Etowah NC Heritage
  • Home
  • SPECIAL
    • Virtual Tour of Selected Historic Places
    • History Displays in Etowah & Library Notebooks
    • Etowah Heritage Day 2019 - 130 Years
    • Etowah Treasures Exhibit, Sept/Oct 2019
  • PEOPLE & PLACES
    • Maps
    • Memorabilia
    • Places, Early Homes, Other
    • French Broad River & Valley Views
    • People - early times
    • People - later times
    • People - Gash Family descendants
    • Veterans
  • HIST. I
    • Timeline
    • Formation of Henderson County, est 1838
    • Etowah History Notes - Research To Date
    • 1889 Money, then Etowah
    • Etowah - Creek/Muskogee Translation
    • How Etowah Got Its Name
    • Postmasters 1889 - 1968
    • Etowah Train Depot - 1895 >
      • Trains of Etowah
    • The Railroad - Hendersonville to Toxaway
  • HIST. II
    • 1900 U.S. Census
    • Farms of Early Etowah
    • Historic Etowah High School 1928 - 1960 >
      • 1st Annual 1938 -The Chief
      • Little Chief - Gleanings from
      • Students & Faculty EHS
      • EHS Memorabilia
      • Etowah High School - Memorial Plaque 2014 - HCEHI
    • Historic Schools 1800s - 1928 >
      • Etowah Institute 1911
    • Schools of Nearby Communities
    • Historic Churches
    • Historic Cemeteries >
      • Thomas-Fletcher Cemetery
      • Adopt-A-Cemetery: Thomas-Fletcher
  • HIST. III
    • Sheriff Robert Thomas
    • Civil War Union Monument
    • Orr Cabin Homeplace - early 1800s
    • Mountain Lily - 1881
    • Welsh Colony 1880s
    • Grist Mills
    • Shape Note Traditions
  • HIST. IV
    • Community Fairs 1938-1941, 1950s
    • Stores of Early Etowah
    • McKinna General Store
    • More Business Ads 1938 - 1960+
    • "Etowah Brick" Moland-Drysdale Corp. - 1923
    • Calx Mfg. Company - 1919
    • Camp Peep-Out - 1935
    • Etowah Grange #984 - 1937 >
      • Grange - 25th Anniversary 1937-1962
      • Grange Quilt - 1953
  • HIST. V
    • 1952 - Hatheway Floral Company
    • 1954 - Etowah Lions Club, Park & More
    • 1960s - Growing & Changing
    • 1964 - Etowah / Horse Shoe Volunteer Fire
    • 1966 - Water & Sewer System, Tower
    • 1966 - Etowah Riding Club
    • 1982 - A Library Comes to Etowah
  • Stories
    • Eade Anderson, Reverend
    • Lois Adcock Bayne
    • Emma Louise Curtis Bradley
    • Richard Brown
    • Patricia Bell Cantrell
    • Jerri Whiteside Lambeth
    • Wanda Sumner Love
    • David S. Mallett
    • Opal Dalton Parkinson
    • Jeannie Huggins Revis
    • Glenda Maxwell Simpson
    • Marylin Annette Jones Thomas
    • "The Follies" & "Matilda's Folly"
  • About

Stories & Recollections of Etowah . . .

as told by  ~  Glenda Maxwell Simpson


Growing Up in 1940s Etowah ~ in the Cabin that  was  Etowah's "Colored School"
PictureIn 1947, the Maxwell Family bought the cabin that was once Etowah's "Colored School." Alice Helen Crook Maxwell, Glenn Cecil Maxwell, Geraldine, Glenda (younger daughter)

We moved to Etowah, NC in 1947 when I was about 15 months old!   My father Glenn C. Maxwell & Alice Helen Crook Maxwell moved our family of 4 there from West Asheville.   My father was an Army Veteran and after getting out of the service wanted a place out in the country away from the city life!   I am sure when they found this place my mom thought my father had moved her to the ends of the earth!

 We have many good memories of living in this “little colored school house”.   This little house/school had 3 rooms consisting of a long kitchen, a living room & one bedroom.   No running water, no bathroom, as all homes have today!   No outside toilet so my Dad had to dig one and build a building around it!   We carried water from a well down in the holler that had a hand pump that you had to prime the pump to get the water started coming out to fill your buckets.   Then you had to climb up the long path to the house and try not to spill the water!   I can remember my Mom would carry 2 five gallon buckets  while my sister and I carried the little gallon lard buckets equal to a gallon up the hill and sloshing water out as we went.   I guess by the time we got to the top of the trail we probably had a bucket with very little water in it!

