Doyle Workman Audio Stories & Transcriptions
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• Doyle & Barbara History of Moving Residences
• Life in Canvas
00:00 [DCWv1: Doyle & Barbara history of moving residences; life in Canvas (00:00-07:09)]
Mike: When did you guys move up here? [To Canvas]
Doyle: In October of 1997, I know that I was 65 years old when we bought this lot.
Mike: Did you retire at age 65?
Doyle: Oh, no, I retired at 50 something, 57 or something.
Barbara: We bought this lot on our wedding anniversary.
Doyle: I retired early.
Mike: How long did you live down there? [Bell Creek]
Doyle: 40 years. We moved there in October of 1957.
Mike: Where were you before that?
Doyle: Well, we lived in Dixie Bottom for about a year. You know where that McDaniel’s place was. Where the filling station was…where Junior Dye was, out that street there about the second or third house. Bus McGraw built a little house there…a little four room house and we lived in it for about a year. Then we bought that place up in Bell Creek and moved up there for 40 years.
Mike: Now, you didn’t live in Bentree?
Doyle: We lived in Bentree when we were first married. (Laugh) Actually, if you go way back, when Barbara and I were married…you know when you went down to Gauley Bridge High School you know when you cross the railroad track, starting up the hill, there is a little apartment building sitting on the righthand side. That is where we lived the first two or three months we were married. I guess that building is still standing there. We had a little ice box, and a man delivered ice about twice a week. It does not seem like it was that far back. One bedroom and living room was all one room. Then there was a kitchen. Right up the hill from Crandall’s [Hardware]. It is a little building that stands right up on the hill, as you cross the railroad tracks--two rooms long.
Then Daddy and Mom built a house up in Sangamore and we lived up there for a while, and then I went to Ohio to work and then came back and lived there a while longer. Then went up to Edmond and lived there 18 months, and then came back down to Dixie. We lived up on Bell Creek 40 years.
Barbara: We have been married 62 years.
03:20
Doyle: We decided we would sell that place, and we were looking all over the place. This house was built a whole lot like the house next door. And he was building it, and we talked to him about it. But it was sold, and he told us he would build one with a similar floor plan. We bought this lot. I actually like this better anyway. The way we built it, we had a basement put in here.
Mike: I can certainly understand what you mean about having things handy, can’t go out into the wilderness.
Barbara: As you get older, your doctors. Even when I was working, I could stop and pick up stuff to take home, but when I quit work, it would take a half a day to go to the grocery store or anything else. It just became too much.
Doyle: We got a lot of pretty good doctors, I guess, out here and a fairly good hospital. If you get something real bad that they cannot handle, they take you by helicopter to Charleston. But there is about anything you want here as far as grocery stores, Lowe’s, and stuff. We don’t hardly ever have to go to Beckley to look for anything.
Mike: Summersville has grown up quite a bit.
Doyle: Quite a bit. It is a pretty nice town. One thing they got quite a bit of is policemen in Summersville.
Mike: I am careful with my speed, staying in the speed limit, but coming across that hill the limit gets down to 50 and there was a policeman right there.
Doyle: There is a policeman there just about every time you come by here. And almost every time you go by you see them writing a ticket. They allow you 60 miles [MPH] but I think they get you at 61 or 62 before they write you a ticket. And people just don’t slow up.
You know that Lonsie Arbogast, down at Dixie, him and his wife was killed at that first stop light as you are coming from Fayetteville, that first stop light. They were both killed there. And they have had a lot of people killed at these intersections. So, they cracked down on the speed and they have not had near as many accidents. A lot of time those big ole’ trucks will come down that hill before you get to 39 there, to go up that other hill, and they will go flying through there, and they will not slow up for the light. If that light does not change way back there, they will go right on through it. They don’t want to slow up and have to start up, down in that dip.
07:09
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• Buffalo Creek Farm Recollections
• Bentree recollections; store; sawmills
• Doyle attending school at Independence and Clay
• The Line Creek sawmill
00:00 [DCWv2: Buffalo Creek farm recollections (00:00-07:34)]
Dianne: When you moved from Buffalo Creek to Bentree, do you remember that?
Doyle: I was born up on Buffalo in 1932, and Mom and Daddy moved to Bentree on April Fool’s Day in 1937.
