Interview with William Lloyd and Anna Baird Lloyd, 1988 June 8 [audio](part 2)
- Cooking in one pot and breakfasts of cornmeal mush or hominy grits; her mother preparing and selling hop yeast; slaughtering pigs; pets; working at Hodgson wool mill beginning at age fourteenKeywords: baking bread; chores; cooking; crock; Hodgson Bros. woolen mill; hop yeast; pets; slaughtering pigs; Women employees; Women textile workersTranscript: Anna Baird Lloyd: ...front, where you come in off the road, that was your living room. And then there was three bedrooms upstairs, and there was two beds, two big beds in one room, there was four of us used to sleep in one room, all the girls. But we had two big beds in there.
Brub Baird: Who used to do all the cooking?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Maggie was supposed to do it, but she never done it. Maggie would say, "It's your turn." Be always my turn, Maggie would get out of everything, she was the oldest [laughter]. I done near all the cookin'.
Brub Baird: That's the one I was telling you about, Maggie was the one - Frankie Cahoon, she married a Cahoon and he's the one that's always trying to go back with the family tree.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, he out in - he's the only one livin', Oliver's still living though, but he don't know nobody, his brothers, he thinks his sons are his brothers. He calls Helen 'Mom,' he thinks Helen's his mother. It's his wife, he's been in there since World War II.
Brub Baird: He's been down in - what is it - Bainbridge?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, Perry Point, he's in Perry Point. He don't even know them, but the two boys are awful good to Helen. And you know she still has the house out in Elsmere, you know, and she's still there in that house that they bought when they were married and the boys want her to sell the house and come live with them, and she won't sell that house as long as Oliver lives. Now she knows Oliver ain't never gonna get better to come back there. But Oliver bought a home about a block away from her, young Oliver, you know, he's got a son names Oliver, that's four Olivers. His grandfather was Oliver, his father was Oliver, and his name's Oliver and now his son is Oliver, four Olivers.
Johnson: Now when you did the cooking at home, did you have certain things that you had to make, would your mother make you always do the potatoes or the vegetables or something like that?
Anna Baird Lloyd: We cooked all in the one pot - ham, cabbage and potatoes all in the one pot, and you made stew you put everything in the soup. We'd have bowls of soup, but we always had either cornmeal mush or rice puddin' or oatmeal, we had oatmeal for breakfast and cornmeal mush and hominy grits. Do you know what hominy grits is?
William Lloyd: Many a morning we had them. Mush and hominy grits.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah. Well, here's Francis. This is my daughter.
Johnson: Hello.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, and that's where I learned to bake bread. Bake the bread, you know, you had to set it the night before and then you put it on the back of the stove with a cover on it, and the next morning it would raise up, you see. My Mother had a lot of hops and she used to sell hop yeast, you know. And that's what they made the break out of, hop yeast.
Johnson: Oh, and she grew that in the garden?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, we had a lot of hops and she used to make the yeast in a big pot and she'd sell it for a cent a cup and it took two cups to make a batch of bread. And then we'd set it there on the back of the stove and the next morning got up, then you kneaded it again on a breadboard, I still have me breadboard, big one. And you kneaded it on there and you put it back there and it raised again. Well then you put it in loaves, whatever you wanted, the loaf pan and it raised and then you stuck it in the oven again, all that for a loaf of bread. You couldn't buy a loaf of bread, you had to bake your own or do without. But Mom always told us to make little rolls, you know, we used to make two pans of rolls. To have them hot for supper.
Johnson: Now when you had that hops, was it just green and then you cooked it up on the stove?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, you cooked the hops up and then the water, why you had to strain it, you know, but she used to have cheesecloth, strain it through a cheesecloth, then she put it in this big crock and people used to buy the yeast from her. See all that garden had hops in it.
Johnson: And how long did you have to keep that hops in the crock before you could sell it?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh, about three days and then you sold it after that.
Johnson: Yes and then you just put the flour to it...
Anna Baird Lloyd: When near one crop was done, you were starting to make the other one. 'Cause everyone baked at that time.
Johnson: That's the first recipe I've heard, though, where they used the hops, I didn't know they could do that.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, everybody made, baked their own bread. I know when we lived up Charles' Banks there used to be Sam Ewings, he had a store in Rockland. When we lived in Charles' Banks Mom used to give him eggs and he would give her whatever she needed - like salt and pepper and stuff like that, for the eggs, barter system or something.
Johnson: Wasn't that nice.
Anna Baird Lloyd: See, instead of money she'd give him the eggs. We had a lot of chickens up there and pigs. You know how they used to kill pigs, I still see them sometimes in my sleep, they had a big iron slab and they had an iron barrel, and they had a fire underneath that iron slab, and then they would stick the pig in the throat here to kill the pig, and they'd let it bleed a while. Then they'd stick it in the barrel, pull it out, stick it the barrel of hot water, you know, and pull it out on this slab. It was an iron slab they'd pull it out on, like a grate you know, and let the water run down in the ground. Then they'd pull it out so they could skin it, then they hung it up to dry, out in that shed. That's how they used to kill hogs years ago.
Johnson: Isn't that interesting.
Anna Baird Lloyd: See, nobody charged anything because somebody come and clean yours, you'd help them to kill and then you'd have to go to the next house and kill. Nobody got paid for anything, they'd all help one another.
Brub Baird: That's right, yeah.
Johnson: Did you have to help take care of the pigs while it was alive?
Anna Baird Lloyd: No, we didn't do nothing, only feed the chickens. We didn't - oh the pigs, they got the slop, you know, off the table. And dogs and cats, we never bought cat food - give them whatever was off the table, you didn't buy cat food or dog food, you'd give them whatever you had on the table left.
Johnson: Did you have a dog or a cat?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh yeah, we had dogs and cats.
Johnson: Did you make pets of any of them, did you have a particular pet?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh my Mother had a little white poodle. I don't know whether you ever remember Mom...
Frances Fostyk: You did have a picture of a poodle, you know, it was taken right there at Grandmom's house.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh yeah, yeah, I think I have them somewhere in the closet there, in a box...I've got a picture of you when you were little and you were making faces and Francis and your father - I meant to get out to give it to you. I'll get it out some day and I'll mail it to you, I've got a whole big box of old pictures.
William Lloyd: You gave me a picture I think.
Anna Baird Lloyd: I gave you your mother and father's picture, a wedding, when they were married, didn't I?
William Lloyd: Yeah, I think...
Anna Baird Lloyd: And I give Bett his mother and father's picture, didn't I? I give you yours?
Brub Baird: M-huh.
Anna Baird Lloyd: 'Cause God knows when anything happens to me, out they all go.
Frances Fostyk: Did you get your brother's picture out or anything, Mom? The two brothers, you said you were gonna get them out. Your brother and his friend, your brother that was killed.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh yeah, no they're in that box. His name was Sammy Davis, Francis, I remembered.
Frances Fostyk: You mean the friend?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah. Jamesey's friend was killed with him, Sammy Davis. He lived down - there were two brothers killed, too, from Snow Hill, Maryland, in that - there were two brothers from Snow Hill, Maryland. And he lived down in the country, Jamesey's friend.
Mrs. Lloyd: Was that the last explosion at DuPont's?
Anna Baird Lloyd: That was World War I, 32 boys. And all - some of them was 18 and some was under 18. None of them left, all blowed to pieces. Francis, they're in that big box. No, I don't think they're there.
Mrs. Lloyd: How old were you when you started work?
Anna Baird Lloyd: I started over in Hodgson's Mill, I only went to the ninth grade in school, and I was about fourteen when I went in Hodgson's to work, for $2.50 a week from seven in the morning 'til five and a half an hour for lunch. First I went in there as a spinner doffing bobbins, and then I got promoted to spinning and then I got promoted to reeling, making the skeins, you know.