 I  remember,
. . . the snows and riding down the long hill toward the well in a dish pan for a sled!
 . . . the yard, flowers & bushes as my Mom played “There ain’t no bears out tonight” with my older sister Geraldine & me.
. . .  the cold winters in that little house.  It was so cold.   People did not have insulation in homes back in the day!   My Mom would hang blankets over the windows to help keep out the cold air!
We heated with coal and had to carry it in with coal buckets!
. . .  the apple trees and sitting on a blanket in the summer time!
 . . . our 2 horses Queen & Nick and my Dad plowing the garden.
 . . . chickens, gathering eggs, slopping the pigs,  climbing trees &  playhouses!
. . .   running down through the woods on a trail that we walked to Aunt Clota & Uncle Jim Phillips home to catch the school bus.   My Dad walked this same trail to ride to work with his Uncle Jim as they both worked at Biltmore Dairy Farms over in Biltmore, NC. 

I remember ,
. . . walking to Holly Springs Union Chapel for Sunday School & Preaching on Sundays.
 . . . walking to this same church for my Mom to quilt and  walking to Bible School there.
 . . . Mom checking the yard for snakes before she would let us go out to play!
 . . . picking blackberries in those same one gallon buckets that we carried water up the hill in!
. . . bees & huge hornet nest built in ivy bushes,  throwing rocks at them,  hitting the nest and being stung multiple times!
 . . . my First Grade Teacher, Faye Wright, coming to this little house to teach me!
 . . . my Dad reading the Bible, after he got home from working the evening shift, late into the night.

 We lived in this little house until my brother David was born in 1953.   Wonderful years in that little house, the old "Colored School” !   

See also, Historic Schools - "Etowah's Colored School"

  • Home
  • SPECIAL
    • Virtual Tour of Selected Historic Places
    • History Displays in Etowah & Library Notebooks
    • Etowah Heritage Day 2019 - 130 Years
    • Etowah Treasures Exhibit, Sept/Oct 2019
  • PEOPLE & PLACES
    • Maps
    • Memorabilia
    • Places, Early Homes, Other
    • French Broad River & Valley Views
    • People - early times
    • People - later times
    • People - Gash Family descendants
    • Veterans
  • HIST. I
    • Timeline
    • Formation of Henderson County, est 1838
    • Etowah History Notes - Research To Date
    • 1889 Money, then Etowah
    • Etowah - Creek/Muskogee Translation
    • How Etowah Got Its Name
    • Postmasters 1889 - 1968
    • Etowah Train Depot - 1895 >
      • Trains of Etowah
    • The Railroad - Hendersonville to Toxaway
  • HIST. II
    • 1900 U.S. Census
    • Farms of Early Etowah
    • Historic Etowah High School 1928 - 1960 >
      • 1st Annual 1938 -The Chief
      • Little Chief - Gleanings from
      • Students & Faculty EHS
      • EHS Memorabilia
      • Etowah High School - Memorial Plaque 2014 - HCEHI
    • Historic Schools 1800s - 1928 >
      • Etowah Institute 1911
    • Schools of Nearby Communities
    • Historic Churches
    • Historic Cemeteries >
      • Thomas-Fletcher Cemetery
      • Adopt-A-Cemetery: Thomas-Fletcher
  • HIST. III
    • Sheriff Robert Thomas
    • Civil War Union Monument
    • Orr Cabin Homeplace - early 1800s
    • Mountain Lily - 1881
    • Welsh Colony 1880s
    • Grist Mills
    • Shape Note Traditions
  • HIST. IV
    • Community Fairs 1938-1941, 1950s
    • Stores of Early Etowah
    • McKinna General Store
    • More Business Ads 1938 - 1960+
    • "Etowah Brick" Moland-Drysdale Corp. - 1923
    • Calx Mfg. Company - 1919
    • Camp Peep-Out - 1935
    • Etowah Grange #984 - 1937 >
      • Grange - 25th Anniversary 1937-1962
      • Grange Quilt - 1953
  • HIST. V
    • 1952 - Hatheway Floral Company
    • 1954 - Etowah Lions Club, Park & More
    • 1960s - Growing & Changing
    • 1964 - Etowah / Horse Shoe Volunteer Fire
    • 1966 - Water & Sewer System, Tower
    • 1966 - Etowah Riding Club
    • 1982 - A Library Comes to Etowah
  • Stories
    • Eade Anderson, Reverend
    • Lois Adcock Bayne
    • Emma Louise Curtis Bradley
    • Richard Brown
    • Patricia Bell Cantrell
    • Jerri Whiteside Lambeth
    • Wanda Sumner Love
    • David S. Mallett
    • Opal Dalton Parkinson
    • Jeannie Huggins Revis
    • Glenda Maxwell Simpson
    • Marylin Annette Jones Thomas
    • "The Follies" & "Matilda's Folly"
  • About