Willett Wilbourn's Reminisces

"Mr. Willet Wilbourn, one of the oldest residents of Pickensville, who died this past year, consented to have a interview with Leroy Speed and the interview was taped. In this tape Mr. Wilbourn tells us much of the history of Pickensville. He started off by talking about the big boats that used to run on the river.

He said that the boats would blow at Old Memphis, and the people could hear the whistle. Fifteen minutes after the whistle blew, you could hear wagons out all over the hill, even if it was twelve o'clock at night they would begin to roll and come to the boat landing. Every time the boat landed at Pickensville, he said, it was just like the circus. Everybody went, and sometimes two, three, or four a day would land. He was asked if most of this happened in the wintertime or early spring, and Mr. Wilbourn said that the boats traveled about ten months a year. The other two months the big boats could not run, but the small ones could continue to run. This was because the water was too low during these two months of the year. Most of the boats ran from Columbus to Demopolis, with the larger boats going to Mobile. When the water would get too low, many times, he said, the boats would get stuck in the mud. He said he saw a boat turn around and use its paddlewheels to fan back out into the nearest channel and then go right on through. All the old boats used to land here, he said, and oh, there would be a terrible crowd. And they would load and unload, and ring a bell, and everybody at the lower landing would get on the boat, and it was only two hundred yards up to the next landing, which was called Pullup's Landing, but everybody got on there and rode that far. In those days they sold whiskey on the boat, and when the old boat would turn loose and get in the middle of the river, it would just stand there, it wouldn't move. It took an hour to go from one landing to the other, which was just two hundred yards, but during that time they were handing out that whiskey on the outside of the rail, and the inside of the rail, and I am telling you, Leroy, I am telling you the truth. On board the old boats you could really have a good time. There were poker games, crap games, they could dance, they served food, oysters and good things like that, all night long. People had a good time back in those days.

And Leroy asked Mr. Willet, did you ever ride the boat and where did you go?

I'd go all the way all the time, he said. I had a boy friend, old Captain Cochran, had a boy on there named John, and boy we were friends. Every time John landed he would come get me, and we would go to Columbus or Demopolis, places like that, and pretty nearly every trip, he'd make sure I'd go along with him.

Did you ever go to Mobile, Leroy asked.

No, I never went as far as Mobile, Mobile. Most of them used to go, though. During Mardi Gras those old boats would be loaded to the brim. You mean they were going down to Mobile to Mardi Gras? Yeah, they'd go down there and spend a week having a good time, and then come back.

Have you ever heard the story of the Eliza Battle, asked Leroy, did that happen before your time?

Yeah, there's been quite a bit of stuff about that, though. Did you know that there's a fellow that died twelve years ago that set fire to the Eliza Battle, and finally confessed to it on his deathbed in New York City?

Yeah, Leroy said, I think read that.

Well, said Willet, he got mad about something on the boat and set fire to it. One night when the river was out of its banks and the old Hard Cash was going down the river, and it got down to Old Memphis, and they heard somebody screaming, hollering on the bank. The old water was out everywhere, and it was dangerous. But they heard the screaming, and the boat took a chance, and it stopped. They turned around, and went back to see what he wanted, and twas an old man named Rance Boone that lived at Old Memphis, and he wanted to know if anybody on the boat wanted to buy a fat coon.

Well, said Leroy, did you ever go farther north than Columbus?

I didn't, but long bout the time I come along they'd stopped going up there, but I remember a boat going as far as Waverly, and I think they went on to Cotton Gin Port, and that's way on up the river where Aberdeen is now. I can tell you something that you don't know, and very few people in this country know, the big boats that we had here once ran the Noxubee River clear to Macon, Mississippi.

Amazing, said Leroy, I didn't know that.

Well, said Willet, Noxubee River ain't anymore nowadays but a big creek down here, but when the water'd get up the government had a dredge-boat in all the rivers keeping them clean. And the big boats, that come here, went to Macon. Actually they kept dredge-boats here all the time and they kept all the stumps and all that kind of stuff out of the river.

Well, would you be willing to say that the coming of the railroads and the trucks and the automobiles ruined this town?

Well, said Willet, good roads, railroads, trucks, that killed river traffic. Pickensville used to raise more cotton than the whole of Pickens County does now, that's true, too. We had one farmer who used to raise at least fifteen hundred bales of cotton every year, and his name was James Stewart.

Leroy said, are you talking about Mr. J. E. Stewart?