William Lloyd: Pay was all the same.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Pay was all the same, you never got no pay. But I remember the girls when they were in the spinning, you know, there would be little cog wheels to run them spinnin' mills, you know, and the water snakes would come out of the water and lay on the rocks, there was a dam right there, you know the dam, and they'd throw them cog wheels out the window at the snakes [laughter]. If old Billy Hodgson had have seen them, he'd have blowed smoke in their eyes.
Brub Baird: Well you know, Aunt Annie, when you were talking about $2.50 a week you say you made? Well I used to - I used to go over and I'd be working over in the Hall of Records and there was one cabinet there, real old thing, it had to be 80 years old or something like that, and it had a lot of the peoples' names in there of people who worked in the powder yards, and all, and mechanics were making like seven cents an hour, nickel an hour.
Mrs. Lloyd: How many days a week did you work, six days?
Anna Baird Lloyd: We worked - half a day on Saturday. Got a half a day on Saturday.
Mrs. Lloyd: Two and a half, and that was from seven 'til five.
Anna Baird Lloyd: We worked 'til twelve o'clock on Saturday, from seven 'til twelve.
Brub Baird: And Sunday off?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah. - The trolley; neighbors in Henry Clay and the wall built near "Boat Row" along Brandywine Creek; discussing Willie Heatherton; husband's relatives who worked for DuPont Co.; games, sledding on Breck's Lane, and swimming in Brandywine CreekKeywords: Bathing suits; Big Rock; Boat Row; Experimental Station; foreman; jacks; jump rope; Lloyd's Hill; Long Row; Rope skipping; Sledding; Steeplejack; Street-railroads; Swimming; trestle; trolleys; Willie HeathertonTranscript: Johnson: When you were at home with your family, did you sit on the porch after dinner?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Not much, if you had work to do, you had to do the work before you went out there. We very seldom sat out on the porch. You know, we'd have to come upstairs and set on that front porch, you know, where the lilac bushes there.
Brub Baird: Right in front of Simon's?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, and the old trolley car would jump the track and went over in our yard and knocked a lot of bushes down [laughter].
Johnson: Oh my goodness.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Knocked the lilac bushes down. You know there used to be a trolley run along there.
Johnson: Yes, I was going to ask about that.
Anna Baird Lloyd: And then the B. & amp; 0. run - when we lived on the rock, the B. & amp; O. used to run back of the house. And then the trolley was down - them houses was built on a rock. And there used to be three doors - there would be us and then there would be your aunt and there would be this Kate Flanigan, and the guys down on the wall used to hollar, "Come on out, Kate, you're missin' something'." She'd always hollar at them, setting on the wall, you know, be out front, they'd hollar, "Come on out, Kate, here we are." [laughter]
Mrs. Lloyd: You made four cents an hour, they were making four cents an hour.
Anna Baird Lloyd: That's about all.
Mrs. Lloyd: Isn't that something, four cents an hour.
Anna Baird Lloyd: And that Kate Todd, well you know she used to run with Dan Hodgson, and whatever we would do, she would tell Dan and Dan would tell his father and then we'd get the dickens. You know, if we would go down to the bathroom, you know it's an outside toilet, if we'd stay there too long, she would tell on us. Yes she did! She went with Dan Hudson.
Betty DeNight: She lived next door to us on Breck's Lane.
Anna Baird Lloyd: And look, after you cross the railroad, you know that big trestle - I was always afraid to go across it the trestle, when we went to Green Hill Church, I always went down and crossed over and went across the run, that's when I'd fall in the run half the time. I was afraid to cross the trestle, I was afraid to look down. On this side of that, I knew her name was Mary, but I can't think of what their name was.
Betty DeNight: Mary Dougherty?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Mary Dougherty, yeah.
Betty DeNight: They lived on the other side.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, there were two houses there and they had to go up steps. I don't know who lived in the other one. I know Mary Dougherty, and she had a brother, too.
William Lloyd: Tom Dougherty, wasn't it?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Tom Dougherty, yeah.
Betty DeNight: Paul, Paul, the brother. The father's name was Tom.
Anna Baird Lloyd: And then next door to them, there were only two houses there. But I knowed everybody on that row, you know, but I didn't know too many up on Boat Row.
Mrs. Lloyd: Where is Boat Row?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Boat Row is where the wall was, you know the creek used to come up there and go in them houses, used to go in your aunt's house, too, every time the creek - we'd have a big rain - the water would go up there. But then where the mill was, they put a big wall there, and that went clean up to Hagley gate.
Brub Baird: When you used to live there, Gordy, the floods used to come up and go in the Long Row.
Mrs. Lloyd: We have seen the water come right up to the top of that wall.
Anna Baird Lloyd: That's why they put that wall there, them houses, well that was Boat Row.
Mrs. Lloyd: Oh, well we called it Long Row. We lived there.
[Anna Baird Lloyd and Brub Baird speaking at same time for following:]
Anna Baird Lloyd: Well that was Boat Row, and the water used to come in there, that was Boat Row. I don't know where they got all the names. Now Squirrel Run, that was right above there, they called it Squirrel Run, I don't know where they got the name. Chicken Alley - I know where they got Chicken Alley from, that was at Charles' Banks. Everybody had chickens - chickens and ducks.
Brub Baird: Right up to the entrance to the Hagley Museum now, those gates there? The creek used to come up over the wall there and one the road and the Long Row was right down from there and the houses - the bottom floor was full of water. Something like up where the Monongahela and Mississippi meets and all them people get flooded out every year.
[Additional crosstalk.]
Anna Baird Lloyd: And a way up further, there's nobody, only two houses up there, one was an older lady lived in there and I think her name was Kitty or something and next to her was Joe Cane, he lived there by himself and he always come down to the creek with a dog.
Brub Baird: Let's see that picture of Irene. Yes, she was a nice looking...
Anna Baird Lloyd: Is that Irene and Eleanor?
Brub Baird: Yeah.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, that's Irene. Eleanor died young.
Frances Fostyk: Eleanor, Mom.
Anna Baird Lloyd: I said Eleanor died young.
Brub Baird: Yeah, she was married to Willie Heatherton.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah. Well he still lives out there. Well one girl didn't get married. One's married, and he still lives out there because young Oliver delivers mail out there and Oliver told him who he was. So Billy sent me a note one time. But he lives there with his daughter, Billy Heatherton, still out on Delaware Avenue.
Brub Baird: That Willie's boy?
[Betty DeNight?] Willie's girl.
Brub Baird: He belongs up to the club now, Willie.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Willie Heatherton?
Brub Baird: Yeah, you see him playing golf every once in a while.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Well, his daughter lives with him, she ain't married. One's married and one isn't.
Frances Fostyk: I don't see any of those pictures, Mom, I don't know what you did with them.
Anna Baird Lloyd: You got them all there?
Frances Fostyk: Yeah, all the goods in the box.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Well I got another box.
William Lloyd: Do you remember his nickname, Willie Heatherton?
Brub Baird: Who? Willie.
Frances Fostyk: That's something, the creek, you can tell her the nicknames of everybody on the creek.
Johnson: Yes.
[Crosstalk]
Anna Baird Lloyd: You never knowed anybody with their right names. They called my husband Steeplejack. Steeplejack, because his father used to climb smoke stacks. Before he got that job, you know, he was a foreman down there in the Experimental Station.
Frances Fostyk: Is that when they named the hill going up from the covered bridge, Lloyd's Hill.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Lloyd's Hill, because they used to live on the hill and then they named it Lloyd's Hill.
Johnson: That was your husband they named it for - that was your husband, he was the foreman at the yard?
Anna Baird Lloyd: No, his father.
Johnson: Oh, okay, and they named the hill for him?
Anna Baird Lloyd: His father was a foreman at the Experimental Station.
Johnson: Did you say your husband worked there, too?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Huh?
Johnson: Did your husband work there too?
Anna Baird Lloyd: No, he never worked there, but his father did.
Johnson: Okay, thank you.
[Crosstalk]
Johnson: But several of your husband's father's brothers worked for them - for DuPont too?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, yeah.
