood. Just a standard type. It's a little bit bigger than a single bed. It's not up to quite a double bed.

Georgia Watson Craven:That was probably what he had.

Georgia Watson Craven:It's got a headboard and a footboard, and was just an ordinary bed.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. Also in that room, was the big marble-top dresser that's downstairs in the downstairs bedroom now. That was Grandpa's. And a small gentleman's dressing table which I have upstairs. Cuzzie got the big marble one, and I took this little one which I love. Somewhere in one of the Washington family had this _______, and I saw one just like it.

Tom Watson Brown: What else?

Georgia Watson Craven:The bed and those two things took up three walls. The bed was in the southwest corner. In the southeast corner, there was a washstand and I don't remember any marble on that. I think Walter has got it now. Some sort of washstand. The last time I was in that room was a long time ago. So that, the bed and the big thing took up everything except the wall that was the door into the north room and I can't remember what was in that little area.

Tom Watson Brown: Now you get into the north bedroom. Also, what about light there? Was there a chandelier?

Georgia Watson Craven:I think there was a chandelier in all of the four rooms upstairs and downstairs, and in the dining room, the old dining room.

Tom Watson Brown: And the same sort of rugs or carpets or whatever?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: The floor up there is painted brown, a dark brown.

Georgia Watson Craven:That's a bad color of stain. Well, those pine things, the way they painted those rooms, it wore off and got scruffy-looking in no time. But if that was all cleaned off, I would think those floors would be brilliant.

Tom Watson Brown: I would too. But he probably had the paint put down when he was there.

Georgia Watson Craven:Probably.

Tom Watson Brown: Whatever it was, paint or stain. Now, you get back in that room, what was in there?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know for sure.

Tom Watson Brown: Another bedroom obviously.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. That's the room that had the furniture that I called a dark red that was like furniture in the downstairs east living room. I don't know how to describe it. It was sort of either late Victorian or something early after that. It had ... the one that was upstairs the last time I saw that - Ann may have changed it and put the bed that was Grandpa's in that room or used it in whichever one of the back rooms you said it was in - but the last I was in that room, it had a dresser that was, I think the chest part was quite low and it could have had sort of a marble, gray marble top, and there could have been a higher chest. I'm not sure whether I remember this right. But I know I do remember the one that had lower drawers, and I think it had a tremendous, big mirror.

Georgia Watson Craven:It's the kind of thing you see in pictures of the early 1900s and they may have bought it just to fill those bedrooms up there. That was a set, a bedroom set, so to speak. It was this big dresser and a bed. I don't know whatever happened to the bed when they all went to iron beds. There probably was a small chest of drawers or dresser or chiffonier as they called it.

Tom Watson Brown: Then you come across into the other bedroom which is on the northeast side and that's just a guest bedroom too. And there is a room off it that was supposed to be the bathroom, but the plumbing didn't work.

Georgia Watson Craven:Now, as you go back to the northwest bedroom, Grandpa had a little bathroom toilet and sink put in there for him and that's, I think it may be that Wic's drawing is going to show that, I don't know. That may be one reason why the plumbing down below in the breakfast room didn't work. They may have disjoined that to make the upstairs one. The only reason I'm bringing it up is, he had a great, big, very nice sink, and Avery and I put it downstairs in Grandma's bedroom and that's where it is. I think we... didn't we take out that toilet back there? I think there was some reason where we had to, and so I put Grandpa's things in Grandma's bathroom. That was a nice bathroom with a marble floor. It's still in there I'm sure.

Georgia Watson Craven:.

Tom Watson Brown: It is. What was his bathroom floor like? Marble?

Georgia Watson Craven:Upstairs? I don't remember. I guess it was just wood and if it had anything on top of it, it was tile, but I don't remember.

Tom Watson Brown: What was in the downstairs bathroom before you moved this down to it?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, it must have been a smaller... The tub was an old tub. It was where the shower tub is now, and the toilet was always in that place. And then, there were those built-in cabinets.

Georgia Watson Craven:I thought once while we were off duty about Cuzzie's china, that Florentine, whatever it is, that there was some in that same construction in what is now the breakfast room, so look in there and see if you don't see some pieces of that. You would like to use it for breakfast or something even if you used what's left.

Tom Watson Brown: What kind of furniture did they have on the screen porch?

Georgia Watson Craven:It wasn't all wicker like it is now, but it had some wicker, and, I think that was the only kind of porch furniture I remember except the big rocking chairs on the front porch. There was a place that you could spend the night out there. We used to sleep out there once in a while in the summer.

Georgia Watson Craven:Stanley Lee had . . . 1 don't know why 1 keep pushing this up to Hickory Hill, but down on Lumpkin Street in what I called the Populas House, Stanley Lee had some sort of thing that you put out in the yard and it was covered with candles. I think you can still buy that kind of thing, and it was off the ground because of the snakes down there I guess. And we used to take turns every now and then, and what did we call it - Noah's Ark. It had little doors that you crawled in to get prone. I think it had a screen that let down or something like that. I don't know why I keel) thinking of that at Hickory Hill at times. It may have been moved up there at some time; but anyway, it was possible to sleep on the screen door in the summer. It was always a source of abuse for us.

Georgia Watson Craven:Now the west porch wasn't because of the afternoon sun and I knew Grandpa had some reason for not screening it. He left it more as an open porch and as Walter used it for that lunch he had at the time of the dedication.

Tom Watson Brown: It looks separate. It looks more likeߞ

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. The other was part of the bedroom ____________. We used to have lemonade out there in the summer and it was a lovely porch and a very much used place. It was cool in the afternoon. I always remember that little chest that I told you Great-grandpa Durham made which is up here. I pointed that out to you and Ann. It's not a chest. It's a little stand with two doors. He ______ and liked to ___________ that carpentry and that was between the west living room and Grandma's bedroom. You came in through the porch door and that little piece was right against that wall. That's where it was when she asked me to always keep it, so I do want it kept in that house.

Tom Watson Brown: It's up here now?

Georgia Watson Craven:It's upstairs. I showed it to you and Ann.

Tom Watson Brown: Is it the little chest and did it go... Just as you came in the door off the screen porch, you'd be looking at it?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: It belongs right down there on the floor, kind of between the two doors.

Georgia Watson Craven:It's not really a chest, it's a little stand. It's about this big, I mean about that high, about this square, and it has a little drawer and then two doors. The knobs that are on it now are brass, but Grandpa Durham, or either Grandma or somebody, had on it all the years at home, those white china knobs. I tried to do it over once and I didn't take anything off. But if that was nicely polished up for somebody with the elbow stuff to do it, it's a sweet, little thing that I think belongs there.

Tom Watson Brown: What was it for?

Georgia Watson Craven:It was just like a little bedroom thing that you could ... I don't think the drawers inside the doors are big enough to hold a chamber pot, but it has, I think, a shelf inside those little drawers and then there's a little drawer at the top. He may have used it in his office or something, I don't know, you know, for medicines or that kind of business. But it's a family piece that needs to be around.

Tom Watson Brown: It was in that little hall? It was not in the bedroom?

Georgia Watson Craven:Exactly, not in the bedroom and not in the front room.

Tom Watson Brown: There is a thing that looks to me like brass that 's down there now, sort of, in that same part. It's about this tall, and it's brass that looks like a vase goes on it or something, and I don't think it belongs there. I don 't think it has anything to do with Tom Watson.

Georgia Watson Craven:I have no remembrance of that at all.

Tom Watson Brown: Can you think of anything more about the house that we need to talk on?

Georgia Watson Craven:On the front porch, they had those big rockers that you can see in the pictures. On the west porch, there wasn't a lot, but you could use in on occasion and I was glad Walter would use, entertain the way he did, that he could use it that way, as well as the screened porch.

Georgia Watson Craven:I remember when we were building those porches. Cuzzie and I were quite small, but we were well aware and had our noses into everything.

Georgia Watson Craven:[TWB cuts tape during story of German girl who wanted to see something of American history. Starts tape again here.]

Georgia Watson Craven:It was a nice house and there are two cousins in Thomson. There were carpenter houses, but they were nice looking, and as far as I know, they're still there. I mean the two are the same size. One i of them is the Henry Price House on Lee Street, and the other one belonged ... his last name was Smith.

Georgia Watson Craven:You remember, I told the story once of the Foundation meeting with some girl who was applying with us, and I said that I'm sure that's Carolyn Smith's granddaughter, and that the grandmother and grandfather _______ window in the ________. Okay, well it was one of their sons, Mr... It's just awful that I can't remember things anymore. Anyway, it was on White Oak Street and I think an exact duplicate of our house and the Henry Price House. It was a nice looking bungalow kind of house.

Tom Watson Brown: Who built it?

Georgia Watson Craven:Some carpenter; I don't remember his name.

Tom Watson Brown: Did Tom Watson have it built or did your father have it built?

Georgia Watson Craven:You see, when I was a baby we lived at Hickory Hill for a year while they were building that house, and that's when he and Mama clashed so. He couldn't stand my yelling and he go so nervous that he let me know and then I got scared of him.

Tom Watson Brown: So, it was built around 1906 or 1907?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: What's left there now?

Georgia Watson Craven:It was built on when I was about 10 or 11.

Tom Watson Brown: But it looks like almost a complete house. It's just small.

Georgia Watson Craven:It was a big room, and Walter and Ann redesigned the interior to make it into a guest cottage, and I think they did very well in terms of the design they worked out.

Tom Watson Brown: What was the room used, for?

Georgia Watson Craven:The room was built to be an additional bedroom. We had two bedrooms in the old house.

Tom Watson Brown: It was a big room with a porch?

Georgia Watson Craven:The dining room was on the west, and they built a sort oi' small passage between the dining room and the entrance to this room. I don't think it had a porch. I don't know whether it had steps you could go up and down to downstairs, but we always used it in connection with the original part of the house, which you could walk through the dining room into that.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know who built the chimney. Walter was crazy about that, and it was nice but not anything I would especially design. The man made a nice design of having the sharp end of the bricks turn. In other words, instead of having it all flush - you must be able to see the outside of that from the house and some of it from the inside - the bricks were turned so that there was a sharp edge that went around a certain area and made kind of a design.

Georgia Watson Craven:What happened to the house?

Georgia Watson Craven:Avery and I had to tear it down. It was one of those houses that had roofs going 55 different ways and was always leaking, and finally, it just had to be totally covered, and the farmers we had there didn't need that kind of a house. It was a terrible expense, so Walter didn't tear that down, we tore it down and used the big room to make into a room for black tenant farmers and then Walter and Ann were veryߞ

Tom Watson Brown: That was this big bedroom?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yes. That big bedroom did have a bathroom. It really never got finished. It was never painted.

Tom Watson Brown: Describe the old house that you tore down. It had two bedrooms?

Georgia Watson Craven:I'm sorry I don't have that ... I may still have some Kodak pictures with that. But if you look at the Henry what's-his-name house and the one on White Oak Street, you'll see exactly what it looked like.

Georgia Watson Craven:The top part of it went like this, and the roof covered the whole front. When you went in, you went into what we called a little reception room. It was a kind of a different little living room, but next to that there was a big room. It was a dining room

Tom Watson Brown: Where do you want to start today?

Georgia Watson Craven:You said you were going to do people, and I think the way you want to do it is best because I have not thought about anyߞ

Tom Watson Brown: Let me see. I've got a bunch of notes here, but let's see what we can read into them. Okay. Why don't we talk about the servants first. That's as handy as any as a beginning place. Who did the cooking?

Georgia Watson Craven:Mammy, and her name was Ella Rochelle. And her husbandߞ

Tom Watson Brown: How old was she?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, she died when I was a little girl. They told me Daddy sent us a telegram to New York. We were visiting up there. Then we heard that she had bought some patent medicine from one of those men that went out down on Railroad Street and had a little platform and put on a show you know, all that kind of thing, and that is what killed her. Now that's all I know about how she died. I must have been about nine years old and it must have been around 1916, 1915, along in there.

Tom Watson Brown: Where did she come from? Had she grown up on the place or anything?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know, but she lived back on what they called the Brickyard Place, which is where Charlie's family moved. We always called it Mammy's House. She had three children that I know. There was Alma, and I think the next one was Nellie, and then there was a boy.

Tom Watson Brown: Did they work around the house too?

Georgia Watson Craven:They worked around the house - especially the boy. Beau, I think that's what we called him. I wish I had that picture book because there are pictures that Mama took of them when they were little children sitting on the front porch of that and Daddy was sitting there with a gun. He'd been hunting.

Tom Watson Brown: She had a husband?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yes. Uncle Rochelle.

Tom Watson Brown: What'd he do?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know. He didn't do anything around the house. He came up there. He must have had a little plot of dirt or something over there. You know where I'm talking about, right there? Does Walter still own that?

Tom Watson Brown: Yes, he and Charlie and Robert live back there now. Robert lives there and Charlie stays there when he comes home. Rochelle would be R-o-c-h-e-l-l-e?

Georgia Watson Craven:That's right.

Tom Watson Brown: Just like the French. Who else worked in the house?

Georgia Watson Craven:There was a maid called Hattie. I don't know whose family she belonged to, but she was a wonderful woman and a good servant.

Tom Watson Brown: She wait tables?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember Hattie waiting tables, but I suspect she did or might have.

Tom Watson Brown: She cleaned up?

Georgia Watson Craven:She was the one that I said that I always remembered her cleaning up the acetylene lamps. She was tall and dignified, and we minded Hattie the way we minded Mammy. I mean they didn't fool around, but she was a very sweet person. Mammy was a sweet person too, and she had a lot of characteristics that made a lovable black. Hattie was a little bit different.

Tom Watson Brown: Who cooked after Mammy died?

Georgia Watson Craven:Various ones. I can't remember a lot of cooks in there, but she was the one who stands out in my childhood. In that book I keep talking about, there was a wonderful picture of her standing at the bottom of the kitchen steps, the old kitchen steps, and that's where that huge sage plant was, and it was of a banana _________. Mammy is standing there in her bare feet and with her bandanna around her head. It was probably hot summertime. She never came in the dining room - only either Hattie or some of the younger ones.

Tom Watson Brown: Who else cleaned up? Anybody else in the house?

Georgia Watson Craven:Later, there was, and I have to think of who they were - who lived there after Mammy. Mama got the Bergamys there. I just can't remember.

Tom Watson Brown: I asked you before, and you mentioned that there was a black man named Paschal that worked there.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. Now I don't remember what he did, but he was around the house a lot I think. Did you ever look that family up?

Tom Watson Brown: I know them. They're very well-to-do, and run this big restaurant there and all.

Georgia Watson Craven:You told me about the restaurant or something, and he had one of thoseߞ

Tom Watson Brown: I know they had mentioned that they are from McDuffie County, so it's got to be the same.

Georgia Watson Craven:I wouldn't be surprised if that's not the same family. There was a picture of the boy that we called Paschal, and I was told that he was Daddy's playmate when he was a child.

Tom Watson Brown: What did he do?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know. I was so little. I remember some of these people by the pictures in that Kodak book that Mama had. I really can't remember Paschal except very vaguely. Now his mother ... Wait a minute, I want to be sure to get this straight. Aunt Zinney, I think, was Paschal's mother, and Aunt Zinney was a little touched they said, but she was a wonderful old lady. And she lived... there was a house down in the bottom of the pasture that was close to the plant. In other words, you passed it as you went down there. It was an old house. I still remember the look through the outdoor rock chimney. Whoever lived down there, I used to like to go down there. I had a very strong feeling of how I felt about that house, and the friendliness, and the finest fireplace and all the rest.

Georgia Watson Craven:Aunt Zinney, she used to get dressed up on Saturday afternoon. Somewhere in her life, she had gotten a black silk dress with a pinafore skirt and she'd go by our house. We'd be sitting on the east porch, and Mama would say "Where you going, Aunt Zinney?" and Aunt Zinney said "Just passing about. Just passing about." She was going downtown just to see what was going on and see people and all the rest of it. She was a little strange, but a very sweet old lady.

Georgia Watson Craven:Now I'm thinking of those two houses. Of course, Grandpa owned what was called the Texas Place, which was beyond where Walter had the fish pond on the _________ over there. There were still farmers there when we had the place. Then I was there once with Walter and with Ann, and I thought how nice Walter had gotten their house. It was either a new house or fixed up so that it was an extremely nice house.

Tom Watson Brown: Other servants? There was Gus that was the driver.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. He was around a lot and drove the carriage. He was an old timer too.

Tom Watson Brown: Who drove the car?

Georgia Watson Craven:The carriages were still used after they ... I know, a white boy drove the car and I think Clarence Brown was one of them. He must be dead now. I don't know who besides Clarence. Then, the first Negro to go up there to Washington with Tom Watson was Cliff in 1921.

Tom Watson Brown: Where'd he come from?

