Georgia BIOS:  The Successful Farmer
   U.S. Work Projects Administration, Federal Writers' Project (Folklore
   Project, Life Histories, 1936-39); Manuscript Division, Library of
   Congress.Copyright status not determined.
   
   0001
   
   August 8, 1939
   
   Mr. James L. McElroy
   
   Farmer
   
   295 Olgethorpe Avenue
   
   Athens, Georgia
   
   By Sadie B. Hornsby
   
   THE SUCCESSFUL FARMER
   
   Mr. [McMurray?] was sitting at his desk in the front hall near the
   door engaged in thumbing over one paper after another. The papers were
   evidently of importance and pertaining to his business affairs, for
   some he lingered over longer than others. It was obvious that he was
   so absorbed in his task that he didn't hear my approach to the front
   porch, for when I knocked on the door it startled the old man, and he
   jumped as if something unexpected had happened.
   
   "Mr. McMurray is tall and portly, with white hair, faded blue eyes,
   and a face which is criss-crossed with wrinkles and deeply tanned and
   roughened by the sun, wind, and rain of eighty-two years. His gray,
   shaggy eyebrows hang over his silver-rimmed glasses.
   
   It was an effort for him to get up from the chair as he is badly
   crippled in his right leg from the waist down. He hobbled to the door
   saying, "Good morning," and before I had a chance to state my mission
   he added, "Now if it's something you want to sell, young woman, I'm
   not interested, and don't have the money to invest in anything. I
   don't read much now, for I can't see good like I used to."
   
   After I had explained the object of my visit, he invited me in. "Come
   in, won't you, or had you rather sit on the porch? But if it's all the
   same to you we'll sit here in the hall, 'cause the sun hurts my eyes.
   You'll have to excuse the house; the woman folks are cleaning house
   and have everything 00022torn up."
   
   There was a loud noise in the back of the house, and asking to be
   excused a minute, he called out, "Sue, are you moving the Frigidaire?
   You go careful. If you jar some of the electrical parts loose it will
   cost me several dollars to have it fixed." The noise stopped and a
   Negro boy and an older Negro went into a room down the hall and came
   out carrying an old-fashioned dresser.
   
   Mr. McMurray said to the woman who made her appearance about that
   time, "What in tarnation are you going to do with that dresser?"
   
   "Taking it up the stairs," she replied.
   
   "What for?" he wanted to know.
   
   "Because there is no sense having two dressers in one room, and there
   is nothing else up there." Nothing more was said and he resumed his
   conversation.
   
   "Now, just to tell you the truth, I don't know anything about legends
   connected with Athens or any place near by. All I ever heard connected
   with Athens was when the Yankees came through. A man, who was in the
   crowd at that time, told me when the Yankees came through here a band
   of them began to steal everything they could get their hands on, as
   well as molested the women and children. Our boys caught the
   ringleader of the gang, hung him up by his thumbs in a clump of woods
   on the other side of town, and the others got away."
   
   I heard the one he called Sue call, "Sister Ruth, have you put your
   vacuum cleaner up?"
   
   00033
   
   "No".
   
   "Well, let me use it for a while."
   
   "All right, go in my room and get it."
   
   The noise from the cleaner began in the room the dresser was removed
   from. Mr. McMurray called in a sharp voice, "Sue, cut that blame thing
   off. I can't hear a word this lady had to say".
   
   There was no response, and the noise continued. He got up from his
   chair, hobbled into the room, and closed the door. The noise within
   ceased. He seemed embarassed over the condition of the torn-up house,
   as there was a conglomeration of furniture throughout the full length
   of the hall - many old-fashioned chairs, sofas, tables, and what not.
   Through an open door in what appeared to be the dining room, I saw an
   old square dining table with a lovely crocheted cloth on it.
   
   My host returned and sat down in a large rocker, after he had stopped
   the noise and confusion. "Now, where do you want me to begin? Would
   you like to know about my father first? Well, he was a famous Baptist
   preacher. He served as pastor for a number of churches for years. Some
   of them he preached at as long as twenty-five years hand running.
   
   "I was born at Watkinsville, in Clarke County then but [Ocenee?]
   County now, on June 21, the longest day in the year, 1857. My father
   left Watkinsville when I was quite a child. He moved out here about a
   quarter of a mile on Mitchell's Bridge Road. My father owned a large
   gin and grist mill. He ginned cotton and ground corn into meal for
   everybody around Athens. I know one thing I did as a boy. I have
   hauled hundreds of bushels of corn in 00044winter right by this very
   house in those days when the road was a foot deep in mud. The corn was
   ground between two huge stones pulled around and round by mules or
   horses. Now all that is done by electricity and the meal is ground by
   wheels pulled by belts connected to the grinder.
   
