 The following text was transcribed from the audio portion of a television program named 'Eye On Kosciusko', aired on WMAB TV of Kosciusko, Miss. sometime in the late nineteen-ninety's. Please keep in mind, as you read, that this is a transcription of a verbal interview. Often it will not follow the conventions of written context. In the interest of readability, certain liberties have been occasionally taken with the original, verbal utterances. Though these changes have been infrequent, they were necessary to help maintain the integrity of the transcript.
Interview with Beatrice Bailey, Ethel Historian
Interviewer: Willa Sanders
WS: (To the camera) Welcome to Eye On Kosciusko. Ethel, one of the
communities in our county, is named after a lady. It would be
interesting to find out the history about that, so I've invited Beatrice
Bailey, a resident of Ethel, to give us a little background about Ethel,
Mississippi.
Welcome, Ms. Beatrice.
BB: Thank you.
WS: We'd like to know, if you know, why or how did Ethel get it's name?
BB: The town of Ethel was established in 1881. The railroad came through in
1882. They built the first depot in 1883 and laid out the town lots.
The town was named for the daughter of the vice president of the
Illinois Central Railroad. He wanted his daughter to have a town named
for her, so they let him name the town Ethel, in honor of her. Her name
was Ethel McConnico.
WS: Well, when was the town incorporated?
BB: In 1911, and it was really a booming town before it was incorporated.
WS: Give us a little history about how it developed. What was the first
store?
BB: The first store was built by one of the people who bought the land.
The land was bought from a lady here in Attala county, named Mrs. Davis.
She was a widow. They bought the land, 800 acres, for fifty cents an
acre. That was in 1880. Two men bought it. One man took his half and
built a steam mill, a store, and a residence. History does not tell us
what the other man did, other than that they laid out the lots. They
sold the lots for the fifty cents an acre to the ones who could pay.
They wanted people to come there so bad that, if someone wanted to come
but didn't have the money to buy, they gave them the lots.
WS: Did Ethel have a doctor?
BB: We had Dr. J.S. Collins. He was first doctor, in 1884. He was followed
by Dr. J.T. Hale, Dr. W.R. Pope, Dr. W.S. Clair, and Dr. W.W. McBride.
Dr. McBride practiced until the late fifties and early sixties. When he
retired, he was much over 90 years old.
WS: Well, tell us about the school now. When was the school built?
BB: The first school was built in 1887. It was built on a lot behind the
stores that runs parallel back of the stores and it was on a lot that
is now used for the building site for the Masonic Lodge. It was just a
small building and had just one teacher. The people were so impressed
with the school that later they wanted to build more to the school.
WS: Isn't there some sort of a rock building or something that is sort of
historic up there on the school site now?
BB: Sometime during the early thirties, the students of the 'Ag' Dept.
(Agriculture Dept.) gathered rocks from the farm of Mr. Swindle, who
was the 'Ag' teacher. They brought the rocks to school and the rock
building was built by the students. It housed the Home Economics Dept.
and the Agriculture Dept.
WS: That's interesting. Where is the town exactly located? Give us a
little description.
BB: Ethel is nine miles east of Kosciusko on highway 12. It was situated
on the north side of the Illinois Central Railroad and was bound on
the other side by the Yockanookany River. It had a street that ran to
the river on the north and the south side.
WS: I know that, at least in your booming days, there were several lumber
mills. Can you name those for us?
BB: We've had many, many lumber mills at different times. The Moller (and)
Vanderboom Lumber Co., out of Quincy, Illinois, came in 1916 and
established a large lumber mill. At the time, there were no electric
lights in the city. They brought a dynamo with them from Illinois and
put lights in their mill and in their office. The office that they
built at that time still stands and is in use today. Following that...
this was a large lumber company; they had dry kilns and they had
seventeen acres of land that they stacked lumber, at least two stories
high, out in the yard. They also had a dipping vat that they dipped
the green lumber in to keep it from staining when it dried out in the
weather. That mill is still in operation today and is owned by a man
out of Kosciusko.
WS: Do you know anything about the other mills?
BB: The other mills were the Bowman Lumber Co., Jay's Lumber Co., Ethel
Planing Mill, Abrams Lumber Co. All of these were in the twenties and
thirties. Some of them left when the depression came.
WS: Mayor Jerry Hindley had contact or connections with one of them.
