Bobby telling about Maw Maw Phillips

Bobby telling about Maw Maw Phillips

Folk musicians--North Carolina

This is a recording of Bobby McMillon telling about 'Maw Maw' Mae Phillips' early life and Mae's mother, Becky Shule. Bobby recorded this in Lower Creek, Lenoir, North Carolina.

Bobby McMillon

Bobby McMillon Collection, Southern Appalachian Archives, Mars Hill University

Southern Appalachian Archives, Liston B. Ramsey Center for Appalachian Studies, Mars Hill University

c. August, 1974

This item may be viewed, downloaded, and printed for personal and educational use, but any commercial use is prohibited without permission from the Southern Appalachian Archives, Mars Hill University. Questions may be directed to the Archivist at (828) 689-1262 or archives@mhu.edu.

mp3

English

music

Audio cassette

4 minutes, 47 seconds

[Spoken:

“Maw Maw” Mae Phillips’ mother Becky Shule was born on Cosby Creek in 1870. She first married Lige Fowler who lived on the Sevier-Cocke county line, near where the Gatlinburg Road mount pass is. After having four children, Lige brought in old Liz Green on her, and thumped her and treated her so ill till his Daddy told her she ought to take the youngest one, Joe, and leave before he killed her. So she took Joe, the baby, and moved to Newport where she washed and mended clothes for a living. When Joe was a year old, Lige sneaked to her parents’ house one day and stole him away. Well, a week later Maw--Aunt Becky—went up there and found the youngins in the house while Lige wasn’t there. She said they was black as coal, so she took them to Mr. Fowlers and kept them a week and cleaned them up. Then she had to go back to Newport. Around 1899, Maw stayed with John Harrison, a widower, on Cosby. He promised to marry her and got her pregnant, but then he didn’t marry her. So when Maw Maw was born and Maw took her home, her parents said she could never stay there no more. Maw took sick and everybody thought she would die. When John Harrison heard about it, he came on an old grey mare and put Maw on it and carried Maw Maw through trails and creeks to Maw’s brother Johnny’s. He first took her to his house and asked her to come in, but she said no--she’d see him hell first before she’d ever come in there again. Well while she was at her brother’s, an Indian cure doctor came through and told them how to take some liquor and something to make her better. Well finally she did get better and went back to Newport. Several years later in 1905, Mitch Sutton, some kin to Granny Roady McMillon told Duggin Jenkins, widower of Elizabeth Harrison, John Harrison’s sister, about what a hard-working woman Maw--that’s Aunt Becky--was. So he sparked her and soon married her. Not long before Maw had courted a Knoxville man named Esau Mantooth and was going to marry him, but a fortune teller had told her that she’d not marry the feller she was going with then but would marry a grey headed man who had come to see her carrying a walking stick over the hill. Well Esau had got sick, and Maw hadn’t heard from him and thought that he had left her. So when Duggin Jenkins came a’ courting, she soon married him. Maw Maw still remembers the- Maw Maw Phillips still remembers the wedding day when she was only five years old. She said that he had told her that his daughter Betty had a little chair that she could sit in, and she did. They lived in a house on the McMillon side of the trail holler. Maw Maw said that she always knew that John Harrison was her daddy, but she never had spoke to him until she was fourteen. One Sunday when she was close- when she was close to Sally Phillips’--that’s Walter, her husband’s, mother--after meeting at McMillon’s--a meeting is the same thing as church--John was there and Sally wanted Maw Maw to meet him. She didn’t tell Mae right off that John was there, and that’s her daddy. Mae said first she didn’t want to go up there, and all them people there, but she did, and John came out. And Sally said, ‘Do you know who this is Mae?’ Maw Maw said, ‘I guess so,’ and John hugged her. He wanted to take her with him and send her to school, but she wouldn’t because his children by his second wife made fun of her. He said she was more like him then any of his children. He often said that he was that he was going to leave her as much money or land as he did the rest, but he died of food poisoning before he ever made a will. Law said that Branch Harrison, her half-brother, was always good and friendly to her and Walter, her husband. And John always liked Walter. Walter worked for him a lot but said the children would put water in his milk and sugar in his coffee to devil him. Years later a woman came to Maw’s and asked her if she knows an Elizabeth Green. Maw said, ‘No, but I used to know one-’]