Interview with Mrs. Mabel Wrenn
April 16, 2003
Interviewed by Jean Uzzle
Mrs. Wrenn attended Trinity School for all of the elementary grades. She was fortunate enough to live less that a mile from it and could wait for her friends and walk with them.
Q: Mrs. Wrenn, what area of Isle of Wight did you grow up in?
A: I grew up in an area called Magnet near a place called Pop’s Store.
Q: How many sisters and brothers did you have?
A: I had, ahh, ten of us together. I had seven sisters and three brothers.
Q: Did they attend the school that you attended?
A: I know my oldest siblings, I’m not sure I don’t think they attended Trinity, but the younger ones attended Trinity.
Q: What grades were taught at Trinity?
A: One through seven.
Q: So did you go to Trinity one through seven?
A: Yes, and I graduated from Trinity when I was in the seventh grade. I was real proud because I was an honor student.
Q: That’s great. How many classrooms were in Trinity?
A: There were three classrooms.
Q: So you had three teachers?
A: Three teachers.
Q: Can you name some of your teachers?
A: Yes, my first teacher was Mrs. Elnora Long. She taught me from first through third. And my second teacher was Mrs. Elsie B. Godwin. She taught fourth through fifth. The next teacher was Mr. W. A. Quarles. He taught seventh, I mean sixth through seventh. I enjoyed the change that came through the teachers. We got to know all the teachers and love’em all.
Q: That was great. Can you remember what year you attended Trinity?
A: I know I attended when I was six years, seven years old and that was 1931 and I went back a second year.
Q: You told me that you had grades one through seven there. How did you get to school?
A: I walked to school.
Q: Approximately how far?
A: I didn’t live far from school. I lived about a half mile from school. I would walk and wait for the other children that passed by to go to school together.
Q: Before you went to school in the morning did you have any jobs or chores to do at home?
A: Yes, I had to make my bed every morning before I left home. Couldn’t leave home unless that bed was made.
Q: Once you got to school, were there chores that you had to do once you got to school?
A: Some time it would be. If we didn’t clean, sometime we would dust the room in the morning before the children get there because I got there early and we’d help the teacher with the dusting and cleaning once in a while.
Q: You got there early because you didn’t have to walk far?
A: Because I didn’t have walk far. I would stick up under the teachers, too.
Q: So, how did you school day begin? When you got to school in the morning what were some of the things that you did?
A: When we arrived at school in the morning we would go in and put our books down. We would stay outdoors and play until the principal rang the bell. Then we would come in and we’d always have devotion. We would have prayer, a song, and a pledge. Every morning regardless we had that.
Q: Can you tell me about your subjects? What subjects did you have at Trinity?
A: In first to second grade we had something called Primer, first reading, ABCs and things like that. I learned how to read before I left from the first room.
Q: When you got in the higher grades can you remember some of the subjects that they had then?
A: Yes, we had reading, arithmetic, geography, history and once a week they would teach us art or sewing. That’s where I learned how to sew.
Q: In 4-H?
A: Yeah, something like 4-H. But the teachers did it themselves because they were trying to prepare us for life in case we didn’t get a diploma. That’s why our teachers worked hard to prepare us.
Q: One of the textbooks was a reader. Were there any special textbooks or readers that you kind of liked that stuck with you? Sometime we usually have a subject that we like.
A: Well, I liked reading Dick and Jane. It was the book I liked best of all.
Q: Where did you keep your books?
A: Under the desk.
Q: How long was your school day?
A: I think it was from 9:00 to 2:00 or 2:30 something like that. I know the white children would always go to school about a month before we would. _____________ I remember that as a child.
Q: How long was your school year? When did school start and when did it end?
A: It started up in September and closed in May.
Q: What about your lunch period? What was lunch like and where did you eat your lunch?
A: Our lunch was 30 minutes period. We would eat inside. It was a sandwich of biscuit with preserves between it or something like that. We would eat that in the class and when we finished we would go outside and play. We couldn’t go until we ate our lunch.
Q: What about recess? Did you have recess other than your lunch period?
A: Yes, we would play dodge ball, hide-and-seek, bobby jacks, the boys would shoot marbles, the big boys would play baseball and we’d help them. It was fun. Shooting marbles and we had a ball.