Barbara: I was born in Widen in 1933, and we moved from Widen to Glen in 1937.
Doyle: So, actually, we moved to Bentree, when I lacked about a month of me being about 5 years old.
Mike: Do you remember that at all?
Doyle: A little bit. I remember a little bit about being on the farm up there in Buffalo Creek--not very much of anything. But I remember when we moved to Bentree--I can remember things. Now you are talking about Buffalo. It was Dolly Parton, no it was Loretta Lynn that was raised in the country, or something. Well, when we was born up in Buffalo, we was born in the country. You couldn’t even get an automobile within a “hoot and a holler” of a house. [Hoot, as in the call of an owl. Holler, as in a loud cry or shout.]
Mike: I have been over there a couple of times.
Doyle: Well, I think you might be able to get a truck in there now, or something. But when Mom and Daddy lived up there, Daddy had to park the car way up on top of the hill across from the house and walk down the hill. And if Buffalo Creek wasn’t too high, you could pull off your shoes and wade the Buffalo Creek to the other side. If it was high, you had to walk up the railroad track about a mile or mile-and-a-half and cross the swinging bridge and then come back. There was no roads in there. Period. And when they moved from there (I don’t know how they moved in there), but when they moved [out], they hauled their stuff on a horse and sled around there and carried it across the swinging bridge and loaded it into a railroad car and brought it down to Dundon. Then they loaded it onto a truck, on over to Bentree. But I never did find out much about that place. I asked Damon about it one day. See Grandpa Mullins owned that old place. And I never did find out where he got it or very much about it. But he got it and give’d it to Mom. You see, that was during the depression. Of course, Daddy did not have much of a job, but he worked on the sawmill, and stuff, some, and they moved up there. And of course, Mom and them farmed, and Denvil and them farmed, and it was rough days back in them days. And they stayed, well both me and Darryl was borned over there.
03:03
Mike: Were you born at home?
Doyle: Yes. And I am not even sure there was a doctor there. I was talking to a woman the other day, and it was in the Mullins family how come I talking to her. She is a Nelson. Herman Nelson’s wife, and she--this girl--Herman Nelson told me that her mother, her mother’s name was Chessie. She would have been a first cousin of Mom’s, I believe was right. Just a minute I am not sure if she was a first cousin or second cousin. She told me that her mother helped deliver one of two of us. Which she may have helped deliver me. And then mom helped when a couple of her kids was born. Now to tell you whether or not there was a doctor there, I don’t know. Apparently, there was some doctor signed my birth certificate. But I do not know if they had a doctor there or not, to tell you the truth. See many of the people in those days were born without a doctor. People just had midwives.
[Sidenote: Jerry Nelson, bought this property and is the current owner. Damon, Eddie, and I contacted him in 2012. He took us over to the farm on a 4-wheel type of road.]
Barbara: Was that called Avoca in there?
Doyle: No. Avoca’s on down the railroad track. [Toward Clay] We was up above Avoca.
Barbara: What was the in-between called then?
Doyle: Well, it was just called wilderness then, I reckon. It was…I don’t know if they called it Chestnut Knob in there or something. I got a map of it--well it is on the computer. Allen got me a set of topographical maps, and me and Damon can show you right where the house sat.
Barbara: Well, tell them about the women that come and the sauerkraut.
Doyle: Well, there was a woman…back in them days…. (These people, these days, don’t know what hard times is; they just think they do.) In ‘32 there was not Social Security, there was no welfare. Period. There was none. This Cora Bell Hamrick, Cora Bell Nichols…
[He and Barbara went back and forth--it may have been Keenen]
Anyway, her name was Cora Bell, and she had come down. She lived back up on top of the hill from Mom and them. And she came down there and would want…Mom and them would pickle beans. And I don’t know if you have ever eaten pickled beans, but I don’t like them.
Mike: I have had them.
Doyle: They are sour like, but back in them days you canned or pickled or whatever you done. Well, every few days, every once in a while, you put all these beans in that old churn, and you would weight it down with a rock or something. And every once in a while, you had to clean the brine off. And Cora Bell would come down and ask Mom if she wanted her to clean her pickled bean jar for a mess of pickled beans. She would do all that and get a quart of pickled beans to eat and go back home--and then you got something to eat. There were a lot of people that did not have very much to eat. And I can remember her coming down to do that.
