Betty Emma Graves Braxton

In October of 1992 I sat down with my beloved grandmother so she could share some of her childhood memories. She grew up in Southern Alamance County, NC in the early 1900’s. Here is a portion of what she shared. I recorded our conversation, and the notes she prepared for our conversation were titled THINGS I REMEMBER AS A CHILD. Susan Troxler

"When I was a little girl, we lived in a large rented house on the road just above Friendship Church, the three oldest of us children were born at that place. We had a happy home, eventually there were five of us children whom our parents loved very much. Later Papa (Joel Seymore Graves) bought some land, and built a house of our own—and after they built the new house we moved and had another little sister and brother born to us. When we were small children living at the first home, Mama (Bertha Louona Smith Graves) would help Papa in the field, and take us children with her. One day they were riding down to the field, and the road was a little bit rough down across the field, and Mama fell off of the wagon-- she was sitting up on the wagon seat with Papa, and holding the baby, my little brother Wake (Joel Wake Graves) in her arms. She broke her arm but it didn’t even scratch the baby, didn’t even hurt him at all; but she had quite a time after that taking care of the baby and the rest of us children and doing all of our cooking and everything, but she got along alright with it.

One time Papa got a little pig for my oldest brother (William Smith Graves) for something for him to play with, and he loved that little pig. He had a sand pile, and he would take that little pig out to the sand pile and cover him up with sand and all you could see was its little eyes sticking out… but when we were children we really had a lot of fun.

I remember Papa would take the baby (Ben Wellington Graves) down to the barn when he’d go to milk the cows, and he had a little tin cup and he’d take that cup along, he was just a little toddler, and Papa would milk the milk right from the cow into the cup and let him drink it, and they always talked about him gaining so much weight and growing so fast, thought it was that hot milk he was drinking.

When we got old enough to go fishing, our grandmother (Elizabeth Jane Isley Graves) and grandfather (William Monroe Graves) lived near us—we could see their house from our house, and we could walk over and visit when our parents would let us. Grandma would come and take us fishing, me and my other older brother, and we had lots of happy times going with grandma fishing. Sometimes we would see snakes, and grandma would kill them.

In the spring of the year we would go out and pick wild berries: wild plums, blackberries and strawberries. All of us children would have a good time picking the wild berries and would carry them to the house, and Mama would make pies and things out of them for us. Then in the fall there were lots of vines in the trees and things like that, so we’d go out and pick and grapes, and we’d swing on the grape vines and just had a lot of fun in the fall, too.

Another thing, when we were small children my brother was about three years older than I…and one day Mama said we were missing. She looked for us, and she found us out behind the house with a can of black tar that Papa had painting the roof of the house, and he had painted me all over my face and hands and everything with black tar. And she was so worried— she said—I was so small I don’t remember this—but she said she was so worried, afraid she could not get that black tar off my face without ruining my skin, but she kept working with it until she got it off. Said it didn’t hurt my face at all, my skin.

After my sister (Nellie Lou Graves Mooney) was born-- I was six years older than my sister-- I was rocking her to keep her quiet so Mama could do her work, and I think I must have fallen asleep and the little rocking chair turned over and we fell on the coals. We had open fireplace, I fell over towards those coals and her little hand went out and hit the coals and burnt the top of her hand, and she cried and cried. We had the doctor come, and he was a doctor that could do what they called talking out the fire, and he blew on her little hand and talked the fire out and it quit hurting and she quit crying; but Mama had quite a time getting it to heal up. And I remember she used Cloverine Salve on her hand to make it heal, and she doesn’t have many scars it just about all went away.

And we always went to church on Sunday morning, we’d have to go in the buggy. It was quite a buggy-full, Mama and Papa and five kids in a buggy, but we enjoyed church and at one time Papa was the Sunday school superintendent, and Mama taught Sunday School Class (at Friendship Methodist Church in Burlington, NC) for several years. And my Grandma Graves (Elizabeth Jane Isley Graves) taught Sunday school for 50 years, taught the small children 50 years, which we thought was quite a record.

