I remember in the beginning the co-op started out with $2.42. That's all the money we put into this thing to start it. The VISTAs couldn't put it in there 'cause they wasn't allowed to. Some of the quilters had to furnish what we needed to start it with. I bought stamps to start it out with, and of course later on when we had enough cash in the bank, I got my money back. I bought envelopes and stamps and different things, tying cord for packages.

I remember the first time you came down to the house and Aunt Vick was sitting in the back room quilting. You commented about the quilt and asked her if she would be interested in trying to sell some of them. She said yes, and I think that you asked her how much she had been getting for quilts, and she told you ten and fifteen dollars -- she had ten dollars worth of materials in them besides her labor. But she made it her pastime and she couldn't use them and she had given the family quilts and they were just piling up. So you said, "How about me trying to sell some?" and she was thrilled to death. But you were a rank stranger to us, and after you left she said, "I bet I'll never see my quilts again. I said, "Oh, give a little faith, of course you will." That satisfied her. She was real old you know. She had a lot of reason in her life to mistrust people. I said "That boy works for the VISTA, he couldn't take your quilt off and sell it and pocket the money." "Well, I guess you're right," she said. So, if I remember right, you took four of Vick's quilts. Then you asked us if there were any other women here that had quilts that wanted to sell them. I told you Ada and you got a quilt from her.

Vick, my aunt, she said she had a big old cheap suitcase, it was made out of pasteboard, but it was a huge thing. She said she would give him the suitcase to put the quilts in. Well, when he came back from Boston he had orders for quilts and he and Jane got this free advertising over there in that Boston Globe and the orders began to come in. There was one day when we got over forty letters and we got over four hundred letters in all asking about the quilts, and in just a short time of a couple of weeks. We was thrilled to death. When he came back with those checks for at least fifty dollars for each one, that floored Vick. After that you couldn't say anything about Jamie then.

Vick loved to make quilts, she had made them ever since she was a girl. My mother was the oldest and she said that when Vick was a little girl she was always trying to create something pretty. They were really poor 'cause her father had died and her mother had to take in borders. They lived in a mining town for awhile after they left the county. They lived up in Greenbrier County. When they come to the coal fields my grandmother took in borders. That was in 1900. Vick was a real quiet person and she looked like an Indian and she acted like one, she had dark skin and dark hair and gray eyes My mother said that Vick stayed in the kitchen and would get a wooden box to stand on to do the dishes. She stood on that box to cook, too.

My grandmother had a huge amount of borders besides having three sons that were working in the coal mines, then. They started to trappin. They were about nine years old when they started in the coal mines. Trappin was what they had to do to open the door for the load to come inland out. one of them had to put axle grease on these coal cars. They nicknamed him "Greaser" (laughs). He died when he was seventy-one, and if you mention him to any of these Cabin Creekers, if you say Henry Bowles, they don't know who you're talking about, if you say Greaser, "Oh yea," I know Greaser.

So anyway, Mom said this house, like all coal company houses, had what they call sealing on it. It was supposed to be plain, made out of pine, but it had a rough surface to it, narrow boards. They didn't use paint then, paint was scarce in this country. They just put the houses up with no paint and no decorating on them. They were all owned by the company and they wouldn't put up anything more than a shelter. So Mom, who sewed for the whole family, said that Vick would pick the lint and little leavings up off the floor and make designs by sticking them up on the unpainted walls. She said it was just marvelous how many pretty things Vick would make. They would stick on those rough walls you know. Just ravellings and lint off material. She was always trying to design something and she wasn't but about eight years old then. She loved to create things, but our mother was the same way. She just had a knack for color, Vick did too.

Vick probably made her first complete quilt by the time she was fourteen. She made her quilts then out of old flour sacks, feed sacks, hits of cloth and old clothes. Even in the big company stores then you might find only five or six bolts of different material. If you got yourself a piece of material to make yourself a dress there was a good chance every other woman in town would be wearing the same dress.

They got flour and feed in 100 pound hags and it was just like what we call unbleached muslin, they called it "factory" then. My grandmother made her own dye out of onion skins and walnut bark and different things. They could dye different colors like red and pink and yellow and green on these sacks after they washed and ironed them. Then they'd cut them up and make their quilts out of them. If they had old clothes or someone would give them old dresses or pants they would cut them up. Men then didn't wear pants like they do today. They called it linsey. The women wore calico. All the material you could buy then you didn't call it print or cotton cloth, you called it calico. They added some of that into their quilts which made them real pretty. My grandmother, when she was 85 years old was still dying sugar bags and feed sacks to make colors in her quilts. After awhile she could buy dyes and then she would iron them up and make her squares or what have you and put them in her quilts. When she was a girl she would make dyes by skinning the bark of an oak tree and put it in a kettle of water and boil it down, of course you weakened it if you wanted it tan; you left it stronger and you'd get a dark brown. I should have remembered more, but I'd say she could do anything: spin, quilt, cook, chop, hunt, plow - anything.

My grandmother lived to be 97 and slipped and broke her hip and they put her in a cast and that's what killed her. She remembered in detail, even at the end of her life, about when she was a girl.

We have two cousins up here on the Creek. We have cousins in Charleston, on my father's side there aren't any of his people living He was a Morris from Nicholas County, our ancestors were one of the first settlers here in West Virginians They were from England to start with and they came over here and fought the Indians and got the land up around Gauley Bridge and Peters Creek, which was named after one of the colored slaves that was on my great grandfather's farm. Our two great aunts were scalped by the Indians. There's a plaque on the side of the road up there. They were only 13 and 14 years old, they were the last white settlers to be massacred by the Indians - the Morris sisters. Our great grandfather lived to be 101 years old, Thompson Morris. All of Lens Creek belonged to the Morrises, the little red church that sits up on the hill there is a memorial to the Morrises. Lens Creek belonged to Leonard Morris. Some of the Morrises contributed to Morris Harvey College down there. Up at Cedar Grove that church was Kelley Morris'.