Barbara: Did Phyllis and Freda ride the train?
Doyle: I don’t know whether Freda did or not, but Denvil and Phyllis--they walked from the house down across that swinging bridge and caught either the train or that Bradley car, that they called it. The old man Bradley had a rail [passenger] car, and they rode it down to Dundon, and they walked over to the high school. That is how they went back and forth to high school. I believe we moved from Buffalo maybe the year that Freda was in 8th grade. When we came to Bentree she started there at Clay [High School].
Mike: How many rooms were in that house? Do you remember?
Doyle: I don’t know if it were three or four. It was a two-story house. But before Daddy moved there, this old man Worth Davison lived there. I did not know, but Damon was telling me that he lived there and about all the windows was broke out of it. And the paper or something nailed over the windows and stuff, because they could not get the glass and stuff to put in there. So, most of the windows was nailed up, and when Grandpa give’d it to Mom and them, they had a time of getting Worth to move out because he did not have nowhere to go. And when they moved in, the house was in pretty bad shape. And they got it and fixed it up, putting window glass in it and some stuff and they lived there about 6 years, I reckon.
07:34 [DCWv2: Bentree recollections; store; sawmills (07:34-19:04)]
Then things started opening up some. Well, Grandpa had gotten a hold of Mom, or talked to her or whatever, and he had that little store there at Bentree. And his brother had been running it, or something, and he wanted Mom to come over and run that store and keep his books for him and stuff. So, she came over and worked in the store and kept his books…and I think got $50 a month for it. And Daddy still worked on the sawmill for a while. I think Denvil went to work at Alloy in 1941, I believe it was. Then Daddy went down there in about 1942. Then Denvil went in the service in about ‘42, wasn’t it? [Denvil enlisted 5/15/1943.] Then, Daddy worked down at the plant. Of course, it is hard to understand, unless you have been through something like that. He was the kind of fella…Daddy did not spend much money. You know that. But I think going through what he went through, he did not want to go through it again. So, he didn’t waste no money. He would save what he got [from Union Carbide], and they would live out of what the store made.
09:40
But during the time he worked at the plant, he saved quite a bit of money. He had quite a bit of money saved. A lot of people would say, why don’t you do this or that. But no! When you had seven kids, and you did not know where they was going to get breakfast at. And then you did get a job, you tried and laid something up for the next time. I reckon that is where a lot of it was at. And you just don’t, some people just don’t get out and throw their money away. Now some people now can get a credit card, they think we will live today and not worry about tomorrow, you know.
10:28
Dianne: Did you live in the store when you moved to Bentree?
Doyle: No. We showed a picture of that shanty a four room house up the hollow, just a little ways from the store.
Mike: I remember those houses. They must have been rental property a while later.
Doyle: No. Grandpa Mullins, you see, he had been over there, and he had a sawmill over in Sangamore. Had it at three or four places. Back in them days, they take a sawmill out there and just set it up and sawed out a bunch of timber. Then they moved it on down the hollow because they did not have trucks and stuff. Most of the time they pulled the logs in by horses instead of trucking. So, they had already had the mill set up down there two or three times down that creek. They had it on down there, down you know where Pat had that mill at.
Mike: I remember that.
Doyle: Now, I believe that is where the mill was at when Daddy moved over there.
Barbara: I can remember when you [Mike] were little calling it the mill saw. I can remember you saying that.
Doyle: Daddy did the sawing for them. And along about that time before Daddy went to Alloy, Gordon had a sawmill over in Leatherwood, and he sawed over there for him. And then he got a job at Alloy. And yet it was about the time that Denvil went in the service. Daddy might have been working at Alloy when they bought that place there at the mouth of the hollow.
12:16
There was an old lady named Ella(?) O’Dell and her husband was Clem. He had been in WW I, and I think he had died. His tombstone is up there on the hill, I believe he died in the ‘30’s. He was buried in a little cemetery up behind that house up there. And he had one son. I guess it was all the children he had, the son wasn’t by his last wife. Wasn’t by Ella.
His son lived in Louisiana; I think. Well, she did not wanted to stay there anymore. She wanted to go--she was already an old woman. She was going to move in with her daughter up here to Tioga, I guess it was. And she wanted to sell it, and Daddy and them bought it...a big price for what they got. They give them $1,500 for it. It was 7 acres and the house. And that old store building, you remember, it was there. [The cancelled checks are included here.]
