SHARP CO, AR - ERNEST G. SULLIVAN - Bio Submitted by: Kelly D. Carnes [K.d.redman@worldnet.att.net] ====================================================================== USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, data may be freely used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. These electronic pages cannot be reproduced in any format for profit or other presentation. ====================================================================== Name: Ernest G. Sullivan Ernest G. Sullivan was born January 1, 1916 in Sharp County, Arkansas. He was the last born child of Little Berry and Susan Florence Sullivan. He grew up near Black Rock, Arkansas and went to school in the one room school house where his sister Artie Bell Sullivan taught. He worked on their family farm and when he grew up became a minister. My grandfather died in 1994 and is buried in the Sullivan Cemetery in Sharp County, Arkansas along with his parents and other family members. These are a few of his memories that we are fortunate enough to have found written down. ----------- Ernest's memories: Before the Depression came along my father, Berrie Sullivan or Little Berry as he was better known, he bought two Model-T Fords and paid $400 cash, which sounds ridiculous, but there is a big difference between todays Fords and those about 1930. The depression hit us down in Arkansas where I was raised. In the very worst of the Depression, I was raising hogs and I would have four hundred to five hundred bushels of corn. I would feed that to the hogs, and sell them in the fall. Now that was some of our cash crop. We'd raise cotton and that was also part of our cash crop. Then we'd raise cattle and sell some of the calves, and that was another source of earnings. But I remember ninteen-thirty two, I had four hundred bushel of corn and thirty some odd head of hogs on the open range, we had open range then. I fed those hogs that entire four hundred bushel of corn, and when it came time to sell them I didn't get $.10/pound. And I remember when Rosevelt became President, and they put on a program to eliminate a lot of the cattle, and farmers had to kill a lot of their cattle. They had to burn them, they weren't allowed to give them to people that were hungry or needed food but they burned those cattle. I needed a pair of Sunday shoes, we didn't have money to go buy those shoes, so we always raised chicken. My mother, Susan Florence Sparks Sullivan, was always raising chickens, and they were laying eggs, so every day on the way to school I carried a big bucket of eggs to school and at the general merchandise store up there they would give you due-bills. A due-bill was a thing that if you took produce in and if they would buy it from you, then they would just write you an I-owe-you and this was the due-bill. When I got enough of the due-bills from the eggs I'd taken in, I could take them back to the store and trade them in for something I needed. So that is how I bought my shoes. Selling eggs, and I was getting seven to ten cents a dozen for eggs. Then we would have old roosters and hen, I would catch them and every so often I would take them up, and he would buy those chickens and the store would sell them for the people to eat. We raised our own pigs, so we didn't have to buy meat. We raised our own corn which meant we didn't have to buy meal. We would have to buy flour because we didn't raise wheat. We had our own lard. We would sell some of that cause that was part of our cash crop too. We didn't wear clothes like you see today, we wore coveralls and blue shambrey shirs and birlgine shoes, we would work in those things. We's raise cain, which we would take to the mill, grind it up and squeeze the juice out of it and make molasses out of it. Well since we had cattle we had our own butter and milk. We didn't have electricity then so we had a deep well and it was my job that when my mother washed clothes, I would go out with a pulley and rope and pull that bucket up full with water out of the well. This you did over and over. We made our own soap, called it lye soap. They had something back then called an ash hopper, and you would take the ashes out of the old fireplace we had and put them in the ash hopper. When it would rain or you pour water over the ashes then lye would come out. We would make soap out of that, along with some of the fat of pigs, and we would wash our clothes with lye soap. That is how we got by back then. I remember my mother using the spinning wheel, she would set there and have the wool or cotton, and she would make thread with it. She had a loom she would weave stuff. Now I am giving my age away but all those things were when I was a kid. Before the Depression we was getting $500 - $700 for a five hundred pound bail of cotton, but when the Depression came along we would only get $200 for that same bail, sometimes only $150. So that cut our income way down. Of course we raised the grain for our horse, you see we didn't have tractors on our farm. Our neighbor had an old Ford tractor up there but it wasn't that great of a thing. My father and I would go out in the field with a team of horses and a team of mules, and we would cultivate our 126 1/4 acre farm, not the whole farm, you know part of it was wood lands, creeks but we would usually raise about forty acres of corn. It was a good creek bottom farm and we could raise a hundred bushel of corn per acre. So we would raise plenty of corn, we would sell some corn and hay. But it was work, I mean everybody in the family had to work. But when my father passed away I was thirteen and since I was the only boy I had to take over for him. That is why so many people are afraid of the Depression. When President Rosevelt was elected and started the W.P.A. I went to work building highways, using a pair of mules. There is one good thing out of the whold thing, we never took a dime from Relief. We got buy, we had clothes to wear, sometimes all we had was corn, bread and beans, but we got by. I am glad we came through it but I don't ever want to go back. ======================================================================