Johnson: Do you know what they did?
Anna Baird Lloyd: I forget what Leon did. I know he worked for DuPont's. Ralph - one of his brothers was a barber, Ralph was a barber.
Betty DeNight: He worked for DuPont, too, though.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah he worked for - they all worked for DuPont's. Everybody out around there worked for DuPont's. Was no Social Security then.
Johnson: Did you play games when you were a child?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh, not much. We jumped rope and played jacks. But I could pitch horseshoes, though.
Johnson: Where did you pitch the horseshoes?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Out in our backyard.
Frances Fostyk: Well you had sledding - you were sledding and skating.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh yes, sledding. I'll tell you. We used to sled on Breck's Lane, I'll tell you what. You know, we didn't have nothin', we'd sled on a board or a bag or something, but Madeline du Pont and them, they had the sleds, and that's why I used to get on the sled, because I used to ride with them, they had the sleds. And you know, they used to bathe in the Brandywine Creek, they had bathing suits, but we went in with old dresses on [laughs], we couldn't afford bathing suits, we had an old dress.
Johnson: Did you go in the Brandywine a lot to swim?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, I could swim good then. There was a big rock in the middle where we used to go in. We used to go in from home and if we could make that rock, we'd know we could make the other side, 'cause the rock set right in the middle, and we all made for that rock, yeah, right from our house.
William Lloyd: That's called Big Rock, I know where that was.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, is it still there, the rock? Well, we knowed if we got on that rock we were safe, then we could make the other side, it wasn't as deep. Yeah, I went swimming in the Creek all the time, that's where we got our baths, Brandywine Creek.
Brub Baird: Did they have any names there like Minnie and the Point, right there at the Hagley Museum gates why we used to call that The Point. Did you have names for them when you were climbing there?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, they had all kinds of names, they never give them the right names. - Discussing Anna Baird Lloyd's parents; the Oliver family and other acquaintances; songs sung as a child; hanging shoes and stockings on the settee during the winter; her mother sewing her clothes; her parents eating mackerel for breakfast; buying her father a collar and tie in WilmingtonKeywords: "Snowball" Oliver; Bancroft's Mill; candy; closets; Come-to-Jesus tie; crocheting; Go-to-Heaven collar; hearse; Joseph Bancroft and Sons Co.; mackerel; panty bodies; settee; sewing machine; stockingsTranscript: [Mrs. Lloyd?]: Well, didn't Grandfather Lloyd have a store at the bottom of Breck's Lane?
Anna Baird Lloyd: That's after they retired. They had candy.
Brub Baird: He come down there one day, Gordy, and threw some golf balls in the stove when Grandfather was tending to the store. It wasn't long before - boom - blew the cover and the lid was knocked off and everything. He's still got a scar where they ran us off up there. And he got his arm caught on a six-foot cyclone fence with three strands of bob wire on top. Tommy Fisher ran us off [crosstalk in background] He ran us off and we jumped and were going over the fence and as Gordy was coming down he got his arm caught on the fence.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Gordy, do you remember your grandmother - I don't mean Grandmother Lloyd, her mother?
William Lloyd: Mom-Mom?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah.
William Lloyd: Yeah.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, Frances remembered her. And they were all short.
William Lloyd: Yeah, I remember her. Grandpop died, what, 1932, 1933?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah.
William Lloyd: 'Cause I remember it was in the wintertime and when a hearse come there, we'd hook to the back of it. Yeah, to get up to the hill.
Brub Baird: On the sled, yeah.
William Lloyd: Yeah, all of us was on the back of it going out.
Anna Baird Lloyd: You know, I still have a note there that Jennie Montgomery wrote me when we were leaving out the Creek to move into town, you know, we moved into Second and Jackson, and she said, "Frances's piece was lost on Breck's Lane, it was found and I'm sending you another and I do hope when you move in town, go in town, you'll bring her out for the Children's Day," and I did - give her another piece. I still have that little note Jennie Montgomery sent me.
Brub Baird: I'll be darned.
Betty DeNight: That's Jennie Toomey?
Anna Baird Lloyd: No, Jennie Montgomery. Her name was Jennie Montgomery and she used to go with Archie Oliver, was Agnes Oliver and Archie Oliver, remember - they lived in the back there. Strone with his dog, lived in one house, and Archie Oliver and Agnes and the Mother and all lived on the other side.
Brub Baird: Snowball, he was the golf professional from out there. He was one of the best known - things that the Creek's known for is Snowball, as a pro golfer.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Snowball Oliver, yeah.
Brub Baird: Porky Oliver they called him.
Anna Baird Lloyd: They never got their name - my husband always got Steeplejack, he never got nothin' else. And your Uncle Albert, he got Yabba [Buchanan]. I don't know whether they ever named Bill anything or not.
Betty DeNight: How did Uncle Albert get half of that foot blown off, do you remember?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, he got that in a thrashing machine, half a foot. He married Jennie Lattimore. She used to live with your aunt - that's where he met her - she worked over in Hodgson's for a while, then she got a job down at Bancroft's, but she boarded with your Aunt Mame, and that's where Albert met her.
Betty DeNight: I didn't know that.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah. Is Frank - is he living?
Betty DeNight: No, he's dead.
Anna Baird Lloyd: How about Bill?
Betty DeNight: No, they're all gone.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Do you have any other questions?
Johnson: Oh, yes, I have about six more pages. Do you remember any songs that you sang when you were younger, did you sing any songs when you were little?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh yeah, we sang a lot of songs - "Wait 'til the Sun Shines, Nellie" and "Put on your Old Gray bonnet with the Blue Ribbons on it, and we'll hitch Old Dobbin to the shay, Through the fields of clover we will ride to Dover on our golden wedding day." [laughs]
Johnson: Thank you.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Remember that?
Johnson: When you were little, who got up first, did your mother get up first or your father?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh no, my Mother was always up first, she had to get us ready for school - get ourself ready.
Johnson: And do you remember...
Anna Baird Lloyd: You know, we had a settee and upstairs was awful cold in the winter, and we took our shoes and stockings off and we hung them on the rungs of the settee. We all had to hang them there and that's where we knowed where to get them in the morning when we got up.
Johnson: Down in the kitchen?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, that was it.
Brub Baird: Keep them warm by the stove, huh?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah.
Johnson: Where did you keep your other clothes?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Upstairs.
Johnson: And did you have a closet?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh yeah, we had plenty of closets in them houses.
Johnson: And what were your clothes like? Did you have long stockings?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Long stockings and long dresses and then you had pants - Mom made our pants and then you had panty bodies and you buttoned your pants to the panty bodies.
Betty DeNight: I remember that - I wore them.
Anna Baird Lloyd: You buttoned your pants to the panty bodies. Mom made everything we wore. She'd go down to the mill, Bancroft's Mill, and she bought the mill ends, she'd buy the bolts of material - she made everything we wore.
Johnson: Did she have a sewing machine?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah.
Johnson: Do you know what kind it was?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh, one of them old fashioned ones. Sometimes she had - one that she'd turn the handle on. She made everything we wore. I still have a collar that Mom made me when I was 45 years old.
Brub Baird: Is that right?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Mom hated black, she hated dark clothes and I remember I went in there this day with a black dress on, no trimmings on it, nothing. And she said, "What are you doing with that black dress on?" And about a week later I got this collar, I still have it in there. [Everyone laughs] Wait, I'll get up and show it to you.
Johnson: Oh, that would be great.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh, I get up and walk through the house, I don't use me cane through the house 'cause I can grab things, I can grab things.
Brub Baird: Do you want your cane, Aunt Annie?
Anna Baird Lloyd: No, I don't use a cane through the house - watch this here. See if you don't see Mom there down in Rehoboth.
Frances Fostyk: No, Mom, I can't find any of those pictures, I don't know what you did with them, but they're not in this box.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Did you look in that other box there - there's another box with pictures in.
Frances Fostyk: There is?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah - Girl Scout box.