13:23
Mike: Now that old building, at one time was the store. Right?
Doyle: It was a store there. Old man Clem O’Dell had a store there. Then there wasn’t nothing in it until Daddy and them come down there. They made two houses out of it or two dwellings at each end of it.
Mike: Now didn’t Mom and Dad live in…
Doyle: They lived in one of them. They lived in one of them, and I believe Sam Moore lived in the other side of them. And then Leck O’Dell lived in it for a while, and I can remember four or five people living there.
Mike: Well, I must have been born about that time.
Doyle: No...
Barbara: Well, Grandpa and Grandma Mullins was living in it the time we got married, the second Grandma Mullins.
Doyle: The little white house straight across the creek from Mom and Daddy’s belonged to Bus McGraw. Now Denvil and them lived in that and I don’t know if they lived in that before they moved in the old store building. I believe they did. Then they moved over in that old store building and lived there until they built that house down there. But Daddy and them, I know when they was talking about it that …you see Mrs. O’Dell had a deal with the son that was still living. Anyway, she had asked him about it. He said, well, he wanted a $1,000 of it--for his part of it. And she thought he was a little bit high, or something, and she said she would just take $500 for her part. That made $1,500. I have the checks up there, where they wrote the checks. I believe they wrote two different checks. It is in an album here, the checks that they wrote. I still have them up there. They wrote one for $1, 000 to the son. I think he lived in…
Mike: So, when did the other store building across the road come into existence?
Doyle: Well, now over where the filling station was? That was built before Grandpa and them went over there. It used to be a little beer joint at first, and I really don’t know too much about it. That piece of land in there--they put a store in it or added some on the back of it and put a store in there. That was when mom went over there to work. They added a warehouse on the side of it down there. I think Gordon built that house; you know where he lived at. Where Gordon’s house was. And they had four or five little one room houses that set over next to the creek, just a one room bedroom or something. They would rent them to people, I guess, who was traveling. I can remember, I know at least four of them, and there was still two of them there for a long time. And they apparently rented them. He had a Delco system, a generator that generated DC power. And he had a refrigerator that ran on dc power, and then they had lights. That was something to see with electric lights--because electric didn’t come up there you see—oh. it was, I believe it was during or after WW II. During World War II or something they started putting… Roosevelt was one that got it started. I don’t know it…I think we still lived up to Sagamore before Daddy and them bought that house down there from Mrs. O’Dell. I can remember they came up there and put the stakes down for the power poles, and the guidelines and stuff. I can remember the people come along, before long, and put the power poles in and then they put power in them houses. They had wiring down under the ceiling, you know, and you just had a light in each room. And one thing and another. It was really bright lights when you turned them on. But that was way back in the early 40’s…but I was thinking it was after World War II, but it must have been a little while before. I guess it was along, you see Roosevelt did a lot of stuff. He had that CCC and stuff that people was in. They must have put money out or something for the power companies to run power into the rural areas. It must have been in the late 30’s or 40’s that they put power up there.
19:04 [DCWv2: Doyle attending school at Independence and Clay (19:04-21:44)]
Mike: You must have gone to school at Independence and then Clay for high school?
Doyle: I went to Independence and then Clay for high school. Barbara went to Clay. Barbara lived over there at Glen. She rode what was 32 miles to Clay, one way. Glen is actually, if you go up there to Independence, and go across that Coon Ridge--then about six or seven miles, you come down over there to what they call, well it is called Spruce Fork. Then you go there, you have to go all the way to Queens Shoals and back to Clay. So, it wasn’t actually too far from our house to Barbara’s house after they built a road through there. But before it was built, the road was almost impassable--the Bentree side to over there, you know. But they built a pretty good road through there in the late ‘40’s or something. But she went to Clay. I guess she was plumb on the end of that bus run from over there, and I was on the end of it from this way. It was quite a little distance away going that a way.
Dianne: Did you go to school with Janet’s parents, the Wilsons?
Barbara: I think they are a bit older than we were.
Doyle: Now, Carl Wilson isn’t a whole lot older than I am; he is a little bit older.
Barbara: I believe that Carl Wilson was an undertaker before you and I ever got out of school. So, he was at Clay Funeral Home.
