Browse Items (2170 total)

 Collene Riggsbee Rogers - Why he liked the work (clip)

Kathryn Wall: Your said plumbing was his passion. Do you know why he liked that better than the other….? Collene Riggsbee Rogers: I really don’t. I don’t. Because I didn’t. I don’t. I don’t know. I guess maybe it was just something that he knew that people needed more and that’s what he focused on…

 Collene Riggsbee Rogers - Other trades (clip)

Collene Riggsbee Rogers: It was his passion. He did everything. He was a licensed electrician and he was a carpenter. Upstairs in the building is where he had his workshop where he made his cabinets and stuff. And I guess he did whatever needed to be done because he was actually doing all of the…

 Collene Riggsbee Rogers - Independence (clip)

Collene Rogers: Well, the only thing he did, I think the books he got, was like twelve of them. He was still working, and he was still going out and working during the day. And after dinner at night is when he would go out in his car and read the books. And so, he did that I guess, for about a, had…

 Collene Riggsbee Rogers - Plumber (clip)

Collene Rogers: Well, I never considered, I always considered my father to be a plumber, you know? That was his passion. But he did build all three of the houses that he owned, he built, and the building. And for, he worked with other builders, Mr. Charles Brooks and Tate, and he would do the…

 Dolores Clark - On the Klan (clip)

 Dolores Clark - On the Barbees (clip)

Dolores Clark: So my great grandmother and great grandfather had two children, Sally and William. Okay, the two children. And that’s when they added on to their house after they built the log house, because they started a family. Sally married a Barbee. She married Fred Barbee and he was down there…

 Dolores Clark - On the Masons (clip)

Dolores Clark: My grandfather was very active, like I said, in the masons. He was a mason, very active. He has built so many things around in the community, the First Baptist Church in Carrboro, he was a part of building that. And I understand from recent information that he and one of my uncles…

 Dolores Clark - On her great-grandfather (clip)

Dolores Clark: Tony was separated from his mother. His mother was taken from him to Hillsborough and put on the block in Hillsborough when he was only 7 years old. And after that, he stayed on the plantation until he was about 16 or 17, and left the plantation, did some work around. He learned how…

 Dolores Clark - Strayhorn family (clip)

Dolores Clark: Well I’ll start first with the Strayhorn family because I was raised in the home that my great grandparents Toney and Nellie Strayhorn built in 1879. And I was born in 1933 and lived in that home for about maybe 20 years or 18 years, I would say, until I left and went to college and…

 Minister Robert Campbell - Campbell building style (clip)

Minister Robert Campbell: Well, looking at the texture of the craftsmanship of the house you can see, as I said, you know, Handy’s signature and Bill’s signature is that it’s good. I mean, they wasn’t boastful but, it had to be something that not only they were proud of, but the person who hired…

 Minister Robert Campbell - Slinging bricks (clip)

Robert Campbell: Going back to constructing some of the houses. Uncle Leo and Uncle Handy and Uncle Bill taught us how to sling bricks. George Barrett: Ok. RC: Sling bricks. Sometimes you could take a flat board, almost like a paddle, you could throw the bricks up and somebody could catch them and…

 Minister Robert Campbell - Blueprints (clip)

Minister Robert Campbell: We did blueprints. It was easy to do the sketches first, because you could say well, this is what we got, do we want the storage room a little bit bigger? So, it gave people the opportunity to change their minds. Do you want the front and back door to be centered, or do you…

 Minister Robert Campbell - Inspiration (clip)

Robert Campbell: He was our inspiration. Sometimes sitting around telling the tales about growing up and the things they had to endure – I think it just made him a more persistent and stronger person, and in doing so, to teach his children as well as his grandchildren how to fend for themselves. If…

 Minister Robert Campbell - Teaching others (clip)

Minister Robert Campbell: My grandfather and most of the builders were eager to be tutors and train other people how to do their type of work. It came in handy for us because we didn’t have to look for a summer job – because we already knew what we were going to be doing. We found out to have fun –…

 Minister Robert Campbell - Signatures (clip)

Minister Robert Campbell: My grandfather used to put signatures in his house. You can easily find the one in Mr. Neville’s house. I haven’t been able to find that, but I know what I'm looking for. Those type of things let you see the ability, the craftiness…

 Minister Robert Campbell - Process of building (clip)

Robert Campbell: The first thing is you got to have your plans. You got to have your concept, so that you can basically make sure that you’ll be able to find all the material for that building and how far you might have to ship it. And I will say that fortunately for most of the construction that…

 Minister Robert Campbell - Mortar and cement (clip)

Minister Robert Campbell: In the mortar and cement, there’s a certain amount per bag that you mix with sand to enhance and strengthen the mixture. In the cement, you would have more sand in it than you would in the mortar mixture itself. When it comes to the concrete, it would be a mixture of…

 Minister Robert Campbell - Ingenuity (clip)

Minister Robert Campbell: My cousin Gloria – my grandfather was teaching us all how to be a part of the work he was doing – she also helped put that wall together. She also made a different mixture of concrete – well, cement – with a mixture of lime in it. There’s a rock in there, it’s huge, and…

 Minister Robert Campbell - Buildings constructed by family (clip)

Robert Campbell: There are several homes, if you take the long journey around. There are some houses on Jones Ferry Road. It all depends on what end of Jones Ferry Road you start on. If you start over there by Terry’s Creek, you’ll see some of his handiwork. But over here in Chapel Hill there’s…

 Minister Robert Campbell - Family history (clip)

Robert Campbell: He was our inspiration. Sometimes sitting around telling the tales about growing up and the things they had to endure – I think it just made him a more persistent and stronger person, and in doing so, to teach his children as well as his grandchildren how to fend for themselves. If…

 Eugene Farrar - History (clip)

Eugene Farrar (EF): I just want to say thank you all for what you’re doing. The only way our history can get told right is that we have to tell it. So I appreciate what you all are doing to explore that avenue of telling history like it’s supposed to be told, from the people who lived it. We’re the…

 Eugene Farrar - Family support (clip)

Eugene Farrar (EF): My family was a very large family, and we sacrificed, and we would help each other, give each other – if you raised a garden and you had peas, string beans, potatoes, and somebody else raised a garden that had cucumbers, tomatoes, and something else, we would exchange. If you had…

 Eugene Farrar - Hard working (clip)

Eugene Farrar (EF): I think hard work, but struggle of course, hard work and struggle back then. Perseverance – we had to make it, so we made the best out of what we had, and that wasn’t very much. Very few cars were in Chapel Hill.

 Eugene Farrar - Sources of rock (clip)

Eugene Farrar (EF): They would buy some rocks. I’m sure that they had places where they were buying them. I never knew where they bought rock and things like that. I don’t think we had a rock yard. There may have been a rock yard around here somewhere, but I don’t know where it was. They built…