Frances Fostyk: Well that's the one I have.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Well, see if there ain't some in another box.
Betty DeNight: Are you enjoying your retirement, Francis?
Frances Fostyk: Oh - not too much.
William Lloyd: This was you when you were young, Francis?
Frances Fostyk: Yeah, that's Eleanor and Irene.
William Lloyd: Eleanor and Irene, huh? Look at the red hair on Francis.
Frances Fostyk: Oh I did that, I think, I must have colored them one time or another.
Anna Baird Lloyd: There must be another box of pictures, Francis. I can get over it, I watch.
Johnson: Oh, isn't that nice. I was going to ask you if it - is that crocheted? You call that crocheting?
Anna Baird Lloyd: I guess she crocheted, Mom crocheted a lot.
Betty DeNight: That's all they're wearing now.
Johnson: That's just beautiful, they are back in style.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Well, that's about 45 years old. I washed it not long ago.
Betty DeNight: That is beautiful, oh yeah, I think that's gorgeous.
Anna Baird Lloyd: I have more handkerchiefs in there where she'd crochet lace on the handkerchiefs.
Johnson: It's just beautiful, thank you for showing it to me.
[crosstalk continues]
Anna Baird Lloyd: And that on a black dress. Now I was 45, now I'm 95, now you know how old that was. My Mother done all that. I don't know how she done it with ten kids. Done all her sewing, made everything we wore. But that's where we learned to cook - nothing fancy, you know what I mean? Yet, whatever they cooked, you had to eat it. My Father said when you didn't like - I never would eat fish at all 'cause I would always get sick. And they would have mackerel every Sunday morning for breakfast, they'd boil mackerel and after they boiled it, they put it in the oven with a little butter on to kind of dry it out. And that's what my Mother and Father had every Sunday morning for breakfast when we were kids. But we didn't have nothing fancy, we'd have oatmeal for breakfast or cornmeal mush - we always had toast.
Johnson: Where did you buy the fish?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Well I don't - well they'd catch fish down in the Brandywine Creek, catfish or anything. But they used to get fish from town.
Johnson: Did they go into Wilmington about once a week to buy food?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh no, my God, they hardly ever went in to Wilmington.
Brub Baird: That was a big trip, wasn't it?
Anna Baird Lloyd: One time, Eleila, wait 'til I tell you, Elelia and oh I have a picture of them somewhere here, I forget who they were. Well we used to go together and one time my Father wanted a new collar and tie and I forgot the kind of tie he wanted and I went into this Irishman, he had a store at Second and Market Street, and he was Irish as he could be and I said "Oh I forgot the name of the collar, but it's opened this way and the tie had a bone in it and you stick it down, and we call it Go-to-Heaven collar, Come-to-Jesus tie." And the man knew what I meant. It was a collar, black tie that had a bone on it, and you put the collar on then you put the tie on and stuck the bone down in there and that made the tie, and that's what I asked for, Go-to-Heaven collar and Come-to-Jesus tie, and he knowed what we wanted. There used to be a place Second and Market. - Her mother canning and preserving fruits and vegetables; grocery delivery; her father saying grace at dinner; wearing flannel nightgowns and booties knit by her mother; feather beds; floor plan of her family's house in Henry Clay; using Listerine for teeth and goose grease for colds; currently making chamomile and caraway seed teaKeywords: Canning and preserving; caraway seed; chamomile tea; feather beds; floor plan; goose grease; grocery delivery; jams; jelly; Knitting; Listerine; nightgowns; oilcloth; Prayers; Teeth--Care and hygiene; tomatoesTranscript: Johnson: How about lunch, did you go home for lunch or did you have lunch in school?
Anna Baird Lloyd: No, we carried our lunch.
Johnson: Do you remember what you brought for lunch?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh gosh, no, be something - maybe it was butter or something else, or maybe some kind of chicken. We always - jelly or jam - Mom made her own jelly and jam. Mom preserved a lot.
Johnson: Where did she get the fruit - did you pick it from the trees around there?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh, people come around selling tomatoes, you'd buy tomatoes for maybe fifteen cents a basket, a big basket. And then they had these jars and they'd put up - Mom had a whole closet full of peaches and tomatoes and whatever she could put up - corn and everything. Mom put up a lot. All summer they - we had to peel them you know, help get it ready.
Johnson: Did they have a lot of horses and wagons come through selling things?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, a man used to come and he would take your order, he had a grocery store up at Rockland, Sam Ewings, and he would come along and he'd take your order and then the next day bring it back - when we lived at Charles' Banks and then he went down the creek too. And then Mom would give him the eggs when we lived in Charles' Banks, you know, and she'd give him chicken - instead of money, she'd give him that.
Mind - you know I was gonna get a job in that powder yard, making them pellets you know, they were hiring girls at the time. But there was no girls in that building, over in another building. They made little pellets for the war.
Johnson: Did you know any girls who did get the job?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh yeah, there were a lot of girls from around there. Some of them from way down in Maryland, you know, that come up here, boarded up in places.
Johnson: Did your father take his lunch to work?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, he always took his lunch, in a little lunch box, little tin box.
[The rest of the group is looking at photographs and making miscellaneous comments.]
Johnson: If you ate lunch out, then did you all gather around the table for dinner at night?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yes.
Johnson: And do you remember, did they say grace?
Anna Baird Lloyd: My Father did, always said grace, yeah.
Johnson: Do you know what he said, does it come back to you?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Well, some of them I do - "Oh Lord be thankful for this day and for this food that Thou provided for thee, and Lord bless this home, Amen." He always said that, I remember that.
Johnson: I think you told me pretty much what you ate for dinner. Do you remember what time you went to bed when you were little?
Anna Baird Lloyd: We went to bed as soon as it got dark. And when we worked we had to go to bed early 'cause we got up early, you know, we had to be at work at seven o'clock and we'd be in bed at eight o'clock at night.
Johnson: Do you remember what you wore to bed, would you put your pajamas on - did you have to wear pajamas or nighties?
Anna Baird Lloyd: No, we didn't wear pajamas, we wore flannel nightgowns. And then we'd have flannel socks. Mom knit booties for us, we wore booties, too, to bed. Mom knit booties for us, Mom was always knitting. I got a lot of her knitting needles here, great big ones.
Johnson: Did she teach you how to knit?
Anna Baird Lloyd: I never learned how to knit, but my sister, Susie, she made all kinds of napkins, Susie knit good, yeah, Susie knit good, but Rebecca died young.
Brub Baird: How about Maggie?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Maggie could knit. But Maggie never liked work. Maggie would shove it on somebody else.
Johnson: What were your beds like?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Feather beds.
Johnson: Did you make the feather beds out of the chicken feathers?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Chicken feathers, yeah, we had feather beds and they were hard to make up, too.
Brub Baird: Did you used to make them, Aunt Annie, did you make them - your mother?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah. And then they used to buy feathers and then towards the last they bought down or something like down and made down beds.
Johnson: But they were very lumpy when you had to make them up in the daytime?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, we made 'em up, flatten them out, but in the morning they would be all lumpy. Sometimes there would be three of us in one bed.
Johnson: Did you sleep on the third floor in that house?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Second floor. Nobody hardly slept in th attic. See we had three bedrooms on the second floor, and my Mother and Father slept downstairs, there was a bedroom down there. And then there were three bedrooms on the second floor - on the third floor, and then there was an attic. See you come in off the road and that was your living room in there, but you had to come down the side of the house - all them houses had to do that, all along that row.
Betty DeNight: Mom-Mom's was the same on Breck's Lane.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yes, yes, had to do the same thing. Had to come down the side, hold onto the railing and then come down the side and that was your kitchen down there and then there was a big dining room and then a pantry. Our dining room was bigger than this, as big as this, great big long table, no tablecloth, oilcloth. You didn't was tablecloths, you had oilcloth.
Johnson: Well, there was so much work, you had so much work already.