Doyle: Yes, but the other fellow, Jack Waters--his wife was the secretary up at the high school when we was there.
Barbara: You will remember Carl Wilson got into it with Murray over the Clay Funeral Home, and then he established his own then. Daddy knew Carl.
21:44 [DCWv2: The Line Creek sawmill (21:44-23:47)]
Mike: Do you remember anything about that sawmill?
Doyle: Yeah, I remember the sawmill some. I remember the one they had up at Line Creek better than any of them. Of course, I was getting up to a pretty good age.
Mike: Where is Line Creek?
Doyle: Well, Line Creek (if you are coming from Summersville) is probably about 15 miles. Do you know where Otter Creek school was? Well, it is this side of Otter Creek from here. Otter Creek school is about a mile up there. The road turns to the left up there and they call it Line Creek. “L I N E” Creek.
[Barbara inserted that on the map it is Lyon. Doyle corrected her that that is Lyonsville, and that it was different than Line Creek.]
Mike: Did you ever work on that mill?
Doyle: No, I wasn’t old enough to work on it any. I think Damon did some. I would go up at stay at Grandpa’s sometimes in the summer, a week or two, and I would be up there around the mill. But I remember it pretty well. Now they was sawing in there during World War II. So, I would have been 11 or 12 years old or something. Then I worked on the mill when Bus McGraw had a sawmill there above Mom and Daddy. I used to work on it when I was a boy. I think Damon worked for Grandpa at different times on the mill.
23:47
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• Albert Mullins sawmill operations
• Coal mining in Bentree
• Bentree information
00:00 [DCWv3: Albert Mullins sawmill operations (00:00-09:20)]
Doyle: Gordon and Pat and Grandpa was all into it. And then Gordon, I believe he went to Leatherwood. I believe that is where he went to first. And Daddy went over there and sawed for him. Then one time Gordon went on down below Charleston, Davis Creek, and run a mill down there for a while. And Pat and Grandpa was into the milling business. And then I don’t actually know when Grandpa quit and turned it over to Pat. Grandpa had been getting up to a pretty good age by that time.
Mike: What powered those? Were those electric?
Doyle: No, there was an old steam engine. I think it was something like a 15-20 horsepower steam engine. It wasn’t very much. It seems like it would be more power than that. But I guess what they do: they get the thing started and it has big old flywheels on it. Well, part of it is governors and stuff, but I think they had those big old wheels to keep the momentum going. Actually, the steam engine is not rated very high horsepower, you know. But I think…well now after Pat put them in down there, they put in some other engines that I think ran on natural gas. They called them Twin MM (Minneapolis Moline or something) motors, and they run the sawmill then. Most of Grandpa’s mill was not oil boiler, just steam boilers. You go around them--they burned wood and slab then--and they’d blow those ashes right out the steam pipe. If you was around those sawmills, you were going to get burned every once in a while. One of the sparks would come down and land on your shoulders or somewhere, and shirts would have a hole burned in them or something. But I always remember those sawmills, being around them, that the sparks were coming out.
But if grandpa, if he had done it, he could have made some money in the timber business--but he was a bit like Daddy, he was tight. I don’t bet the turkey.
Barbara: I believe your grandpa was working on the sawmill when you and I got married.
Doyle: Oh, yeah, he was still working then. I remember when Grandpa was fairly young. He had some horses or maybe even oxen that hauled stuff. But he had gotten into…I think when Bradley and them was building that railroad track up towards Widen…apparently he hauled a lot of the cross ties and stuff up in there with horses and stuff. Then he hauled stuff for oil wells, with horse and wagon. But then he started making some money and got into sawmills and stuff and in the earlier years of his life he was making some money and he was worth a lot. He was considered a pretty rich man in Clay County at that time. Because there wasn’t nobody that had no money, it was the time of the Depression. Grandpa had enough money that he could buy anything he almost wanted to buy. And I know I heard Daddy talking about that he had bought all of the timber, contracted all the timber, on the waters of the Leatherwood. And it was not a whole lot of money, I don’t remember how many thousands of dollars, but it was great big area when you are talking about it. And it was not a whole lot of money--it seemed to me maybe it was a $1 an acre or something. It wasn’t much at all, but it was a whole lot of acreage, you see.