Yeah, said Willet, yes, John D. Long used to raise seven hundred and fifty bales himself, and we had two farmers out two miles from here, it wasn't any trouble for them to raise four hundred bales each. Besides all the other little farmers in this area. Back in those days if a man planted ten acres of cotton, he could tell you within one hundred pounds what he was going to make, and that was fore we had them boll weevils eating it up. I remember far enough back when they didn't have anything but a little bit of boll cotton, and that little boll wasn't a bit bigger than the end of your thumb, and we called it pea cotton, it was a very small boll of cotton, but, boy, it made lots of bolls on a stalk.

Was a long-staple cotton, asked Leroy.

I don't know, said Willet, I remember that. There uz ten thousand bales of seed and cotton, and they packed the seed down every time.

The picture that I saw the other day of the steamboat Vienna, said Leroy, it was loaded with sacks. Now what you s'pose was in those sacks? Were they sacks of grain, sugar, or what?

Swile uz such stuff as rice, coffee, and that sud, that sort of thing. They shipped the corn in sacks, too. And I can remember when flour came in barrels. Why, said Willet, I never saw a sack of flour until the First World War. In fact I saw nothing but barrels. Back in those days flour sold for three dollars and fifty cents a barrel.

Well, said Willet, how did y'all get cheese in that's days? You ought to know about those cheese deals, I used to order very old cheese, at least two year old New York State cheese, to come up from Mobile. I'd get me a twenty-five pound hoop, and cut it in four pieces, and then it was gone. Old Man Jim Gates out at Spring Hill, he'd get one quarter, old man Davis would get another quarter, Jim Cox would get another quarter, and I'd have one quarter left. And when that was gone, we'd send down to Mobile and get us another hoop.

You mentioned Mr. Davis, said Leroy, do you remember his first name?

No, I don't remember his name, just Davis is all. But he came by here last summer, and the first thing we started talking about was the cheese. Back that far, Leroy, when I went into business all we got was whole cheese, but now there ain't no such thing, as being, it's all got cream in it, cream cheese is the thing.

Well, that's what we call processed cheese, said Leroy.

Yes, said Willet, that cheddar cheese. The best cheese you can buy now ain't no good, cause it's made out of cheddar, and that ain't nothing but the clabbor off the milk.

Well, Leroy said, what you're saying is that they aren't putting the whole milk in cheese anymore.

Naw said Willet.

We're talking about Willet Wilbourn, but I want to tell you a little bit more about him.

Leroy asked him about the meat that came up on the boat.
He said, yes, we used to get Meyer's bacon; it was smoked almost black. It would come in a hundred and thirty-five or a hundred fifty pound size, had the ribs and pork chops all in it, they didn't take anything out. And that was the best meat on this earth.

Where do you s'pose it was processed, Leroy asked. Where was it cured?

Oh, it come up from Mobile, but I think it was made in Tennessee somewhere. They always got it from Mobile. They shipped it in fifteen hundred pound boxes. And it wouldn't even be just a few sides in there. Man, they wuz terrible big sides and that box wuz packed full. You can imagine the size it was with all the ribs and all in it. When I was a boy I been down on the place many a night and I'd smell that stuff cooking, and I'd go by some house and there was an old family down there, and she'd know what I wanted, she'd come out with a piece of hot cornbread and a piece of that meat. Man, it would be the best stuff a man ate in his life. They would hang it up in the smokehouse, and put a pot under it and catch the grease. Every merchant had a meat room, and he called it the dark room. No flies or nothing could get in there. He'd buy all the meat he wanted in the spring and store it in that house. I guess that a lot of them round here now that remember the meat rooms. I was talking to an old black woman up here the other day, and she's older than I am, and she wuz talking bout that meat.

Well, said Leroy, did you ever have a stagecoach to stop here in Pickensville?

Yes, said Willet, this my house is an old inn, right here. This was started in eighteen twenty and finished in eighteen twenty-two. So was the Methodist Church over here. This building over here built in eighteen twenty, finished in eighteen twenty-two.

You mean your house was used for a stagecoach, said Willet.

Yes, and it had sixteen rooms to it. It took two years to build each one. All the stuff in this house is hand-built. These things here, and all this lumber, wuz hand worked. William Gass has a great uncle named James Stinson, wasn't it, he married in Mississippi, and him and his wife rode horseback to this stagecoach inn when it first opened, and spent their honeymoon here. Stagecoach operated until eighteen forty. It used to be a stagecoach come from Columbus here, and would stop and spend the night. And then another stagecoach would come from the south, and it would meet here. The one from Columbus would proceed on to Eutaw, and the one from Eutaw would go on to Columbus the next day. I've heard them say that there'd be so many people staying here that they would have to double up, a lot of them would have to sleep on the floor. And doctors, you asked me about them, Leroy, we had five. We had Dr. Moorehead, Dr. Hill, Dr. Long, Dr. Gass, and Dr. Wilkins. And two drugstores. Course, we didn't have no hospitals or clinics, wasn't even any in the country.

