Personal Reflections on life in Damascus, Va. 1911-1930’s
By Carrie Trent Price in an interview on December
3, 2010.
Carrie Trent was 12th of 15 children, born
on February 1, 1911 in Fisher Hollow, near Alvarado. In
February of 2011 she will be 100 years old.
Carrie's mind is alert and she has
many memories of her early life. This interview was conducted
with several people asking questions, including her son David
Price, her son-in-law Stuart Wright, Stuart's sister Tommie Pratt
Waters (who wrote the interview below,) and Richard Smith, webmaster
for the Town of Damascus website.
There were two groups of children
in Carrie's family, seven in the older group and
eight in the younger group.
She lived on the Brown farm and later moved to
the Debusk farm in Fisher Hollow just outside Damascus, Va. Her
Dad was a farmer. She walked about 1 ½ miles through
the fields to the Cedar Bluff School. At about the age
of 6, she had foot logs to cross and they were frozen with ice
in the winter. She remembers screaming and slipping as she walked
with her brother who was in the 7th grade. This was a one room
school primary through 7th grade. Blanche Clifton was their "very
nice teacher" who once shared her lunch with Carrie when a dog
ate her lunch en route to school. Johnny Perdue cleaned the school
and started the fire which kept them warm in the winter.
She left the Cedar Bluff school and
attended the Laurel Community School for 2-3 years. This was
also a one room school and students brought their own aluminum
cups and filled them with a dipper of water. Bess Rowe was the
teacher and one day made Carrie stay after school to help her
clean up and sweep the school room. Carrie told her mother about
this and was told "the teacher was paid to do this work
and she did not have to". The Laurel church which still
stands in the Rowe town community was built over the original
school building. She was rarely afraid walking but did get afraid
of John Ramsey’s old dog who barked when she walked by.
As a youngster she remembers
her only possession was a Rhode Island rooster and
she wanted to give it to Henry Vestel, a friendly neighbor
who lived in a log house in Fisher Hollow. She was living on
Slate Hill at that time. In return for the rooster, he gave
her a $1 bill. She had never seen one before this. He had
two sisters, Fannie, and Laurie who never married. She loved
to go and stay with them. The house had a fire place with a bed
on either side. They liked to pamper her when she came to visit
and they gave her an ear of corn to go out and feed the rooster
who became a family pet. 
When she started attending Damascus High School
she continued to walk to school. She loved to get on the railroad
track and felt she could “go faster than the train”.
Now she was walking alone as none of her siblings went with her.
She
was the only one of the 15 siblings who finished high school. Her
younger brother Elmer quit school rather than take a whipping
from the principal, Wilton Mock. Mr. Mock was first postmaster
in Damascus then became the principal at the high school. Elmer
joined the Navy to avoid returning to school and the whipping.
Carrie was always busy and left home early and got back around
4:30. The roads
in town were dirt with some gravel. Her brothers picked blackberries
and sold them for 35 cents a gallon, commenting that the roads
in town had rocks so small they were no bigger your
fist.
The train was an important
part of their transportation; there
were a few cars in Damascus around 1915. Carrie’s mother
had a horse and buggy and went "first class" when
delivering butter to customers in Damascus. The first car she
saw belonged to Martin Lynch from Bristol,she was 8 or 9 years
old. She learned to drive a car in the early 1930’s.
She sometimes stayed with one of her sister’s in Alvarado.
There were 4 train stops: Alvarado, Drowning
Ford, Vail’s
Mill and Damascus.
When Carrie was home she and her older sister
prepared breakfast for the family. She had many chores to do
including taking care of the cow. She milked the little black
and white cow who did not want anyone but Carrie to milk her.
She put the milk in the cool spring house and learned how to
take the cream off and make butter, and buttermilk. This was
all done by hand. Sundays were the primary day of rest and the
children often played in the branches near the house. She remembers
picking flowers and she enjoyed the out of doors. She attributes
the walking and exercise to helping her live to the
age of 99.
She sometimes stayed with her Widener grandparents
on Red Hill and went across the swinging bridge to get Kerosene
in a kgallon container for 10 cents at N.S. Wright’s Store.
This was when she was ten and eleven years old.
She graduated from high school
in May, 1930 and got married in Sept.,1930. She moved
to Damascus with her husband Blake Price and into her present
home with her mother and father in law. She has lived
in this house for 80 years. When she moved
in, the house was rough and had about 4 rooms. Her husband added
rooms over the years. Her mother-in-law was nice but she liked
her stuff in the floor. Carrie said when she tried to clean
the house she said wished there were two of her to clean and
her mother in law said one was quite enough.
When she moved
to Damascus there were lots of people on the street. The Broady’s
had the first house built on this side of the river, the Morgans,
the Beverlys, and several others. Growing up she had lived
with just her family and when she moved to Damascus she had lots
of neighbors on the street. For the first year she did not trust
the bridge and stayed close to home. She did not even walk into
town that year. The present bridge is #3. The first two
were rickety bridges. She is proud of knowing how to work
and that it takes a lot of time to do things right, especially
without a lot of money.
The Greenway Hotel was just down
the street from her house but burned to the ground in 1932. It
was the first and last of hotels in Damascus.
Further down the road where the Douglas Inn stands was a saw
mill. She and Blake had a small farm at the present house
with a cow and she went to McConnell’s Mill (now the Old
Mill) when it was a working mill to buy feed for the cow. They
picked out pretty feed sacks and took them to a seamstress to
make dresses for Virginia and Linda her daughters.
When her brother Charley came back after the Navy
they went to see her brother Luther in West Virginia and stayed
a couple of nights around 1971. That was the year she got
her Chevrolet which she still has.
June 26, 1990, four women, Carrie, her sisters
Minnie, and Hazel, and Minnie’s daughter Mary flew to Oregon
to see her brother Smith. She had not seen him for 40 years!
That was her second time on an air plane. The first was in 1980
to see her son David after her husband Blake died. Her granddaughter,
Cindy went also, she was about 14 years old. They saw the
sights, the Washington Cathedral, the White House, the Museums,
and the Zoo.
Written by Tommie Pratt Waters
Click here for photos from the albums of Carrie
Trent Price
Carrie Trent Price and her son David, December 2010.
