MF 170 Betty Parker Duff / Class and gender roles in company towns in Maine and Kentucky

Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History: MF 170 Betty Parker Duff / Class and gender roles in company towns in Maine and Kentucky

Number of accessions: 16
Dates when interviews were conducted: 1999-2002
Time period covered:
Principal interviewers: Betty Parker Duff
Finding aides: transcripts.
Access restrictions: NA3345
Description: This collection consists of a series of interviews conducted by Betty Duff in connection with her PhD dissertation for the history department at the University of Maine. They were recorded in Millinocket, Maine and Benham, Kentucky, and focused on life in a company-owned or dominated towns.

NA3339 Bobbie Gothard, interviewed by Betty Park Duff, March 23, 2001, at the Benham Coal Miner’s Museum in Benham, Kentucky. Gothard talks about going to school in Lynch; her ancestors legacies; her grandparents jobs within the mining community; women’s limited roles in church and politics; and class systems within the union community. Text: 4 pp. partial transcript. Recording: C 2465 45 minutes.

NA3340 Cynthia Allen, interviewed by Betty Parker Duff, March 22, 2001, at Allen’s home in Lynch, Kentucky. Allen talks about moving to Lynch in 1916; the dangerous affects of the UMWA in town; how women managed if their husbands were killed in the mines; women’s roles in church; rivalries between Lynch and Benham; immigrant women in Lynch; her husband’s job in the mines; mining companies against the United Mine Workers; her mother making lye soap; and Lynch presently being run down. Text: 23 pp. transcript. Recording: C 2466 1 hour.

NA3341 Otis Atkinson interviewed by Betty Parker Duff, May 3, 2002, at the Southeast Kentucky Social Club barbecue in Lynch, Kentucky. Text: 1 pp. selective transcription. Recording: C 2467 3 minutes.

NA3342 Constance Ellison, interviewed by Betty Parker Duff, May 3, 2002, at Ellison’s home in Benham, Kentucky. Ellison talks about moving to Benham in 1944; segregation in the schools; being a black woman teacher; violence among UMW and Benham; the difference between Lynch people and Benham people; and the advantages of living in a company town. Text: 12 pp. transcript. Recording: C 2468 30 minutes.

NA3343 Catherine Perry, interviewed by Betty Parker Duff, February 21, 2001, at the VA Hospital Lounge in Togus, Chelsea, Maine. Perry talks about growing up in Millinocket in the 20s and 30s; her father leaving her family; the Millinocket school system; the intermixing of ethnic groups and women in the area; the presence of the KKK in Millinocket; women’s church groups; the upper class mill managers; the advantages of living in a company town; rivalry between Millinocket and East Millinocket; traveling by train; and inventions, such as the washing machine, in the late 40s. Text: 16 pp. transcript. Recording: C 2469 45 minutes.

NA3344 Loretta and Richard Manzo, interviewed by Betty Parker Duff, February 19, 2001, at their home in “Little Italy,” Millinocket, Maine. The Manzos talk about his parents moving to Millinocket; growing up in Little Italy; building a parochial school in 1938; leasing land from Great Northern; working for the mill; the relationship between Great Northern and the unions; women’s groups in the community; gardening, canning and sewing; family heritage. Text: 18 pp. transcript. Recording: C 2470 / CD 0988 1 hour.

NA3345 X, interviewed by Betty Parker Duff, March 14, 2001, Millinocket, Maine. X talks about moving to Little Italy, Millinocket from Italy in 1924; speaking both English and Italian; her education at Stearns High School and hairdresser’s school; wanting to become a teacher; thought on marriage; politics in Bangor and serving as a state committee member in Millinocket; her father’s remarriage; owning land in Millinocket; her father’s life as a mill worker for Great Northern; growing up in Millinocket; her sister’s life; past and present day Little Italy; local boys; and pollution from the mills. Text: 27 pp. transcript. Recording: 1 hour C 2471.

NA3346 Ruth Wiley, interviewed by Betty Parker Duff, January 4, 2002, at Ruth’s home on South Twin Lake, Millinocket, Maine. Wiley talks about why her grandparents moved from Europe to Millinocket; her grandmother’s remarriage; how her mother and father met; her education in Millinocket; her husband’s job in the mill in 1956; living situations before buying land from Great Northern; how her husband, Glen, came to live in Millinocket; working outside the home in her high school days; women’s jobs and why her husband would not let her work once married; women’s roles in the community; religion; and the relationship between unions and companies. Text: 20 pp. transcript. Recording: C 2472 1 hour.