BB: The Bowman Lumber Co. went out of business during the depression, in
1930, and it sat idle for three years. Then it was bought by a Mr.
Barge, who operated it as the Ethel Lumber Co. He did that until 1944.
He let his planer mill right-hand-man, Jimmy Hindley, have it. Jimmy
operated it then until he retired, and at that time turned it over to
his son, Jerry Hindley. The mill is no longer in operation, but Jerry
has extensive timber operations in both lumber and hauling timber.
WS: I think you worked for Moller/Vanderboom, didn't you, at one time?
BB: Moller/Vanderboom is special to me because as a graduate of Holmes
Junior College, that was my first full-time job. I was just twenty
when I started work there, and very shy, but went there with all those
men, about a hundred employees at that time. That was a special time
in my life.
WS: That's where you learned to drive, wasn't it?
BB: I didn't know how to drive. Back in those days, every family didn't
have a car and the men of the house drove the cars. The girls didn't
know how to drive. So when I went to work for Moller/Vanderboom, I did
not know how to drive. I had to learn on whatever vehicle they had.
The main vehicle they had, for the president and vice-president to use
when they came, was an old Huffmobile, which is an old, old make of
car. It was like a limosine. They had a pick-up, which was kind of
beat up, and they also had lumber trucks. I could drive any of them.
I sometimes drove the pick up, a few times drove the Huffmobile, but
most of the time I chose one of the lumber trucks, with the trailer
detached. It was not easy learning to drive because this was winter
time and there were so many trucks and wagons pulling lumber in there
that the roads were bad, bad. Sometimes you had to drive on lumber
laid down side-by-side to make a runway for you to drive on. You had
to stay on that, or else you would get stuck.
WS: How much did a drivers license cost back in those days?
BB: A drivers license, in those days, was twenty-five cents. You went
over to the depot, the Illinois Central Railroad depot, and the agent
over there let you have your drivers license for twenty-five cents.
You did not take a test. You were just given your drivers license, on
just faith.
WS: I know that the railroad played a big part in the development of Ethel.
You've spoken of it several times. Tell us a little bit about that, or
if you had experiences with it.
BB: The railroad, when it first came through, had a train going east and
west in the morning and east and west in the afternoon. There were no
eighteen-wheelers at that time, and it was used for all the shipping.
We had passenger trains with a few freight cars, but then they had
freight trains as well, just regular freight trains.
Our family had friends up east of Ethel, so we used to ride the train
up in the morning, spend the day, have lunch and ice cream and all the
good things that the lady prepared, and then ride home in the afternoon
on the train.
WS: I think you related to me also: Didn't your mother also go on shopping
trips and use the train?
BB: My mother used to go to Kosciusko and do the shopping for the winter.
Most of the time, in the summer, she made our clothes. But, in the
winter, she had to buy some things that she could not make. She would
take a day, go down on the train, come to a major department store here
in Kosciusko, and make her purchases. They would pack it up in a great
big shipping carton, put it on the train, and it would come back on the
train with her in the afternoon. Our daddy would meet the train, pick
it up, and bring it home. It was just like Christmas when she opened
that box. We'd all dive in. We'd look to see what she'd brought for us.
WS: Name some other businesses in Ethel, when it was at it's highest
economic activity.
BB: Ethel had many, many stores, hardware stores and mercantile stores.
Some of the younger people might not know what a mercantile store was.
A mercantile store had everything you could want, or you thought you
would want. You'd go in there and you'd look 'til you found what you
wanted. We had dry goods stores that had ready-to-wear and fabrics
and things like that. At one time, we had a milliner's shop. One of our
doctor's wives had a milliner's shop.
WS: Milliner's shop? Tell us what that is.
BB: That is a hat shop. She was a real dressy lady and had come from away
from Ethel and she was really fixing us up with the hats.
Ethel, at one time, had it's own telephone service that was operated
by a family, from their home. It was one of those old crank-type phones.
You'd call the operator, tell her who you wanted, and she would connect
you with them.
At the very height of Ethel, we had two hardware stores, four just
regular department stores, as we would call them today. They were just
general stores. We had two cafes and two hotels, that is two, two-floor
hotels, and many boarding houses.
WS: What about service stations?
BB: We had five service stations, and I mean full-service, service stations.