Q: Can you describe your classroom? What was it like?
A: I remember, uh, it was nice and the walls, I think, were painted white and I remember we had this wood stove in there and we sometimes had to bring the wood in to teachers so they could get our fire started. I remember plenty mornings the teachers using that wood to make fire to heat the room.
Q: So the teachers made the fire?
A: Yes, when I first started to school, teachers made the fire along with the bigger children.
Q: How was the school heated?
A: Had this great big iron stove and they would put wood in it and later on we got some coal, which heated better. I remember all that.
Q: That was a graduation from wood to coal. (Chuckles)
A: Right.
Q: Now, what about the bathrooms?
A: Ooh, that’s the problem. We didn’t have a bathroom. We had toilets. I remember it was so many feet from the schoolhouse. We had to get permission to go to the toilet. Our teacher was real smart. If he thought you didn’t have to go to the toilet, they wouldn’t let you go. This day this little girl went to the toilet (I’ll never forget it) and she dropped her shoe in the toilet, one of her shoes. And she cried, her sisters cried and her brother cried. So the principal had to send her home. Everybody had to go, the whole family had to go—all the sisters all the brothers and the little boy that lived next door. Our teacher got upset and said, “I will send the whole school home!” He was mad because everybody had to go home. I’ll never forget that day. Yes, indeed.
Q: I hope there were more.
A: I remember she cried because she didn’t have but one shoe. It was raining and she and she went home in the rain. Even the neighbor boy went home. He cried and they sent him home, too.
Q: Where did you get your water supplies for school?
A: We had a pump outside and some of the big boys would go out there and pump the water and bring it in and put it in a cooler. And we would drink it that way.
Q: So you all had a cooler?
A: Yes, something like a cooler that the water came out of. I thought it was a cooler anyway.
Q: Usually they just used little buckets.
A: It was a cooler; I remember a cooler.
Q: How would you describe your teacher’s desk?
A: Always neat and tidy. She had everything folded up in the corner in the direct place: Pencils in one place, the notebooks in another place, and the textbooks in another place. I remember it was always neat and tidy.
Q: How would you describe your desk?
A: My desk was small with a little shelf underneath where I could put my books and my lunch. Each child had one of those desks.
Q: So they were separate desks?
A: Separate, yes.
Q: In your school did you have a chalkboard or a blackboard?
A: We had a blackboard that we wrote on, a blackboard.
Q: What about your school supplies? Who furnished your school supplies like your paper, pencils, and things that you used in school?
A: I remember buying my own, purchasing my own.
Q: What about your books?
A: They would send them down and if we weren’t able to buy books we would share the books.
Q: So do you think you had to pay for the books?
A: I don’t think we paid for them. Later on, we probably paid for them.
Q: At first you don’t think you paid for them?
A: I think they were free items.
Q: Can you remember if there were any teacher aides, something that would help the students on the wall of the school?
A: Yes, I remember clearly. They had alphabets at the top of the wall and on the other side they had the numbers 1 to 10. I remember that. Every once in a while the teacher would get a picture like a child reading a book and stick it like behind the teacher’s desk or something like that.
Q: What about the higher grades, maybe who knew the alphabets? Did they have maps or something on the wall?
A: I remember I’ve always seen a child reading even though it was ________.
Q: Mrs. Wrenn, can you remember about the lighting in the school? Was it natural light through your window, was it electricity, or was it lamplight?
A: I remember clearly they had lamps because they were much bigger than our lamps at home and she would let us wash the lamp globe sometimes. Mrs. Godwin would let us wash the lamp globes so they would be clean. And after a while we got electricity there. In the daytime we didn’t use the lights much ‘cause we could see from outside. The sun would light the rooms up.
Q: Back then a lot of the schools had a lot of big windows.
A: Right, big windows let plenty of light in
Q: Did you have somewhere to hang your coats?
A: Yes, we had a closet and in the closet they had nails driven in a board. We would hang our coats on the nails.
Q: If you misbehaved in school how was punishment?
A: Punishment was like this: If you were real bad, they put you in a corner and stand on one foot. Then sometimes you just stand in a corner on both feet. And then if you misbehave yourself again you get two-three licks in your hand and that would kill us, because you didn’t want to get those licks in your hand.