Georgia Watson Craven:Cliff taught Cuzzie to drive that old Buick. I don't know where he came from. He had a nice family and Cliff was in Washington. His wife was awfully nice. That last time I was with Grandpa was in Chevy Chase. I was out there for a summer because I was going to take the college board exam, so I got to know Cliff's wife and his little girl. The wife was a very superior Negress woman. Cliff had dignity himself.

Tom Watson Brown: What happened after?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know what happened to Cliff after that. I don't know whether he was around Thomson. He may have worked for Cuzzie and Walter or something, or he may have been in Washington. I just am not quite sure.

Georgia Watson Craven:Later, there was another family that I should mention. The father was Bill Woodfork -they said f-o-r-k, but I think if was f-o-l-k. He lived on the old outplace in a little house that was right on the road beyond the house that Walter made into his overseer's house. It was a tiny little house. He worked for Daddy. He was our farmer. His wife was an inbred. She had malaria, you know, which is a _______. They had, let me see. . . the oldest child - it's awful that I'm scrambling around for names - Willie Mae. Willie Mae was my little playmate. She was enough older to take care of me and also play at the same time. You know, dolls and outdoors and that sort of thing. The next was a boy, two boys. You must have heard of Horace and Janie. Well, Horace was that second boy, and Janie was the youngest. Dorothy and Willie Mae worked at our house and Grandma took Horace and Janie to Hickory Hill for light chores just to have them someplace. Their mother couldn't take care of them.

Georgia Watson Craven:Horace worked as... you know, brought the coal into the living room stove and did chores in the kitchen for whoever was cooking at the time. And Janie, Cuzzie and I used to, when we were about 14, we used to ... I think Grandma had us do it to Anne Busler How to Set a Table, but she had us go in to help Janie set the table. Janie wore those old-fashioned little caps that had ruffles around them.

Georgia Watson Craven:When I think of it, I think we were mean to Janie, but Janie loved us and we loved her. We used to try to pull her cap down, and Janie'd say "I can't have no cap down over my ears." She didn't want it down here, but she was around and she had been up to see me at Hickory Hill after Walter had it. But I doubt if she's alive now. I don't think she is. I never knew what happened to Horace. Willie Mae finally went to work for Grandma.

Georgia Watson Craven:One morning Horace came in, I guess to make the bedroom fire over at Grandma's and she heard this little whispering voice above her, and it was Horace. He said Nella Mae - they didn't even speak good back then - Horace said "Nella Mae don run away". Then finally poor old Bill was broken up by the loss of this girl, so Grandma gave him the money to go to Augusta to look for the girl. And poor Bill went and was so buffaloed by it because he never left the shed in the railroad station. I don't know whether Willie Mae ever was found or ever came back or not, but she was my playmate. Now there are some other families. I mentioned the family that was at the Florida place. That was Uncle Steve and Aunt Ann.

Tom Watson Brown: In Florida?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah. This was at the Los Olos place. They stayed down there all year and kept the place. When we went down there, Aunt Ann cooked and Uncle Steve was doing the same thing around the place. You know, just digging it up and eating. He used to crack coconuts for Cuzzie and me and getting the milk out and that sort of thing. I ought to know their last names.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know the whole relationship, but there were two little girls that were older than Cuzzie and me, about four or five years older, and they were the ones that played with children and looked after the child that was a baby. Their names were ... one of them was Ann Ozzi, and we said "Anozie." I never could figure out that name, but it was A-n-n and then Ozzi added on. I don't know what the Ozzi was, but O-z-z-i is the closest I could come. I took pictures with them in our childhood. Cuzzie had one and I had ________ what the other name was. They were related in some way to Aunt Ann and Uncle Steve, and I think it was their mother who was Mammy. She was out there for a while, but I think she also worked at Hickory Hill. She was a good cook and a good woman.

Georgia Watson Craven:Uncle Steve and Aunt Ann - Grandpa - and I don't know the details of this in real facts - in some way, he gave them a piece of land in that Los Olos in the Fort Lauderdale area. I don't know whether it was a piece of a place, or whether it was over in the, not the town, but it was Fort Lauderdale. I don't know how he did it, but even his after death and Grandma's death and all the Florida as that place, legal things kept coming back to us about Quit Claims to this plot of land that those two people owned. I don't know exactly what we did. Clint West was doing the business then, not Mr. West, but his son Clint. He finally decided that we'd just sign a Quit Claim and let it go.

Tom Watson Brown: That means that it had never been formally deeded over to them.

Georgia Watson Craven:It must have been some sort of thing like that.

Tom Watson Brown: This was to remedy that. Get a good title.

Georgia Watson Craven:They had been dead a long time by then.

Tom Watson Brown: One thing that we forgot to do yesterday was the printing plant. Tell me about again.

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, I don't remember when it was built, but I still think that the water tower weekend when they had that huge barbecue was when they opened that. There were people from all over. I don't think I'm wrong in saying even hundreds of people. As far as the printing plant was concerned, it was sort of annexed to home for me because I lived over there. I mean I was with Cuzzie at Grandma's and at Cuzzie's most of the time, but it was also a place. Daddy was out there working; Aunt Julia was out there working; and Harold Cliatt, Aunt Julia's son. He would go up there after school because Aunt Julia didn't have anyplace to send him. And Harold and I played together. Ile tried to teach me marbles and we'd do other things.

Georgia Watson Craven:Now, getting away from him and back to the plant itself. But onto the plant, an annex was built and I think it was not brick. I think it was just flat boards and it was called a warehouse where they had bales of paper. There was also a haystack because after the papers were clipped to just shreds of paper, I think they took it out there. They couldn't burn it to get rid of them. Harold and I used to love to go out and play in that - jump in it and do all that.

Georgia Watson Craven:The plant itself ... I can really tell you what it was like by walking in again. The front, you've seen pictures of it, haven't you?

Georgia Watson Craven:I've got a little trunk upstairs that's got, I don't know how much of this is worth anything, but that thing is dedicated to Watson stuff for you to have, and there might be a picture in there.

Georgia Watson Craven:Anyway, the front was just plain brick. I think there were some windows on one side. The from door, when you faced the thing, you were facing something north of you. The front door was on the east side, the other east wall. You walked in there, and to your right, which would be on the east wall of the building, there was a little closed-in place that, I think, businesses had at those times for privacy for the upper people, the executive end of things. I don't know who was in those offices. If Mrs. Lytle was over there, I know she would have had one. Addie may have had one, but it was a little place with some two or three little cubby-holes. That stopped and went out and there were windows along the east wall and the west wall. The first thing I remember in terms of machinery there was some sort of typing places. Aunt Julia was one of the ladies that worked there. They used to work at the plant as well as the men. Then after them, you walked down sort of an aisle with machinery on both sides. At the back of the building, which was the north wall, there were three big presses: one that did the Jeffersonian every week. (I used to watch Harold throw the papers out and all that, fold it and everything.); and one that did some books; I don't know whether the second one was for binding, but there was a third press there that wasn't used all the time.

Tom Watson Brown: There was probably a different press for the magazine because they are all different sizes and different kinds of paper.

Tom Watson Brown: Maybe not the books. It must be the magazine that I'm thinking about.

Tom Watson Brown: No. He took back the copyrights on his books, so I think he was doing the books there too.

Georgia Watson Craven:I think he did do books there, especially the paperback books.

Tom Watson Brown: They are different sizes, and it's a different kind of paper for each of the three. That 's what I think. So I think that'll probably be it. You don't have any idea of the names of the presses or anything like that, do you?

Georgia Watson Craven:No.

Tom Watson Brown: How many people worked in the building?

Georgia Watson Craven:That I don't know either. There were four or five ladies where Aunt Julia was. I remember one of those linotype men. They had three linotype machines. They were on the west wall, southwest wall. I can't name the other kinds of machinery. I didn't know, but I used to like to look at the linotype men when the presses were running. I can remember a couple of times when I was up there for that, and then Aunt Julia and these ladies had small machines or something. I don't know whether that was binding. They were binding things all the time. The only thing I'm clear about is what is what machine was the press and the linotypes. They must have had a lunch hour because I'm sure the people brought lunches.

Tom Watson Brown: How big was the building?

Georgia Watson Craven:It was big.

Tom Watson Brown: I can kind of tell that from the studs that were left. There were from the presses.

Georgia Watson Craven:Part of the building was on that kind of a floor. I don't think the whole building was a concrete floor at all. I think the whole building, a lot of it was wood. There were areas, because of the machinery, that had concrete underneath. Some of the people that managed that machinery were brought from outside of Thomson. Thomson wouldn't have had any linotype machines.

Tom Watson Brown: What did they do?

Georgia Watson Craven:My vision of it is a big, round thing with two wheels on it, and then handles that went back so people could push the thing. It was kind of a push cart, but in that big drum, there was water that passed out - that kettle, because I think of water. At our house, the J.D. Watson house, caught on fire once. They sent me over to Miss Cottage's, which is where Walter had his overseer. They brought that little thing down, and they said it saved our house from burning down. I don't remember whether they had a lone building, outside shed, sort of thing to put that in or not. That was part of the purpose. I'm trying to remember whether there was a water tank there.

Tom Watson Brown: How did they get the ... after the papers were printed, how did they get them out of there? Did they take them down to the train station?

Georgia Watson Craven:I think so.

Tom Watson Brown: The same with the raw paper coming in I guess. They got rolls of paper, and then Tom Watson would send them the copy of what to put in.

Georgia Watson Craven:I think that's what went on in these little rooms, reading of prints, proofreading and that kind of thing.

Tom Watson Brown: Well, there is a lot of business too. You've got to keep track of f where the paper is going and who's responsible.

Georgia Watson Craven:_________ when they did work at the desks in the basement of Hickory Hill which we talked about yesterday.

Tom Watson Brown: But the main plant was built with brick? What was the roof? Tin?

Georgia Watson Craven:That's what I would gather. It looks like a flat roof from the picture, but it must have had a little hit of a slant. I don't know. It was bright out in the cotton fields.

Tom Watson Brown: Was it tall?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, it was on one story.

Tom Watson Brown: Were the ceilings tall?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know. Since the presses were tall, it must have had some height. I just don't remember being conscious ofߞ

Tom Watson Brown: I was thinking about how the people kept cool with only windows and things. Okay, who shall we talk about first? Why don't you talk about your grandmother.

Georgia Watson Craven:Okay. My grandmother had the greatest respect and admiration from all the people that ever knew her. She was a very dignified, but not pretentious, lady. She was short. One thing that I felt to a certain extent she was lacking, and I think that would have taken it out of her, was a sense of humor. I don't much remember much of a sense of humor. I think Uncle Lonis' death nearly killed her, and then, politics make a tense life. There is no doubt about that.

Georgia Watson Craven:She was a perfect lady and a Southern type. Domesticity was her forte in terms of running the house. It was her job in life. She had a little basket like this with keys in it. She would get up early in the morning. I used to like to follow her around. I felt very much at home and relaxed and at ease with both of my grandmothers. I adored her and I was her son's child and all that. In this little basket, she had all these keys, and she used to go around in the morning and unlock certain things, places. I don't remember what exactly. But she made children comfortable and was popular in town.

Georgia Watson Craven:One of them that she didn't deserve, but kind of gave up, was Miss West. But Miss West's sisters were always friends. Miss West became a Christian Scientist, whatever they call these people that sort of lead people. Miss Myra McClain, Mrs. Myra McClain, was faithful until the end. She wrote in a Victorian kind of way, but a very warm tribute to Grandma after she died. What she tried to say was that she was the wife of a prominent man, but that she herself, Grandma was a great person too. That was in the Thomson paper. I never had a copy of it that I could find, but you might get somebody to look in the old McDuffie Progress about the time that Grandma died and find that. Now Miss McClain, she was a very aristocratic lawyer lady. They were one of the nice families in town. Her husband was, I think, the cashier at the Thomson, Bank of Thomson. Miss Myra had two daughters. They were both a little younger than Daddy.

Tom Watson Brown: Let's get on back to the rest.

Georgia Watson Craven:Okay. I was just trying to think of Grandma's friends. There were a lot of old ladies in town that were sweet. Some of them were - in other words, she was adored by the people who knew her. But they stayed at home all the time. They didn't go out.

Tom Watson Brown: So people came to see them, or they occasionally visited?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah; not often. People didn't come often, but some of those people never stopped coming. She did a lot of quiet charity in terms of doing something for this person and that person. Organize is what I'm trying to say - sending something here or giving something there.

Tom Watson Brown: How did she dress?

Georgia Watson Craven:I was going to tell you that. She dressed simply. At home, during the summer, she always wore nice, light cotton dresses. She was very neat. I think of them as always being a skirt and a waist and she almost always, I remember, wore a little apron, a little white apron. My Grandmother Milligan wore those too until the end, I think. She would oversee the kitchen, go in there. Mammy was the cook, but I'm sure Grandma helped make the menu everyday, not formally.

Tom Watson Brown: Could she cook?

Georgia Watson Craven:She could cook. There were times when there was no cook at supper in the summertime and Grandpa had this love of those little ... They're called meatcakes in that Senate cookbook - that she made out of hamburger, and put these things in it that Grandpa liked and he would have those cold for supper in the summertime; and then she made soda biscuits. They were really like a cracker. I don't know how she did it except she must have had a thin dough and extra soda in there per his suggestion. He ate those all the time instead of hot breads. Then they had these cornmeal things - I'm thinking of summertime now. I have a felling that he may have eaten things like a green pepper, raw green pepper, and he loved Worcestershire sauce and put a lot of thatߞ

Tom Watson Brown: We'll come back to him. Let's stay on her.

Georgia Watson Craven:All right. Let's stay with her. One of the things that she made that I wish I could duplicate was chicken pie. It was in a deep casserole dish, not a thin pan. She had some sort of strips of dough about an inch-and-a-half wide that she strung across the baking dish like this - it went down to the bottom and across the top like this, so when you ate it, it was like a moist noodle, but it wasn't any noodle. It was a good biscuit kind of dough. She would put it in the pan and then put in on top too. She didn't put carrots and peas and all that stuff in it. It was just a wonderful sort of... The juice of the chicken with, I think, maybe enough flour came out of these things to make it a little thick, but it was the best thing called chicken pie that I ever ate.

Tom Watson Brown: It was just chicken and this dough?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. There were other things that I know were always cooking. Once in a while, Mammy would make, and I'm sure it was Grandma's suggestion, some banana fritters for dessert. Oh boy, were they good! They had a sweet, homemade syrup that went over them after they were deep-fried of course. I don't think Grandpa ever tasted anything like that.

Tom Watson Brown: The banana fritter - was it just the banana?

Georgia Watson Craven:It was a banana dipped in this fritter dough and dropped in deep fat, and golden brown when it came out. There were some other desserts too I can't think of. I always loved everything that was made with fresh berries that were picked in the woods or on the roadside or that kind of thing. So did Addie. Addie used to buy-- I forget ... anyway, Grandma was a good cook.

Georgia Watson Craven:During the summer, Mammy would leave something ready for her to do, and then she would get it finished and want Janie or somebody in Janie's place, try to get them to serve it.

Tom Watson Brown: Did she go to church on Sunday?

Georgia Watson Craven:Nobody there went to church. I did. I got into the Methodist Sunday School and went faithfully. Grandpa used to tease me about it. He would ask me what the sermon was like and, of course, that made me ________ where. I couldn't say a word. In fact, I was friendly with some of the ________ up on the _________.

Tom Watson Brown: Did she read much?

Georgia Watson Craven:She read, but I don't think she read what we would call heavy stuff - the kind of thing that your school taught you to read. She read novels, not trash novels.

Tom Watson Brown: Magazines?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know. There were magazines. There were two glossy magazines, but I don't remember.

Tom Watson Brown: She didn't play anything musical? She didn't play any music?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, she didn't play anything.

Tom Watson Brown: Did she spend a lot of time just silting down talking with you or Tom Watson or the surviving children?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember Grandma sitting downstairs and visiting with the family at all. Now I do remember a couple of times when she had that downstairs bedroom, and he had the front room, that he would come in and sit by her fire after we were in bed and talk to her in a relaxed, nice way. But in later years, I just don't remember.

Georgia Watson Craven:Grandpa talked at the table. Of course, he didn't have anybody much to join in who was interested in the Hetsburg but Grandpa, but I remember some of his conversations and his people like Janie would get fascinated. Janie dropped a cravat of gravy one time, and her eyes were just still glued on it. She said, "the gravy dropped" but he had to have some outlet of conversation.

Tom Watson Brown: Did she go out in the woods and walk around much. Was she interested in that sort of thing?

Georgia Watson Craven:She was out in the new yard and in the garden. She was interested in the vegetable garden. From Daddy's little letters, I think she got that from Great-grandpa. I don't know whether he was like the other Durhams who had an herb garden for his medicine or not. He might have had.

Tom Watson Brown: Then you didn't know them, I was going to say, did they come visit a lot or anything, but they were both gone, I guess?