Anna Baird Lloyd: That was a good old time out Henry Clay, though.
Johnson: Did you brush your teeth before you went to bed, did your Mother make you brush your teeth before you went to bed?
Anna Baird Lloyd: No, no I don't know whether we ever cleaned our teeth. Yes we did - we had to gargle with Listerine, gargle with Listerine - Listerine's an old timer, you washed your mouth out with Listerine. And if you had a cold, you got rubbed with goose grease. All up in here and your chest and everything, you got a cold on your chest, you got goose grease, piece of flannel, you rub that on and then a piece of red flannel.
Brub Baird: Did they have Vick's then?
Anna Baird Lloyd: No. You got goose grease.
That ain't nothing now, wait until I tell you what I take. The doctor give me medicine that didn't do me no good and he kind of got mad when I told him I didn't take it. I got Calamine and I got other seeds with it and I make my own tea and this here - it's a gas that builds up with this here hernia, you know, and I take that and I can lay in there and then I belch and then it starts running in the bag, you know. I take me own calamine tea. And the doctor didn't like it cause I told him I took - his medicine didn't do me no good, the calamine tea, I didn't care.
Brub Baird: You make your own tea.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah.
Frances Fostyk: Listen, you take what helps you.
Anna Baird Lloyd: I did. The German lady in the back gets me - she gets it cause I can't go no more to get it, and she gets it and now she takes it [laughter].
Betty DeNight: Give me the name of it, Aunt Annie.
Mrs. Lloyd: Calamine tea, what did she make it with?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Frances there's another box with pictures in.
Frances Fostyk: Well, I'll look and see if I can find it, but I know that this is all my stuff, I think.
William Lloyd: Do you know where this store is, Colonial?
Frances Fostyk: No.
Brub Baird: Wonder if they had any Boys and Girl Scouts when they were little, I guess not.
Johnson: I never heard of it. We have a question to ask about all the organizations.
Anna Baird Lloyd: See that, I put a spoonful of that and a half a teaspoon full of this, and I use a little bigger jar than this full of water, and I let it come to a boil. I let it boil for a second and then I turn it down and I wait 'til it gets cold, and then I strain it and that's what I put in the refrigerator. And I take a wine glass full after I eat.
Frances Fostyk: It's chamomile.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Chamomile.
Frances Fostyk: They all put different kind of seeds. Caraway seeds. Yeah, I think that's the kind, give it a flavor.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Frances, that ain't the Christmas tree. You've got the Christmas tree, there's another box like that in there. That's over in the corner, that's my little Christmas tree. I got a big jar this evening.
Mrs. Lloyd: I'll have to write that down - caraway seeds and chamomile.
Anna Baird Lloyd: I don't know what this black seed is.
Frances Fostyk: Caraway seeds.
Betty DeNight: This is really strong isn't it?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yes. And you know I let it - I use a half a teaspoon full of this and teaspoon full of that and I let it boil. And I have that jar full of water.
Brub Baird: Smells like tea.
Anna Baird Lloyd: See that, I had that jar full of water and then I strain it and then it gets cold and I put it in the refrigerator and then when I feel real bad, some nights Frances has to get up in the middle of the night and give it to me, and reheat it, I have to drink it warm, you can't have it cold, you drink it hot. You have to drink it warm.
Betty DeNight: What kind of seeds?
Anna Baird Lloyd: I don't know what kind of seeds they are - you know what they are?
Frances Fostyk: Caraway - they're caraway seeds, Mom. Boil and simmer, right?
Anna Baird Lloyd: I boil and simmer and then when it gets cold, I strain it and I put it in that jar - see I put this jar full of water.
Frances Fostyk: That would be about eight ounces.
Anna Baird Lloyd: One of them Sanka jars, and I keep it in the refrigerator and then when I take a glassful, little glass about like that, and I take it warm. And that makes me belch and brings up the gas. It helped me more than what I paid twenty-five dollars for.
Frances Fostyk: I don't know where she put those pictures - the album or something.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Maybe they are in one of them, Frances, maybe I put them in some of them.
Brub Baird: An awful lot of them. I mean a lot of them stuff the old people come up with.
Anna Baird Lloyd: See all of them are all of my great nieces and nephews pictures. They're all Virginia's kids.
Brub Baird: You had onions on your feet.
Anna Baird Lloyd: And when Robin, he's just that little boy, he's tickled to death. [crosstalk] - Attending church, Sunday School, and church suppers; her father in the Orangemen's Club; stringing popcorn and cranberries at Christmas and other traditions; eating pancakes at breakfast; getting oysters with her father at Jesters in WilmingtonKeywords: Breck's Mill; Christmas decorations; cranberries; Green Hill Presbyterian Church (Wilmington, Del.); Jesters; lace; Orangemen; Oysters; pancakes; popcorn balls; rag dolls; Sunday schools; Working class--Religious life; Working class--Social life and customsTranscript: Johnson: I want to ask you what you did every week - did you go to church every week?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Every Sunday you had to go to church in our house.
Johnson: Did they have Sunday School for the children as well?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Nine o'clock in the morning at Green Hill Church, nine o'clock in the morning.
Johnson: Did they have the Sunday School as well as church, or did you just go to one or the other?
Anna Baird Lloyd: There's a big lot and it was a wealthy man that was buried there and he had this big headstone, railing all around it, and all the men used to stand there and wait for the kids coming out of Sunday School. And as they come out, they grabbed them and run them up into church. [laughter]. All the men used to stand there, yeah, the women would be inside. Mom could never go 'cause she had too many chores to do at home, but Pop always went. I have a picture of him setting on the stone wall, wait until I get it. He must have just come from church cause he had his little black hat on him and he always wore shoes, gaiters you know, the rubber on the side and you pull them up with a little thing on the back.
Johnson: Do you remember anything about those church services, were the services pleasant or do you remember anything about it?
Anna Baird Lloyd: What, the service?
Johnson: Yes.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Well, sometimes I did. I learnt more in Sunday School. There was a teacher there. Betty Krause, Betsy Krause used to teach me Sunday School.
Johnson: Her picture is in that book - her picture is in that book I gave you.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Betsy Krause?
Johnson: Yes. One of the ladies recognized it, so when you have time to look at it, you'll see her.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, well she used to be my Sunday School teacher. There's Betsy and Emily and Dorothy, I think, yeah.
Betty DeNight: That's Chick Krause's mother?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah.
Johnson: Now how about your mother, did she ever go to any kind of clubs or sewing circles or anything like that?
Anna Baird Lloyd: No, no she never had no time.
Johnson: Nothing in the church?
Anna Baird Lloyd: No. Oh, we always went up to church suppers though, when they give a supper. You know you'd go to all the churches, and Pop did give us money to go up - you'd go up there, you'd pay a quarter, and we would go to all the church suppers. You know, they had big suppers and everything is on the table, you helped yourself, you got what you wanted. First there would be one church, up to the Methodist Church, and then Saint Joe's used to have it and our church used to have it and we'd go to all of them. We got a good meal, got dessert and all for a quarter.
Johnson: Did the women bring the food in, or did the...
Anna Baird Lloyd: No, it was at the table, but then they had people to wait on you, you know.
Johnson: People worked at the church and did that?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, that visited the church.
Johnson: How about your father, did he belong to any clubs?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Nup.
Johnson: Not the Old Fellows, the Masons, the Hibernians or anything like that?
Frances Fostyk: Uncle Needie belonged to something.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, he was a Mason.
Frances Fostyk: He belongs to the Orangemen, too.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, my Father did belong to them Orangemen, too.
Frances Fostyk: He did belong to the Orangemen?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah.
Frances Fostyk: I knew Uncle Needie did because he used to come to Philadelphia to the Orangemen's Day.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, he belonged to the Orange Parish.
Johnson: Where did they meet, right in the Brandywine or did he have to go down to Wilmington?
Anna Baird Lloyd: No, I think they met in some - down at the Club, down at Breck's Lane.