Well, what did you do when people died, asked Leroy.

There wasn't any funeral home back then. When a person died, his neighbors come and dressed him, and laid him out at home. Now the boats wuz running every day and it wasn't any trouble to get you casket from Columbus. Then they'd put the body in the casket and carry it to the church on a wagon. They had a big marble table over there, in the Methodist Church, and that table was used to set the casket on. When the funeral was over they'd put the casket on the wagon and carry it back out to the cemetery. They didn't have a hearse in that day. But we had epidemics, about eighteen forty they had a typhoid epidemic. Everybody, that is, a big part of the people moved to Columbus. They thought it was the low ground that was causing it. At that time there was a cotton gin on the river, and people used the cottonseed for planting, but all that was left over they just threw out on the ground. They didn't know that seed would make good fertilizer, feed cows, anything else. And when the cottonseed piled up and rotted, people thought that was creating a typhoid fever epidemic. They found out afterwards what caused it, but they had moved away thinking it was low ground. And people didn't have any screens in that time, so they didn't know that the mosquito was causing the malarial fever. So everybody laid all their illnesses on low ground. Now we had some dug wells, there's a number of drilled wells now, I'm talking about the early days when we had dug wells. Those dug wells had good water, too.

Was Pickensville dry most of the time, you couldn't sell whiskey out here?

Well, it was wet til nineteen and five. Before that time liquor was sold in every grocery store in this town, and finally got down to where we just had two saloons.

You mean to tell me, Willet said, that there was two active saloons here?

Yeah, but about nineteen three they voted them out of town, and they moved down to the end of street, just beyond the city limits. The town was incorporated, you know, and they voted it out of town, and moved about a quarter mile above town.

Did y'all have saloon girls like you see on television, Willet asked.

Naw, there wasn't anything like that. One thing happened in a saloon. Old man Bill Rogers was a big corn-raiser, you know, and he had a terrible big corn crop that year, and it was dry. It hadn't rained, and we needed rain bad. And it came an awful rain and some clouds, and it just poured in Pickensville. You never saw such a heavy rain in your life. Old man Rogers got to walking around, and hollered that this rain just made him five thousand bushels of corn. He hollered, everybody, come on, let's go get a drink, all the drinkin's on me. He got on his horse and started to the swamp, and got down there about a quarter of a mile, down there about St. John's Church, and there it was dusty. Old man Rogers hadn't got a drop. And there he had bought drinks for everybody in Pickensville.

When the railroads, let me tell you about those, said Willet. I rode a flat car to Reform and back, and I rode the first train out of Aliceville. The first one that I rode from Carrollton to Reform was on the flat car, and boy was there a crowd there. They had an old soldiers' reunion there that day, and give em all a ride from Carrollton to Reform and back. And then I remember when they had the first train to run from Aliceville to York; I went down there and got on it, too. Had a big land sale down there at York, and people from Columbus and everywhere went down.

At one time there was fourteen stores in Pickensville, Willet said. Big merchants, some wealthy. A.J. Bush had a business here, and he moved to Mobile and went into the wholesale business and then he could ship his merchandise back up the river to the merchants here. I remember old Dr. Wilkins, J.J. Stinson, A. J. Bush; those were some of the biggest merchants we had here in Pickensville. I remember the names of them, but I can't remember them because that was before my time. Oh, it was back about eighteen forty and eighteen fifty that all this was going on. I got no memory.

Mr. Willet told about the three blacksmith shops that used to be in Pickensville. One was run by a man named Burnell, one by a Robinson, and the other by a Davis. He said back in those days you had to have a blacksmith's shop cause everything had to be fixed. And they had a tanning yard there, where people brought the hides from everywhere and had them tanned, and made them into leather. And Mr. Willet said that it was almost impossible to wear out a pair of shoes that were made from this tanned leather. They made harness, and all, saddles, and said, he said a saddle back in those days, the very best saddle that they made didn't sell for but about thirty-five dollars. And the shoes were from three to three fifty.