Georgia Watson Craven:Oh sure. I never knew any of them.

Tom Watson Brown: I've got the Darwin book. You say it was kind of a topic of conversation or a scandal, sort of?

Georgia Watson Craven:No. but it was generally in the... If anybody knew who Darwin was, it was Jennie. You didn't talk about. . . well, evolution was not talked about until the case in Tennessee, and I was in college then.

Tom Watson Brown: As to her parents, is that story - you know, that Tom Watson started - are we satisfied that that's factual?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, I don't know what you mean by satisfied. My feelings go towards that and towards the Durham side of that. She was so devoted to him, and he was evidently so devoted to her. Then I told you I think I asked Cousin Lucy once, and she said we always felt she was one of us.

Tom Watson Brown: So that would go against the story?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: And to a more rational sort of thing or other. I told you, did I not, that I found in some reminisces or something about the Durhams that there was a mention ofߞ

Georgia Watson Craven:Yes, you mentioned the other children.

Tom Watson Brown: There is a mention of two brothers; each of ' whom produced children and brought them home and raised them as their own without a wife or anything. So, there would have been at least precedent. Like I say, I'm satisfied in my own mind. He spent a lot of time in New York - Tom Watson.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: He was a lawyer, very smart. If the man was to have been found, he would have found him.

Georgia Watson Craven:I know you've always thought that.

Tom Watson Brown: I'm satisfied of that Parker. Lewis is a name that is still rattling around down there, but I don't know that it has anything to do... I guess I ought to go flip through city directories, you know, in the 1860 census and all that kind of thing, to see if I can find something.

Georgia Watson Craven:What do you mean by Lewis?

Tom Watson Brown: Wasn't Lewis the other name?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know.

Tom Watson Brown: It's supposed to be that her name was Lewis and the fathers name was Parker.

Georgia Watson Craven:Oh, I see. I don't know.

Tom Watson Brown: I also haven't... I've got to get his service record. I may have sent off for it once. They couldn't find anything, but I know he was down there. Sometimes, they may not have had the doctor listed. Everything was kind of informal anyway, and they may not have a doctor attached to the regiment, listed with the regiment thing, and the doctors may not have been assigned in that fashion around Savannah, so you could have just had a medical service which was on-call for different units around and about, but I'm satisfied he spend most of the war down there.

Tom Watson Brown: Let's talk about the children then. Louise was the youngest?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. Daddy was the oldest.

Tom Watson Brown: I gather that Louise was sickly to begin with?

Georgia Watson Craven:That I don't know. The pictures of her look kind of that way. I've only seen one or two pictures, and she looked like a frail, little thing.

Tom Watson Brown: Burton, in his biography, describes her - which he would have gotten from Tom Watson - as being sickly. You know, it was a close thing - nip and tuck when she was young, and then she died when she was four. Diphtheria, or do you know?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, as I've always heard, she was out playing and came in and, I don't know how soon she got sick, or whether she even lived overnight, but it was a very sudden death. She was four, Annie was six and Daddy was eight.

Tom Watson Brown: But you don't know? Is Diphtheria registered or do you have anyߞ

Georgia Watson Craven:I never heard what. In fact, I was under the impression that they never knew exactly what this sudden thing was.

Tom Watson Brown: I've also heard that he sealed off the room that was hers.

Georgia Watson Craven:That's right. He didn't want anything touched for a long time.

Tom Watson Brown: Well, it wasn't too long before they left that house and moved on up to Hickory Hill anyway.

Georgia Watson Craven:No. They moved to Hickory Hill about 1904 or 1905 and Louise died when she was four years old.

Tom Watson Brown: That would have been about 1918.

Georgia Watson Craven:Daddy was born in 1880; Annie in 1882 and Louise in about 1884. If she was four years old, she would have died at the end of the 1880s.

Tom Watson Brown: Anything else? She was blond I gathered from the photographs.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: When you said that your grandmother was short, how short?

Georgia Watson Craven:I felt as tall as she did when I was nearly five feet. She was about like I am now I think. She was a very tiny, little lady.

Tom Watson Brown: Slight built, medium build, or heavy build?

Georgia Watson Craven:Not heavy.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. Medium?

Georgia Watson Craven:I would say more slight - between slight and medium, along in there. She wasn't just thin and scrawny.

Tom Watson Brown: Certainly when she was younger she would have been slight?

Georgia Watson Craven:I would think so.

Tom Watson Brown: What was her hair color?

Georgia Watson Craven:Her hair was light gray. It was gray as long as I know it, but she had had light hair and blue eyes, so Louise probably got her coloring from her.

Tom Watson Brown: So, it was probably blond, or close to blond, and blue eyes?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: I think in the pictures I've seen, like her wedding picture, her ears stuck out just a little bit and my grandmother Agnes' ears stuck out a little bit.

Georgia Watson Craven:Daddy's did. Well, all of us had ears like this.

Tom Watson Brown: And Missy's ears stick out a little bit.

Georgia Watson Craven:And mine do too.

Tom Watson Brown: That's a family trait.

Georgia Watson Craven:I used to wear my ears out and started to realize when I was an old lady that they were just sticking out like this.

Tom Watson Brown: Anything else you can think of about Louise or anything?

Georgia Watson Craven:When she dressed up, she wore beautiful clothes. She did wear these very nice.

Tom Watson Brown: We're on Louise now? Louise the baby?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know anything more about Louise really, except that she came in the house.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. Let's do Agnes next then. Tell me.

Georgia Watson Craven:I loved Agnes. She was one of the comfortable ones to me. Missy reminds me of her so much in looks, and I think, her temperament.

Tom Watson Brown: Missy is pretty bossy and very confident.

Georgia Watson Craven:Agnes was not bossy, but she was smart enough to be positive.

Tom Watson Brown: So Missy is too - very positive.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know. I think that's the part of Missy that I think about Addie, but she's always looked a little like her - certain views of Missy. She didn't need anybody else to make up her mind. She was good with children.

Tom Watson Brown: When Missy got married, I was mentioning to my friend Attridge, I said "I wonder if that boy knows what he's gotten in for," and Attridge said, "check his mother out." Well, I listened to her for a while and that was just out of the frying pan and into the fire, except Missy's smarter. Hal's mother is just a "blah, blah, blah " kind of thing with no sense.

Georgia Watson Craven:But I remember Tad said before they were married that she felt that she was a victim of getting oldߞ

Tom Watson Brown: He was enough younger that he couldn't physically. She was good with music?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yes. She played the piano. She would come with Grandpa when he played his violin and she played the piano. She was a very social person. She enjoyed having people around her. She used to have big and lovely parties, but mostly card parties - bridge parties with women, and she and Uncle belonged to a small group. I don't know if they had one or two tables of Duke Bridge that they'd play.

Georgia Watson Craven:Addie was a novel person. I think that's one reason I enjoyed her. I would go down there and spend the night sometimes to go to the movies because I don't know whether Daddy even ever saw a movie. We didn't have a car, and it was too far to walk into town at night and that kind of thing. She and Uncle went to the movies a lot. Cuzzie got see the movies early and used them just like Jean Craven does.

Georgia Watson Craven:She had that horse and buggy, Addie did. A horse and buggy of her own. The old horse was named Dinah and she drove all around town with Dinah, usually with a kid or two in the buggy. Dinah was so tame. When they lived in what was Hospital House, in that long stretch - it's a block really between there and the next house - they always said that the kids used to run under Dinah to see how many times they could run under her before she switched her tail.

Georgia Watson Craven:She was a very folksy person, but in her own way, superior. She was spoiled, but she was very generous and open-hearted and open-minded. I was never uncomfortable around Addie. Most grownups now and then could make you uncomfortable.

Tom Watson Brown: How tall was she?

Georgia Watson Craven:She was taller than Grandma, maybe by a head. I don't know.

Tom Watson Brown: Five-six maybe? Something like that?

Georgia Watson Craven:Maybe not quite that but more than five feet. Somewhere, but not too far from five-six I guess.

Tom Watson Brown: Slight?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: What color hair?

Georgia Watson Craven:Reddish-brown I would say.

Tom Watson Brown: More like Tom Watson?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah, she had that coloring and, to a certain extent, face.

Tom Watson Brown: Fair? Real fair?

Georgia Watson Craven:She could have had freckles if you _________ under certain circumstances.

Tom Watson Brown: Then, sort of like Tad. He's got that.

Georgia Watson Craven:I know Tad's got that look, and it's the Watson look. And his baby looked to me as if it had it already.

Tom Watson Brown: Could be. Well, that's pretty regular. The baby does have... definitely has blue eyes, very blue. What color eyes did she have? Did she have blue or gray?

Georgia Watson Craven:Addie's eyes had a little more green in them, not heavy green, but I guess hazel-eyed is what you call sort of green-brown.

Tom Watson Brown: Where all did she go to school? She went to school in Thomson obviously, then, at one point, they sent her to that Catholic school in Washington because that was the best school around pretty much. She was supposed to have been romantically inclined to somebody and Tom Watson broke it up.

Georgia Watson Craven:I think that was when she was at Agnes Scott.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. So that's later?

Georgia Watson Craven:That was later.

Tom Watson Brown: Did she finish Agnes Scott?

Georgia Watson Craven:No. Nobody did at those times. Cousin Lucy said she went there from the time it opened until I forgot how old she was, but every year, they added another grade on it, so she gave up.

Tom Watson Brown: Who was the guy that she was inclined to marry?

Georgia Watson Craven:I can't remember what his name was. He could have been from Warrenton.

Tom Watson Brown: Pretty good folks or not or what?

Georgia Watson Craven:I think they were pretty good folks. I don't know what the opposition to the marriage was.

Tom Watson Brown: Well generally, they were the age of the daughter. The father is against it and doesn't think the boy is good enough, and is worried about his prospects and the usual gamut of things.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know anything about the character of the boy.

Tom Watson Brown: Tom Watson pretty well broke it up, didn't he?

Georgia Watson Craven:That's the tale that was handed down to me.

Tom Watson Brown: So, then she what? What did she do after that? After Agnes Scott. She just settled in Thomson?

Georgia Watson Craven:She went on a lot of campaign things with Grandpa. You sent me a copy of a postcard or something once. Seems to me I've read letters where she'd write back to Grandma and report on what Papa said or did or what _________ was. I think she... It seems to me, that there were letters from California and New Orleans that I have seen.

Tom Watson Brown: Really? Okay, good. How old was she when she married Oscar Lee?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know.

Tom Watson Brown: She couldn't have been too old.

Georgia Watson Craven:_________ was married in 1905, and Cuzzie and I were born the same year, 1906. If she was born in 1882, which I assume since Daddy was born in 1880, she must have been in her early twenties if I've gotten that about right.

Tom Watson Brown: So, she probably got married around 1904, or something like that.

Georgia Watson Craven:I think Grandpa opposed that because he was an older man - a widower with two sons, and he probably wanted her to marry a younger man. But I never heard of anybody that he himself wanted her to marry, so it wasn't that he was working towards that.

Tom Watson Brown: Also, this guy was a widower who didn't really have much of a job.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know what Uncle was doing then. The first job that I remember was when he was working for his brother in Augusta.

Tom Watson Brown: The wholesale grocery stuff?

Georgia Watson Craven:The wholesale grocery thing. And he traveled.

Tom Watson Brown: It was his brother he worked for? Not his stepfather?

Georgia Watson Craven:It was his brother, Mr. Lee.

Tom Watson Brown: Not the stepfather. It was the brother?

Georgia Watson Craven:It was his brother.

Tom Watson Brown: So, that was the stepbrother.

Georgia Watson Craven:Stepbrother, because he was a Lee and Uncle was a Slater.

Tom Watson Brown: I think you told me that the mother married three or four times and this probably would have been the son of the first marriage, and then I think she has a son by each marriage.

Georgia Watson Craven:I told you that, but that's hearsay with me. I don't mean hearsay, but it is true. Now Miss Adele belongs to... I don't know if she belongs to Slater or one of the others, but I know that the Lee and Augusta was a half brother.

Tom Watson Brown: Yes. That's right. Half-brother, not stepbrother. That makes sense.

Georgia Watson Craven:They were nice people. Addie used to stop there even when we got to the place where we could go up to Augusta once in a while in the car. I remember once stopping there and Miss Lee invited us to come back to lunch and we did, and it was just a nice thing. It was on the part of Augusta where you drove in at that time. It's not the stylish part of Augusta now.

Tom Watson Brown: I've read, a long time ago, it used to in that secretary I hope is still there - it's got to be around somewhere - a letter from her to Tom Watson tellingߞ

Georgia Watson Craven:From who to Tom Watson?

Tom Watson Brown: From Oscar Lee's mother to Tom Watson telling about the family.

Georgia Watson Craven:I see. No, I never knew anything about that.

Tom Watson Brown: The father had been in the Army, and I think he might have been killed in the Army or died shortly thereafter or something. So, I'm not sure who all these . . . exactly the series of the marriages. What do you think? Oscar war bornߞ

Tom Watson Brown: When he was fairly young, they were already living in Thomson?

Georgia Watson Craven:They lived in... You don't know the house. Miss Marian Gross lives there now, across from the Baptist Church, and Dr. Wiley lived there, but that was where they lived. It was a nice house, a two story house. That's a nice little area, right in there.

Tom Watson Brown: Then the mother died?

Georgia Watson Craven:The mother died, and she is buried in that lot as you know where Walter and _____ are.

Tom Watson Brown: The Lee Lot now. So, they were already living in Thomson; she dies; and some years later, he marries Agnes and they move to her house?

Georgia Watson Craven:They move toߞ

Tom Watson Brown: the Hospital House?

Georgia Watson Craven:That's where they lived when I was very little. If they ever lived anywhere before that, I don't know.

Tom Watson Brown: Then after that, they moved into the Tom Watson house. So, what I'm getting at is, he moved from his old home across from the Baptist Church to this house. So that's a cause of insecurity typically. What about Leonard? Leonard just went and disappeared?

Georgia Watson Craven:As far as I know. I've never known exactly why. Leonard was a handsome boy too. He had straighter hair than Stanley, but it was wavy. I don't remember him as having the little boy part in him that came out in Stanley at times. Addie, as far as I know, loved them and did everything in the world for them, but maybe they rejected her in a way. I don't think Stanley did and, as far as I know, I just don't know about Leonard. Leonard wasn't what I think of as insecure, except that he was quiet. I doubt if he talked much. I think he kept all of his thoughts to himself.

Tom Watson Brown: He was further up in age.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: How much older than Stanley was he?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know. I would guess two years or four years, something like that.

Tom Watson Brown: Stanley was about six years older than you all?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember really. Something like that.

Tom Watson Brown: You told me my mother got tuberculosis from Oscar Lee, and Stanley had tuberculosis and went up to a farm in New York and worked all one year and got rid of it.

Georgia Watson Craven:Is that where he met Marian?

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah.

Georgia Watson Craven:I didn't know. I don't remember that.

Tom Watson Brown: Anyway, that cured him - getting up into that kind of air; at least they thought it did back then. He may have had it and it may have been latent and he just died of something else. How come Agnes didn't get tuberculosis?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know.

Tom Watson Brown: It's highly contagious.

Georgia Watson Craven:I know it is.

Tom Watson Brown: I told you that if I have any kind of patch test, I show up positive for tuberculosis, but when they do the x-rays, it's okay, which I'm inclined to think that despite everything they did, I picked up some of the tubercular whatever it is in the womb if nowhere else.

Georgia Watson Craven:Exactly. We used to worry about you for that reason.

Tom Watson Brown: The system overcame it. Although now I must say I snort and cough and things all the time, and it's not a cold. The doctor says it's a non-specific allergy, but it's stupid thing. If I try to go to sleep in a bed lying down, I feel like I'm choking, so I sleep sitting up all the time.

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, you get some of that from the Watsons.

Tom Watson Brown: Now that could be. I was going to sayߞ

Georgia Watson Craven:I have. They gave me, when I got to the hospital every now and then, the last time, the tubercular test. Nothing was showing up, but I've always been susceptible to bronchial, hay fever. Since I got this heart pacer, I remember the doctor saying I've got to go back and he asked me if I had a cough. I said "No, I don't have a cough, but what I do now ... It's not a cough that coughs up anything. It's a dry cough. And I know I've coughed, you just hadn't noticed it." But I get these spells every now and then.

Tom Watson Brown: Oh, I have that.

Georgia Watson Craven:I think it's just something that runs in the family.

Tom Watson Brown: I'm kind of like Alexander Stevens. I've got to sleep sitting at a 45 degree angle.

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, I've had to do that. I had a hiatal hernia. You know what that is - the stomach is upside down or something. I had to sleep that way for years.

Tom Watson Brown: There's a valve in the throat that closes the esophagus or something.