Betty DeNight: Breck's Mill?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, Breck's Mill.
Johnson: Oh, that wasn't far.
Anna Baird Lloyd: No, that wasn't far. No, my Father never went to town much.
Johnson: Well, let's talk about Christmas. What did you do for Christmas?
Anna Baird Lloyd: String popcorn for balls. Put popcorn on for tinsel and all - pink - we'd have pink and white popcorn. Then Mom made all kinds of - we'd make all kinds of paper dolls and put some kind of tinsel on them and hang it on the tree. We had a few balls, not many.
Johnson: Did you buy the balls?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, we had them.
Johnson: How did you make the popcorn pink?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh I don't know, they dipped it in some kind of pink liquid and made it pink. And then you had a needle and you had to string in it, put that through the popcorn and make a big string of it.
Johnson: How about cranberries, did you ever do that to cranberries?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, we had cranberries, yeah.
Brub Baird: That's probably what they made it pink with, the cranberries.
Johnson: That's what made me think of the cranberries.
Anna Baird Lloyd: We used to string cranberries, too, and hang them up on the tree.
Johnson: You'd have to buy those in the store, right?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah.
Johnson: Yes. Where did you get your tree?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Go out in the woods and chop it, you didn't get no - you didn't buy no trees, went out in the woods and chopped a tree.
Johnson: Did your brothers do that, or your father.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh no, me brothers used to do it.
Johnson: Where did they - any old woods?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Any place that had a Christmas tree, they chopped it.
Johnson: They weren't fussy.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Nobody bothered you.
Johnson: Did you have a stand to put it in, and do you remember what that was like?
Anna Baird Lloyd: A bucket of sand, or a bucket of dirt. You planted it down in a bucket of dirt, and then you covered the bucket over with some kind of wallpaper.
Johnson: Oh, that was different.
Anna Baird Lloyd: You covered the bucket with wallpaper, I remember that. And then you'd have some kind of string and you tied the wallpaper on there, you didn't have much sticky stuff then.
Brub Baird: Did you have yards, you know, around the tree?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah.
Brub Baird: I remember Daddy used to love to make each little - for the yard there...
Anna Baird Lloyd: The last time Frankie was here, the minute he opened the door one time, he says, "My God, Aunt Annie, have you still got them? Remembering them reminds me..." I said, "Yeah, do you want them?" And he says, "Yeah." He took them home. It was a bisque, a boy and a girl and she's holding a lamb and he was holding a little Bible, a little prayer book. And it stood about that high. Frankie took them home with him. And he said he had them priced - guess how much they're worth - $250.00 each. But he said they wouldn't part with them for nothing. I said when they come I'll give them some more chicks and ducks to... [tape is switched]
Johnson: And you set it up the night before Christmas so that the children were surprised on Christmas morning?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, they'd have everything. We believed in Santa Claus until we got older, you know, we thought there was one. And we cried because we didn't get what we wanted. Mom made us rag dolls, you know, we all got rag dolls. Mom would make rag dolls and make the face and put buttons on them for eyes and things like that.
Johnson: What did she stuff the dolls with?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Straw - straw or hay or something. That's the kind of dolls we got. You know when you have ten kids and not much money coming in...
Johnson: But what a lot of work she went through then, to make your dolls.
Anna Baird Lloyd: You know what I paid rent in St. Helena - three dollars a month rent.
Brub Baird: Is that right?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Our house at St. Helena.
Brub Baird: How many eggs would you eat for breakfast like or something like that?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Well, lots of times we didn't eat eggs, you know, we got cornmeal mush or oatmeal mush - we'd always get - Mom made pancakes a lot, and then we'd use syrup on it. See, she had a big griddle and you'd cook six or eight pancakes at a time - no little ones, they would be about this big, big pancakes, we called them pancakes.
William Lloyd: I used to eat nineteen of them in the morning.
Frances Fostyk: Here's two of the pictures, they were the only two I could find, Mom.
Anna Baird Lloyd: That was me.
Frances Fostyk: And that's the one of your brother and his friend.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, see me picture there, there's the one that's killed and there's his brother, that's his boy friend, Sammy Davis. That's me peeking around the corner.
Brub Baird: Who was this - is that you, Aunt Annie?
Anna Baird Lloyd: That's me, yeah. See at that time you had to pay to get your picture taken, there wasn't so many cameras out.
Johnson: Do you remember where that was taken?
Anna Baird Lloyd: I guess in our yard, I don't know.
[Mrs Lloyd?]: Which one is the brother, the one in the white shirt?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh no.
Brub Baird: You'd heat it on a stove - a bucket-a-day stove.
Johnson: Is that your husband? He was nice looking.
Brub Baird: I don't know, it looks like a bar - what were you doing in a bar?
Anna Baird Lloyd: It might have been - I was never in no bar, I was never in no saloon. You know where me and Pappa used to go a lot of times - there on Fourth Street right below King, he used to go in there, he loved oysters and Jesters, there used to be a Jesters there, and he would get oysters and I used to like fried oysters and he'd get raw oysters.
Frances Fostyk: You know who the granddaughter is of the Jesters? Mrs. Pyle down the street.
Brub Baird: Mrs. Pyle?
Frances Fostyk: Pyle, her father was a Jester and her grandfather.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, they used to have a oyster place - right below - there would be Fourth Street, be King Street and then it would be a couple doors below King - Jester's.
Frances Fostyk: Yeah, I remember where it was, I remember the Jester's.
Anna Baird Lloyd: And you know, there's a Dry Goods Store up here, and I bet that guy, that's his grandfather. He couldn't talk English much, he used to come around and he would have spools of cotton and needles and everything and he would go door to door. I don't know how that man used to carry that pack, and everybody out the creek and all used to buy stuff off of him. Everybody there bought off him.
Mrs Lloyd: Jester's eventually started selling produce.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Dry Goods Store, this used to be a Dry Goods - it used to come from - he was Jewish - and then after a while his wife came with him and she was carrying another pack because his business got so big, he was selling embroidery and lace, you know they were great for sewing lace on everything. Even the pillowcases had lace on them.
[crosstalk] - Making her mother's rice pudding recipe with certain substitutions; having a goose on Christmas; Fourth of July traditions; childhood games; her grandmother putting tatting on the edges of underclothes she made; current medical issues and visiting with acquaintancesKeywords: birthdays; Charles' Banks; Christmas goose; Firecrackers; Fourth of July; hoop rolling; Jacks (Game); jump rope; Keyes' Hill; lace; Lloyd's Hill; penny crackers; picnics; recipes; rice pudding; Tatting; UnderwearTranscript: Johnson: What about birthdays - did you celebrate your birthday?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Well, the last time - they celebrate my birthday up to my granddaughter's, but then down here, I belong to the Golden Age Club down here a block down, and they celebrated it down there, too, when I was 85. And they were to take me down there for the last meeting, you know, there was always a man comes up, and I waited for this man to come up for me and he didn't come, and a woman come up after me from the Club - three women come up after me, and they had the car and they said, "Come on we're gonna take you." And I said to them, "Where's Jack?" And she said, "Wait until you get in the car and I'll tell you where Jack is. She said Jackie died this morning at two o'clock." That man that was supposed to bring me down. And he used to kid me, he said, "I'll come up after you, I'll have to bring a wheelchair."
Johnson: How about when you were a child - when you were a little girl, did your mother celebrate your birthdays, all ten children?
Anna Baird Lloyd: No, not much. She knowed your birthday, you know, maybe make a cake or something. Yeah, Mom baked good.
Johnson: Your mother must have been really nice.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Mom was a good baker. But I don't bake no cakes, I never bought cakes or pies either when I was first married. I made a big rice pudding - Frances said it was great. I put raisins in it - like Mom made her rice pudding, you know. Frankie sent me a rice cooker, you know, from Japan and I get the - I don't buy that Minute Rice, I get the old rice, and you don't have to watch it, just plug it in and push it down and then it's automatic, it goes off. So I made a rice pudding like me Mother made it, only my Mother didn't use canned milk, but I did. I grate an apple in it, take the skin off and grate it and I put a lot of little raisins in, seedless raisins you know, and the rice is creamy and then I put a can of evaporated milk and a can of water and then I put another can of fresh milk in it and two eggs. I beat the eggs up and make a big rice pudding.
