Interview

Mary Scarlett Jones

11/9/03

Conducted by Joe Liles

My full name, and I have right much of it, is Julia Mary Frances Scarlett.  They used to only call me Mary Francis, but now they are call me Mary, Mary Scarlett Jones, which is what I have on my driver’s license.  Jones is my married name.  I was born on November 30, 1912.

My mother was a Wattlington.  Her father was Gilbert Watlington.  She said that he got a thorn in his foot, and he died from an infection from that thorn.  Later on, her mother got married again.  She married a Kelly, Jarret Kelly.  Her brothers were old enough to leave home, and they didn’t get along that well with their stepfather.  They all left.  Some elderly lady told her that they saw one of her brothers over in some part of Virginia and that he had grown a handsome mustache. 

My father’s name was William Green Scarlett, but most everybody called him Bud Chris.  They say that he father, Levi, was born on Christmas.  My father went by the name of Chris for such a long time that people thought that was his real name.  Even my brother James, they called Mr. Chris.  That’s where it came from.  Our grandfather was called Chris because he was born on Christmas, and the name was shortened and passed down.

I grew up in the cabin out here.  I was the middle child.  They had four younger than me and four older than me.  I had an older sister that was named Sadie Scarlett, and a brother by the name of Levi Scarlett, and a sister named Lovenia, and a brother named Odell, then I came next.  I had a brother named James, he was next, then a sister Savannah, my brother John (that’s Beverly’s father), and a brother Richard.  And that was the nine that lived to get grown.  I had a younger brother that passed in infancy.  His name was Clarence.  I think he might have been three years younger than John.  It might have been four, I don’t remember.

Mother always said that she was the mother of twelve children.  Her first two babies died in infancy.  Then the doctor told her, “I’m going to give you some medication so that the next one that’s born will live.  The next one that was born, that was Sadie, and she did live.  They all lived down to nine, ‘til they got to the baby one, Clarence.  He passed at maybe two or three months old.

Now as for life in the cabin, if I can remember it correctly, we had a kitchen that kind of set off a little bit from the other part of the house.  It got to where we built a building in between.  We called it the dining room.  It was between the kitchen and the bedroom in the cabin.  I don’t remember when it was, but we got some kind of shanty for the boys to live in.  They were growing up kind of fast.  It was something called a shanty that the older boys lived in. 

Go to Mary Scarlett Jones - Part 2

Return to Interviews page

Return to Fish Dam Road page