Georgia Watson Craven:It's upside down and there's a small part where the big part should be or something, and I finally had to have surgery. They don't like to do surgery for that, but they did and they found that the diaphragm was striped and that was from I know when I got that cold. I got sick the night before I was going to Hilton Head when Avery was still alive. The doctor thought I needed the break and go __________ invitations, so I know all about that.

Tom Watson Brown: When I'm checking into a hotel, they obviously think I'm crazy. They say what kind of bed do you want, and I say I don 't sleep in a bed. Does it have an armchair? They can 't handle it. Most places do not have an armchair. A lot do. I get the armchair up against the wall, put a pillow behind my head and use a blanket to wrap up and sleep six or eight hours, so I get enough sleep, but it has taken a while to develop this. It all happened about the time I turned sixty. Everything just went to hell when I turned sixty.

Georgia Watson Craven:Maybe that's the time mine got bad too.

Tom Watson Brown: Agnes died of cancer?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Cancer of the stomach? Uterus?

Georgia Watson Craven:Uterus I think. I'm not sure Tom, but I somehow got that in my head. They wouldn't have told us then.

Tom Watson Brown: She was ... I've got the dates and everything, so I've got that. Were there any miscarriages? Simply just the one child? Just my mother?

Georgia Watson Craven:As far as I know.

Tom Watson Brown: Were they close - my mother and her mother?

Georgia Watson Craven:I think so. As far as I know I think they were. Of course she was closer to Grandpa because she was Grandpa's little girl. She was her Daddy's girl. She could work Grandpa, and Cuzzie learned to work Grandpa.

Tom Watson Brown: Same thing.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: She was the only one who could.

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah.

Tom Watson Brown: I mean of all the people. What about reading and stuff?

Georgia Watson Craven:Addie?

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah.

Georgia Watson Craven:She was a reader, but she was a reader of the current, good novels. She kept up with things. She knew what was going on around her. She was a person of her time, let's put it that way.

Georgia Watson Craven:They were in the movies when they came. I remember when they first came to Thomson. First one we ever went to was with her. She took us to Augusta, Cuzzie and me, and maybe some other little girl, to see a play once. It was my first theater experience. It was Buster Brown, if you know who Buster Brown was. She was interested in good movies. I remember one of the ones that she featured, and I think that's where she took us before. It was Birth of a Nation. She was a good Confederate.

Georgia Watson Craven:She dressed nicely. She always had lovely clothes. She had a lot of clothes made by ladies in town who needed the work. You know, cotton clothes. We all had cotton clothes for the hot heat.

Tom Watson Brown: What did they do for hairdos and everything?

Georgia Watson Craven:As far as I know they were just done at home.

Tom Watson Brown: Whatever was to be done was done at home?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Anything else that you can think of that I ought to put down for her?

Georgia Watson Craven:Addie? Well, I told you she liked the parties and they had this Duke that bedded rich girls. She was around town in the buggy, and I think she went to church with Uncle a lot, to the Baptist Church. And he was very active in that church and Cuzzie did too as she went to Sunday School and all that. She was very talented over there. Addie was a social, friendly person. I think she had the reputation of being spoiled. Miss Mae Gibson told me once the story about Daddy always being ashamed of Addie if she had what I would call a monster temper on the street with some other kid or something like that. I'm quite sure that Miss Mae told me that Addie broke a little umbrella over a little boy's head once and Daddy was ashamed to claim her, but it was that kind of relationship. She had the strength that should have been divided…the strength _______.

Tom Watson Brown: That often is the case though. Particularly, it sort of criss-crosses back and forth in the parents. If they have a strong, father, more often than not, the son is - particularly the first son - and now people only have two kids, it's kind of weak and the daughter is often strong in contrast to her mother and sort of relates to the father or something.

Georgia Watson Craven:To you repeat you and Miss Mae makes me want to back to Grandma just a minute. I said that I didn't think that Grandma had much of a sense of humor. I remember now she may have had it and just smiled, but she wasn't a person that was given to that. But Miss Mae who tended to Daddy and Annie and lived in the house, she said one time during one of these political campaigns that Grandma had two men to put to bed at night and them, being enemies, it was questionable whether to ask these two men to sleep in the same room, much less sleep in the same bed. Miss Mae said something to Grandma about it and Grandma said "Politics makes strange bedfellows. Put them in" and they all got by. So she was onto things. I don't want to give the impression that she didn't know what was going on.

Georgia Watson Craven:Addie had something of Grandpa's braille (?) and Daddy had something of Grandma's quite reserve.

Tom Watson Brown: Let's talk about him now. Walk us through the children. He was born in 1880. Right?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: How tall was he?

Georgia Watson Craven:He wasn't tall either.

Tom Watson Brown: Five-six, five-eight?

Georgia Watson Craven:I would say five-six.

Tom Watson Brown: Now that's shorter than his father. Wasn't his father taller than that?

Georgia Watson Craven:I'm not sure. Then put five-eight. He was average size for that period. I didn't think of him as being short.

Tom Watson Brown: If you saw him standing with Tom Watson, who was taller?

Georgia Watson Craven:We always said Grandpa was taller, but the pictures that you see of him to a certain extent lead you to think that he was a little short. Now maybe he was just short in terms of modern comparisons.

Tom Watson Brown: But your father was shorter than Tom Watson?

Georgia Watson Craven:That I don't know really. I would think they were about the same size, but then Grandpa may have been taller.

Tom Watson Brown: What kind of builds?

Georgia Watson Craven:Slim build. He was never anything but slim. Not skinny, but not over-full in any way. He had a nice figure.

Tom Watson Brown: What hair color?

Georgia Watson Craven:Golden red. It wasn't red, but it had flecks of that kind of thing. It was light hair which probably was from Grandma to begin with. It was golden, like mine was when I was a child.

Tom Watson Brown: Eyes?

Georgia Watson Craven:His eyes were blue-gray. Addie had Grandma's color and Daddy had Grandma's color.

Tom Watson Brown: Athletic?

Georgia Watson Craven:He played baseball on a Thomson team and got a hernia, and that's what he died with.

Tom Watson Brown: From playing baseball?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, the hernia.

Tom Watson Brown: He got the hernia playing baseball?

Georgia Watson Craven:That's what I was always told. I think that was the only organized sport they had ______

Tom Watson Brown: It took a long time. But hadn't they operated on him for the hernia and he, when he was down in Florida, it came loose or something?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't think he was. The part was, he died, as I understood it, from trying to save him with an operation. He had an attack - I've pieced this together because I've known more about hernias over on the Jupiter Island place, and whenever the doctor got there, it was too late. They couldn't move him to a hospital or anything, and tried to perform the operation there and that he died, I would say, under the operation.

Tom Watson Brown: I kind of _______ hernia anyway. Was it something where the intestine bulges out?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. Now I've had a hernia down here and had to have it operated on.

Tom Watson Brown: What it is?

Georgia Watson Craven:It's an extended _______. I don't know whether it's muscle... I don't know whether it's another kind of ________. It comes from an overstrain and then it evidently can't shrink itself. I guess you can get a hernia in almost part of the body.

Tom Watson Brown: The intestines is kind of down and got pinched or something?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. And I have a feeling that this is a little swollen now. In other words, I hope it keeps holding. I'm not going back and do anything about it, but my doctor finally sent me to a man who was a specialist in this, and that doctor says that I ought to do it and my own family doctor advocated it. I had it done over here. I think it was the last operation done on it anyway. I had had it done since I've moved here. It very often comes in the groin. That's what Daddy's was I always understood, and he had stretched himself in some way playing baseball. That may just be a myth on why it did that.

Tom Watson Brown: What education?

Georgia Watson Craven:The Georgia Military College in Milledgeville. He must have graduated there because he went to the University of Georgia but didn't graduate there. I never knew whether he didn't graduate because he drank too much or whether he was without his Grandpa someplace. I just don't know. Then he studied law in Thomson. I think he was licensed to be a lawyer. There is a picture somewhere of Daddy in a law office with whoever this man was. I don't know why I don't know the name of that.

Tom Watson Brown: Well, he would have what is called read law in this man 's office.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. That was when you read law.

Tom Watson Brown: It was somebody in Thomson?

Georgia Watson Craven:The picture was in Thomson, so it must have been a Thomson lawyer that he read with.

Tom Watson Brown: At one point he was in the legislature?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah, then he was in the legislature, but I've never had any material on that or any of these things. It's just been what was handed down by mouth.

Tom Watson Brown: If I remember the story, Tom Watson put him in the legislature and then decided he was getting into mischief or stuff up there, and the legislature wasn't in much shape anyway. Remember Tom Watson quit when he was there. He only served one term. So he brought him back to Thomson.

Tom Watson Brown: Another legend was about Tom Watson going downtown to Thomson and smashing up the people that ran the bar.

Georgia Watson Craven:Oh. I didn't know about that.

Tom Watson Brown: Because they had been giving drinks to your father. I don 't know what age this was, but that 's a recurring legend about Tom Watson going down there and just cleaning the place out and threatening to kill them if they didn't close it down all because of his son hanging out there. I have no reason to doubt that.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't either.

Tom Watson Brown: Some variation anyway.

Georgia Watson Craven:People say you're a victim of it.

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah.

Georgia Watson Craven:I mean, a victim of ... He was an alcoholic, different from what you see today, but there were long periods when I was a little girl that he didn't touch it. Then he'd drink. He drank beer a lot when I was a little girl - all the time, but then when he would return to public life he just quitߞ

Tom Watson Brown: If he'd start drinking, he wouldn't stop. He'd go to sleep and then start drinking the next day.

Georgia Watson Craven:There were time periods in there when went like that sort of thing.

Tom Watson Brown: So, effectively you're not functioning in these bad periods.

Georgia Watson Craven:I think he just never got into any _________. The one break I think was that he loved the farm, being out on the farm. He enjoyed overseeing that and Addie and _______. He loved the vegetable garden and that's why these letters to his grandfather in Washington, to his father in Washington, saying that Grandpa Durham's garden was this and so-and-so was up and old Watson didn't care whether the peas were up or what. But it showed an interested Daddy - that he was happy being near the earth and doing that kind of thing. We had beautiful vegetable gardens over at our place. He liked to fish and hunt. He was that kind of a country boy and I think that was his escape from the tensions of a more intellectual and active.

Tom Watson Brown: Did he read a lot?

Georgia Watson Craven:He had a very good mind. He read. You know he had a little newspaper of his own at one time. It was called the "McDuffie Progress."

Tom Watson Brown: It was the first "McDuffie Progress"?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, it was... I used to have a paper and I remember. I have heard, and I don't know whether it was through my mother or somebody else, that he was making such a success of it that it was a promise or something or other, and that Grandpa got jealous and stopped the paper that was published over at the plant, Progressive Farmer, or is there a national one called that? I think it was called the Progressive Farmer. It was just a small, you know, maybe two sheets. I don't know.

Tom Watson Brown: It dealt mostly with farming?

Georgia Watson Craven:I think it addressed that audience. How much political stuff was in it, I don't know.

Tom Watson Brown: I suppose he mailed it out for circulation or something like that?

Georgia Watson Craven:I'm sure. Right. It would be a lot of the circulation he would get from the Jeffersonian circulation.

Tom Watson Brown: Now, he went to New York and was working on the magazine up there in the early 1900s when he must have been twenty-something, or maybe earlier.

Georgia Watson Craven:He was born in 1880, so it would have been after 1900 when he was there.

Tom Watson Brown: There was a Watson's Magazine that he and his father did and everything, and it was obviously traveling off Tom Watson's name, and they were in with a couple of people, and they had a big falling out, so Tom Watson left and set up "Watson's Magazine" somewhere else - Atlanta or someplace.

Georgia Watson Craven:But now wasn't that Watson's Magazine in with some of the ________. I don't know this, some one of the date publishers.

Tom Watson Brown: The publishing part of it might have even stayed in New York, but I know he broke up with his partners. That was the first Watson's Magazine. He had the People's Party Newspaper in Atlanta and some other stuff around. Anyway, your father went to New York somewhere in there right? You don't know exactly when, but in the early 1900s.

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah.

Tom Watson Brown: He apparently stayed there and Tom Watson would go back and forth, but he stayed there and tended to the business of the magazine and that's where he met your mother somehow.

Georgia Watson Craven:She had taken nursing. The only things that were respectable in English Episcopal tradition were nursing and teaching. She had to stop her nursing because she had diphtheria, but she got back in and she had her friend, the doctor from Kingston, who was a famous eye, ear, nose and throat man, and he helped her get into a place that was known for treating alcoholics. That's where she met Daddy. She was a supervisor of something or other in this place.

Tom Watson Brown: You suppose he went there himself, or did Tom Watson put him there or what?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know.

Tom Watson Brown: In New York City or Long Island?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know whether that place was in New York City or Long Island, but she was in New York City I think. She'd been at a post-graduate hospital with this doctor where he was a doctor. They were an old Kingston family. His sister visited him at Oxford a couple of times.

Tom Watson Brown: Were they about the same age, or was there an age difference?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, there was an age difference. My mother was born in 1876 and Daddy was born in 1880, so it was something like four years difference.

Tom Watson Brown: They got married in?

Georgia Watson Craven:In 1905.

Tom Watson Brown: And came back down to Thomson?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. They went to Thomson on that wedding trip and to Wilmington Beach or whatever. That beach is in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Tom Watson Brown: Did Tom Watson and his wife and family go to the wedding, or did they just get married and is come to Thomson?

Georgia Watson Craven:Grandpa and Grandma did not go to the wedding. I'm sure Grandma wasn't there, or she would have said that, but she told me that they couldn't come to the wedding because Grandpa was sick and he may have just been mad at the marriage. That I don't know, but she was married at home - but not the Episcopal Minister and she never got over that. At that time, the Episcopal church was very rigid about people who were divorced not being married again as long as their former partner was alive and this was the case with Daddy, so they had to be married by the Dutch farm minister.

Tom Watson Brown: Now who had he been married to before?

Georgia Watson Craven:Some woman in Thomson. I don't know why these names escape me so now - Miss Burnley, Miss Mattie Bell Burley. And there is a child's grave in the Watson's lot that has no marker. It's under the magnolia tree looking east. I asked somebody once who it was, and I would ask Mama thinking she must have known, then I asked somebody else about it and they said that it was a child of Mattie Bell's and Daddy's. I finally asked an old friend of mine who was old enough, but young enough, to have some information about this and she said that ifߞ

Tom Watson Brown: We've been over this before, but lets get it on this tape where we've got it sure. Tell me about his build and height and everything as you remember it.

Georgia Watson Craven:I wish I knew his height. I don't think he was tall as we made him out to be.

Tom Watson Brown: He was not six foot.

Georgia Watson Craven:Oh no, nothing like six foot.

Tom Watson Brown: So, about five-nine.

Georgia Watson Craven:Put it at that.

Tom Watson Brown: Something like that?

Georgia Watson Craven:That's still pretty tall, but...

Tom Watson Brown: But he wasn't very heavy?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, he wasn't heavy ever when I knew him.

Tom Watson Brown: That would be, even then that would be the heaviest he weighed, would be toward the end of his life.

Georgia Watson Craven:And he wasn't heavy then.

Georgia Watson Craven:He wasn't heavy then.

Tom Watson Brown: What was his hair color?

Georgia Watson Craven:His hair color, it didn't have a reddish tint ever when I can remember. It was some half gray as long as I remember, but it was towards just a dark color, I'm gonna say brown, but I don't mean a heavy brown. It was probably the color it used to be after he got older and turned dark, just like mine is. My hair was very light.

Tom Watson Brown: Mine too. I was that tow headed and then darker and now mostly all gray.

Georgia Watson Craven:Mine too.

Tom Watson Brown: What color eyes?

Georgia Watson Craven:I would say gray with maybe flecks of brown or something. He had very strong eyes of course. I mean, his eyes were filled with power. They were not solid gray like Grandma's as far as I remember.

Tom Watson Brown: He could really stare you down?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: This girl, she 's probably deceased now, but she 'd been a girl and went up to Washington with him. Told me as a secretary or clerk or something. Said she used to wash his eyes with witch hazel.

Georgia Watson Craven:I suspect she did.

Tom Watson Brown: Would that make sense?

Georgia Watson Craven:Did I give you a bottle to take home that had been on his dresser?

Tom Watson Brown: I don't think so.

Georgia Watson Craven:I thought when you and Ann were here you took one.

Tom Watson Brown: Could have been.

Georgia Watson Craven:He had two bottles about this big around, clear glass and about this tall and the stopper was that cut diamond glass. Witch hazel was in it and I wouldn't be surprised exactly what he used it for.

Tom Watson Brown: You say he was a very elegant dresser?

Georgia Watson Craven:Absolutely. He used to have a little Jewish man come from Augusta to measure and bring up fabrics. He wore, when he was in Washington that other time earlier, beautiful silk pongee suits in the summertime. I don't what he ever did to keep him pressed.