   "When I was a boy I had to walk four miles to school every day, four
   there and four back, making eight miles a day. Now children can't walk
   up here several blocks to college. I went to school here in Athens to
   a private school for boys, taught by Mr. Scudder. The school in recent
   years has been converted into a dwelling house. It is standing on the
   original spot, next to the First Presbyterian Church. After I finished
   there, which took me three years, I went to another private school
   taught by Sylvamis Morris and Judge Lumpkin. I went there three years.
   Among other subjects I took was bookkeeping. I have never used it only
   in my own business. That old school stood where the Fowler house is
   now, and recently bought by a fraternity. The school I went to was a
   residence converted into a schoolhouse and was known at that time as
   the Old Charbonnie House. Schools won't as good in those days as they
   are now, and that was the last place I went to school. I didn't go to
   college. It took a heap of money to go to college back in my young
   days.
   
   "Yes, mam, I have been here a long time. Why, I remember when there
   won't nothing but houses on Clayton Street with the exception of where
   Sun's Drug Store is now was a blacksmith shop. And I have seen mud
   half a leg deep on Broad Street after a heavy rain, and I remember
   when the first paving was laid, but of course I don't remember the
   year as my mind is too short now to recall the exact year.
   
   00055
   
   "I helped my father on the farm and at the cotton gin until I was
   twenty-one years of age, doing everything that came to hand, working
   on the farm in season and at the cotton gin and grist mill in the fall
   and winter. When I became a free man I married and went to farming for
   myself. I still farm, but it is run by tenant labor. I've been very
   successful handling labor. One Negro family has been on my farm
   twenty-five years and another has been with me twenty-three. I have a
   twenty-five horse farm; therefore, I have several other families
   living on it. The cotton gins are quite different now from what they
   were when I was a boy. The old ones were fed by hand.
   
   "After my father died I moved to town. A man had bought and built this
   house. He also owned two lots next to this one. Times got tight with
   him and he came near losing his property and this house he lived in at
   the time. I bought this property from him, which caused him to get on
   his feet and start all over again. That was twenty-seven years ago.
   
   "When I moved to town I built a modern gin, grist mill, and shingle
   mill, also a feed mill. I have ginned as high as three thousand bales
   of cotton in one season, but the Government has cut the cotton acreage
   down so my boys didn't gin but a little better than six hundred bales
   last year. The report on cotton is it seems much larger than last
   year.
   
   "I have been nearly killed several times fooling around the cotton
   gin. When I was running a water pipe to the gin, I had to connect it
   with the water main over here at the Co-ordinate College. Of course I
   had secured permission from the proper authorities. You have to be
   careful that the pipes are free of dirt, so I picked up a long pipe to
   knock the dirt out before 00066the men working on the main laid it. In
   doing so I struck [?] pipe and it knocked me flat on the ground
   senseless. If I had not been standing on grass and it was dry I
   wouldn't have known what death I died with.
   
   "One day while working around the gin, the cuff of my shirt caught on
   a line shaft and [??] around for some time before the machinery could
   be stopped and I was pulled out. Every stitch of clothing was torn
   from my right side but the cuff of my shirt. My hip was badly mangled
   and it was thought for a long time I would never walk again without
   the aid of crutches. I was about fifty-five years old when that
   happened.
   
   "I told you that I ran a shingle mill in connection with my cotton
   gin. Do you see my hand, with the two fingers gone? Well, let me tell
   you how it happened. I had an [emery?] wheel attached to the machinery
   on my shingle mill. I had just finished whetting a saw. I noticed the
   shingles were banking up, and very carefully I reached my hand down
   between the saws to scatter the shingles. When I pulled my hand out it
   was in some way knocked up against the saw. It sawed two fingers off
   in less than a second, and they flew out and hit the wall about ten
   feet from me.
   
   "W-e-l-l, it's like this, what I made on my gin, grist, and shingle
   mill, has enabled my to buy what property I cared to own. I fed,
   clothed, educated, and gave my children a few opportunities those
   times could afford. I have started each of my ten children out in
   business. I think that is evident of what the success the gins and
   farm has been.
   
   "I was the father of thirteen children, buy only eleven of them lived
   to 00077be grown and married. One of my daughters died soon after her
   first child was born, and the child died a few weeks later, but her
   husband is dead now. All of my children have a high school education,
   and four or five of them finished college. The rest of them wouldn't
   go. My wife and I were married sixty-one years before her death. She
   died this past December, and my oldest child will be sixty years old
   his next birthday.
   
