D. F. Conner, Oconaluftee, North Carolina
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D. F. "Doc" Conner, of Oconaluftee, in Swain County, North Carolina, was 84 years old when recorded in 1939. He was self-educated and the owner of a country store.
[transcripption copyrigh Michael Montgomery and Paul Reed, 2017]
Well I was uh borned in uh Jackson County, eighteen fifty-five, and uh was uh, oh about eight years old I guess, or nine, moved from that county to uh, my father did, to uh, to Macon County, and uh we were there for about six years I think, and then we, my father moved to, to, into this county known as uh, as Jackson at that time again, but was finally made to, so called to be Swain County, a new county struck off, and uh that was uh here on the waters of Luftee River, stayed there from the time I were about fourteen years old I think, on up till today on this river known as the Oconaluftee River, and uh I’ve been here in these mountains ever since, reared up, just, just come up, and uh now I’m a-gitting up in years, eighty-four I think, been here in the Smoky Mountains ever since, since I was about uh maybe fourteen years old, of course, we are here in the park now, the park area, our lands is turned over to the, to the, the Smoky Mountain National Park.
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Well, back when I were just a young man a-growing up, why, we didn’t have any advantage much of schools, we would probably have a term of about three months in the fall season, teacher would commence maybe sometime up in August and for three or four weeks then and probably stop then about two weeks to, for the people to take fodder and so on, and, and we would be out for a while, and about three months would be the, the extent of the school possibly, we wouldn’t get to go near all of that, course the, they were poor chances then for us, young fellows a-growing up to get any chance much of, of schooling, and it remained thataway for a good long while before we had any better advantages, probably the most of us was, was about grown without any education much, and so it, it’s been thataway till, till it didn’t give us people at that ti-, edge of the world, didn’t give us much chance of learning, we had to learn to help our parents, they was scatterly, scattered and not thick settled, and we had to help them at home, and we didn’t look out to ever need any much education.
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Well, back uh some years ago we had a good chance of fine mountain range, had our cattle out in the, in the Smoky Mountains, and me and uh one of my boys had some cattle killed by the bear, it was uh one big steer that we put a, I had some bear traps we put around the, around the steer where the bear were coming, and we finally had got him by the foot, you know, he went back into the laurel hung with this trap, and finally we traced him up till we got in hearing of him, he were, he were cutting a big figure and, and a-growling and so on, but we slipped round him with our guns and got close to him, and, and my boy shot him in the head, and we killed him and, and rolled him down the mountain to where we could, could uh kindly dress him, you know, well I had my horses hitched up pretty closte, but when we got back with some of our bear to them horses, you know, we couldn’t get up close to them, but we finally got our horses and taken part of it on one of them that we could get the closest to, and, and packed him in home, we had a fine time that day I tell you what, but the, it was uh, it was more fun to us than anybody would think for, because we was so interested in getting that, that brute that was a-killing our cattle up, and so we had a good time though a-getting in home, with one horse scared till we couldn’t get him close to the bear, we got some of it on, packed on one of them and got him in home at last.