Document text
Josephine Wallace
July 5, 1938
If you should meet Josephine Wallace you would more
than likely say to yourself "With a little more 'finish'
she'd be a good-looking woman."
She has a high forehead,
well -shaped nose and mouth, and nice blue eyes. She keeps
abreast of the styles perhaps a little too well and
she is never without a permanent wave. Although she has
worked in a cotton mill a good part of her life she does
not look more than her forty years.
The ambition of Josephine's life is to keep her
five children, more particularly her two daughters, out
of the mill. She does not mind the hard work she does
each day because it is to provide advantages for her
children. She is making seventeen dollars a week and
her husband twenty-two. They apparently dread the
impending wage cut more than some families of lesser
means because they hate to curtail in any measure the
standard of living they have worked out for their family.
If you should go to the Wallace home in all proba-
bility you would be greeted by one of Josephine's neatly
dressed and well-mannered children who would enter into
conversation with you as soon as you were both seated
in the living -room. The living room is a cheerful,
homey place despite the misapplication of color and the
2
lack of taste in choice of ornaments. The door prop
is a big chine cat which curls itself in insolent laziness
and manages to gaze at you no matter where you are seated.
The mantel is adorned with two miniature covered wagons,
one polar bear, a cat group, and a china centerpiece
which features a little girl looking at a dog and asking,
"Can't you talk?" Wherever you turn in the room you are
likely to see a gaudy -looking piece of statuary but in
a little while you do not mind. Even the too much green-
ness of the flowered rug which is vying with the colorful
drapery ceases to annoy you. Inevitably you reach the
conclusion that the people who live here have created
for themselves a home.
The Wallaces are congenial among themselves and
they find friends who share their interest in music.
The bad -toned piano is the pride of the household.
If Ira Belle, the 17 year old daughter, were to come
in during your visit she would ask you if you could
play certain tunes and with a request that she play
them for you she would respond readily. She might play
il g
Tippy-Tippy-Tim, a number or two from Snow White,
4 A
several others from recent pictures, and almost certainly
Duke University's song. Ira Belle and her sister have
taken free music lessons for the past two years from the
3
WPA teacher who also gives lessons on the Wallace piano
to a number of other girls.
Ira Belle will take from the music rack a number
of hymn -books and hand them to you for your inspection.
Among them will be a compilation by Gypsy Smith, a
favorite of hers. Her grandfather Carrington who was
born in England has told her that when he was a lad he
ran away from home and lived for awhile with the gypsy
tribe to which Gypsy Smith belonged. When you put the
books aside Ira Belle will play for you a number of
hymns which she and members of her family have sung in
duet or quartet combinations at the local churches
during revivals.
The Wallace children are proud of their mother
and father. Josephine has told her children that their
father traces his ancestry back to the Wallace clan
that saved the Crown of Scotland, and that gives the
two girls a certain feeling of security as they attend
the Durham High School. Ira Belle thinks that many more
of the mill girls would go on through high school if
they were not made to feel inferior by classmates who
have had superior advantages. The past year she was
the secretary of her section, in which, as she expresses
it '1A11 the girls were nice, smart girls and none of
them high falutini.0 Both of the girls say that
MW
4
Josephine has always seen to it that they were as neatly
dressed as anybody in their classes.
One point of pride with Josephine's children is the
fact that their father who had very little grade school
education passed a correspondence course dealing with
arithmetic. Josephine herself went through the seventh
grade because conditions in her home made it unnecessary
for her to start to work until she was fourteen.
Josephine Wallace is the oldest of five children
born to David and Josephine Carrington. David, one of
six children, was born in Bidston, Cheshire County,
England. His father, a watch maker and diamond setter,
sent him to grade school from the time he was three
until he was eleven. At eleven he entered Brassie's
Shipyards and worked until he was fifteen. Joining
the English navy then he served for eight years and came
out a skilled mechanic. Service had brought him to the
Atlantic Coast of the United States and in David's
words he had become a "free -thinker and wanted to upend
the rest of his days in the United States. England in
those days was too conservative for me." Shortly there-
after, having made his way to North Carolina, he met
and married Josephine Smith who lived in the backwoods
country near Sanford. Josephine had to her credit only
six months of schooling. Her father had come home from
the War Between the States crippled with arthritis and
unable to do manual labor at all. .His girls worked
hard on the small farm which he owned and managed to
subsist in a meager sort of way. David's skill as a
mechanic, when a skilled mechanic was hard to find,
made it possible for him to keep a job and make Josephine's
life a little easier than it had been. Soon after he was
married his pay was increased from seventy—five cents
to a dollar and a quarter a day. When he told Josephine
the good news she exclaimed "My Lord, that makes us rich
folks for sure." She says that no money has ever made
her prouder than that first week's wages with the raise
for it seemed such a big amount after the lean, hard
days she'd known on the farm. From then on David made
a fairly decent living for his family and by the year
1912 he had a small bank account.
At that time letters from England reminded him
that his mother was ageing fast and her health was
failing. David could not overcome the desire to see
his mother again. He sold all of his property except
his household goods and with his wife and three children
went to England. After a month's visit among his people,
David and his family returned to North Carolina on the
Aquitania.
Shortly after his return David secured a job as
a mill mechanic in West Durham and he has been there
since. Josephine as the oldest of the children felt
the need of contributing to the family at an earlier
age than the others. Then, too, all the girls her age
that she knew had entered the mill. Her younger brothers
and sisters attained the age of sixteen before their life
in the mill began. One of her brothers is married to
a nurse and one of her sisters whose husband owns two
houses in Asheville is supervisor in a cigarette factory
in Richmond. The other brother and the other sister
are married and working in the same mill with Josephine.
Josephine is proud of her mother and father. She
likes to tell you that the older Josephine, now sixty-
one, got another permanent last week. She will look
at the large photograph of her which stands on the
piano, and say "That's a good picture but lot of folks
have told me they didn't think it done Mama justice."
If her father's name is brought into the conversation
she will probably tell you that he is a thirty-second
degree Mason.
Josephine's ambition for her children is hardly
more pronounced than is her husband's. He is determined
to educate his children so that they may make a living
of which they will not be ashamed. Though Tom Wallace's
7
father became Chief of Police of Burlington before his
death, the older ones of his seven children knew many
hard days and were glad of a chance to work in the mill
when they were no more than ten or eleven years old.
The Wallaces have not saved any money during their
married life but they have provided their children with
a respectable home. If Josephine's health holds out
and the mill continues to need them both they plan to
send all their children through high school and to give
the two girls business training to equip them for the
profession of court stenographer.