Tom Watson Brown: What do you call them, silk?

Georgia Watson Craven:Silk pongee.

Tom Watson Brown: P-o-nߞ

Georgia Watson Craven:--G-e-e. Just pongee, but the pongee is silk, and they were tailored to him. Then his winter clothes were tailored to him. I can't remember what else he wore in the summer. I think they all wore sort of lightweight gauze. I don't know why I want to call it Panama. But it was a tropical or semi-tropical thing that men wore in that kind of world.

Tom Watson Brown: He wore a swallow-tailed coat all the time.

Georgia Watson Craven:Most of the time, yes. He had some sack coats up there and they called them cut-off coats and lie wore those more later. But when he was very young there are lots of pictures of him and I remember him in swallowtails.

Tom Watson Brown: He was not balding. It doesn't look like it in the pictures.

Georgia Watson Craven:No. I don't even remember a bald spot coming. He had very heavy hair.

Tom Watson Brown: Athletic in terms of well coordinated?

Georgia Watson Craven:He was athletic in terms of horseback riding. He was a beautiful rider. He was against hunting, but not fishing I guess, but he did have a little rifle that he shot jaybirds and English Sparrows with because they were such a nuisance to the other birds. Now he was what I would call acceptable now, naturalist. He didn't go out and slaughter things just to slaughter. He protected the native things and knew them well.

Tom Watson Brown: Did he have a shotgun? Any kind of heavy gun?

Georgia Watson Craven:Shotgun, how would I know Daddy had a shotgun? Grandpa carried the loaded rifle for this kind of shooting.

Tom Watson Brown: Like a. 22 or something?

Georgia Watson Craven:I'm sure it wasn't a shotgun.

Tom Watson Brown: Like a. 22or something like that?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right, a little .22 rifle.

Tom Watson Brown: How was his diet? Did he have trouble with his stomach?

Georgia Watson Craven:Whenever Eddie had been warned about his stomach and had had trouble. His stomach was like mine, it was a nervous stomach. I think that all hiss emotions may have gone to his stomach, instead of the kids and that kind of thing. He was very sensible about his diet. He loved a nice rare roast beef. They had that a lot. He didn't eat fried chicken and that kind of thing, but I think he ate what would be, they used to call it, not broiled, but smothered chicken. No, not smothered, it was and oven cooked chicken like baked chicken, only it was a smaller chicken and more tender. It was anther name for it.

Tom Watson Brown: And I know he like squab.

Georgia Watson Craven:He liked things that were cooked that way and with butter and so on, browned stuff, rather than stuff like the chicken pie. I don't remember whether he ate chicken pie or not, he may have.

Tom Watson Brown: What kind of vegetables did he like?

Georgia Watson Craven:I think he probably ate most of the vegetables. I don't know which ones he liked and which ones he didn't.

Tom Watson Brown: You told me he used to have crates of celery sent up.

Georgia Watson Craven:He did. He loved celery. He loved celery and he ate, as I told you the other day, he had pecans and English walnuts in a bowl and they were brought to his place for dessert. And I don't know whether he ate fresh grapes and things, he probably did. He ate watermelons in the summer. Along with those in the winter, they used to sell dried grapes then, not in packages and off the stems. But they came in bunches that had been flattened by being packed. Raisins is what I'm trying to say. He ate raisins and pecans, all those nuts together. Now and then he would just have a spell of having a wine. I don't know if it was a port or what, something like that after dinner at the table by himself. Nobody else as far as I know was ever offered any unless maybe it was a guest. Ladies didn't drink it. He was the only one around the table.

Tom Watson Brown: Any other kind of wine?

Georgia Watson Craven:I think there must have been at times. I remember Miss Lizette used to have a lot of Chianti I guess it was.

Tom Watson Brown: White, Italian like.

Georgia Watson Craven:Italian in those little Italian bottles with the spout outside. But it wasn't a steady thing every day year in, year out. He liked, there used to be on that big sideboard that you've got down there, very often a cold ham, and if it was turkey time, a cold turkey. I always think of some sort of baked hunk of meat or something of that sort being on that place. I don't know whether the room would be there or if they had that in the summer, it would have to go on ice. But in the wintertime the room was cold enough to ________ they put a fire in there for every meal. He liked nice roast meat. He ate all those. As I say we had roast beef a lot which was good. I don't know where he got good enough roast to have rare in Thomson but he did.

Tom Watson Brown: How about the bread?

Georgia Watson Craven:Most of the time he ate those little soda biscuits that Grandma made which were just crackers. They were paper thin and if you broke one they went all to pieces. They have enough soda in them to look brown. I don't know whether all that soda was good for his condition, but they thought then it was.

Tom Watson Brown: Did he like any other kind?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember him eating hot biscuits and things like that so much. But I'm not sure about that?

Tom Watson Brown: He like pie?

Georgia Watson Craven:No.

Tom Watson Brown: Cake?

Georgia Watson Craven:He didn't eat cakes and pies and that kind of thing.

Tom Watson Brown: Ice cream?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember him ever eating ice cream. He could have.

Tom Watson Brown: Soup? Did he like soup?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yes, he had that vegetable soup that Grandma had I think 365 days a year. It was Campbell's Tomato Soup and I didn't like it because Mammy always put sage in it.

Tom Watson Brown: Not vegetable soup, it was tomato?

Georgia Watson Craven:I think he had the vegetable soup, too. I don't remember any other soup much. We used to have it and Grandma may have had what they call English pea soup, when the English peas were young. They would take them out of the shell, they wouldn't be quite developed and put them into ... you know milk soup. Ordinary rice and asparagus soup. That was another thing that we had in the spring at my house and I think probably at Grandma's too. When the asparagus was young and tender and the peas were young and tender, you had a milk soup which was really awfully good if it was made right. She used to often have baked fish, big baked fish. I don't know where she got them or how. I think he liked those baked fish. This of course he had in Florida a lot.

Tom Watson Brown: What about citrus fruits? Grapefruits, oranges, lemons?

Georgia Watson Craven:He must have eaten those and all kinds with the Florida taste and so on. I don't remember people having those for breakfast anymore. I don't remember anymore that they had them. When they ate them I don't know, but I know there were oranges around there.

Tom Watson Brown: Ice cream?

Georgia Watson Craven:That I can't remember. Ice cream was a great thing and some Sunday dinner in the summer. You know something I saw that I wanted to buy for you and send to Hickory Hill and then I thought I don't know whether they'll ever find anybody, and it was $150.00, which looks good to me right now with all this ahead of me. But it was an old-fashioned ice cream churn that you had to do this with and I thought where he can find somebody that'll sit on the back porch and do it. But what would be more typical of Hickory hill than to have one of those. Do you think you would ever use it?

Tom Watson Brown: I'd have to get the kids into it.

Georgia Watson Craven:That's right. That's what I was afraid about. And Charlie doesn't have any children to send over there to do it.

Tom Watson Brown: Tell me the daily routine at Hickory Hills best you remember it. When did they have breakfast?

Georgia Watson Craven:Grandpa's time schedule of when these things, I don't mean day by day, but over the years, I can remember two different kinds. Maybe if he was writing intensely he would have a thermos of black coffee sent up at night and get up early and write and then come downstairs late. I don't whether he had breakfast then say if had been up at five ______ whether he came and joined the table or not. Grandma always had a breakfast table with people there and food that was appropriate. There was a fire in the fireplace.

Tom Watson Brown: What time?

Georgia Watson Craven:A reasonable time. Say 8:00. It wasn't a 9:00 or 10:00 thing with stuff out on the sideboard. It was hot grits and ham or bacon. I don't ever remember any other kind of...

Tom Watson Brown: Did he eat that?

Georgia Watson Craven:I'm not sure. There were times when he came downstairs to the whole breakfast. That would be a year or a month whatever. And then other times when he wanted to stay upstairs. Breakfast was a good meal. Eggs was another thing they had.

Tom Watson Brown: What kind, scrambled?

Georgia Watson Craven:I would think they were scrambled. They wouldn't be hard fried.

Tom Watson Brown: Toast?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember bread toast. They could have toasted biscuits or either fresh biscuits. I do remember pancakes and I don't ever remember waffles coming out of the waffle iron.

Tom Watson Brown: Cereal?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember him eating any of that. I think the grits would be there instead of the cereal.

Tom Watson Brown: You remember him eating any of that, particularly at breakfast?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, I don't remember it.

Tom Watson Brown: But he did drink coffee.

Georgia Watson Craven:He drank very strong coffee.

Tom Watson Brown: Juice?

Georgia Watson Craven:Juice wasn't in then.

Tom Watson Brown: Milk? Did he drink milk?

Georgia Watson Craven:I can't remember that.

Tom Watson Brown: Did y'all?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't think he did. I don't think we had milk at the table.

Tom Watson Brown: What about dinner? Midday?

Georgia Watson Craven:Midday dinner was the big meal.

Tom Watson Brown: 12:00, 1:00?

Georgia Watson Craven:I would say between 12:00 and 1:00. They'd had breakfast early enough for an early dinner, not a 2:00 dinner.

Tom Watson Brown: Did he come down for that?

Georgia Watson Craven:He was always there for that.

Tom Watson Brown: Always. And when was supper?

Georgia Watson Craven:He was there for supper. But he had this as I say, evidently he didn't want to eat heavy food it night. Now why those little meatcake things weren't heavy I don't know because they had to be fried, but they probably were very carefully done with that little drop of bread and meat that was in them was not fat. I know Walter has got that book of the Senate menus. Somebody made a book of menus from famous senators or this, that, and the other while he was there. They enlisted the wives for the recipes. Grandma turned in those for the, I think we called them meatcakes. I think they're called Senator Watson's, maybe they did call them meatcakes. But they were really made out of ground meat with some sort of gravy in them and they probably had a little Worcestershire sauce in them. Grandpa loved Tabasco sauce and I like it too and I burn my tongue too and I think he did his. The only two flavors that I ever remember using was Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce and he put a lot of that on his stuff. I never saw him add catsup or anything like that.

Tom Watson Brown: What were the work habits? He'd get up fairly early and work in his upstairs office, library study?

Georgia Watson Craven:If he was going on some writing or something, he would get up and work there and that was when we didn't see him down for breakfast and I remember those very vividly and how nice it was to have everybody at the table for breakfast.

Tom Watson Brown: What did he do later on in the rest of the morning?

Georgia Watson Craven:The rest of the morning he was in his study. In the afternoon, after dinner, most of the time he went for a walk, a long walk, back there towards where Charlie's family lived and Mammy's family lived, went through the woods. Then there were the years he would pick up every now and then and ride horseback. He would go riding in the early afternoon.

Tom Watson Brown: Any particular place he'd go while horse riding?

Georgia Watson Craven:Out in the country someplace. Another thing that he did was, if he didn't do this kind of thing, he would play a record or two on the Victrola and that's when he taught Cuzzie and me a little about dancing. I used to feel sorry for him because we was sort of tensed up, but he really did I think start me in dancing. That's one of the few things that I ever did well.

Tom Watson Brown: What time would supper come in? Sundown, 7:00, that kind of thing?

Georgia Watson Craven:It wasn't as late as seven. I think it was earlier than that. In the summer it was always light. In the winter it was a little different. Summer suppers were light things. I think that Ned Anders had a branch office down there when I was... Not long a go. At Grandma's Sunday suppers, there was no need to rush to business with Grandpa. He had these cracker things. But she used to...if there was left over biscuits, split them and toast them. I think we sometimes had those for supper as well as for breakfast. A thing that she does that I told Jim about it not long ago. It was something that Jim was going to warm up that we were afraid would dry out. And I said well my grandmother used to wet her hand, have a little water left on the hand and do this. Flip them towards the biscuit just a little bit. A little bit of moisture so that they didn't just dry, while you were down in there. She used to have these kind of biscuits, and I think we sometimes had those for breakfast, the fresh biscuits had been over overnight.

Tom Watson Brown: Did he work after supper then?

Georgia Watson Craven:No. He might have gone upstairs. He could have worked. I just don't know whether he worked or read. Sometimes, by this time it was getting dark and the day was over and everybody had something to do. I don't remember sitting around much at night.

Tom Watson Brown: What about drinking? Obviously one time he was with the prohibitionist and all this and all that and then later on he started drinking. Some of that I suspect he probably got started with relationship to the bronchitis and all that breathing problem. Would that be a fair... ?

Georgia Watson Craven:I think if he drank, when he drank, it was at night after he had gone up to his room. It was never at the table. There was never any trace of alcohol or anything. And at the table, as I said, there were times when he had wine but not wine everyday and every meal at all unless it was Christmas or something like that. It was a glass of maybe in the winter he had it with a meal or he had it at night with the lights on ________. His wine drinking was mostly a small old-fashioned wineglass, not any taller than that. It would be part of his dessert, I think with the nuts and the raisins and that kind of thing.

Tom Watson Brown: Now I'm talking more about whiskey.

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah I know you are, but I don't ever remember him drinking whiskey downstairs at a social hour or,... people didn't have it down that way.

Tom Watson Brown: Would he then drink bourbon or what?

Georgia Watson Craven:That's what I guess but I'm not sure.

Tom Watson Brown: He was pretty formal in his addressing people and all that sort of thing wasn't he?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. Once in a while he would see somebody who came out of the past. Some old man from the country or so and so and he let go of his more formal attitude and would kind of hug him or they would. I just felt it was a different kind of reaction.

Tom Watson Brown: Did he lose his temper a lot?

Georgia Watson Craven:I couldn't say that he lost it a lot at all.

Tom Watson Brown: Not around you all then?

Georgia Watson Craven:No. But I know when he got mad. He was mad at Cuzzie and me. I told you about that business of going down and sitting on the stone in the water. He was mad at us one time about that horse. This was a mean horse that he had.

Tom Watson Brown: How could you tell when he was mad?

Georgia Watson Craven:He'd let you know. The time about the horse. This was a new horse he had and it was wild even for Grandpa, but he could manage him. And Grandpa had a white man who was working/taking care of the lot and the horses, his name was Mr. Harrison, a younger man. He told Mr. Harrison not to let us beg him to get on that horse. Mr. Harrison did, we nagged him to death I guess. I don't know whether anything happened. Nobody was hurt and I don't think either Cuzzie or I were thrown off. I would know that and remember.

Tom Watson Brown: I was talking about in the picture with the little ponies, that he was mad then?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember when he was mad with the ponies but he used...

Tom Watson Brown: The two of you were standing there barefooted with the ponies.

Georgia Watson Craven:That's right. That was the day that we had been on the big horse, Cuzzie had. Mr. Harrison put her on. That's why we looked so sad.

Tom Watson Brown: How did you know that he was mad?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well he blessed out Mr. Harrison for putting us on the horse, putting Cuzzie on the horse.

Tom Watson Brown: What tone of voice, manner?

Georgia Watson Craven:Tone of voice, manner, "I told you not to do it!" Told Mr. Harrison to keep those kids off that horse! It was just like Jim getting on the horse and breaking his arm down there. But we cried because we was scared. People got the idea that you had to be scared with Grandpa if you were around and that just wasn't always so.

Tom Watson Brown: When he lost his temper and was mad at something like that, did he cuss, use profanity?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember that he did and I think I would. It was a manner and the pride in his manner. I never really heard him cuss. He was a very controlled man in spite of an emotional quality.

Tom Watson Brown: Did you go to any of the big speeches or anything? Did you hear him make a speech?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, I can remember going down to the courthouse one time, going, course I wouldn't know what he said, even then, certainly not now.

Tom Watson Brown: How did he speak? Was his voice high like my voice? Was it lower?

Georgia Watson Craven:I would say it was more like yours. It was a moderate voice.

Tom Watson Brown: But it would carry?

Georgia Watson Craven:Oh sure. He was and old-fashioned orator.

Tom Watson Brown: I see. I'm trying to you to describe it.

Georgia Watson Craven:It had drama, flair, conviction.

Tom Watson Brown: More like the timber.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know quite how to describe it.

Tom Watson Brown: But it wasn't nasal or reedy or anything like that?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, I don't remember anything like that.

Tom Watson Brown: Voice came out in the right part of the body and it could carry? Did he have an accent? A southern accent?

Georgia Watson Craven:Not a broad southern accent. Just mild. I think he was too much of a master of the English language to go in for, I'm sure that probably a Northern person thought he had an accent.

Tom Watson Brown: About like mine?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. It wasn't stinky southern.

Tom Watson Brown: Shave everyday?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah.

Tom Watson Brown: Shave himself?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah.

Tom Watson Brown: Straight razor?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right as far as I think. I can vaguely remember a razor with a handle, but I'm not sure.

Tom Watson Brown: That 's a straight razor. The tip of the blade folds into the handle for safety.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. I think that's what he had.

Tom Watson Brown: How about a haircut?