You could get a flat fixed or they would pump your gas. It wasn't like
the self-service that we have today. We had a major Chevrolet dealer and
they had four mechanics, all the time. They had a full-service, service
station and a body shop with this Chevrolet agency that was there, at
that time.
WS: Well, that's quite impressive. What about bus service?
BB: The bus service was the Trailways Bus. It had a bus running east and
west both morning and afternoon. Going north, it didn't seem as crowded
as it did coming back. I remember, as a teenager going to college, all
the teenagers went by bus because their parents didn't furnish them a
car, like we do today. Every child has his car. But we didn't have our
cars and we had to ride the bus. We had many, many students from up
around Ripley and Tupelo and places like that that got on the bus up
there and came to Ethel. By the time it got to Ethel, the bus was
packed. Some bus drivers would call for a back-up, but some didn't.
Then we had to stand and hold to the rail where the luggage was placed
in order not to fall, as we were standing. But we probably couldn't
have fallen far because it was so packed with people standing, riding
the bus.
WS: So, you rode all the way to Holmes Community College?
BB: We rode all the way to Holmes Community College the first year. The
second year, they were reworking Highway 51, from Durant to Canton, and
we had to go around by way of Lexington. When we got to Lexington, the
bus couldn't go on the highway that ran from Lexington to Goodman, so
we had a friend in Goodman who met us there and carried us on to
college. He would take as many people as he could to the college.
WS: Didn't you go on your honeymoon on the bus?
BB: Yes, I did. In 1939, when Elmer Ray and I married, we went by bus to
Jackson. The bus station was not too far from the Heidelberg Hotel. We
had reservations there, for our honeymoon.
WS: Do you recall any dates about the infrastructure of your community,
like paved streets and things like that?
BB: The paved streets was along about 1953. Before that time, it was pretty
bad, especially in the winter time, with all the wagons and trucks
bringing lumber in to the different lumber companies.
The electric lights...when Mississippi Power came into the area, they
came into Ethel. I'm not sure of the date of that, but when they came
in they put vapor lights all over the city.
WS: What about water?
BB: Water came in about 1953. They built two wells, with an elevated water
tank. Then it was later, in 1956 or 7, that they built the lagoon that
takes care of the waste and put in the sewer system.
WS: Do you recall a time when your community really pulled together?
BB: Yes. In 1928, the Ethel Lumber Company had a boiler to explode that
killed five men. The remnants of the boiler went sailing across the
street into a store, a mercantile store, and just cleaned it out,
just took it apart. Ethel pulled together and tried, as best we could,
to help with these bereaved families, who had lost five men. In a town
of that size, to lose five people at one time, was very distressful.
WS: What is the population, now, of Ethel, would you say?
BB: The population, now, is about six hundred.
WS: And, at it's highest, was it, say, close to a thousand?
BB: A thousand or more.
WS: Who's your mayor?
BB: Our mayor now is Jerry Hindley, and we are a city that's governed by a
mayor and board of aldermen. We have five aldermen. It's always been a
mayor and board of aldermen.
WS; And, what about churches?
BB: We have two full-time churches now. Ethel Methodist and Ethel Baptist,
each of which have celebrated their one-hundredth anniversary. The
Ethel Methodist Church is not as many as the Ethel Baptist, but they
are very active in the community, as well as in the religious circles.
Ethel Baptist recently completed a new fellowship hall, just before
the time for their one-hundredth anniversary.
WS: Which one's the oldest?
BB: The Ethel Methodist Church is the oldest. The Ethel Baptist is next
and then the Presbyterians were there, at one time, and the Church of
God, but they're no longer there.
WS: Well, this has been very interesting. I appreciate, so much, you
coming and giving us this history about the town of Ethel. I know that
a lot of our viewers probably have wondered why it was named Ethel.
It's real nice to be caught up on this history. At one time, it
apparently was a very booming town.
BB: It was a booming town, and you have quite a few prominent people in
Kosciusko who came from Ethel. Since we don't want to leave someone
out, we won't mention any names, but two of your bank presidents in
Kosciusko are from Ethel, and there are many others. Two of your
mayors of Kosciusko were originally from Ethel.
WS: A lot of good people. All over Attala County, we have a lot of good
people.
We really appreciate you digging up this information for us and
catching us up on the history of Ethel.
(To the Camera) And we really appreciate the fact that you're tuned
in. For 'Eye on Kosciusko', I'm Willa Sanders...
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