Interview with Emma Mitchell, July 9, 1987

Partial Transcript: You want to tell me what your name is?

Segment Synopsis: Emma Mitchell talks about her family members and life in Eastern Kentucky.

Keywords: "Black bat" death; Ashcan School; Elkhorn Creek; Family; Family members; Farm work; Grandmothers; Horse transportation; Living off the land; Oak liquor barrel mill; Planting corn; Staves

Subjects: Coal mines and mining.; Education; Families.; Farm life.; Farming; Occupations; Salaries

Partial Transcript: Well now, the berries were wild berries, weren't they?

Segment Synopsis: Emma Mitchell talks about picking berries, and more about her school and teachers. She talks about the preserved or "put-up" foods the family ate in the winter, and those foods bought at the store.

Keywords: Edgewater Coal Camp; Health issues; Men and women teachers; Movies of the 1920s; One-room schools; Picking berries; Quitting school; Snakes and charming birds; Store-bought foods; Winter foods

Subjects: Education; Food habits; Food--Preservation; Rural conditions; Snakes; Teachers

Partial Transcript: Did you go to town and, and watch movies in the winter time since you didn't have to--

Segment Synopsis: Emma Mitchell talks about her family life in the winter time.

Keywords: "Hold up" winter foods; Christmas time; Helping to feed the poor neighbors; Hog killing and hog meat; Working and living in the winter time

Subjects: Christmas; Farm life.; Neighbors; Rural conditions

Partial Transcript: Okay. How old were you when you got married?

Segment Synopsis: Emma Mitchell talks about the 1920s, seeing a car for the first time, newspapers bringing the news, joking, family life, and voting.

Keywords: Cincinnati Post (Ohio); Democrats; Father's teachings; Hard working; Republicans; Seeing her first car; Self-education; Women get the vote

Subjects: Chaplin, Charlie, 1889-1977; Voting rights; Women and politics; Women--Suffrage

Partial Transcript: I, I used to work in elections.

Segment Synopsis: Emma Mitchell talks about her involvement with campaigns and elections, and her first time voting.

Keywords: Bootlegging; Campaign information in newspapers; Franklin D. Roosevelt election; Men getting drunk on election day; Moonshine; Voting politics

Subjects: Political campaigns.; Politics, Practical.; Women and politics

Partial Transcript: A--there was a couple other things I wanted to ask you about that, about voting, and then we'll try to get off of it for a while.

Segment Synopsis: Emma Mitchell talks about men drinking on election day. She talks about her father, a minister, buying whiskey and the use of the whiskey that saved the family during the 1918 Influenza Epidemic (WWI). The conversation then goes back to voting and buying votes.

Keywords: 1918 Influenza deaths; Buying votes; Selling votes; Whiskey as preventive medicine

Subjects: Influenza Epidemic, 1918-1919; Medicine, Rural; Voting; Whiskey

Partial Transcript: Where did women vote? I know that they had to vote in some terrible places when they first started voting.

Segment Synopsis: Emma Mitchell remembers some of the election houses, and she talks about female politicians. She talks about working and building her house.

Keywords: Buying a house; Buying votes; Congress members; John W. Langley; Katherine Gudger Langley; Migration out of Kentucky; People down on their luck; Women running for office

Subjects: Elections--Corrupt practices; Home ownership; Political corruption--Kentucky; Votes; Women and politics; Women politicians

Partial Transcript: Now the women--you're an exception. The other women weren't out building houses and selling them and being a financial genius.

Segment Synopsis: Emma Mitchell talks about the work she did on her land and her house, and work that other women did not do.

Keywords: Duties for women; Memory loss; Women campaigning and running for election; Women working

Subjects: Gardening; Women and politics; Women politicians; Women--Employment.