Georgia Watson Craven:I think that Mr. - now what was that man's name, the barber in Thomson.. .1 think he used to come to the house and cut his hair. Maybe once in a while he went downtown, but I think that was the usual pattern.

Tom Watson Brown: Saves a lot of time.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. We went downtown very seldom.

Tom Watson Brown: Now he had a lot of... well, he had real estate here and there. Why did he hay the mountain in Virginia? That was strictly for the asthma andߞ

Tom Watson Brown: Okay, so you don't know why Tom Watson bought the Virginia mountain?

Georgia Watson Craven:He had that when I was born or bought it so fast that we got down there when I was a month or two old.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay, mountain in Virginia. We assume he bought that for cash from somebody. We don't know who,

Georgia Watson Craven:I do know that there had been an old hotel up there. You know that don't you?

Tom Watson Brown: You told me that. What happened to the old hotel, burned down?

Georgia Watson Craven:Burned down. And there were some cottages around like in St. Simon's. One was Grandpa and Grandma's, one was Addie's, one was the guest house, and we had an old two story house.

Georgia Watson Craven:These were just very primitive houses, but the place was so comfortable and country and mountain and all that. Then there was a farmer.

Tom Watson Brown: But he liked it for the bronchitis and all that kind of thing. In the summer.

Georgia Watson Craven:My father did. And Grandpa must have too because there are pictures of him up there. I don't ever remember being there when he was, but that doesn't say anything.

Tom Watson Brown: He didn't go up there a whole lot then?

Georgia Watson Craven:Not that I remember. I can remember there were several summers but it could have been just two or three. But there are pictures of me up there when I was an infant and two or three years old and then... but I was even very young when he sold it.

Tom Watson Brown: When did he sell it?

Georgia Watson Craven:I can't remember. I remember being up in the attic in one of those rooms when I found out about it. I was crushed. In the attic in Thomson.

Tom Watson Brown: About when?

Georgia Watson Craven:Let's see, in 1910 I would have been four. I was older than that. I must have been five or six, I don't think much older than that.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay, so about 1912?

Georgia Watson Craven:Say that. I think that will be, that's six years old.

Tom Watson Brown: What about this sort of mountain property in White County, Georgia?

Georgia Watson Craven:Now he bought that later on, and I don't know how much later, but I was always told or given that impression.

Tom Watson Brown: He bought it. He didn't get it as a fee or anything?

Georgia Watson Craven:Not that I know of. Sid he bought it to replace the mountain in Virginia. I guess things went from bad to worse in many ways in those years and he never built on it.

Tom Watson Brown: We've done stuff in Florida. I know about the farm properties, he just got them as he went along. He bought and sold that rowhouse in Washington and when he went back he rented both times. I've got all that. Any other property he owned that you can think of?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, the only property out of Thomson and that area that I know about was Virginia and Florida and North Georgia. Did you say he bought and owned a place in Washington the first time he was there?

Tom Watson Brown: It's still there.

Georgia Watson Craven:You sent me a picture once. It was a carnal sort of thing. Was it the whole house or an apartment?

Tom Watson Brown: Rowhouse.

Georgia Watson Craven:What?

Tom Watson Brown: Rowhouse.

Georgia Watson Craven:Oh rowhouse, yeah.

Tom Watson Brown: You know where they're all under one roof?

Georgia Watson Craven:He had other things that I bumped into, like the bank. Do you know anything about the bank?'

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah, he was the president I think or Uncle Forest was the president. He sold stock in the bank. I know that. But he had control of it I suppose.

Georgia Watson Craven:Either Uncle Forest was president or he was, I don't know which. Maybe it was after Uncle Forest died.

Tom Watson Brown: He didn't keep the bank very long did he?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, the bank went, all those last years things changed a lot.

Tom Watson Brown: What years did he have it? Do you know?

Georgia Watson Craven:No.

Tom Watson Brown: Okay. Any other business enterprises that come to mind? Most of his energies I think were completely absorbed obviously with the politics and the writing.

Georgia Watson Craven:The politics, the plants and the farms, that's all I know. And the writing of course.

Tom Watson Brown: Tell me about Forest.

Georgia Watson Craven:I loved Uncle Forest. He was relaxed and easy to know. He was a priceless businessman. He was in the bank, he was in all kinds of mercantile things. He had a store on the corner of Railroad Street and what was the extreme south end of that, that was groceries and I think maybe dry goods. He owned several stores down there. Some of them were his and some of them were rented. There was a meat market.

Tom Watson Brown: Was he big?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah. As I remember he was a big man. Both tall and...

Tom Watson Brown: How big?

Georgia Watson Craven:Not rotund, but he was big.

Tom Watson Brown: Maybe six, over six foot?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, those men weren't that tall then.

Tom Watson Brown: Close to six foot?

Georgia Watson Craven:I guess so.

Tom Watson Brown: And heavy?

Georgia Watson Craven:And heavy.

Tom Watson Brown: What'd he die of?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know. He died very suddenly as I remember.

Tom Watson Brown: And fairly young?

Georgia Watson Craven:And fairly young.

Tom Watson Brown: So he died before Tom Watson?

Georgia Watson Craven:Oh yeah. I saw the date of his birthday. I know it was in that Chelsey James Wilson fad.

Tom Watson Brown: Who did Tom Watson have as a friend that he really communicated a lot with. We know we had McGregor who was kind of a friend and even though he was older, he was kind of like a lieutenant or an aide to Tom Watson.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: And was obviously beholden to him in a big way. Who else like that was or who did he talk to a lot?

Georgia Watson Craven:Major McGregor kind of stood out. First of all because he lived close to my father to do that and we used to go to Warrenton in the car to see him for an afternoon kind of thing. And he would come down to Thomson, though I can't remember when or why, and they couldn't see each other a lot because it wasn't that easy in those days to go any distance. I don't know anybody else close by that took Major McGregor's place. There was a lawyer, Mr. Ollie in Augusta, who used to come up but I don't know whether he always came on business or what.

Tom Watson Brown: He was one of the lawyers in that federal case in about 1916 about sending obscene, no it was later than that, it was Wilson.

Georgia Watson Craven:Then there was the funny little man in Atlanta, Benjamin Blackbird. Do you know him?

Tom Watson Brown: I know his son.

Georgia Watson Craven:Oh you do?

Tom Watson Brown: Or grandson.

Georgia Watson Craven:He used to annoy Cuzzie and me because he was always so sweet and all that kind of thing and was very, a little man, and always so immaculate and so dressed up. He wore ...parkeys that I can remember. He was awfully good to us. But he was so different from Grandpa I don't think we how to category. He used to come from Atlanta and I don't know whether he came on visits just to be friends or whether he always came on business.

Georgia Watson Craven:They had sonic political staff together, I know that.

Georgia Watson Craven:Then he had a couple of country people. There was Mr. Jim Harrell who lived in the country up near Norwood. He was a big man, a farmer with a huge family of boys and they took my wild little pony up there and got him broken for me. But I remember him coming down to Thomson once or twice.

Tom Watson Brown: J.J.?

Georgia Watson Craven:J.J. was always a friend.

Tom Watson Brown: Did he come often?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well he came about like Major McGregor. I would say he came next to Major McGregor in terms of time.

Tom Watson Brown: What aboutߞ

Georgia Watson Craven:He had lots of people in Lincolnton, Georgia, but I don't know who they were that came over, if at all. Now he had another kind of friend that he carried on and that was like the Carvers from Lincolnton. One of the Carver girls had married Matt Hayes who was a political, I mean he would do anything for Grandpa and he was one of the pallbearers. He had a grocery store in Thomson called, I think it was Hayes he called it or something like that. The Hayes lived down the road almost across from where he lived. Anther man with that same kind of not offended by the nettle, you know intellectual friend was Mr. Wall and John Wall, who had a meat market in Thomson, I can't think who the other poor fellow was. Mr. Wall was another one like Mr. Hayes was.

Tom Watson Brown: How about Massengale?

Georgia Watson Craven:I know the Massengale name and that they wereߞ

Tom Watson Brown: I think that's the store that he clerked at when he was a child.

Georgia Watson Craven:In Norwood, Ms. Mae Gibson, I think, was connected with them in some way. I don't ever remember... I know that name, but I can't remember any person, they did talk about the Massengale's.

Tom Watson Brown: In the 1906 election, he made a speech where he would warn the audience in Thomson to watch out for Bowden. Bowden had been sent down here by James Smith up around Athens who is the huge land owner up there, to buy the governorship and was giving money for votes. There is a big long... and then Bowden settled there subsequently and had the bank and everything. The theme of the speech was watch out for Bowden. And Bowden decided he'd better get out of there and he moved on that day. It was the Fourth of July or something or other barbecue. When the election returns came in, Hoke Smith, who Tom Watson was supporting, won big and James Smith, the only county he carried was McDuffie County - meaning Bowden had spent so much money he bought enough votes. You know five bucks then was a small fortune to those people who were destitute. The classic telegram has been preserved somewhere in Athens. It was from the Manager in Atlanta telegramming Smith in Athens to what the vote tally was. "Says all is lost save honor and McDuffie. And McDuffie came damn high."

Georgia Watson Craven:That's wonderful. I don't actually know when Grandpa said that. But I'm glad toy know the circumstances.

Tom Watson Brown: Oh yeah he said, watch Bowden. So I assume he didn't have much to do with Bowden for the rest of his life.

Georgia Watson Craven:No. I don't ever remember him seeing or being there.

Tom Watson Brown: Having anything to do with him.

Georgia Watson Craven:Now we were friends with Lucille.

Tom Watson Brown: Naw, just work on him. How about from Mercer?

Georgia Watson Craven:He had Dr. Forester. Now there was another one, Dr. Forester and Dr... They were two men that came to Thomson from Mercer. Whenever they preached at the Baptist Church, they would come up to Grandma's for dinner afterwards on Sunday. Grandpa very often went as a courtesy to hear them preach. I remember he used to go into fits and tantrums almost. John Rose held Sunday School late because he was outside cooling his heels trying to get into the church to hear Dr. Forester. I wouldn't put that past Mr. Rose at all. Anyway, he did maintain those. Who was the name of the man that preached Grandpa's funeral or eulogy?

Tom Watson Brown: I don't know.

Georgia Watson Craven:He was from Macon. It may have been Dr. Forester. If it wasn't Dr. Forester, it was the other one I'm trying to think of.

Tom Watson Brown: But both of them from time to time.

Georgia Watson Craven:Any other from time to time.

Tom Watson Brown: Any other sort of academic types that come to mind? No reason there should be?

Georgia Watson Craven:I'm sure he had academic contacts and correspondents.

Tom Watson Brown: I'm just thinking about that came to the house.

Georgia Watson Craven:I am too.

Tom Watson Brown: Judges, lawyers?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well there were lots of lawyers. I don't mean lots, but there were lawyers who came every now and then, like the man from Augusta.

Tom Watson Brown: Did you see any of these people who were running for governor come by?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember seeing any.

Tom Watson Brown: That would he more of a business.

Georgia Watson Craven:But Hallord Clyde told me, and you said he's wrong... Was it Dorsey at the end of the Frank thing or Frank case?

Tom Watson Brown: Dorsey tried the Frank case.

Georgia Watson Craven:Oh he tried it?

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah.

Georgia Watson Craven:Well who was the governor?

Tom Watson Brown: Slayton was the governor. Slayton was the governor who commuted the sentence despite the fact that he, Slayton, was a law partner in the defense firm. Is that gross?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well I should say so.

Tom Watson Brown: Well you can understand why everybody was outraged and this Jewish treatment of the Frank case always leaves that out.

Georgia Watson Craven:I know.

Tom Watson Brown: But I went back and looked it up. He's in the city directory; he 's in the newspaper advertisements as a name d partner in the firm before Frank was arrested, during the trial, after the trial, through the appeals and at the time of the commutation. Governor was not a full-time job. He would go over to the Grant Building and work in the law firm during the day, and then commute the sentence when it should have gone over to the next governor who was Cliff Walker, no Nat

Georgia Watson Craven:Nat Harris.

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah, whoever the last Confederate Veteran, Nat Harris. And then Hugh Dorsey was elected governor after that. Then Dorsey and Hoke Smith and Tom Watson all ran for the senate after that.

Tom Watson Brown: Did you see much of his brother, William?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, Uncle Todd was so pious and Bess Hyde told me that he wasn't as good as he seemed to be. She said that he used to beat those two girls, Donna and Effie. This is terrible to think about, but a lot of pious men are like that. That the other side comes out. My relationship with Uncle Todd was always very nice. He was a pillar of the Methodist Church where I'm at and between Sunday School and Church, the men would all gather right in front of the courthouse and talk and he reminded me of Avery's Quaker story about the Quakers getting out and the old man saying what does he think of _________ going to pieces... That was the whole point. It was still business with Todd. Anyway, Uncle Todd was out there with those people. He always spoke to me very sweet. But, for some reason, I was always timid around him.

Tom Watson Brown: What did he do? Was he a merchant?

Georgia Watson Craven:He had a county office.

Tom Watson Brown: County, okay.

Georgia Watson Craven:And as far as I know that and his farms, and the watermelon was his business. And Grandpa was good to him but I think Grandpa was impatient with his piety probably. Now his wife was a great lady and she was his second wife. His first wife, the wife with the children and died. And I think I'm right that she was a sister of the first wife. Endora was her name.

Tom Watson Brown: Finish saying what Clyde was saying, was telling you what about Dorsey? That Dorsey came to Thomson.

Georgia Watson Craven:He told me that you said that that scene with the governor coming to Thomson and him and Grandpa in the carriage, that that was not true. That the governor did come down. Hal Clyde told me, and I know exactly where he was, just off the west porch where it curves, we were under a tree where we had a hoop to throw basketballs. Harold said the governor was here last night. Now how he knew it and whether it was true I don't know.

Tom Watson Brown: But that wouldn't be Dorsey see.

Georgia Watson Craven:Well whoever it was. And I thought there's some secret about this and I can't even remember whether I was the age it would have been the Frank case or what.

Tom Watson Brown: The Frank case was tried in 1913

Georgia Watson Craven:I was seven years old.

Tom Watson Brown: The appeal dragged on and on and on and on. And he was finally, the sentence was commuted in 1915, two years later. 1915 you would have been nine years old. Do you think it was that time?

Georgia Watson Craven:It could have been.

Tom Watson Brown: Or it could have been later.

Tom Watson Brown: Slayton commuted the sentence, then two days later Nat Harris took office and a bunch of months later, Frank was taken from the jail, driven up to Marietta and lynched. So if the governor came, it would either be early in 1915, you know, "about what do you think I should do or am I doing", which I don't think is very likely. Now I'm confident if governors came there it would be governors, particularly came there all the time, soliciting his support and everything.

Georgia Watson Craven:I just don't remember seeing them myself.

Tom Watson Brown: Well that scene in that movie was totally fictitious. All during that time. Well, in living just outside of Atlanta. The physical appearance and so forth and so on. They had him a machine politician, which was just the opposite. He didn't know how to run one out. He was a one mall gang clearly. As far as I know he never took any financial support or aide. He ran his owls campaigns, published his own stuff, and just went all out. You never went on a campaign thing with him did you?

Georgia Watson Craven:No. I went to a couple of things at the courthouse andߞ

Tom Watson Brown: I think my mother did.

Georgia Watson Craven:I'm sure she did.

Tom Watson Brown: After her mother died I think she went with him a couple of times.

Georgia Watson Craven:But I was never with him on the road any place. Addie was older when she went and we were still in the lower grades. I'm not sure we went to public schools. I was in the Thomson school about four years and that was all before I went to Nashville.

Tom Watson Brown: I assume when he traveled any distance at all, other than Augusta, where they took a car, everything else was train.

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, I would assume so too.

Tom Watson Brown: It just had to be. I know he ended up in St. Louis on occasions and I know he was in New York City lots.

Georgia Watson Craven:Those were all the Populist states.

Tom Watson Brown: See that's the election of 1896, the election of 1904, and the election of 1908, which is getting on up there. That's right, then the later races were all in Georgia.

Tom Watson Brown: Jimmy Carter, who is a lying, little pious jerk, he's an embarrassment to the state.

Georgia Watson Craven:I was so loyal to Georgia that I let hem suck me in, but now he makes me sick to my stomach.

