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Ruby Ellen Hall remembers kinder, gentler Statesville
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Published: April 26, 2009
Ruby Ellen Ferguson Hall was born in Charlotte in 1919. She has lived in Statesville for 84 years.
Some time ago, realizing that she likely will not be around another 89 years, Ruby started writing down some of her memories. Not a full autobiography, mind you, but some short sketches of people and places she remembers.
"Sometimes my mind goes back to my childhood in South Statesville," she says. "There are lots of really happy memories, but there are also some extremely sad ones. In the last year I wanted my family to have some knowledge of what life was like back then."
Ruby Ellen, as she likes to be called, has two sons, three grandsons, a granddaughter, a great-grandson, a great-granddaughter, plus five nieces and a nephew. Her husband, Frank Aubrey Hall, a Statesville policeman, died in 1991.
When she was five, in the mid-20s, she, her brother Victor and mother and father moved from Charlotte to Statesville, where her father worked at the Turner Foundry as a cast molder. The foundry was located across the railroad tracks from the J. C. Steele plant.
The family moved into what Ruby recalls as "a very small house" on the corner of Winston Avenue and Fourth Street.
"The house had no indoor bathroom and no extra room for my brother, who was two years older than I was," she said.
Her mother's brother, Elmer Spencer, who owned Spencer Lumber Company in Gastonia, came to the family's rescue and sent workers from Gastonia to add an indoor toilet and another bedroom to the house. The workers stayed at the Vance Hotel while they worked, but Ruby's mother, Mamie Spencer Ferguson, fed them.
Ruby has a special place in her heart for her Uncle Elmer. "He was just a wonderful man. I never heard him say an unkind word to anyone. To me, he was next to God."
Later Ruby's sisters, Betty and Lee, were born, and the three girls shared a bedroom.
Ruby just loved South Statesville.. "This was a very loving and caring neighborhood," she says.
"Everyone looked after everyone else. When an illness occurred, it seemed that it was one big family. When someone died, the body was kept at home until the time of burial. Neighbors rallied around, sat up all night with the family and brought in food."
Ruby says that her mother, although she had no formal medical training, was the neighborhood nurse and as a midwife helped in delivering many babies, including a set of twins.
"We never knew fear," she said. "We didn't even have a key for the door. In the summer, when it was so hot, Mama would put a quilt on the front porch and we three girls would sleep there."
Most of the time, though, the three Ferguson girls slept together in the same bed inside the little house.
"In the winter, Mama would warm old flat irons, wrap them in towels, and put them in our bed at our feet, so we were toasty warm.
"When it snowed in the winter, Mr. Tripp Barnhardt would start early in the morning with his horses and push the snow off the streets with his plow. It snowed more back then and we loved to play in it. We had a sled and it was such fun to ride down the big hill on Fourth Street, then walk back up and start over. I was so small that I had to step in the holes that bigger people had made in the snow."
Ruby began her education at the Mulberry Street School and continued there until the Avery Sherrill School was opened.
"We had so many students [at Mulberry] that classes had to be staggered; some students started early, others started the school day at noon."
One particular incident stands out in her memory. Her mother made her children's clothes, as was common then. One day Ruby wore a new light-colored dress to school.
"We were having writing class. At the upper corner of each desk was an inkwell into which you had to put your pen to get ink to practice writing. As I tilted the inkwell, it flipped over and spilled ink all over my new dress. My teacher, Miss Overcash, took me into the restroom to try and rinse the ink out. Then she sent me home where Mama, too, tried to wash the ink out. I think she tried buttermilk.
"Honestly, I cannot remember the outcome of the condition of the dress!"
Ruby remembers that Avery Sherrill School opened in the middle of the school year and she is proud that her mother was the first president of the school's PTA.
Alex Cooper was the owner of Cooper's Grocery Store on Boulevard. Ruby feels he should be remembered. According to Ruby, "This man was as near a saint as anyone could ever be. No one knows, or could possibly know, how many people he gave groceries to, just because they could not afford to pay for them. He was the one who saw to the planting of all the beautiful maple trees all the way down that street. I've always wondered why it was not named for him."
Cooper was not the only one to help those less fortunate. "During those hard times," she says, "many people were struggling to even have food to eat. I remember our church, Race Street Methodist, would gather food and slip it onto the porches of people who were desperate; today, that is hard to imagine.
"Even my little mother went to work for the WPA (Works Progress Administration), teaching sewing classes. She was an expert seamstress and everyone loved her, but it was extremely hard on her."
Ruby's brother joined one of President Roosevelt's programs, the CCC.
"My brother went into the Civilian Conservation Corps, which helped some as he sent money home and there was one less mouth to feed. I worked in the high school library for $7 a month, with which I bought my first "ready-made" coat. That was exciting!"
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The little house still stands at the corner of Winston and Fourth and the building that was Cooper's store still stands on Boulevard.
The old Mulberry School now serves as an apartment building, while the Avery Sherrill School building has been torn down, it's last use being the site of Fifth Street Ministries.
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