He goes on to talk about some of the people that lived in Pickens at that time, and then he got to talking about the Methodist Church. He said the Methodist Church had two hundred and fifty white members and a hundred and fifty black members. On the south side of the church was a pew, and there was a double pew down the middle, and one on the north side. Now the slaves had the south side, and when they took communion, the white people took communion first, and they went up and took their communion, and sat down, and then the slaves went back, up there and took their communion. They had to come to SundY, to church every Sunday, just like the others did. I remember when there wasn't such thing as a man going to church and sitting down by a woman, he said. The women went in and sat on one side of the church, and the men went in and sat on the other side of the church. The double pew, the women would sit on the left, and the men on the right, and that was the custom until nineteen twelve. And back in those days, there on the men's side they have four big wooden spittoons about twelve feet, I mean, a foot square, on each bench, and during preaching, men would sit up and chew tobacco. Man, I remember those spittoons, every one of em, and how they were put to use. And the servants, my goodness, said Willet, they'd last at least an hour and a half and most of em two hours. And singing, there would be plenty of singing. I can remember back when both churches had a full-time pastor.

We'd get on the steamboat here on Friday night and go to Columbus then stay on the boat and eat on the boat and come back Sunday morning, and you know how much it cost us? A dollar and an half. All of that. And they wuz using gold money back in those days, said Willet. There was plenty of money. I remember when they took up money, everybody had gold til they took it up. Now course we ain't never had a bank in Pickensville. We never did have a bank in Pickensville. The merchants acted as our banks; there was no banks in the county at that time. There wasn't a bank in Pickens County since I can remember. Merchants would furnish the farmers all over the county the supplies they needed to make a crop. They didn't take a note, they didn't take a mortgage, they just took your word for it. Nobody tried to beat anybody back then because then he wouldn't get anything else. There wasn't anywhere else to go, only here, so you had to act on your honor, and the merchants acted as the banks. And when a merchant advanced a farmer, what rate of interest do you suppose he had to pay? Very little. The only bank in the country was in Columbus, and nobody borrowed anything from the banks, cept the merchants here, they got all their supplies out of Mobile.

Were the people that afraid of banks back in those days, asked Willet. Well, they didn't have any banks. And you asked me what we'd do, what an individual would do with their money. Why they stuck it in safes and things like that, big iron safes. And they'd ship their cotton to Mobile and the money'd be shipped back up to em in a nail keg if it was that much money. I can't imagine, said Willet, money coming in a nail keg. Well, it did, and the farmer just got it off the boat and took it home.

Well, said Willet, I want to tell you about those Indians that lived in this area, too. They didn't exactly live here but they came here often. We had an old Indian tooth doctor that used to come here and pull tooth, and he'd come every summer and pull everybody's teeth. I f you had the toothache you had to last all the year, til he would come back. And when he got through, he looked like he had butchered hogs. And we had Negro barbers back then. When I was just a small boy that's the only kind of barber I ever heard of. We had a big fat black named Armistead Herndon, and he was one real good barber. He ran the barbershop here in Pickensville, right on that corner, and after Aliceville built up he went down to Aliceville, and he stayed in Aliceville three days a week, and the rest of the time in Pickensville. In Aliceville his barbershop was over Moody's Drugstore. He was the only barber in Aliceville at that time. Well, the blacks did all the barbering, and haircutting, and the shaving, and the shoeshining and all that kind of stuff.

And I want to tell you how the ladies dressed back in that day. There wasn't no such thing as a beauty parlor, that just something that's come in here late in life. Well, ladies used a little makeup; they put some chalk on their face and rubbed their cheeks with some kind of rosy-looking stuff, never heard of lipstick. But they used to wear what they called Arats@ in their hair, they'd take a big wad of hair, and they'd put their hair over it on both sides. The funniest thing I remember about women back in those days was the bustles. I mean, you can see pictures of em in movies now, but they don't compare to how they looked back in those old days when they really wore em. They had a great big pad that they'd put on their seat, and make em stick out behind. And the women wore long dresses in those days, and they'd have to pull em up far enough for their feet to move. You never saw a woman's legs; in fact, you never saw a woman's ankles.

And when people used to come to town here in Pickensville and get drunk, we didn't have any jails to lock em up in. The marshal would get a trace chain; he'd lock it around the neck of the person, and lock it to a tree til he got sober the next day. It was an old Negro here in town named Chill Henders. He was kind of cracked, I think, because most of the time he'd spent in my peach orchard. He would go out there and tear little pieces of his clothes off, and then patch em back on. He spent the day, patching and sewing on his clothes. That's all he ever did. But he'd ever always going to town and getting in some kind of devilment. He got mad at old man Joe Eddins, and one night he went up to Mr. Eddins house, and Mr. Eddins had three fine black wash pots. The old man, uh, Chill, took those wash pots and dropped all three of em down in Mr. Eddins' well."