   "My widowed daughter and her little boy are living with me now, sorter
   keeping things together for me. But I am going to get married again
   just as soon as I can find some nice lady that will have me. You don't
   know a nice woman about fifty or sixty who would like a nice home and
   a good husband? If you do, tell them about me. If I married again my
   children would have a fit, but I don't see why, because as fast as
   their wives or husbands died they were ready to get them somebody
   else.
   
   "Due to my father being a Baptist preacher, nautrally all of us belong
   to the Baptist church, and so to speak I was born in the church. Rain
   or shine, snow or blow, that is one thing my father demanded of us. My
   mother made preparations on Saturday, and bright and early Sunday
   morning if it was a country church my father served and it was a good
   distance from home we set forth to be there on time."
   
   The telephone rang, and the young woman he called Sue answered. Then
   she called to Mr. McMurray, "Papa, hurry and come on. Maybelle is
   waiting on us."
   
   He said to me, "Everything is so turn up here today, one of my
   daughters has invited us to have dinner with her. I am sorry to have
   to go, but you 00088know when a woman gets a meal ready it makes them
   mad to keep 'em waiting. Suppose you go by the gin on the way to town
   and look the gin over. But, before you go, I want to show you
   something I picked up in the field on my farm. Here it is. I used it
   for a paper weight all these years. Some people tell me it looks like
   a pine cone petrified. It does resemble one, but the sections that
   form the burr are diamond shaped and clear as crystal. Some of my
   folks took ink and traced around each of the sections that form the
   burr. I meant to take it down town and have it cleaned, but I have
   never gotten around to it. Here is a rock I found. It looks like it
   was shaped by an expert. I have found many arrow-heads, pots, and
   things in days gone by left by the Indians. I have often been sorry my
   wife let the children break them. It has always puzzled me what the
   Indians used these two rocks for. The round one is an inch thick and
   of solid black rock, and the other one is oblong and exactly a half
   inch through, and of perfectly white rock."
   
   The girls called him again, and he hobbled to the door with me,
   saying, "Be sure and go by the gin and ask the boys to show you how it
   is operated."
   
   When I reached the McMurray Brothers Gin the next morning there was a
   middle-aged man sitting on a split-bottom chair leaning against the
   building, holding the reins of the mules standing in front of the
   mill, while their master was unloading corn to be ground into meal. I
   asked the man if he was Mr. McMurray.
   
   "No, mam, I am just their first cousin, but I hang around here when I
   don't have nothing else to do. You will find them inside. Just go on
   in." The man who was standing at the grinder, grinding meal when I
   entered 00099the building didn't see me at first. Finally he looked up
   and came toward me. "Good morning. What can I do for you?"
   
   "I explained my visit to him. He nodded his head, pointed his thumb
   over his shoulder, and said in a gruff voice, "Go in the gin house.
   You will find my brother in there mending a belt. He will tell you
   what you want to know. I haven't got time myself. I have fifty bushels
   of corn to grind into meal right away."
   
   As I started to thank him, he said, "Not at all," and, scratching his
   head vigorously, he returned to his task.
   
   I followed his directions and found his brother mending the belt.
   After I had explained what I wanted, he said, "I never was a hand to
   explain things so a person could understand what I'm talking about,
   but I'll be glad to show you around and tell you what I know about it.
   
   "My father turned this over to [us?] five boys about twenty years ago.
   If you like this kind of work it is very interesting. There used to be
   money in this sort of work when we took/ it over. All of us have
   families and from the proceeds of this we have done the best we could
   by them. Educated our children and have given them a few advantages of
   life.
   
   "I've seen the time when we ginned cotton day and night, of course in
   season. And have ginned as high as thirty-three hundred bales of
   cotton in one season. Times were good then, but since that time there
   has come an awful change. Each year we have ginned less and less
   cotton. Last year was our shortest year and we only ginned six hundred
   and thirty bales. As a rule, 001010a man can pay for his ginning out
   of his seed from the cotton. It cost around $2.50 to gin a bale, but
   this year, as I see it now, the seed from a bale won't pay for it; as
   cotton seed is selling for 75¢ a hundred pounds.
   
