Annie Ford Wheeler - Memories of Marion

Published on June 14, 2017

Annie Wheeler recalls life in Hamburg.

Transcript

ANNIE FORD WHEELER: Hamburg was a special place. It really was a special
place, because it was so close to Marion with Marion Military Institute and with
Judson College and there had been a Presbyterian seminary for women, but it had
a very high level of education and it was a very cultural community. It was not
like farming communities in North Perry, for example. My father was a farmer. He had his own place until the Depression and when the banks closed, my father had taken out a mortgage in order to build three nice tenant houses and when the bank closed, he lost the place and from that time on, he managed big farms and he managed the ward's agricultural interests. What was it like growing up? Well I grew up with my--go back to before 1930 when we were living on our own place and I had my brother as a playmate and his best friend, James Holly, who lived a mile down the road, and would ride his mule over to our house and Brother and I had a pony, had a little horse. It wasn't a pony. It was a small horse and Brother sat on the front and I sat behind him on the horse's rump and that was our playmates. It was an interesting...that area of Hamburg had been underwater and there were sharks' teeth and there were some marvelous shells. I wish I had sense enough to know that those shells were very special. They were large shells and we'd find them out in the field under bushes. I've often thought about those shells and why we didn't... but we didn't know enough that they were special. We had pheasants out in the fields, beautiful birds. You'd go along the road and they'd just be along the side of it.

Audio Information
Attribute	Value
Date	2014-08-04
Interviewer	Michelle Little
Interviewee	Annie Ford Wheeler
Repository	Samford University Oral History Collection
Collection	STORI Collection
Accession	SUHist/Marion/001