Johnson: And is that the way your mother made it?
Anna Baird Lloyd: That's the way my Mother made it, only she didn't use canned milk.
Johnson: How about the apple, did she put the apple in it?
Anna Baird Lloyd: She put the apple and raisins in it, but she put the big raisins - there wasn't no seedless raisins then, she put the big raisins in it, but I buy the little seedless raisins.
Johnson: Oh, yes, they're easier to eat.
Anna Baird Lloyd: I make it creamy and good. 'Cause some friends from the church used to come up here and I'd give them a dish of rice pudding and they wanted to know how I made it.
Johnson: What was your favorite holiday when you were a child?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Christmas I guess.
Johnson: Christmas. Did your family get together for a big dinner, too?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Well, we always had goose and chicken. My Father wouldn't have nothing else but a goose for Christmas.
Johnson: Where did he get that?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Well sometimes - when we lived at Charles Banks, we had a goose, but when we lived down in Henry Clay, he'd buy the geese, get it at the farmers out - he used to go up over Lloyd's Hill, that farmer that was up there, used to be a farm up there, and that's where he'd get his goose at Christmas, always got a fresh one, he brought it home and killed it.
Johnson: Now did the Company every give you turkeys for Thanksgiving or Christmas? Somebody remembers getting a turkey?
Anna Baird Lloyd: No, we never got anything from them. We never got anything from them.
Johnson: Now how about the Fourth of July, what would you do on the Fourth?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh, just stay home I guess, no parades, never got to town to see a parade. We'd have parades out Henry Clay, though, or around the Fourth, and everybody hung a flag out, and shoot fireworks, these penny little crackers, you know. Yeah, we had them, big pile of them.
Johnson: Did St. Joseph's sometimes put on a picnic on the Fourth of July up on Keyes' Hill? Did you ever hear about St. Joseph's having a picnic up on Keyes' Hill on the Fourth of July?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, they'd have picnics.
Johnson: But you didn't go to that?
Anna Baird Lloyd: They all had picnics, anywhere you wanted to go and picnic on the Fourth of July. Yeah, lots of times we went up to St. Joe's on a picnic on the Fourth. St. Joseph's Church, it was up on Barley Mill Lane.
Johnson: Do you remember anything about that?
Anna Baird Lloyd: No, just I know we had a good time. We'd jump rope and they'd jump over hoops or something. We jumped ropes and played jacks and that's what we did when I was a kid.
Johnson: Did they roll hoops - did you ever do that?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, you roll hoops - you had a stick and you'd roll a hoop.
Johnson: Did the girls do that as well as the boys?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, the boys did it, too. You never rolled hoops did you?
Brub Baird: Yeah, yeah we used to make a piece of wire and you'd bend it and bolt it down and run along holding the wire.
Johnson: Did the girls do that as well as the boys?
Brub Baird: I don't remember the girls doing it up there.
Johnson: I never heard of girls doing it.
Anna Baird Lloyd: A lot of times they run barefooted, but I never go barefooted, I couldn't walk in me bare feet. But you'd see them running up and down the road in their bare feet.
Frances Fostyk: My great-grandmother taught us hop scotch, and other games - something we played with stones also. And she taught us to jump rope.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Jump rope - and double Dutch you know.
Brub Baird: Yeah, I guess them stones was probably like jacks.
Frances Fostyk: Something like jacks.
Johnson: And what was her name again?
Frances Fostyk: Her name was Louisa Blizzer Griffith.
Johnson: Thank you. Now was she a powder...
Anna Baird Lloyd: Her maiden name was Blizzer and then she married a man who was Griffith, your grandmother's name was Kate Griffith, of course she married Lloyd.
Frances Fostyk: She was quite a charming old lady. I think we all sort of remembered her.
Anna Baird Lloyd: You used to say to your grandmother, "Now Kate why did you do that, Kate, I told you ought not to have done that, that won't turn out right." She used to tell...
Frances Fostyk: She used to make something out of paper and put a hook on it and she did tatting with it. I never can understand how she did that. She made our underclothes and she put tatting on the edges.
Johnson: That is so pretty.
Frances Fostyk: Yes, she made it for all the girls.
Johnson: And where did she live?
Frances Fostyk: She lived with my grandmother, Katie Lloyd, Griffith Lloyd, in Henry Clay, and she lived in Farmington with her.
Johnson: And did her husband work for the Company, too?
Frances Fostyk: No, he was dead at that time when she lived with my grandmother.
Anna Baird Lloyd: They lived down in Farmington, or Harrington didn't they?
Frances Fostyk: Farmington.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Farmington, that's right.
[Mrs. Lloyd?]: Are we making you too tired, Aunt Annie?
Johnson: When you get tired...
Anna Baird Lloyd: No - I don't go to bed 'til eleven. Eleven o'clock sometimes. When that hernia don't bother me, I can set up, when the hernia goes - if it's five o'clock I go to bed. But, oh, the other night it was terrible, I couldn't get rid of it. It went up and it cut the breath from me, it went underneath the breast and it cut the breath off from me.
Frances Fostyk: They don't want to do anything about it because nobody wants to be responsible for a hiatial hernia.
[Mrs. Lloyd?]: It's a very serious operation.
Anna Baird Lloyd: See - don't belong on this side, see move it over on that side. But he told me those tissues were all dead, that's why they couldn't put the bag on that side, the tissues were all dead. See I had the second operation and that's when the hernia come after that. They had to move my intestines over on the left side and that's what's bothering me. Oh, I went every place when I was 85. I belonged to Golden Age and I'd go on all the trips with them.
Johnson: You have to have lots of company now to make up.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Well, down here who - one called up today, now this is Wednesday, another will call up Friday. Several of them on the prayer list may call up to see if I'm okay, if I need anything. And then the woman that I went with when we lived on 34th Street, you know, down Strawberry Mansion, she's dead a long time ago, but I used to take her every place with me. We used to go down to Atlantic City along with her mother, well they're dead now, they're all dead, they got three daughters living, two's widowed and the one, Frances's girl friend, she never got married, she went with the girl. Well, they come over here every other week to take me out for a ride and take me up to market. And they call every other night to see if I'm okay. Three sisters, the three Stansbury girls, two of them are widows and the other never married. They still keep in touch. And then the one in Doylestown, her husband, every time he comes he makes something. He made them cats and he made that duck. See that little thing in the back there, it's made out of wood - see if you can tell what it is. Yeah, do you know what that is? See if you can tell what it is.
Brub Baird: Yeah, I remember seeing that before. Certain ways you look at it...
Anna Baird Lloyd: Certain way you look at it. You know, this girl up in Doylestown, her mother, you know, when I got a vacation Poppy couldn't get his and I said, "Well I'm not going nowhere cause he can't get two weeks off." He only got a week off, and I'll be home a week, and your mother, she had her breast taken off, and I said, "Look," they lived right in back of me, their yard and mine combined you know when we lived on 34th and Strawberry Mansion, and I said, "tell your mother to come here and I'll tend to her." So her mother came here and I tended to her, her breast and everything for that week and she lived with me the week, then she went over to her own house in the back of me. Well, her and her brother, they never forget me either just her and her brother living, the mother's dead now, and it's her husband that makes me all these cats and...
William Lloyd: Got to hold it flat and away from you. Now stand up - that's it, now hold it out and then look at it sideways.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Do you know what it says?
Brub Baird: I can't read to see this one.
Frances Fostyk: Mom, do you know any of these?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Let me see.
Brub Baird: I remember one other one she had here.
Betty DeNight: Did you have any more questions that you really wanted to ask her?