   "Do you see that pipe that begins over there by the door? The cotton
   is hauled here and the people drive on those scales in front of the
   door. After the cotton is weighted, that suction pipe is placed in the
   wagon of cotton and draws the cotton into the gin. This wheel here is
   governed by air control and when that large pipe is full it trips the
   wheel. The air is cut off until the pipe is cleared and it cuts on
   again." He opened the drums, explaining, "This is where the seed is
   taken from the cotton. The brushes back of the saw cut and card the
   cotton as it is cut from the seed by the saws in front of the brush.
   These seed go through the trough until they reach the trap door here.
   Do you see this roller? Well, it turns the seed into the pipe below
   and they are carried through that pipe until they reach the seed house
   at the corner of the lot cut there.
   
   "While that is going on, the cotton drops in this hopper. When it is
   full, do you see this round circle in the floor? We spring the trap
   and this round section revolves to where the bale is shaped. Where the
   bagging and ties are placed, as this hopper fills with cotton to be
   pressed into bales, it gradually rises until the bottom of the bale
   reaches the level of the floor. Then the ties are buckled over the
   bagging that holds the cotton.
   
   "These stalls are used for storing seed. Do you see those trap doors
   at the back of the stalls near the floor? They open into a suction
   pipe. Often we store the seed for a man, and he will decide to sell us
   the seed. After 001111the purchase is made, we open those doors and
   the seed are carried to the seed house through a pipe. Lots of times a
   man will haul cotton here in the rain and the cotton is stored in
   those stalls until it is dry enough to gin. We don't make no extra
   charge for those things, for a fellow in business has to do lots of
   accommodating to hold their customers.
   
   "During ginning season we work night and day. It keeps all of us on
   the jump, and we hire quite a lot of help. Some we pay $2 a day and
   others $3. Of course we do pay a few as low as 75¢. $3 a day includes
   day and night work. I couldn't say how much we make, as what we make
   is divided among us boys, and we at least make enough to keep our
   families from starving. However, fifteen or say eighteen years ago we
   made a good living out of ginning and gave our children a few
   advantages and a college education. So far our children don't have to
   help us, but we are getting old now, and if the ginning business keeps
   dropping off there is no telling what they will have to do.
   
   "Since this country has cut down on cotton acreage, other countries
   are doubling theirs. Take Australia, which at one time was considered
   a small cotton country. It doubled its acreage in the last two years.
   Instead of this country exporting our cotton and cotton goods to other
   countries raising cotton, they are importing it to us each year by the
   million bales of both cotton and cloth. But I'm sure the reduction of
   acreage in this country is all right in its way, and these in charge
   surely know better than we what it is all about.
   
   "Now come this way, and I'll show you the grist mill. All this
   machinery 001212in here controls it. This is the corn sifter. After
   the corn is shelled it is put in the sifter. This [?] sifter has a fan
   under it that blows the cornsilk from the corn, and the sifter catches
   the large pieces of cobs. The corn is then taken through the overhead
   pipe controlled by those belts you see, and is spilled into a smaller
   sifter where every particle of dust, dirt, and small bits of cobs are
   either blown out or left in the sifter. It then goes to the grinder
   and comes out nice clean meal. You won't find any worms, weevils, and
   trash in our meal. Some people just grind all that up in the meal, but
   we try to be careful about ours. We used to grind lots of meal, but
   now we grind just whatever amount of corn is brought to us.
   
   "Look out of the window, and you'll see our mill for chopping oats up
   into [food?] stuff [?] stock. It is over to the left. That small
   contraption to the right is where we saw shingles. We take the lumber
   and saw it into the desired length, them feed it to the machine, and
   as you know one end of the shingle is much thicker than the other.
   Since composition and tin roofs are used now, we have very few calls
   for our shingles.
   
   "The [sacks?] you see back of you here in the building are full of
   meal and corn. You are right, this machinery is dangerous, and you
   have to be on your guard at all times. But so far, none of us have
   been hurt in the past twenty years, but we did have a Negro to get his
   hand cut off in the cotton gin, and another his arm."
   
   While we were talking, a woman dressed in a pink [crepe?] dress and a
   boy in overalls drove up in front, with two miles hitched to a wagon.
   The woman and boy were sitting on a board laid across the front of the
   wagon. There 001313were several sacks of corn, chickens, eggs, and
   watermelons in the back. The woman had her straight hair tucked back
   of her ears. She spit a mouthful of snuff on the ground, addressing
   Mr. [?]. "Do you have time to grind this corn by twelve o'clock?"
   
   "Yes, I think so."
   
   "All right," said the woman. "Git out of this here wagon, boy, and
   yank them there sacks of corn out. You know I've got to git to town
   and sell my chicken and watermelons before folks beat me selling
   theirs."