Tom Watson Brown: He's so busy trying to get the Nobel peace Prize it's a disgrace. I have a movement up going that we are all putting in a certain amount of money each and buy him a big, silver bowl that says Jimmy Carter, Nobel Prize. Give it to him and say "now stay home and shut up ", cause he intrudes where he hasn 't been asked to. It borders on treason because he purports to represent the government and everything and it 's j ust disgusting. Well, in this latest book that he 's cranked out, he talks about what a great friend his grandfather Gordy was - that's Miss Lillian's father of Tom Watson, and that he gave Tom Watson the idea for Rural Free Delivery, which is a flat out lie. Gordy couldn't have been that old to begin with. I've never run into any mention of Gordy in Tom Watson's stuff. There are a couple of letters at Emory which are bread and butter letters - "I heard you named your son for me...I nice honor" or something like that. I've run into all kinds of people named Tom Watson. This Tom Watson, unlike his nephew Carter who ducked World War II, this one was in World War II. The Japs captured him at Wake Island or Guam, one of the two, and they didn't release him until 1947. Somebody finally found him working at a mine in Japan. He was gone. His wife had had him declared dead and she had remarried and had a family, and he just wasted away. So he was a hero. I say Jimmy Carter spent seven years in undergraduate school to avoid going into World War II. No one avoided World War II. That's just disgraceful.

Tom Watson Brown: All right, let's switch over the Mrs. Lytle. Tell me about her now. I need to know what she looked like and where she came from and all that. When did she come on the scene?

Georgia Watson Craven:I can't quite remember. I vaguely remember the lady before that who was the secretary and lived in the house. She was a lively Virginia lady, Miss Maude Needham - very tall, very stylish and very dignified. I think that she got along with Grandpa and admired him and all that. I never heard of any real trouble there. I don't remember Mrs. Lytle's arrival on the scene at all. There seems to be some slip in between and I don't know when Mrs. Lytle came - the year. She was an Irish lady and had that kind of wit and ability to entertain children and how to do nice things in that way. I thing she was sincere in that. But she tried to win Cuzzie and me and did. Addie had no objection to begin with, but in the end, I told you about the time that Addie called me over and she was crying. It was down at the Duncan house - you used to go there - she had built. I know exactly where she was standing - at the back porch. It was a concrete porch. They may have built over it now, I don't know, but she had been up there and she said, "Oh Papa is just..." that point was that he had been changed by this woman. I think she knew then how ill she was and she was trying to ask me I guess. I was older for my age than Cuzzie was. Cuzzie was...I

Georgia Watson Craven:was more pragmatic. I was more mature in a certain way, to take care of Cuzzie. She asked me N that in the hospital in Atlanta later - to please watch out and take care of Cuzzie She had some sort ofߞ

Georgia Watson Craven:You didn't do it. You let her run off and marry my father.

Georgia Watson Craven:I was off in another world

Tom Watson Brown: Why in the world she did that. They couldn't have had anything in common.

Georgia Watson Craven:I can not remember who said this to me 'cause I can't thing of anybody who would, but somebody said to me that she wanted to get away from the situation of Uncle Ed in Atlanta. Now, there was no situation except that he was ill and I think with cirrhosis.

Tom Watson Brown: My mother put out that little paper for a while, The Watsonian.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. That was when she was married, wasn't it?

Tom Watson Brown: They were trying to make me go with that and what there was around Thomson and I think that's when pop then left and went to journalism school in Athens and ultimately ended up going to Washington and so forth and so on. In what ways did she think Mrs. Lytle had changed Tom Watson?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know whether she could manage Addie. For a long time they seemed to get along. Mrs. Lytle was the kind that got along with everybody to begin with. Lots of people in Thomson liked her. She said that Irish gift, it's a gift, and it's not all blarney, but people didn't see through certain things that were also to a certain extent blamed on the Irish. Even now, a certain sort of not showmanship, but a look.

Tom Watson Brown: Actually they have a very difficult time cooperating and working with other people. They like to talk a lot and all this and all that, but they won't unite and get the job done when it comes down to it. They drink a lot of whiskey. In fact plenty of them are alcoholics and I know, I have, not counting Emmy who drank herself to death, I have four contemporaries, all of whom were Irish, alcoholics, and committed suicide. You can't tell me, people say you shouldn't generalize. Well if you can't generalize, you can't carry on an intelligent conversation. There is a strain of that, just like Irish men tend to marry late. They don't get married at 21. They get married at 41. And that goes back to where there was so little land they had to wait for a parent to die to get a little teeny thing, anyway, etc., etc. She drank?

Georgia Watson Craven:I wouldn't be surprised, but I never saw her.

Tom Watson Brown: Did she drink with Tom Watson?

Georgia Watson Craven:What?

Tom Watson Brown: She drank with Tom Watson didn't she at the end of the day?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, I don't know if that's one of those secrets that nobody knew.

Tom Watson Brown: Well then what's his name has got it in his book.

Georgia Watson Craven:So it could be. He interviewed her and she wanted to call Cuzzie after Grandpa died and tried to get hold of me in some relationship.

Tom Watson Brown: Hold of them as what, friends?

Georgia Watson Craven:She would have liked to have been a family aunt or something like to Cuzzie. Cuzzie didn't have anybody and so I could see how maybe she went that way and then Walter interfered with that.

Tom Watson Brown: J.J. didn't like her.

Georgia Watson Craven:I know he didn't. J.J. even talked to about her. He thought she was the thing that spoiled everything, her coming I into things.

Tom Watson Brown: I would assume from that, I am satisfied that there was never an affair. Tom Watson was obviously incapable of that. I can tell just from reading these writings and his writings about his wife and his denunciations of other people, etc. He was not hypocritical. He was straight down the line and you paid for your transgressions and so forth and so on.

Georgia Watson Craven:I never saw anything.

Tom Watson Brown: However, what I get from you and Van Woodward and he gets some of it from you, too, is that, she could talk to him about daily events and politics and all that kind of thing. She could do things for him. You follow me, which was not the role of his wife and this was a new sort of thing and she could handle correspondence. It's like a good secretary if you will - they become an executive secretary because they know all the people in your life and they know where they fit in and they can do things for you. Unfortunately I haven't had one, but anyway.

Georgia Watson Craven:I think you've hit her right down the line. She was capable and she knew, I'm not saying that he I judgment was wrong. I'm just saying that she was that kind. So she had a, I don't want to say a power, but she filled a need that he had for some capable person to sit down and talk to him. Now I think Grandma was totally not interested in that kind of thing and she didn't have to be. She may have just gotten a dose of politics early and.

Tom Watson Brown: This is not untypical of any marriage. Almost, because the people who are married get married here and then they sort of go in different directions and, who can a doctor talk to? Is he gonna come home and talk to his wife about all the operations that they had, no, he talks to a nurse. Cause they talk all that Latin lingo, some of which is phony I think. Also she could kind of move in a man's world to some extent.

Georgia Watson Craven:That was not Grandma's world at all.

Tom Watson Brown: She could type I imagine because this is where we've switched to typewriting letters.

Georgia Watson Craven:She could do things in a man's world that no other woman down there had thought of.

Tom Watson Brown: She had some ambition I'm sure. So she tried to get more and more into what would pass for machinery. I know after his death, she was trying to do certain things.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right, she tried to keep the papers going. She tried to stay in what had been, that was over, and that was the publishing and the place and the property and Grandma and everything. So far as personal attention is concerned, I'm convinced that she really was the one to mend my father.

Tom Watson Brown: Was she attractive?

Georgia Watson Craven:She was not unattractive. She had a wit. She knew how to talk. She was entertaining.

Tom Watson Brown: Personality and all that. Was she tall?

Georgia Watson Craven:She was taller than...she was maybe as tall as Grandpa. I don't know. She wasn't a little woman. She wasn't anything like that. She was not of a thin build. She had a sort of Irish look.

Tom Watson Brown: Full-figured.

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah.

Tom Watson Brown: Red hair?

Georgia Watson Craven:No, she had dark hair that was gray.

Tom Watson Brown: How old was she?

Georgia Watson Craven:I think she was older than daddy. She had a grown son, Stanley Lee's age, his name was Stanley too. His mother had just beat the life out of him.

Tom Watson Brown: He was the only child?

Georgia Watson Craven:Only child.

Tom Watson Brown: What happened to the husband?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know, nobody ever knew. It wasn't somebody she talked to nobody about.

Tom Watson Brown: You think she was a grass widow as we say, meaning that she hadn't been divorced?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know.

Tom Watson Brown: Catholic?

Georgia Watson Craven:She didn't have a husband when I knew her and I don't know if he was dead or alive or under what circumstances.

Tom Watson Brown: Catholic?

Georgia Watson Craven:She was Episcopalian, but I never knew whether that was true, because she came from a Catholic family. Her mother must have been Irish.

Tom Watson Brown: Baltimore?

Georgia Watson Craven:No. New York. I think New York. And her mother's second husband was a Catholic and that's alright, but anyway that's what he was and she had a half-brother and a half-sister. The step father's name was Hurley and he was a hotel man and managed some sort of hotel down in what is Greenwich Village today down in the southern part of Manhattan. That's how some of that silver I told you about... it wasn't silver but hotel stuff. Then he finally quit that business or retired. And I don't know, I have a feeling I saw him one time, but I may be missing a marble.

Tom Watson Brown: The boy called me up one time.

Georgia Watson Craven:Stanley Lytle?

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah.

Georgia Watson Craven:I didn't know that he lived that long.

Tom Watson Brown: He had read that magazine article that was published about 30 years ago in The Atlanta Journal by Vinnie Williams and he says, alright when are we going to have the big reunion? I said ________ and got rid of that. This was the middle of the day and he sounded like he might have had a warmer upper at that hour.

Georgia Watson Craven:He was sad. He was so henpecked by his mother. Maybe sheߞ

Tom Watson Brown: Did he live there too?

Georgia Watson Craven:No.

Georgia Watson Craven:Did they live in the cottage?

Georgia Watson Craven:One time he was in the Navy and I remember when he came. He never amounted to anything and I felt that he was, just didn't have her drive, her ability or anything. And on top of his not having things, she pounded at him. Why wasn't he this and why wasn't he that sort of attitude. So you couldn't help but feel sorry for him. But he was a misfit certainly in Thomson with Stanley Lee's crowd.

Tom Watson Brown: Did she stay down in the cottage down there?

Georgia Watson Craven:Some. I don't know, I don't think that she was down there all the time. I don't think that she stayed down there in the winter really. I just can't be for sure.

Tom Watson Brown: It wouldn't work good in the winter under any circumstances.

Georgia Watson Craven:Do what? Work down there?

Tom Watson Brown: It wouldn't be comfortable in the winter.

Georgia Watson Craven:No.

Tom Watson Brown: Did she stay, you say she did stay at Hickory Hill some?

Georgia Watson Craven:She stayed at Hickory Hill most of the time that I know about. She had this little house, but it was sort of a retreat place to go down for a an hour or two; and in the summer she used to have the Victrola going and ham snacks and stuff for the kids.

Tom Watson Brown: So she stayed at Hickory Hill a lot?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: Upstairs? Upstairs?

Georgia Watson Craven:I think she stayed upstairs in that east room. There was no place for her downstairs.

Tom Watson Brown: How did she get along with your grandmother?

Georgia Watson Craven:It's hard to say. Grandma just let things like that slide over.

Tom Watson Brown: Just ignore it?

Georgia Watson Craven:If she didn't like them she didn't squall about it. And Mrs. Lytle sort of took over and ordered all these things for the house as if Grandma didn't know what was good taste or what to have. Grandma had better taste than she could ever think about. But she was tied to things in the of market, she took a lot of nice magazines from the family and she would see what was in style and what wasn't and so on.

Tom Watson Brown: Did she eat at the table with y 'all?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah. Now you asked me about her dress. She was a very slouchy woman at times. She could get dressed up and corseted and look nice. She had a whole set of garnets, dark stones, you know earrings, some necklaces, pins, etc., so she could present herself as a very presentable person and she had a kind of presence if I may say so and a kind of self confidence and that sort of thing. But she used to come to the table just slouchy. There is a picture of her, I think there's two. I know there is one when she's looking through the window of that entrance that goes downstairs and I know exactly what's beyond that, of how sloppy she was.

Tom Watson Brown: Did she work downstairs?

Georgia Watson Craven:At times. Sometimes upstairs. But I can't remember in one of those pictures she has on tennis shoes. She just looks awful. The story went around, I don't know whether it was true, that Grandpa said something to her at the table once about not being corseted.

Tom Watson Brown: I assume today since no one is corseted, that function is taken over by reinforced brassieres, so you just, you're not jiggly or droopy or whatever. If you were describing, and she worked obviously over at the publishing plant too, so if I were describing her job description today, she would be really either an executive secretary or the office manager. Sort of those kind of duties.

Georgia Watson Craven:She was certainly an executive. She was the top executive there.

Tom Watson Brown: When she gave orders, people knew that she was presumably speaking for Tom Watson and they'd go and do things.

Georgia Watson Craven:Her power was - that was where her power was. Her judgment I thinkߞ

Tom Watson Brown: He didn't want to be bothered with this kind of stuff.

Georgia Watson Craven:Now how good her judgment was about policy, I don't know, but her judgment was good in another way. It was what she did. She knew how to get things organized, how to put them through, and you may not like the principle of what she was standing for, but she could do it. Nobody else could. Now I'm judging things and I was a little girl and may totally __________, but that's the impression.

Tom Watson Brown: And also if she was truly Irish, which we assume she is, she was good at manipulating people, and that goes with drinking and all that, and b) careless with the facts. Whereas a Scotsman would be very precise, an Irishman either purposely, or in the spirit of exaggeration and drinking and everything, can be very, you know, kind of off-the-wall. That's interesting because they're both the basic, I think they're both the same basic racial style. Which is Celtic, Gaelic, whatever you want to call it, but apparently that water makes a difference or something or other.

Georgia Watson Craven:I wish you and Durham could go to Scotland.

Tom Watson Brown: He is hell bent on doing it and wants to immigrate there when he's 21. So we decided we'd, said well, there's one easy way to cure that, ship him over there for Christmas for a month, and it 's so damp and cold and rainy, he ain't ever gonna want to go back.

Georgia Watson Craven:But I was thinking about the cemetery that I told you about where all these Watsons were down there.

Tom Watson Brown: Oh yeah? Where?

Georgia Watson Craven:It's in Ayr, A-yr.

Tom Watson Brown: A-y-r? There 's a river named that, isn 't there?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. It was a cemetery where Robert Burns is buried.

Tom Watson Brown: Really. Same cemetery?

Georgia Watson Craven:Uh huh. And there were Watsons with all these John S's and things like that occurred in our family.

Tom Watson Brown: You think it's our crowd?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know how, I just don't know enough about it, but at the time it was fun. I thought "well, here's some of my ancestors."

Tom Watson Brown: Is it lowland Scotland?

Georgia Watson Craven:I think so.

Tom Watson Brown: Highland Scotland? Lower? On the border?

Georgia Watson Craven:I've never been there to the highland part. It was near the border I think.

Tom Watson Brown: He wrote in a letter that I've seen that they were from around Rockingham Castle.

Georgia Watson Craven:He had a book Rockingham Castle and I don't know what happened to it.

Tom Watson Brown: Hopefully it's at Brenau.

Georgia Watson Craven:Let's hope so. It was gone with that group.

Tom Watson Brown: But Ayr is close to that area you think?

Georgia Watson Craven:When we were going across Scotland...

Tom Watson Brown: I don't know where Rockingham Castle is so,

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't either so I shouldn't start on that.

Tom Watson Brown: How old was she?

Georgia Watson Craven:She was older, maybe four years older than daddy. I think she and my mother were probably born at the same time, '76.

Tom Watson Brown: What did your mother think of her?

Georgia Watson Craven:She thought she was cheap Irish.

Tom Watson Brown: Which would be typical of upstate New York, Episcopal, everything Irish need not apply.

Georgia Watson Craven:Of course, that's not fair, but that was the way people reacted then. Those were the labels. But you know that was one thing my mother I think was right about that. The people in Thomson did know the different kinds of northern people.

Tom Watson Brown: Still don't.

Georgia Watson Craven:And they would marry this element and that element and the other one that were just not like us. The only thing the south had was colored.

Tom Watson Brown: That's right. Exactly.

Georgia Watson Craven:Then they embraced everybody on that.

Tom Watson Brown: I told you I went through when I got to college at Princeton, everybody jumped all over me for being prejudiced. I say well there are two problems with that. I said you're saying all this, I know more black people than I know white people. You don't know any black people. Why am I prejudiced and you're not? Well then they start talking amongst themselves raising hell about the Irish, the Italians, the Hungarians, the Pollocks, whatever. I said my God, if you can't get along with European people, how do you expect met to integrate and that's still a problem today. They don't understand.

Georgia Watson Craven:She was black and she was a girl got caught over between the wars and had to stay and married and grew up around Kingston which was _______ town.... so I'm careful when I talk about her, but she is _______ and that's the kind that would be accepted without any prejudice by anybody who knew how to judge people, no matter what.

Tom Watson Brown: Did your mother express to you that she had any inkling of Mrs. Lytle being interested in your father?

Georgia Watson Craven:Not in those terms.

Tom Watson Brown: But she didn't have her over to dinner or any of that kind of stuff?