He backed out of it because he wasn’t sure if he could keep Gordon and Pat sober long enough to cut it. Both of them drank a lot, Gordon and Pat. And Sherman he was bad in drinking and Guy, he got killed drinking. Pat and Gordon when they got drunk, they stayed drunk for weeks at a time. They would just get sloppy drunk state. Then they would sober up and then about every six months they would just get drunk. And Grandpa was afraid that he could not get the timber cut without them, you know. He probably could have hired somebody else to have done it.
But he did not buy it. Then he came over and bought that big track of timber at Bentree. Actually, it run from way up there next to the foot of the hill and come down next to Dixie somewhere. He had a bunch of it and plumb up them hollows and stuff up to Sagamore and all that. And he had bought it and had a contract to cut it. Old man White, he was in the business, but he didn’t have any way, or as I understood it, he didn’t have any money or something. He had the mill and stuff, but he did not have the money to buy any timber or anything with. Grandpa subcontracted him several hundred acres or something. I don’t know how much that was up there for him cut and pay him as he cut it.
Mike: Now that would have been second growth timber, right?
Doyle: Well, it would have been at that time.
Mike: Because I had always been told that Bentree was named Scotford around the turn of the century when the name changed. But that they had had a big lumber industry.
Doyle: Well, there was big mining in there, you see. But then Grandpa had let old man White have that track of timber you see, without paying for it or something. He did not put any money up, and he started timbering. Old man White, he got more trucks and got him a bulldozer and stuff you know to build roads and pull logs in with. He done ten times the sawing that Grandpa had done probably. Grandpa was the one that was keeping him in business when they got started. So, when Grandpa and them would saw lumber--but old man White in that time was getting big enough he was shipping lumber out to the railroad cars. And grandpa and them would sell him whatever little bit of lumber they cut. Old man White would give them a good price for it and everything. He always treated Grandpa right, and he always remembered, I reckon. But I remember hearing that he was really the one that got old man White started. I guess anything Grandpa wanted, old man White would give it to him. Old man White got a lot of the timber out. Whites are plumb out of it now. Bud White and that brother of his, the brother all he wanted to do was spend the money and did not do very much work. Bud was doing all the work and he finally got out of it. Clonch has got all of that now. Clonch has a mill and stuff in there.
10:00 [DCWv3: Coal mining in Bentree (10:00-18:58)]
See there in Bentree…well down behind that charcoal plant there was a great big gob pile out on that hill. But it was burning and stuff when we moved there. Where that gob had burned for years and years and years. There was a big mine there and there was mines just down around that curve from where you all lived. You can see the old…
Mike: Gauley Hollow, right?
Doyle: …but up this side [north side] of Gauley Hollow. You know where Elswicks had their mill. Well, just about across the road from that there use to be big cement piers. There was a tipple built.
Mike: I remember that.
Doyle: They mined that hill, well actually in that hill behind where you all lived, in there. Then they would mine that hill down there where you went up to Gauley Hollow. There was a lot of mining, in fact. Old man Walter Ramsey, he had a store there and Clem O’Dell had that other one up there. Then someone had a theatre there where they had showed silent movies. There was a pretty good size town in there at one time, in Bentree.
Mike: Do you remember that?
Doyle: No, it was all gone, even the tipple and stuff. I was talking to Lev? Rogers, and he lived in that area. He was telling me about it. He said he used to come there to that store of Clem O’Dell’s when he was a boy. He told me who it was who got the contract to tear the tipples and stuff down. They were gone, but they could not have been gone very long before we moved there. They was in operation for quite a while, and they had the railroad come plumb up to where Elswick’s mill set. They run that train up there for years and years. They would come plumb up there and go back a hauling. They had their charter I reckon. Then they put that charcoal plant in--they done some business then. You probably remember Terry Selinger, he was one of the millionaires here in Nicholas County. He had little old mines up there right above Ida church on the left side, just about the time you’d go around that curve, on the left-hand side. He had mines on the side of that hill, him and George Hill. And they had a little old two and half ton Chevrolet truck they hauled the coal from that mine. They had a ramp built down there at the lower end of that charcoal plant. They would back it up and dump it into railroad cars. I think Terry Selinger, he’d drove truck part of the time, and George worked in the mine. But I guess both of them worked in the mine part of the time. They had ponies that pulled the coal out and that is where they were mining it back in that time. George Hill, he quit, and Terry Selinger was going up in here into Nicholas County. He was making money hand over fist. He was worth several million dollars, for a little while. But that was where he first started. I am sure Damon could tell you more about it than I could. When Mom and them had that store down there and that filling station, Selinger bought his gasoline off them on credit there. He would buy gas there, hauling coal and before long he was getting into money. He was one of the early ones. Well, there was a lot of people here in Nicholas County made millions of dollars, millions and millions of dollars in that coal business. You see there was a time, I guess after you was out of college, coal went to $100 a ton or something like that. It was said that people made money hand over fist at that time. A tremendous amount of money people made. Before that there had been some big mines. Now Bentree was, I was thinking it was called something else besides…Scotland?
