Document text
W1 1 05G
Date received
Consignment no.
ShIPPoa from
Lab4t41 qoe-e
Amount
i0,6
WPA C
Form PROJ CT
--3
UNIT
--Collection (or Type)
PI** of ori
ProJect worker—
Project edJf
_
Remarks _
Project #1655
W. W. Dixon,
Winnsboro, S. C.
ELIZABETH VANDERVILLE DARBY
(white)
84 YEARS OLD.
Elizabeth V. Darby lives with her half sister, Mrs. Edward D. Sloan,
and her niece, Margaret Sloan, on the sout#weet corner of Vanderhorst and
Moultrie Streets, in the town of Winnsboro, Fairfield County, South Car-
olina. She is vivacious, intelligent, a good talker, and an attentiVe
listener. She is one of the interesting personalities of Winnsboro.
It is quite a pleasure to see you again. I have been longing to
see you and ask you about the particulars of the death of my friend Bill
Ellison. His death was so sudden. He MOJA on the streets Saturday, cheer-
ful and full of life, and early Sunday morning the news came that the silent
angel of death had visited him and taken him away in a moment. And here I
am old enough to be his mother and still living.
How old am I? If I live to see the 24th of next September, I will
be eighty-four years old. I was born fourteen miles from Wilmington, N. C.,
at Long Creek, a small post office place in New Hanover County, but the
county has been changed to Ponder County since then.
My father was a physician and surgeon, Dr. S. S. Satchel].; my mother,
Elizabeth Vanderville Satchell, died when I was three years old. I was the
only child by mother. When she died, father married Anne Moore. There were
four children by this union, James, S. S., Jr., Paul, and Margaret. Marga-
ret is the present Mrs. Sloan, with whom I make my home. Again my father
was bereft of his wife, and he embarked in the' last matrimonial adventure.
This time he was joined in wedlock to Sarah Bell. He had one child by this
W11056
2.
marriage, Quincy Bell Satchell.
My father was indulgent toward me as a child. I commenced to learn
my A. B. C.'s at his knee. There were no public schools in North Carolina
when I was a child; so,with the best of intentions,my father sent the nec-
essary money to D. Appleton Company, publisher, and they sent him the
blue -backed speller. He began teaching me the alphabet. The book ceased
to be interesting to me, a child, after I had absorbed all the tales of
the pictures in the front and back; pictures of the bear, the fox, the boy
in the apple tree, and the vain girl, with the pail of milk on her head,
going to market. In fact so tedious and tiresome became the ba (bay),
bi (by), be (bee), and bo (bow), that one day father rode off to see a
patient in the midst of a lesson, and I crept out to the well in the yard
and threw the Yankee blue -book (as I called it) to the bottom of the well.
n Father gave up the task of teaching me and sent me to a private
school, taught by a Mr. Richardson in Wilmington, N. C. here I found the
blue -backed speller again and went through it with just appreciation, as
the dunce cap hung on a nail back of the teacher's chair and three hickory
switches stood admonitory in the corner of the schoolroom, evident signs of
compulsory education in that day and time.
In my ninth year I was sent to the Moravian School, and it's a God's
blessing I was. The school was in charge of a Mr. de Schweinitz. The
teachers were kind in disposition, conscientious and thorough in their train-
ing, and the knowledge and wisdom I acquired there have been useful all my
life. I remained at school until the end of the war.
Anent that war, my father enlisted in the regular troops but was
soon detached and placed in charge of one of the base hospitals as physician
and surgeon. He was under General Ramsome, brother to 'Mat' Ransome, who
3.
became U. S. Senator after the war, that is when he first enlisted. The
general's name was Robert Ransome.
On the day the Yankees entered the town, the school bell was tolled
for assemblage of the pupils in the chapel. de were, as a body, cautioned
that our welfare and treatment by them would depend much on our decorum
of respect and politeness toward them. The first one who appeared was on
horseback. He was alone; I remember his frying pan and cooking utensils
were arranged about his saddle. Then two came and inquired about the lo-
cation of the post office and disappeared.
The next day many strolled and lolled about the school yard and
promenade grounds. In a bevy of girls there always is a pert one or two.
Some remarks of an ill nature passed between the girls and a young officer
with more bravado than brains, perhaps, and he secured a U. S. flag and put
it flying above the school building. The girls wanted it torn down, but
Moraviaas are the kind of Christians who, in their meekness, submit to per-
secution. The flag remained flying until the Yankees departed.