Johnson: Well, I have some more, but maybe I could come back and see you again sometime.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, you can ask me again, I'm okay.
Johnson: I think you've pretty well covered what we have to say so...
[Some miscellaneous comments as they look at a plaque with the word "Jesus" and more photos.]
Johnson: This is a release - this would allow the Museum to use anything you said - in case they wanted to write a book about it.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Well, I'll put "Anna Baird Lloyd". I can't write as good as I used to.
Johnson: Well, it's very good. Thank you very much. - Dressing up on Halloween and going to Alfred I. du Pont's house and dancing; Christmas parties at Breck's Mill; additional conversation unrelated to oral historyKeywords: Christmas parties; Du Pont, Alfred I. (Alfred Irenee), 1864-1935; Hagley Community House (Breck's Mill); Halloween; Halloween costumesTranscript: Johnson: Do you remember anything about Halloween, before I go?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh yeah, we used to dress up in - oh, Halloween, we'd dress up in all kind of clothes. We did have masks, we'd dress up in all kinds of dresses, maybe gingham aprons or whatever we had, we didn't have no suits or nothin'. And we'd carry a lantern with us. And this Alfred I., we used to go up to his place, you know. They would give us a lot of candy and cakes and things when we went up there. And that's where we used to go up there and we used to look at the floors, they were so pretty, you know. And he said, "Come right in, there's plenty of wax to wax them over." And he used to let us come in there and dance.
Johnson: In his house - you danced right in his house?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah.
Johnson: Did he bring you Christmas presents?
Anna Baird Lloyd: No, we never exchanged presents that way, you know.
Johnson: Some people remember that he used to have a party down at the Hagley Community House...
Anna Baird Lloyd: Well, we put together the Community House. We'd go down there at the parties, you know, and then we got a present, some kind of a little toy. DuPont's would give us a Christmas party down there - the mill's still there they told me.
Johnson: Yes. Do you remember what your presents were?
Anna Baird Lloyd: Oh no, ours would be a little doll and the boys would get a little truck or a little machine or something.
Johnson: Jenny Toomey says she remembers her doll that he gave her.
Anna Baird Lloyd: Yeah, we'd get a doll, all the girls got a little doll. And the boys got some kind of a little toy, no guns or nothin' you know, be a little car or something like that.
Anna Baird Lloyd: [Replying to the comments being made by the rest of the group regarding the plaque:] Yeah, that guy makes that and he made that goose or gander, he's always making me something. This man's my friend from Doylestown, the one I took care of his wife's mother, you know, with the cancer - she had her breast taken off and I used to dress it and all. And her and her brother, they never forget me, they send me cards at Christmastime and send me money, and then they come down about a month and take me out. And every time he comes, her husband, he's always making something. He made that gander over there and he made me black cats, he's always making me something. He made me them black cats and candlestick holders. And one time he come here and he says, "What's your daughter gonna do with them old closet doors down in the basement?" I said, "I don't know, I guess they're gonna throw them out." He said, "Do you care if I take them home?" And I said, "No, take them home." And about a month later he come down with that little cabinet - he made me that cabinet - yeah, he took them down and made me a cabinet.
See them cats I got up on the top, up on top, them black cats? He made them, he made them candlesticks. Every time he comes down, he's making me something. He lives in the basement. He's retired, too - he lives in the basement. His wife said - oh God they got a beautiful home, full of antiques, too. They live this side of Doylestown, they got a beautiful home.
[Additional miscellaneous comments. Anna Baird Lloyd gives Johnson something she made with yarn. Everyone still continues to talk at the same time.] - Discussing family photographs and additional conversation unrelated to oral history as the group prepares to leave; Frances Fostyk attending kindergarten at the Hagley Community House (Breck's Mill) as a childKeywords: Hagley Community House (Breck's Mill); Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater KentTranscript: Anna Baird Lloyd: [Showing additional photographs:] I have to show them these. I showed you that before. That's my mother and father, there's the Rockford Water Tower, that's our front yard where the trolley run over knocked the bushes...
Johnson: Oh, I bet the museum would love to have a copy of that. The museum would love to have a copy of something like that. Isn't that something with the tower in the back?
Betty DeNight: That's Rockford Tower, u-huh, isn't that good.
[More comments as they look at photographs.]
Anna Baird Lloyd: Now I'll tell you my sister, Rebecca, and how this got burnt - we had a fire one time and I grabbed it and saved it, with my marriage certificate. That was my sister, Rebecca that died during the flu.
Frances Fostyk: Well she looks like her grandmother.
Betty DeNight: Oh, does she?
Brub Baird: She was a good-looking woman, too.
Anna Baird Lloyd: That's me down at Fort Meade when Jim was down there.
Johnson: Isn't her hair pretty!
Anna Baird Lloyd: There's Martha, Jim's wife. [crosstalk]
Frances Fostyk: Oh, there's her Bible.
Brub Baird: See, they all have it - the whole gang from up - whatever house you go in, you always see one.
Johnson: Is that a family Bible?
Brub Baird: I guess so. My Grandmother had one.
Johnson: Would it be all right if I looked at the front? [crosstalk] They didn't write anything in there.
Brub Baird: Everyone has had it - my Grandmother and the whole gang of them, all of them. When you go in the house, you'll find that there.
Johnson: Yes, u-huh.
Brub Baird: You see one of them now, outside of the old gang, you gotta go in the hospital.
Johnson: That's right [laughs].
[More miscellaneous comments by everyone as they look at photographs.][The group prepares to leave.]
Frances Fostyk: It was nice of you to come up, she's enjoyed that I know.
Johnson: Well thank you for having us, it's been a big help. She's told us things that nobody else has, it's really been interesting.
Frances Fostyk: Oh, you're from Hagley, then?
Johnson: Yes, yes.
Frances Fostyk: I went to kindergarten down there. Did you ever go to kindergarten? I this it was Miss Nutter was the kindergarten teacher, something like that.
Johnson: Well, where would this have been, at Alexis I.?
Frances Fostyk: In Henry Clay - right there across from Hodgson's Mill - there was a - we used to call that the Hagley House, I don't know what they call it.
Johnson: Oh, the Hagley Community House, yes. That's where you had kindergarten?
Frances Fostyk: That's where I had kindergarten, I went to kindergarten there.
Johnson: Oh, I didn't know they had kindergarten there.
Frances Fostyk: Yes, Miss Nutter was the teacher. Somebody ought to know about her. Her name was Miss Nutter, and I was very young, because I hadn't even started school yet, you know, and it was more like what we call nursery school today. Because I remember, particularly the sand box. It was a table with - full of sand, you could stand there and play. That's all I remember about it.
Johnson: Well, you could probably tell them a few things, too, about what you remember.
Frances Fostyk: Oh, I doubt it.
Johnson: If you were willing.
Frances Fostyk: I mean, that's just my recollection.
Johnson: If they have any more questions to ask your mother, would it be all right if I came again sometime?
Frances Fostyk: Sure, I'd love to have you come.
Johnson: What is your address here, I'd better write it down.
Frances Fostyk: All right. 328 Borbeck - B-O-R-B-E-C-K Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19111.
William Lloyd: Write the telephone number down so that you can call and make sure that they're here.
Frances Fostyk: I've memorized it so that way it won't get cold. I was just saying that I've been volunteering down at the Atwater Kent Museum here in Philadelphia. We've been sewing labels on some of the donations and they have a complete wedding outfit - the bride's, the groom's, the bridesmaid's, I guess the parents and the flower girl - back in the 1800's. Very lavish, you know, that somebody would make those things.
Johnson: Glad to get that - did they have a bustle in back?
Frances Fostyk: Bustle - it wasn't a very big thing, you know, it's just...
[Good-byes are said as the group prepares to leave.]
Johnson: Thank you very, very much. And thank you for talking to me, I had such a good time. What's your last name, too?
Frances Fostyk: Fostyk - F-O-S-T-Y-K - it's Frances.
Johnson: Thank you, thank you.
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