Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2023/Fall/Section33/The Davis Family

Overview

The Davis Family lived in Montgomery, North Carolina during the 1930s when the Federal Writers Project took place. The Davis family faced hardships as Carl, the father, was an alcoholic and two of the Davis daughters had children out of wedlock.

Biography

Sheriffs inspecting barrels of alcohol during the prohibition era.

Family Life

The Davis Family lived on a farm in Montgomery, North Carolina. Carl and Camilla Davis received a small run down house on family land from Carl’s father where they had four kids quickly after getting married. Carl and Camilla are quite opposite. Carl is a loud, hostile, selfish alcoholic married to Camilla who is calm, loving, and intelligent. On the farm they grew crops and livestock for the family's food and grew tobacco to make a living. Mr. Davis was not satisfied with this hardworking lifestyle and started selling corn whiskey, which was illegal during the prohibition era. He would often be on the run from the sheriff for this and spent many nights away from his family in jail or hiding. It got to the point where it was needed for a truck to be stored at a friend's house which he would escape to and speed away into a safer hiding spot. After many incidents and nights on the run Carl finally gave up on the bootlegging lifestyle and went to work at the local mill. He still was not interested in helping out with the family farming business and left all these responsibilities to Mrs. Davis and the Davis children.

The oldest daughter, Pauline was liked by many of the boys her age in the town, but she only liked Clarence, who she was distantly related to. Despite Clarence and Pauline desperately wanting to get married Clarence's mother and Mr. Davis forbid them from doing so. Pauline and Clarence had a baby out of wedlock which gained the negative attention of many town members. The community encouraged the two young future parents to get married, but both Mr. Davis and Clarence’s mother forbid it. Around the baby’s first birthday Pauline went to work as a night shift mill worker with her father and Clarence. A few years later the Davis family's second daughter also had a daughter out of wedlock and raised her in the Davis family home as well.

Town Life

The Davis Family lived in a poor community of Montgomery, North Carolina. The town was very small and was an everybody knows everybody type of community. Here families shared a spring instead of having individual wells and plumbing. The women would meet often and gossip around the spring while washing clothes and collecting water. During this time their husbands would fight over town issues and take turns shooting wildly at each other. Due to the lack of plumbing it was common practice for the families to leave buckets of water out on the porch all day and by bathtime it would be warmed by the sun.

Most town members worked at the local mill and they had a very distinct lifestyle. The mill workers would work all day and party late at night, introducing a social life atmosphere to the town.

Social Context

Prohibition In North Carolina

North Carolina was the first state to ban selling, producing, importing and transporting alcohol in May of 1908. This was 12 years before the 18th amendment officially banned it for all states in 1920. During this time bootlegging, selling alcohol illegally, and speakeasies, hidden bars, became very popular. Bootleggers often modified “their cars to be as fast as possible and laid the ground for race car driving and eventually, NASCAR.” Nationwide prohibition laws were lifted in 1933 with the 21st Amendment, but it continued on until 1937 in North Carolina.

Illegitimate Children In The South

In the 1930's children that were born to unmarried mothers were labeled as Illegitimates. These kids were often called “bastards” and were seen as a bad thing. Children were not the only ones suffering in this situation, the parents were also punished. Parents could face consequences such as confinement in individual homes or baby farms which could be compared to a very harsh day care environment. Until 1960, mothers that had a baby before marriage were not offered the public benefits offered to other single mothers such as widows. Some Demographics were at a greater risk for having an illegitimate child. For example, “mothers of children born out of wedlock are under twenty-five years of age and almost half of them are under twenty-one.” The U.S. Children's Bureau was especially concerned over the health of Illegitimate children as they had higher rates of malnutrition, mediocre child care and other hazards compared to babies with married parents.

North Carolina Mill Workers During The 1900’s

Many millhands worked extremely long shifts, often twelve hours straight, six days a week and were often paid very little. At work they were expected to keep up to the quick pace of the factory machines while facing heat, humidity, loud noises and lots of dust making it an unhealthy working environment. On top of this the environment was worsened by many mill owners as they “fostered management control” allowing them to “avoid taxes and [exclude] workers from municipal government.” Families often would work at the mills together and even children were offered jobs, most often starting around the age of 12. In fact, between 1880 and 1910 approximately 25% of all southern cotton mill workers were younger than sixteen. Typically females worked in the spinning room and males did the heavy work or served as supervisors.

References

“The Davis Family” Interview by H.W. Corley, date November 30, 1938, Folder 332, Federal Writers’ Project papers #03709, Southern Historical Collection, the Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Merryman, Kristen. “Prohibition, Bootlegging, and the Law in North Carolina.” DigitalNC, January 17, 2014. https://www.digitalnc.org/blog/prohibition-bootlegging-and-the-law-in-north-carolina/#:~:text=Prior%20to%20the%20full%20country,for%20race%20car%20driving%20and.

Donahue, A. Madorah. “Children Born out of Wedlock.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 151 (1930): 162–72. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1016992.

Lelodis, James, and Kathryn Walbert. “NCpedia: NCpedia.” Link to NCpedia main page. Accessed October 10, 2023. https://www.ncpedia.org/anchor/work-textile-mill.

Brown, L. Ames. “Prohibition.” The North American Review 202, no. 720 (1915): 702–29. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25108648.

Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd, Robert Korstad, and James Leloudis. “Cotton Mill People: Work, Community, and Protest in the Textile South, 1880-1940.” The American Historical Review 91, no. 2 (1986): 245–86. https://doi.org/10.2307/1858134

Herman, Ellen. “Illegitimacy.” Adoption history: Illegitimacy, January 24, 2012. https://pages.uoregon.edu/adoption/topics/illegitimacy.htm.