In 1920 Papa bought a car—this was the year Nellie Lou was born, so we all thought it was her car, you know. We were all so happy to get a car so we wouldn’t have to ride in the buggy every time we went anywhere… so Papa didn’t know how to drive when he went uptown and bought the car, but he drove it home. A day or two after that he was going to carry some eggs and things that he had to sell to town, and he started to town with them and I think he broke most of the eggs before he got there because he didn’t know how to put on the brakes when he come to a rough place in the road, because he went across it pretty fast. But he got to town and back safe and sound.

When we were kids we had to walk to school, we didn’t have buses when we went to Friendship School-- its there where the church is-- which is now torn away; but we walked down there to school and it was quite a muddy road, sometimes you walked in mud up to your ankles, and you were a mess when you got to school. But we didn’t mind, because everybody had to do the same thing. I still remember when the bigger boys would get to fightin’ on the way to school, and sometimes I would be scared to go because I was afraid they were going to hurt each other, but that’s the style boys did back then, they didn’t like each other then they’d fight. But as far as I remember we never did have any real big fights.

There’s so many things I could tell, and maybe I can get more of them later on. But Grandma (Narcissis Emilyne Catherine Robertson Smith) and Grandpa Smith (Quinton Alphonso Smith), I kind of left them out, but they would come visit us, they lived in Kimesville, which would be probably 15 miles from where we lived, and it took them quite a while to get down there in their buggy. So they didn’t get to come too often, and Grandpa was sick a lot of the time, he had real bad asthma and he couldn’t get out in the air like a lot of people did, but they would come to visit us and they would usually come early in the morning and go back in the afternoon on Sundays, and when we’d get home from church they would be sitting out on the porch in two big old rockers that Mama had on the front porch, and they said that she always got them just for them to sit in, I don’t know. But they would be sitting on the porch rocking when we got home from church, and Mama would always have her Sunday lunch prepared because she did most of that on Saturday and then early Sunday morning before she’d get to church, so it didn’t take her long after we got from church to get it on the table so we’d all be having lunch. They didn’t go to church because they had to drive down from Kimesville to our house and it took them all the morning to get down there you see, then they would eat lunch, then it was time for them to start back. Sometimes they would come and spend Saturday night with us and go back on Sunday.

After Grandpa died, Grandma would come and stay several weeks at the time, sometimes. In fact, she stayed around with all of her children, she’d go stay a couple of months at a time with each one, which worked out pretty good, she enjoyed it because she loved to talk from one place to another, so it was good for her.

But when she was at our house, she used to love to sing, she was a good singer in her younger days, of course she didn’t do too well… but she remembered all of the verses to the songs, and she would sing little songs for us, they call them now ballads. And she couldn’t understand, she was old, and she couldn’t understand when we got radios. Mama would want her to bathe sometimes, and we didn’t have a bathroom and we bathed in the kitchen in front of the fire, and Mama would tell her when she was going to give her a bath; and she said “I’m not going to bathe in here, cause those little people in that box over there will see me.” And she thought the radio was a box, and she didn’t understand why the people was in there, she just couldn’t understand that. And another thing she couldn’t understand was airplanes, she would say “Well I don’t understand, I see it a-flying up there but I don’t understand the fool things.” And we thought she was so funny, we loved to listen to Grandma talk.

One of the songs though, that Grandma used to sing; and Mama knew it and would sing it to us children when we were little, we loved to hear her sing… you see, when we were small we didn’t have radio then, we had the radio later; but when we were small families had an organ or a piano, and somebody might could play it a little; but some of these old songs were things that had come down through the families, and I don’t know where this one originated from but it was called “The Two Little Orphans” and Mama would sing it to us children, and my oldest brother would always cry when Mama would sing it."





My grandmother enjoyed a simple, happy childhood and life. She loved sharing her childhood experiences with her children and grandchildren.

She was my favorite person, ever.

Susan