Our school ran out of tea, coffee, and sugar. The substitutes used
were red sassafras roots for tea, which we liked; ground okra seed and ground
parched corn for coffee, and molasses took the place of sugar.
The Yankees did no burning or damage to property that I remember.
In fact there was a good number of people in the locality who did not be-
lieve in secession and a few who thought slavery should be abolished.
The next school I attended ,for three years ,was the convent school
in ailmington, N. C. Leaving here, I went to my mother's people, the Van-
dervilles, in New Jersey. They secured me a position to teach in the public
school at Summerville, N. J. The school hours were from 9 a. m. to 4 p. m.
with an hour's intermission for recess and dinner. I remained here until the
4.
death of my father's second wife; then he had me to return home, keep house,
and govern the four children, my younger brothers and sister.
When my father married the third time, I went back to New Jersey
and was governess in a home of four children until I married a prosperous
young lawyer, Frank Darby. We were married nine years, but had no children.
His mother got the bulk of his property. I consented to receive as my
share, $3,700.00.
Soon afterward, I secured a position as bookkeeper and cashier of
Gailord Co., in wilmington, N. C. I studied stenography during my idle
hours, and became the stenographer of Governor Russell of North Carolina
in 1897. He was a Republican but a fine, nice gentleman. Afterward, I
worked under my brother, Paul, in Washington in the employ of the Sou. ky.
Co. Next, I worked for my brother, S. S. Satchell, Jr., in Philadelphia,
until General Otis went to the Phillipine Islands and the company sent my
brother there. Following this, I lost all I had saved in a Building and
Loan Association while acting as bookkeeper for a real estate and insurance
operator, J. O. Reiley, in Wilmington, N. C.
I next becaPs housekeeper for Father J. A. Gallagher, a Roman Catholic
priest, and remained in his household thirteen years, at Newbern, N. C. Then
I came to Winnsboro in 1924 to my sister, Mrs. E. D. Sloan, and have resided
with her family ever since.
n my brother, S. S., Jr., left the railway employment and obtained Gov-
ernment service in the Phillipines, and he was afterward on the Pacific coast
in the service. He helped me until he died in the Presidio Hospital, out in
California.
On my mother's side I am descended from the first white child born in
New Amsterdam. He was a de Rapalje child, and his father a de Rapalje built
5.
the first house on Staten Island. olhen the English took charge of New Am-
sterdam, they changed the name to New York. You see that still leaves me
a knickerbocker.
Yes, I remember the firing on Fort Sumter, near Charleston. I was
in my seventh year. General Beauregard had twice made a demand for its
surrender, and the third time he told them that the 12th day of April would
be the last day of grace. Everybody was solemn on that day, something like
the expectancy of an impending total eclipse of sun, which I witnessed af-
terward in the late 90's. There was no playing on that day, but there was
sad,anxious faces all around. News came that the fort had been fired on,
and, soon afterward, war was declared. My father went out in Capt. Cling
ham's company, but he was soon transferred into the hospital service. He
didn't face any bullets afterward, but he had to meet smallpox and diseases
which carried away as many soldiers as grape shot.
As the war went along, the matter of women and girisdresses received
much attention. There was no new cloth available. Old dresses were changed,
sometimes turned wrong side out or remodeled. Grown folks' clothes were re-
cut and fashioned into girl's dresses, dyed, and retrimmed. The girls wanted
to look fresh when the boys came hone on furlough. Dyes and dye -stuff was
a problem. Madder, copperas, barks, and roots were used to produce various
shades of coloring. Designs were nearly impossible; stripes predominated.
Economy had to be observed and considered. 4e11, the styles then were long
dresses with trails. You must know that in those days it was the height of
immodesty for a woman's ankle to be seen by a man; and a man never knew the
color of his sweetheart's stockings until the night they got married. Dresses,
before the war, required fourteen yards in the making. aomen in those times
wore shawls, each had an ambition to own and wear a cashmere shawl. They were
6.
lovely things, costly in material and beautiful in delicate embroideries.
One of the everlasting griefs to the womanhood of the South was the search-
ing for and taking away of these shawls when the Yankees made their other
depredations in their march through the Confederacy.
I am an old woman now. I have played in the sunshine, walked under-
neath clouds, and trudged in the rains of troubles that seemed about to over-
whelm me, but I have cone out of it allochastened and resigned to the will
of our Heavenly Father.
The first of next month I'll make my annual visit of three weeks to
the Convent of the Sacred Heart, at Belmont, N. C. I shall be very glad to
send you a postcard after my arrival, and it will please me to hear from
you and my friends in Winnsboro occasionally while there."