Georgia Watson Craven:Oh no. There was absolutely no exchange of social things. So that was out. There was one thing the last time my mamma went to Kingston to visit. I stayed in Thomson. I don't know whether my grandparents were ill or what, but I remember when she came home, came up from the station, it was in that little half-story kind of carts that they had, and she was talking to Ms. Lytle and she said "Oh I met somebody who knew Mark Hurley", that was Ms. Lytle's half-brother. and he was evidently a very fine man, a young man who had been active in some sport, I don't know what it was. I don't think he was in the Olympics, but near to that kind of thing. That's the only time I ever saw her when she made a friendly gesture towards Ms. Lytle. That was... I never say mark Hurley, but I saw his sister, Ruth. I didn't like her, she was a ________, she really was, and I'm not prejudiced against them, I like them. I like them for the crazy things that they...

Tom Watson Brown: Oh the fun, yeah.

Georgia Watson Craven:But I do know that those social differences exist in a certain period until they get adjusted.

Tom Watson Brown: And which blacks have never been able to do.

Georgia Watson Craven:No.

Tom Watson Brown: Or don't care to do.

Georgia Watson Craven:No.

Tom Watson Brown: That's why the country is so screwed up now.

Georgia Watson Craven:Exactly.

Tom Watson Brown: Now they pass a new federal statute that bombing or setting fire to a church is a federal offense.

Georgia Watson Craven:Exactly.

Tom Watson Brown: It should not be a federal offense. It doesn't have anything to do with federal law.

Georgia Watson Craven:I can't say.

Tom Watson Brown: Leave it to the state. It's a cheap political stunt that you can't vote against.

Georgia Watson Craven:No, no.

Tom Watson Brown: You follow me the way it's been. And Clinton gels away with this all the time. The lying no good...

Georgia Watson Craven:I know.

Tom Watson Brown: Plus he made this big speech about how he remembered churches burning when he was small boy in Arkansas. Did your father like Ms. Lytle? Was he attracted to her at all?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't think he really was.

Tom Watson Brown: He was kind of passive?

Georgia Watson Craven:Yeah.

Tom Watson Brown: I kind of picked that up.

Georgia Watson Craven:I think I was at the age where I would have been jealous.

Tom Watson Brown: Sure, sure. Because I have a feeling here that he, like I say, liked older women as kind of a mother sort of thing but didn't get carried away about anything.

Georgia Watson Craven:She liked to be in charge.

Tom Watson Brown: Which he was perfectly willing to go along with that. Don 't make waves.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. Don't make waves. Grandma was the same kind of way I think. She just let her go ahead and do what she wanted to. If she wanted to, just let her do it, just don't make waves.

Tom Watson Brown: Let's see is there anybody that we haven't covered?

Georgia Watson Craven:As far as I know, I really can't tell you anything.

Tom Watson Brown: They were kind of minor, more so the family.

Georgia Watson Craven:You mentioned Grandpa's brothers and sisters what he was. His relationship with Aunt Addie and she didn't have hard luck I guess accepting Papa's illness that Aunt Julia and Aunt Belle did.

Tom Watson Brown: The two favorites amongst the sisters were Addie and Julia?

Georgia Watson Craven:Aunt Julia no. Addie and Aunt Belle Erksley whose grandson lives out north of here and comes down here once in awhile. Aunt Julia was the youngest child and her daughter, Gladys, that I saw, is living in Maryland, she said that she thought that her mother's illness and whining about her illness all the time was, I forget, something that they know a lot about now. She had terrible migraine headaches, that kind of thing. Grandpa, I don't know how Aunt Julia could have made it without Grandpa's help in one way or another. He had given her a job or helping her do this that or the other. I don't know whether Aunt Julia's husband left her or what, but anyway, they weren't together all of the years that I knew them.

Tom Watson Brown: How about Aunt Addie the oldest? You said she had some illness?

Georgia Watson Craven:What?

Tom Watson Brown: Did she have an illness you said?

Georgia Watson Craven:She had something that made her in a wheelchair all the time that I knew her, but she was bright and happy. Aunt Belle had a rough life with a great big family of boys, nine or ten or something like that, and they were the Ursuries and strong male kind of men, you know that kind.

Tom Watson Brown: I know several of them. They're just big.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right, they're huge. One of them played on the Georgia Tech football team and he was the youngest and the only one I guess that ever went to college, that's got them off the farmer boys. One of them wanted Grandpa's saddle and Mama thought that was reasonable so whoever was giving things out, finally gave him that.

Tom Watson Brown: What did you ever hear Tom Watson talk about his father and his mother?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't remember.

Tom Watson Brown: Not his father? The mother lived with them there for a while.

Georgia Watson Craven:I was easy to know that he adored his mother, and he gave her credit for his success. She did everything to make it possible for him to go to school in Thomson, then finally sold family things so he could have those two years at Mercer College. I'm gonna say what Grandpa said about Aunt Julia before we leave those relationships. I can remember hearing him say, and it hit my little girl mind so hard and I think so true he said "sister Julia is a whiner." I know a lot of ladies who whine.

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah, you, just don't want them around.

Georgia Watson Craven:But he gave her a job and she came to dinner a lot of times and picked up Harold little jobs. And I suspect he helped the older girl, Edna, go to Georgia Normal School over in Milledgeville.

Tom Watson Brown: But he never did mention his father really?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't ever remember him mentioning his father.

Tom Watson Brown: I think that's just like Bethany... he drops them out there. How about his grandfather? Did he ever mention his grandfather?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't ever remember him mentioning it but somehow I carried the feeling that he revered that grandfather. Bethany had left and then he and Uncle Forest made that family cemetery with the fence around it and put the monument up out in the country where they're all buried.

Tom Watson Brown: That was the old, old place, the real old, old place, wasn't it?

Georgia Watson Craven:Nobody knows where they lived at Wrightsboro, but as far as I know, when they left the Wrightsboro area, if they were ever up there, they lived in that place.

Tom Watson Brown: I'm confidential that that's... it 's the Old Stagecoach Road, which had a bunch of other names and the house was up here on top of the hill and then it had a nice wing built onto it, although your grandfather lived in the old part, the log cabin part. Then Tom Watson's father, .John, moved it back off the hill and built the house that's there now.

Georgia Watson Craven:I didn't know about the move on the hill, but I know that they planned that they would build a house. After the war John insisted on starting it even though everybody was broke and didn't have anything. But you know what, I can't...

Tom Watson Brown: They couldn't finish the inside.

Georgia Watson Craven:What?

Tom Watson Brown: They built it, but couldn't finish the inside. And things got worse and worse and worse. He gambled away and he counted on a lot of things happening and the panic of seventy-three finished everything and they moved to Augusta. I've got to get to Augusta and find out exactly where they lived there which should be in the city directory and the census there.

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't... Van Woodward gives a little bit of an idea where they lived, but is not entirely specific. I haven't seen that in a long time. But to go back to the house and place, the log cabin where Grandpa was born. Walter moved that from Edgar Wilson and Norma, that was Norma's property along with Forest, where the Wilson's live. That place…

Tom Watson Brown: I thought he moved it form out there. I thought he moved it form out there whereߞ

Georgia Watson Craven:That's whenever we went by the Wilson place, they pointed out the house that was where Grandpa was born. I can't get it straight.

Tom Watson Brown: That's not inconsistent. The house out close the stagecoach Road on the way to Augusta is where Grandfather lived and where his mother lived with the grandfather while the war...

Georgia Watson Craven:My eyes saw a place where it said Watson's Place or Watson's stop or something like that. It was a horse stop.

Tom Watson Brown: It was the Old Stagecoach Road and that's where he writes about Toombs and Steven stopping and spending the night all that kind of thing.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. Okay.

Tom Watson Brown: Did you ever hear him talk about his uncles? The ones that died in the war?

Georgia Watson Craven:I must have heard him talk about Uncle Ralph, but I really can't say anything special cause I'm sure my mind could easily get Bethany.

Tom Watson Brown: Well Bethany is a pretty accurate description of it all.

Georgia Watson Craven:He did think about the house as Bethany over and over again, that was real and who was living there or if they were taking care of it and that kind of thing. When we were teenagers,

Tom Watson Brown: Oh he did, he looked after it?

Georgia Watson Craven:No he didn't look after it but he was always interested.

Tom Watson Brown: Yeah, want to make sure somebody was.

Georgia Watson Craven:When we were teenagers, Miss Lula Farmer owned that house. She used to have things for our crowd when her daughter Helen was in our group. She was the daughter of the Pierce's that Grandpa was so close to. We used to go out there and sing. In those days we didn't have much for kids to do and Miss Lula was always all nice to everybody and she had a little quilt, she used to get teenagers together and we sang out of those old song books that they had during the 19'x' century, Dollie Nellie Grey and all those old-fashioned songs. I remember we met at Bethany. Miss Lula was very happy to have Bethany and have it for that reason, so that was when I saw most of that house, when she was living there. Then Mary Watson drove me around, maybe even the last time I was there I saw all that, I think she told me that somebody had moved Bethany to where I saw it because I was surprised, anyway it was not out in the country like it was when Miss Lula was there unless the town had grown that much. Another house that had been moved was the house the Lookeys lived in. It was right across the railroad and looked right at the railroad like this instead of onto Jackson Street Wilson Hawes' daughter, I mean sister was living there.

Tom Watson Brown: Did you ever remember him talking about religion at all, with you or in front of you or anything like that?

Georgia Watson Craven:I think if anybody said anything about religion that your had to try to latch onto. I don't think there was too much to latch. I don't want to say that he was a reverend, but he was certainly not a dogma man. He was like Conrad. He feels that, to a certain extend, he is a religious person but will have no part of anybody's dogma.

Tom Watson Brown: Did they have grace or say thanks before the meals?

Georgia Watson Craven:Never.

Tom Watson Brown: You just sort of sat down with everybody here and... did you ring a bell to get the servants in?

Georgia Watson Craven:They might have a bell. Usually there was one standing there because the kitchen was so far they couldn't hear.

Tom Watson Brown: You'd have been too young to really talk about history or anything like that?

Georgia Watson Craven:No. We did talk about history. That I remember. But I want to go back to the religious thing. He did have friends. The Baptist preacher used to come see him and there were two or three that they had who were intelligent men that he liked.

Tom Watson Brown: Who was the Baptist preacher?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well, one of them was Dr. Young, who was a very strange little man, but I think probably had a brilliant mind. That was a very sad thing. He had a family. They were different from the people in Thomson. They had a funny old car that I think he had built or something like that and they were hit by a train because the whole family was wiped out. Four or five people were killed. He was a friend of Grandpa's. I don't know how much Grandpa enjoyed him. Anyway he used to come up there and they'd sit and talk, and I'm sure if Grandpa hadn't enjoyed him, he wouldn't have come back very often.

Georgia Watson Craven:Then he was a friend of Mr. Mashburn's who was a Methodist minister and a very dear old man. His granddaughter lived with him and she was a friend of mine. They moved from Thomson the way the Methodists move their ministers around - at least they did then.

Tom Watson Brown: They still do.

Georgia Watson Craven:And his little granddaughter was a good friend of mine. She used to come up to Hickory Hill a lot and when my father died, I still have a letter that she wrote me. They moved away about that time. Mr. Mashburn was a nice man. I don't know the one or two others that came occasionally. And I think he had a coupe of Catholic priests that he liked and enjoyed. I don't remember to be sure that I ever saw one there but _______ sent Addie to a convent school. I think it was a hierarchy in the Church. The Jesuits andߞ

Tom Watson Brown: Where was the priest from? Augusta?

Georgia Watson Craven:I would assume so. I just don't know. I'm a little vague about there being any testimony to that. Now I am testimony to Dr. Young and Mr. Mashburn. I think there were another couple of ________ that came up there.

Tom Watson Brown: When he would talk and visit, where would they usually be - out on the porch?

Georgia Watson Craven:On the porch. Another nice thing that he did was to lend books to two boys who were very smart in Thomson school and they didn't have any access to books. They would come and they would ask in some way if they could come and if he could lend them a book or do something like that. One of them - of course kinds didn't understand a brilliant boy from a stupid boy, and they used to tease this boy - they called the poor kid Socrates. This was the kids at school. And he used to come and buy book from, and I can not remember that boy's name of his family.

Tom Watson Brown: He used to come to borrow books.

Georgia Watson Craven:He was very much a little gentleman. He was a nice boy, very nice boy.

Tom Watson Brown: He came to borrow books, not buy books.

Georgia Watson Craven:What?

Tom Watson Brown: He came to borrow, not buy.

Georgia Watson Craven:Oh, he came to borrow. And I'm sure he brought them back because he got them again, got more books. I don't know Randall I guess was too young to have come and borrow books, but grammar was a potential.

Tom Watson Brown: What about history, you said he did talk history, about history to you?

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. I don't know. I remember certain subjects. For some reason I remember the Hetsburg.

Tom Watson Brown: He was writing that little book about that time.

Georgia Watson Craven:He was writing that little book about that time.

Tom Watson Brown: Anything else?

Georgia Watson Craven:He would take off about something, just as you were talking about little Elizabeth and how distorted things were being taught to her or how little was being said. If reading about Thomas Jefferson that morning, he might talk at dinner at the house, just as he talked about the Hetsburg when he was writing that little book.

Tom Watson Brown: So these were really like mini-lectures or comments or something like that.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right. But it seems to me that whatever conversation he had, or we had at the table, was Grandpa talking about something intellectual and everybody else, maybe they were half asleep, maybe they were really interested in what he was saying. For some reason I guess I was interested in history even then. I remember when I went to Washington that summer after he was sworn into the Senate and Cuzzie of course had been here for that. He was showing us some of the paintings in the Capitol and there was one of the general period, late period in that hall and I recognized the subject matter and said something to him and he was so pleased. I have childish version of that sort of thing. Then I did good at grace Cathedral school. He talked about, I don't remember Cardinal Bent so much, but he must have talked about them, too. Nobody answered much, but everybody listened to him.

Tom Watson Brown: I think that's about got it. Can you think of something we've left out that we ought to get in?

Georgia Watson Craven:Well we talked about house habits at breakfast and dinner and supper, where we ate and didn't eat. We've talked about his writing.

Tom Watson Brown: What did he take for, did he take anything for asthma and bronchitis and all?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know.

Tom Watson Brown: Who was his doctor?

Georgia Watson Craven:I don't know whether he had a doctor in Thomson or not but Dr. Wright. I can't remember his first name. He was a very fine physician in Augusta and he had a hospital that I'm sure was made from an old, old brick house. My mother was down there in the hospital and I remember Addie taking me down to see her and it was made out of what had been a mammoth bedroom. I remember this lonely little bed that my mother was in and this great big empty room and big wide planks on the floor. That was Dr. Wright's hospital. It was called Margaret Wright Hospital. My mother thought he was a wonderful doctor. He came to Thomson every now and then. Somebody drove hi up to see Grandpa if Grandpa was really sick. I don't know what local doctor if any, because he didn't fool with doctors a lot. He just may have had prescriptions for the asthma.

Tom Watson Brown: Did he have any other ailments?

Georgia Watson Craven:Not that I can remember.

Tom Watson Brown: Everything was just in this asthma or bronchial?

Georgia Watson Craven:Just that sort of thing.

Tom Watson Brown: Didn't he favor one of the cousin Durhams that was a doctor?

Georgia Watson Craven:Cousin John Durham from Woodville.

Tom Watson Brown: John Durham.

Georgia Watson Craven:My mother loved him. She could imitate the way he's spit tobacco, but he was a dear man. She knew real people when she met them.

Georgia Watson Craven:We went up there once. He was the father of Mrs. Riley - Cousin Sally Riley was a _______, but she was more of a McQuale. Her mother was a McQuale and they were Baptist to the alligator skin, just so interested in foreign missions and all that kind of thing. The McQuales weren't close together. They didn't live in Thomson. But Cousin John was married to a McQuale.

Georgia Watson Craven:The Durhams were very independent people. I mean, he was like Grandpa in a way in terms of ...I'm sure he __________ but he was just a dear country man and country doctor that people loved. Mama used to make me take his copper spring tonics and we went up there once through the day and I saw where Cousin John lived and I remember they had a table. They had twelve children and we ate - these sweet, old people and me - at this huge table. I was so awed at that thing I didn't know what to do. When we saw his medicinal garden that day...

Tom Watson Brown: I can't think of anything else.

Georgia Watson Craven:Well I'm sure there's lot more to think of, but I think we've probably covered it all.

Tom Watson Brown: If you think of that other Mercer doctor

Georgia Watson Craven:Dr. Forester and Dr... What is that man's name? Could it have been something like Keith? No, that's not right. I will try. I might just come to me, sometimes things like that do.

Tom Watson Brown: They found some more references to that Watson oratory prize that he had over there so we want to get that cranked up again.

Georgia Watson Craven:Right.

Tom Watson Brown: You know - make it a five hundred or thousand dollar prize or something for the best thing because that would certainly be consistent with what he was doing.