LENA: No, Kelley's Creek was named after Walter Kelly. William Morris was one of the first white people to settle in the Kanawha Valley and his cabin was at the mouth of Kelly's Creek. But they named Kelly's Creek after Walter Kelly because the Indians sneaked into his cattle and killed him and his family. My great aunts were out hunting the cows and they were late getting back, so their father and their father's brother went to hunt for them and just as they got to where they were they could hear them screaming. The Indian had got the girl between his legs and bent her head and was scalping her ! the other one was laying dead with a broken back already scalped. I believe that was in 1801.

My grandmother was born at Pt. Pleasant out on the Ohio River during the Civil War. She had some brothers that went West with her father and mother because they didn't want to fight in the war, draft dodgers. So, they got in a covered wagon and went to Indiana and her mother was pregnant on the trip and my mother was born in a covered wagon. When they came back after the war they settled up in Summers County where Vick was born.

Considering the times, my grandfather was rich with land. He had huge plots and meadows and fields. They had livestock and all types of animals that they kept. But they still would have to go out in the fields in the coldest winter weather. My grandmother told me that while they were working they would get so hot that they would strip down and hang these red underwear up in the tree. Well, it seems that when it was time to go home they would put the underwear back on, even if it was frozen. Well, my grandmother says that my grandfather died of TB, but I think it was pneumonia. My grandmother was left with seven children and Aunt Nell was only six months old then. At the time he got sick they had a huge crop of wheat out, they had cattle and corn, they were pretty well fixed and had a nice home. So, after he died she couldn't do it all but some of the neighbors came in and harvested the crops for her. As time went on and she found that she couldn't do all the farming, she took a job and walked three miles a day to her cousins, he was rich and he ran a store, and she'd walk that three miles each way, In the summertime she hoed corn for fifty cents a day and took it out in groceries at the store. Finally, two of her brothers gypped her out of this home she had. She finally moved to this small place that was only a Shack, it was a shanty, she said it was terrible. She continued to work for these people and in the winter time she had to do the housework for this cousin, In summer she hoed corn.

Talking about my people, they have really come up the hard way. Vick, she never knew nothing but work all her life. She would go up on this mountain here in back of her home, she helped build her home. She was a good person, She was so quiet, I didn't mind keeping her at all, She loved to just sit in her room and quilt and when she had a little bit of money later in life she would collect materials to make quilts. She was so proud right after the cooperative began and she sold that quilt to Mrs. Onassis at Mrs. Brenner's shop on Cape Cod. Then she got sick and Mrs. Henseley across the foot bridge had to finish them. She was just thrilled to death by that. She was a typical hillbilly she never traveled, I don't think she went any further than Hinton and Charleston in her life. She never went anywhere. She went to Williamson, once. Now that was the scope of her traveling. She never went anywhere. All she knew was hard work. Of all our people she was the hardest worker. She could do anything, she could build a house. She had a real pretty house with a good size lot just above here. She had beautiful flowers in the yard and six rooms with water in the house. But she'd go up on the mountain and plow or cut wood. Now, she didn't have to. She had a good man, he worked in the mines and he never missed a day. They had two sons. The youngest left home and got married pretty early. The other didn't leave 'till he was nearly forty and he worked in the mines.

If Vick were alive today she would be so pleased to see Cabin Creek Quilts. I never dreamed that it would go this far. I figured it might last six months or a year and we'd sell a few quilts but not like this. I remember one Sunday when we first began and we were working out of my living room, we had fourteen different women in that room about selling quilts. From Coal River and Charleston, Paint Creek, and all over. For over a year I never saw my davenport it was so covered with quilts. Then we fixed a room in that house out there between mine and Graces that used to belong to my mother. We fixed a room up in there for our office. Yea, we sure had the people coming here. But at times we had fights with our best friends over it. We had to talk up to them, I'll tell you right now. Vatellas was one bunch. They didn't like the VISTA workers, Grace can tell you that. Some people in Eskdale sort of gave them the cold shoulder. They didn't trust them. They called them hippies, communists, they said they were dirty, we knew better than that. They may not have had the finest clothes in the world, they had them but they didn't wear them. But that went with the job they had. As for their being filthy, I know better than that 'cause they took too many showers in my shower room, and then over at Lena's wasting water and soap! They couldn't have been filthy (laughs). They ate at my table and at Lena's table and there wasn't anything wrong with any of them, they were just good human beings. But the people thought that they were dirty and filthy and low-lifed and everything else.

The first VISTA I saw before you and Sandy was a Jewish boy from New York. He was living up in the cove. He came down here to talk to me. He didn't stay very long, two or three weeks and he was gone, He couldn't take the pressure. They treated him like a dog. The people thought it was terrible that you would be staying up in the cove with a colored person. That was never heard of before that, a white person went in and lived with a colored person. I suppose some thought that you stayed with the colored because you liked them better than the white. The white people wouldn't hear to taking any of them in. They criticized us at first but it didn't take them long to figure out we were friends. I told them, you talk about the VISTAs and that's fighting talk (laughs). When the girls started coming in they talked about them being prostitutes they said everything bad about them, about them hitchhiking from one state to another, about the way they dress. They just resented outsiders coming in, that was the main thing. That's just pure ignorance.