NA3347 Delia Cummings, interviewed by Betty Parker Duff, March 12, 2001, at her home in Millinocket, Maine. Cummings talks about her family’s heritage; her mother delivering babies at home; women’s organizations in the churches; her husbands career in the military and working in a store; what happened to wives when their husbands died in the mills in the 1950s; the lack of women’s occupations in Millinocket; high school education; women’s daily life; taking trains into Bangor; women’s place in the mill; and memories of her grandparents house as a child. Text: 23 pp. transcript. Recording: C 2473 1 hour.

NA3349 Fred Morrison and Leatha Morrison, interviewed by Betty Parker Duff, March 10, 1999, at the Morrison’s home in Millinocket, Maine. Duff’s husband, David, participated in interview. The Morrison’s talk about Italians helping to build and afterward, working for, Great Northern in the early 1900s; delivering babies at home with the help of midwives; women’s groups in the churches and their influence on the town; Great Northern incorporating Millinocket in 1901; the process of building Millinocket; different cultures attending the same church; employment during WWII; and the percentage of women working after marriage. Text: 12 pp. transcript. Recording: C 2475 1 hour.

NA3350 Kitty St. John, interviewed by Betty Parker Duff, July 10, 2000, at Mrs. St. John’s home in Millinocket, Maine. St. John talks about giving birth either at home or in the hospital; women having nothing to do with the actual mill of Great Northern; men’s attitudes; women’s jobs outside the home; working at boardinghouses; separation between the different immigrant groups; alcoholism in both men and women; prostitution in Millinocket; Great Northern not hiring Jews; the strong presence of the KKK in town; Catholic and Protestant religions; unions in the mill; and how unmarried pregnant women were treated. Text: 17 pp. transcript. Recording: C 2476 1 hour.

NA3351 Michele Warhola, interviewed by Betty Parker Duff, April 3, 2001, at Stevens Hall, University of Maine, Orono, Maine. Warhola talks about moving to Millinocket in 1962; the 99 year land leases granted from Great Northern; her mother’s life as a housewife; the Daughters of Isabella; limited jobs for women in the mill; ethnic groups in Millinocket; an abundance of churches in East Millinocket; class systems; alcoholism among men and women and the affects of it on working; growing up in East Millinocket as a child; the effects of her father’s mill job on her family; unions; people depending on Great Northern; attitudes about homosexuality; and the advantages and disadvantages of growing up in a mill town. Text: 21 pp. transcript. Recording: C 2477 1 hour.

NA3352 Polly Segree, interviewed by Betty Parker Duff, April 8, 2001, at the Millinocket Town Museum. Segree talks about growing up in Millinocket; becoming a teacher; her mother’s life; classes taken in high school; food; dinner pails and other artifacts located in the museum used in the early 1900s; important women in Millinocket, including Charlotte Walls, Clair Hatfield, Josepha Evans, Bernice Buck, and Della Pratt; and the Navy Mother’s Club. Text: 8 pp. transcript. Recording: C 2478 20 minutes.

NA3353 Betty J. Howard, interviewed by Betty Parker Duff, March 23, 2001, at Benham City Hall in Kentucky. Howard talks about living in Benham, Kentucky, a union mining town owned by the company International Harvester, in the 50s and 60s; what each of her parents did to get by; her mother’s life growing up in Lee County; the Benham, Lynch, and International Harvester coal miner cemetery; the L&N railroad; child-birthing methods used in the early 1900s; women’s clubs in Benham and Lynch; and going into the mines with her grandfather. Text: 20 pp. transcript. Recording: C 2479 1 hour.

NA3354 Euna Mae Caudill, interviewed by Betty Parker Duff, March 20, 2001, at Euna Caudill’s home in Benham, Kentucky. Caudill talks about moving to the Benham in 1949; living in multiple mining camps, including Black Star; where and how she delivered her eleven babies; methods of washing clothes; women’s roles in church; mending and sewing clothes; and her husbands involvement in the United Mine Workers. Text: 13 pp. transcript. Recording: C 2480 45 minutes.