Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2022/Spring/105i/section007/W. H. Etheridge

Biography

Early Life

Typical house on a tenant farm.

W. H. Etheridge (Mark Bulton) was born on August 17, 1897 and lived in Wilson, North Carolina. He was an only child to his mother, Mary Lillie, and father, William Nathan. He met his wife, Lucille (Martha), in school and courted her for two years before they decided to get married. They both did not finish a lot of school, only reaching 7th and 6th grade each. The marriage between Etheridge and Lucille occurred on January 5, 1919, when he was 21 and she was 16. They began their family with tenant farming, most likely tobacco, for a few years and made a steady income for the years they were farming. They began having children, three sons and two daughters named Clifton, Dorothy, Van Buren, Elizabeth, and Douglas. They were content living out in the countryside.

Later Life

Etheridge and his family stopped working on the farm and moved into a small house in town during the Great Depression, a movement incredibly common for rural North Carolinians at the time. The family missed farming and it was easier to pay rent there, but Etheridge came to the conclusion that he had been away for too long to get back into farming. When they first moved into town, Etheridge began having health problems with his heart and kidneys, so he had to spend a few weeks in the hospital. He was put on a special diet and medications that caused financial stress on his family, along with hospital bills. Etheridge worked at a stemmery, most likely operating a packing machine, for eight months out of the year, earning $600 total, about $40 less than the average annual income of a packing machine operator. He also got over $100 from Social Security during the four months the stemmery didn’t have work for him to do. Only one of his sons found work, his earnings used to help pay rent, and he earned $10 a week at a poolroom nearby. Later, Etheridge began working as a nightwatchman, specifically in the 1940s, and the family began renting out one of their rooms for additional income. Dying on December 11, 1941 in Wilson, Etheridge was survived by his wife and children, the last child dying in 2020.

Social Context

Lack of Education

In rural areas, lower income families could not afford to send their kids to private schools, boarding schools, or to further their education, and this often led to most of these people being unqualified for some of the higher-paying jobs that those with access to higher education were qualified for. Jobs that were available for those that did not have access or could not afford higher education often consisted of farming and factory/textile work. In 1913, North Carolinian Governor Charles B. Aycock enacted the Compulsory Attendance Act, requiring children ages 8 to 12 to attend school for four out of the 12 months of the year, and though this began the increase in education rates in North Carolina, it was still not incredibly effective. In 1910, the percentage of students enrolled in elementary to high school in America was 59.2% and increased to 64.3% by 1920. One of the main sources of this issue is the way the schools were set up. In most rural schools, there was one teacher for all of the students, regardless of their ages, and with only one teacher, their attention could not be divided evenly and for most of the school day the students were left to work by themselves. The teacher-student ratio in 1910 was 34.3, meaning there were 34.3 students to one teacher, compared to the teacher-student ratio in 1990 being 17.2, half of what is was 80 years before. A large amount of students with only one teacher are provided a worse education than one teacher with a smaller amount of students, and this lack of education automatically put the lower-income people at a disadvantage that did not allow them to pursue higher-paying jobs.

Nutrition in Rural South

Many families in the rural south were not wealthy and could not afford many luxuries, including choosing what they eat. A lack of money meant that they ate whatever they could afford or grew themselves, often not being the healthiest options. With a very limited diet, many people did not get the right nutrients or vitamins they needed to live a healthy lifestyle. This was a factor that led some people to fall ill or develop related diseases/conditions, which then led to even more expenses for doctors, hospitals, and medications. One major health effect at the time was dental problems, including cavities, gums in bad conditions, and "defective" teeth. A typical diet for these families included biscuits/bread, vegetables from their garden, beans, and any animal products if they were lucky enough to have their own cattle (milk, eggs, occasionally fresh meat), with wheat being an essential crop grown and eaten by everyone.

References

"W. H. Etheridge" Interview by Combs, Stanley, May 20, 1939, Folder 328, in the Federal Writers' Project papers #3709, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"W. H. Etheridge." Find a Grave, 2022, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/75499798/william-harvey-ethridge

"W. H. Etheridge." U. S. Marriage Records, 1741-2011, 2022, https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/discoveryui-content/view/7060789:60548?tid=&pid=&queryId=d516aacaa76d88a4b86661fed8e66de9&_phsrc=JSf62&_phstart=successSource

Raleigh, & Peek, W. W., The History of Education in North Carolina12–13 (1993). Raleigh, NC; N.C. Dept. of Public Instruction.

Raleigh, North Carolina Education (June 1910) § (1910).

United States Federal Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/discoveryui-content/view/156704811:2442?tid=&pid=&queryId=7d68cceae88b5d2129d885838ddbc72e&_phsrc=JSf61&_phstart=successSource (accessed February 24, 2022).

Bishop, RoAnn. 2010. “Agriculture in North Carolina during the Great Depression.” NCPedia. Autumn 2010. https://www.ncpedia.org/agriculture/great-depression.

Biles, Roger. “Tobacco Towns: Urban Growth and Economic Development in Eastern North Carolina.” The North Carolina Historical Review 84, no. 2 (2007): 156–90. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23522906.

Croxton, Fred C., and Frederick E. Croxton. “WAGES AND HOURS OF LABOR.” Monthly Labor Review 39, no. 4 (1934): 963–91. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41862996.

Davis, Joseph S. “Wheat, Wheat Policies, and the Depression.” The Review of Economics and Statistics 16, no. 4 (1934): 80–88. https://doi.org/10.2307/1928426.

Office of Educational Research and Improvement, and William Sonnenberg. Edited by Thomas D Snyder, 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait § (1993).

Office of Educational Research and Improvement, and Thomas D. Snyder. Edited by Thomas D Snyder, 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait § (1993).

Image: Fiegel, Jayne H. View of Clovelley Farm Tenant Ouse. 1933. Photograph. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.