Ancestry
Interview Information
June 2011, Charlottesville, VA
Interviewees: Noah Aldridge, Mary Ellen Rose Butler, Angela Niles, Gloria Niles, Mary Niles, Joshua Niles-Dancy, Stephanie Perry, Jacqueline Perry-Haig
Hear Their Stories
“I Knew He Was A Bell Ringer”
“I Knew He Was A Bell Ringer”
Ruth Hunt remembers what she heard about her great-grandfather Henry Martin.
“Yes, I knew he was a bell ringer, and I knew that he carried these, oh that’s coming back to me now. I remember Daddy talking about these buckets of coal that he carried to fire, whatever he had to fire. He was very good at ringing the bells without a time piece. I remember Daddy saying that. And I remember him saying he was always there, you know like he wasn’t, he was on time and he wasn’t absent, that sort of thing. And I know my Grandmother Patsy Martin, great‑grandmother, was a very religious person. The two of them seemed to have been religious people from what I recall. And my Grandmother Patsy would not allow anybody to come in her house with a hat on. My father told me about a man who came to her door, I don’t know whether it was insurance or what he was, but she invited him to take his hat off and the way she invited him was like, this was the impression I got, no nonsense kind of thing.”