Mike: It was called Scotford.
Doyle: You know where Etta Jane lives, they called that something along in there.
Mike: I believe it was called Cambria. [And Doyle agreed.]
14:45
Doyle: And someone said that [Michael] Benedum--you’ve heard of the Benedum Foundation. Well, they got oodles of money. They hand out lots of scholarships. I think that fellow was into the coal business up there, and there was another man by the name of Tree. The coal--they mined a lot of dirty coal, and in selling it, a lot of customers veered away from coal that come from Scotford, you know. Because it was dirty coal. So those two people got together and changed the name to Bentree. And then they could sell coal that was not from Scotford, it was from Bentree. But it is said that is how it got its name. I don’t know.
Mike: I always heard it was a guy named Benjamin Tree.
Doyle: No, I think it was Benedum and…I got something here on the post office and naming it. I got a write up on it somewhere here. But there was a lot of work there in Bentree at the time, back around the 1900’s. In fact, I guess there was a little narrow-gauge railroad that went up by the store building where Mom and them lived. They hauled logs and stuff out of there. In fact, I believe it went pretty close to that old store building, and went up to, I believe they call it Big Hollow up there somewhere. I but never did know much about it.
Mike: Well, I remember the railroad that came up through to where Elswick’s was. I have a picture of a railroad sign that says Bentree on it. It is long gone.
Doyle: Yes, that was a full-scale railroad. Now, on up above the Ida church, where Selinger mined…I remember back when I was going to grade school, there was a big gob pile up there where, apparently, they had mined. Some coal mines up there. But I don’t remember any being mined up at Sangamore. But there a couple of pretty big mines there in Bentree at one time.
Mike: It would be interesting to know what it was really like in the heyday.
18:58 [DCWv3: Bentree information (18:58-21:19)]
Doyle: If I had known it when I was younger, when a lot of the older people were there, them McGraws and them people. You could have found out a lot of stuff. Of course, you never think about that when you are younger. It is always too late. Now all the old people are dead and gone. But there was a lot back when we was growing up. Back on some of the hills, old farms and stuff where people lived, even back in there on the Ripatoe. See, they had a schoolhouse and stuff up there where they taught school. That school--I wouldn’t be surprised if that school up at Ripatoe was there the time I went to high school. Damon could tell you. A fellow they know (Collins) lives there right close to them, he taught up there at that school at Ripatoe, before the time he was married. There were several families, Kinser, lived up there on that hill. Harveys and I don’t know who all lived back up there. But they had 12, 13, 14 kids back in there.
Mike: Was it the mining company?
Doyle: I don’t know what it was, but you can get to it right up that little hollow up there where Jack McGraw lived. Go right up that hollow there and come out right about where that school was. And I cannot ever remember going up there myself, but there was a path up there. But there was an old woman whose name was Minners(?) lived there, and that is where they went in and out. They walked up and down that hollow there. I seen that school up there; there was a bell on it.
Mike: Now, could you get there up through Dixie, as well, up there?
Doyle: You had to go up to the grade school, and there was a road back up on that hill, but I do not know how rough it was to get in there. But it was back when they started doing stripping that they built a road back in there, better road and did a lot of stripping and stuff. But they used to be enough people lived back in there that they had a school. But then there were several places up at Sangamore, back of them hills that was old homes and stuff that was torn down and gone before we got there. But a lot of people lived in that area at one time. Of course, it has all changed.
21:19
Doyle Workman Vol1 - Vol3 were recorded on July 3, 2003 at his home in Canvas, WV.