Q: You had certain degrees of punishment?
A: Right, right, right
Q: Is there any additional school experience you had that you would like to tell me about that you? You know sometimes things happen that always stick with us and in our memory? Were there any school experiences that you remember that you’d like to tell us about?
A: One, I think, was Mrs. Godwin lived in the country and she would come to school driving a buggy and a horse. And the big boys would go out there and unhitch the horse and tie him to a tree and feed him. And right before we got ready to go home she would send the boy there to get the horse and bring him to the door so she’d be ready to go home. That was fascinating to me. (Chuckles)
Q: I can imagine. Now, are there any other childhood memories you had? Maybe not at school, or maybe walking to school or coming from school, or maybe at home that you remember?
A: I remember on certain days, like once a month our teacher would give us hot cocoa. That’s all that we got that was free. And I remember every time she had need for a spoon or fork, she’d send me home to get it from my mother and bring it back to school. I thought that was great that I could go home and get something that the teacher wanted, you know. I enjoyed that experience.
Q: That’s what happens when you live close to school.
A: Right, I just felt special because I knew it was important that she had that spoon.
Q: So when she made the chocolate, what did you drink it out of?
A: We had cups. I remember…seems like she told us to bring a cup to school that day and we would drink out of that cup.
Q: Now, is there any other experience that you can recall in the county after attending school and the job changes, and even some of the things that have changed from then to now? Is there anything that stands out in your mind or is there anything that you would like to say to children who are in school now? Some advice?
A: One thing I’d like to say and I tell my son. He says, “Momma, the teacher has pets,” and I tell him, “No, they don’t have pets. Any teacher likes a child that gets their lesson and behave himself.” I think one example for children they should learn how to be obedient and courteous to the teachers, and study the lessons and don’t think about so much foolishness.
Q: Compare teachers that we have now compared to the teachers we had when we were in school. How would you make that comparison? Do you feel like they were more dedicated or are the teachers now more dedicated than the teachers back then? How do you think about that?
A: As a child, I think they were more...seems to me they were more dedicated, and the children were more respectable back then than they are now.
Q: That might make a difference.
A: I think that makes a difference. I know when we went to seventh grade some children were 14 or 15 when they finished seventh grade. Our teachers made sure that those boys knew how to add, subtract, divide, and the girls knew something about cooking because the teacher use to tell us “some of you are not going to high school anyway. Which they didn’t. Some didn’t go to high school. The idea was to try to prepare us. They would teach the girls how to sew and things like that, how to can.
Q: Do you have any advice for children now? What would be your advice to give to a child that’s in high school now?
A: To be respectable and get your lesson!! Study!
Q: Is there anything else you would like to tell me about school?
A: I have seen so many changes in my day. Like when we went to school I walked to school when I went to high school five miles every day, and when it rained I couldn’t go. Men that worked in town be in town they wait to come home in the afternoon picked us up and gave us a ride home so we didn’t have to walk home. I mean it’s just so different. We used to walk and then white the children threw snowball on us, and spitballs, and talk about us and we’d be walking and they would be in school buses. I’ll never forget that. So it was exciting. After I finished school I stayed home three years. I wasn’t able to go to college, but my Mother wouldn’t let us do domestic work though. I stayed home and would sew for people. I made good money sewing, hemming dresses for people and making the skirts for them. I enjoyed that. Then I got married at 22 years old. (Giggles)
Q: Did look like you were prepared to do something?
A: Yeah, he said I was prepared do something. Some of you not going to do anything any way, so finish high school. After I got married then I got an Associate Degree in Early Childhood and I worked as a teacher’s aide. I worked as a teacher’s aide for almost 20 years until I retired from Surry County. I have an adopted son and five grandchildren.
Q: That’s good. Is there anything else you would like to tell us before we close the interview? You’ve given us some good advice and you’ve told us about your school days, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the interview with you.
A: Thank you.
Q: I’m happy that you came to give your interview. Be sure you tell your grandchildren to come to the museum so they can hear your interview.
A: Ok. I sure will.
Q: Thank you so much.
A: Thank you.