| Summary: | (8:23) Mrs. Barton discusses her family's history. This inteview is part of an oral history project funded by a grant from the Alabama Historical Records Board, managed by the Alabama Department of Archives and History staff, using funds provided by the National Historical Preservation and Records Commission.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Martha Barton
May 14, 2009
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 1 of 10
Clint Alley: We’re here with the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library today, May 14, 2009. My name is Clint Alley, I’m with Mrs. Rhonda Haygood, we’re interviewing Mrs. Martha Barton today. Mrs. Barton, we’re gonna to start out by asking you when and where were you born.
Martha Barton: I was born right here in this city of Florence in ECM Hospital on Tuscaloosa Street at the time.
CA: Tuscaloosa Street.
MB: Right down here, the block below you, that’s where it was.
CA: So they’ve moved since then?
MB: They’re apartment or townhouses or something there now.
CA: Okay, okay. Ah, and did—were your parents from this area?
MB: No, neither one of them.
CA: Okay, where’d they come from?
MB: My mother came from Jackson County, Alabama, Stevenson. And my father came from Perry County, Tennessee.
CA: How did they get together?
MB: Ah, my father came to Florence and my mother was teaching school here. She taught school from 1913, quit, went to Washington during World War I and stayed there about three years. Had some wonderful experiences while she was there.
CA: That’s Washington D.C.?
MB: Washington, D.C. She worked in the War Department.
CA: Okay.
MB: My father enlisted in the Navy in 1907. And he served with Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet.
CA: Okay, so he saw the world then didn’t he?
MB: He saw the world. You know the ‘speak softly but carry the big stick?’ And all the battleships, all the ships were white. And he served on a submarine.
CA: Okay.
MB: The Adder.
CA: The Adder.
MB: Which was no bigger, when you see a picture of it, than the, some of the torpedoes today. It was a seven-man submarine.
CA: Seven-man submarine. And was he in the Navy when the war broke out? World War I?
MB: No, uh-uh.
CA: Okay.
MB: No, he was out of the Navy, and I think he came here about 1919, worked at the Dam, construction there. And my mother got back from Washington about 1919, 1920. And I don’t, that’s, I don’t know how they actually met, but—
CA: But they met in Florence?
MB: They met here, yeah.
CA: Okay. Say she was a school teacher?
MB: She was a school teacher.
CA: Okay. Did she teach, was it a—
MB: She taught—
CA: —one room schoolhouse, or was it—?
MB: Yes. Well Patton School was a city school at the time. When she taught a while at Patton, she went out and taught at Stoney Point, which was a one-room school. And then Gravelly Springs I believe. One might have been before the other one, I may have them backwards. Then she went to Gordo, and then we came along, my brother and I.
CA: Okay, okay.
MB: And she started to teach again in the late thirties, during the Depression, paid in script, which is just a piece of paper that you could take to the grocery store and they were supposed to accept it and let you have food or whatever you needed, but some of them wouldn’t do it. But, she retired from Central Elementary School. She was there for twenty-seven years, I believe. So I don’t know in all how many years she actually taught.
CA: But she, after she had you and your brother she, she quit working for a while?
MB: She, yeah, uh-huh.
CA: Okay.
MB: Well, when she got back from Washington, I don’t think she taught any more. She worked as a bookkeeper for Young’s Furniture, which is where that building next to Shoals Theatre is; Young’s Furniture was there and their son died in France; there’s a memorial window to him in our church.
CA: Okay, Okay.
MB: My father taught school, too.
CA: Did he really?
MB: He had a, well at the time, it was the only degree I guess they were giving from a Memphis College, and he was teaching in Obion County, and it turned out his students were all his nieces and nephews and he said, ‘This is not gonna cut it!’
(laughter)
MB: So he, he decided he was gonna do something else.
(laughter)
MB: But, on my mother’s side, my grandparents both taught school in the 1880s. I find my grandfather in 1880 listed as a schoolteacher in Jackson County.
CA: So teaching is in your blood, isn’t it?
MB: Yes, but you know I put a stop to it.
(laughter)
MB: None of my grandchildren have been interested in teaching.
CA: Okay. Your mother got her degree at UNA, it’s, was the Normal School?
MB: Yes, she had a B.S. from, the first degree in 18—, 1912, was, ah, I don’t know really what it was called, but I have her certificate. It’s a great big ornate thing. And then she went back and got a B.S. in ’49 and went to Peabody and got a Master’s.
CA: A Master’s, okay, so she was, she was an early graduate of UNA then, over there.
MB: Yeah. For several years she was the oldest graduate that ever came to homecoming.
(laughter)
CA: Oh, wow. That’s quite a distinction.
MB: Yes, cause she got to ride in the limousine, well it wasn’t a limousine, but the open car with the president.
CA: Oh, wow, wow.
MB: And, I don’t know—
CA: That’s amazing.
MB: That was quite a treat for her, cause she was up in years then.
CA: So they got married in about 19—, 19—?
MB: Twenty-four.
CA: Nineteen twenty-four, okay. Nineteen twenty-four. All right, and then, where was their house at? Where was the house you grew up in?
MB: Well, when I first came into this world, we were living where there’s a parking lot, UNA has a parking lot, and right next to it’s this little white frame house. In that house.
CA: OK.
MB: Florence Hall and Strickland Hall occupied that parking lot. And then we moved around over town a lot, and went to the country. And it was country. Dirt road, no electricity. And we went out there about 1935.
CA: Nineteen thirty-five.
MB: No—living in a two-room log house, each room was twenty by twenty with a dogtrot through the middle of it.
CA: Oh, wow, what community was that in?
MB: Well, originally it was called Lovelace community, but now they call it Central.
CA: Okay, over there at Central.
(laughter)
MB: I don’t know why. But, that house was supposedly built by the first Lovelace that came to this county, about 1830. Lots of the descendants of that family come there now to see the house, but I’m afraid it’s falling down.
CA: But the house is still sort of standing a little bit?
MB: It’s still sort of standing and I could explain why it’s falling down, but that might not be the right thing to say.
(laughter)
MB: I don’t want to add the property tax nor the commercial rates for utilities. Cause that would—
CA: Yeah, so you, ah—
MB: —do a number on my income.
(laughter)
CA: So do you still own the house?
MB: Yeah.
CA: Do you? Okay.
MB: That’s where I live now.
CA: It’s where you live now?
MB: We built another house.
CA: Okay.
MB: When my husband and I retired, we moved out there from town. And we had some acreage and he really enjoyed the gardening and the fruit trees and taking care of the property until he got sick.
CA: Okay.
MB: And I guess he was sick about ten years that he couldn’t do too many things. He could mow the grass a little bit. But, now I’m trying to mow fifteen acres.
CA: Oh, that’s a big yard.
MB: I’ve got a big, wide blade on my mower.
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