Frying Pan Farm Part 11

The telephone operator was particularly helpful in locating rural doctors when they were needed in an emergency. Like the veterinarians, doctors were not relied on for minor illnesses but were called on in extreme cases. Jack Day and William Robey were among the doctors who travelled by horse and buggy (and later in early model Fords) to make housecalls. They were loved and accepted by the community: "We thought of a family doctor about like we did our minister."[230] Fees were usually $1.00 for a housecall though farmers would sometimes offer a bushel of corn or a chicken in payment for their treatment.[231]

The doctors contributed a great deal to the well-being of the community.

Rural families, however, were resourceful in finding home remedies for many ailments. Some of these were long-respected herbal preparations, but others were used more because of tradition than effectiveness.

Frances Simpson described the special folk medicines of her family near Herndon:

When an epidemic was reported in the village during the winter, she prepared the dreadful smelling _asafetida_ bags which she tied about our necks under our dresses. They were supposed to ward off diseases.

When my sisters and I had colds, mutton _tallow plasters_ were put on our chests and fastened to our underwear. These sticky, clammy plasters were worn until all signs of cold had disappeared.

_Sulpher and mola.s.ses_ by the spoonful were given in the spring 'to help clear out our systems....' Calomel was an often used remedy for the liver until the doctor forbade its use.

My mother had a bad case of erysipelas and her leg was in a fearful state. Nothing seemed to help it. One night she dreamed my sister Dora, who had recently died, came to her, told her to make _poultices of cabbage leaves_ wrung in hot water and apply them to her leg. She followed instructions and in due season her leg was healed.[232]

[Ill.u.s.tration: G. Ray Harrison, c. 1925. Photo courtesy of Ray Harrison.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Harrison family's mule team on a shopping trip to Herndon about 1914. A young Ray Harrison is riding in the wagon. The stores in Herndon provided basic supplies and services for the Floris community. Photo courtesy of Ray Harrison.]

The Floris community was an early outgrowth of a mining settlement near Frying Pan Run. Robert Carter, of Nomini Hall in Westmoreland County, owned the land which he believed contained rich copper ore. Though roads were built and several mining attempts made, the mineral proved to be of poor quality. The access offered by roads built by the miners (for example, West Ox Road on which Frying Pan Farm is located) opened the area to agriculture. The first permanent community was formed by a group of Baptists, who successfully pet.i.tioned Carter for permission to build a church on his property. One of their early churches, a simple, frame structure built in 1791, still stands near the center of the community.[233]

The origins of the area's unusual name are obscure--some believe either Indians or early miners who camped in the vicinity mislaid a frying pan and named the creek after their loss. Others feel that the circular shape of a round pool into which the run flows influenced its appellation. Until 1879 the community at the crossroads of the West Ox and Centreville Roads was also called Frying Pan, at which time it was thought too undignified a name. It was rechristened Floris, according to one source, after the prettiest girl in the neighborhood. Another story relates that summer boarders near Frying Pan Post Office thought such a lowly name would cause ridicule among their city friends. They called the town Floris, which means "flower" in Latin, to tone up the image of their warm weather "resort." By the time of the name change, the village had expanded somewhat from an 1801 description of "four log huts and a Meeting House,"[234] but it retained its small personal character. In the 1920s and 1930s it consisted of a blacksmith shop, general store and post office, a boarding house, three churches and two schools, as well as the surrounding farms.

The focal point of the Floris community during this period, and the factor which gave it a countywide importance, was the Floris Vocational High School. The school was the result of the Smith-Hughes Act, pa.s.sed in 1917 to organize agriculture and home economics courses on the secondary level of education. H. B. Derr tried unsuccessfully for two years to establish such a course in Fairfax County but met with little support from the members of the school board, who favored traditional academics. It was finally through the farmer's clubs and community leagues (forerunners of the PTA), especially those in the Floris area, that Derr was able to convince the county of the program's potential. By 1919 farmers and merchants had donated some $17,000 to start construction of a building, and in honor of the special efforts of agriculturalists in Floris, it was decided to locate the school there.[235]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A sketch of the plot of land originally deeded to the school board in 1876 by George Kenfield for a Floris school. Fairfax County Deedbook H-5, p. 617.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mr. Jack Walker, the engineer in charge of the construction of the Floris School 1920. Copy of photo in Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Floris Vocational High School under construction, c.

1920. Note the tennis game being played in the front of the old building. Copy of photo in Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.]

The Floris Vocational High School was the third to be built in Virginia.[236] It was extended from an existing, two-year high school, founded in 1911, but the property on which it was built had actually been deeded to the school board over forty years earlier. In 1876 George Kenfield deeded about six acres of land to the Frying Pan School a.s.sociation and the property remained in school use through several owner changes.[237] One- and two-room schools stood on the land until 1911 when a larger building was completed.[238]

The citizens of Floris had worked together to raise money for the vocational school; they also contributed their skills and time to its construction. Under the direction of two (often dissenting) contractors, a Mr. Sheffield and Jack Walker, pupils and parents helped to raise the three-story brick structure, and later to build a smaller agricultural shop a short distance from the main schoolhouse. The school was open to the entire county but the immediate community continued to feel a special interest in it. The Floris Home Demonstration Club served hot lunches in the school for many years and around 1924 they sponsored the hiring of a music teacher at their own expense until the county and state finally gave support to the teacher.[239]

Floris Vocational High School was an immediate success. In 1924 it had 150 pupils, evenly divided between primary and secondary grades, and hailing chiefly from the Herndon area. Students walked or rode horseback to reach their cla.s.ses; some, such as Virginia Presgraves Harrison from Loudoun County, boarded with local families.[240] The high school offered the standard curriculum courses of English, American and European history, algebra, geography, physics and chemistry. Courses in higher mathematics (plane geometry and trigonometry) were optional as were English history and foreign languages. The school differed from the county's other secondary inst.i.tutions in the varied agriculturally oriented courses it taught. Boys learned the principles of agronomy, animal husbandry, soil control and veterinary science, and were expected to put the theoretical knowledge into practice with test animals and acreage on their home farms. They also sharpened their skills in agricultural shop courses. Under the guidance of Ford Lucas and, later, Harvey D. Seale, they were taught carpentry, motor repair, blacksmithing, indeed, everything from building chicken coops to "how to put a roof on a barn and keep it from leaking."[241] Cla.s.ses for the girls also stressed the relations.h.i.+p between theory and practice. The rudiments of nutrition, food preparation, fabric and clothing construction, were carried over into "Hominy Hall," a house owned by William Ellmore, which housed the kitchen and serving areas for domestic science courses. The girls spent several hours a week in this building, gaining proficiency in the work which would probably occupy most of their lives. Like the majority of the students' homes, Hominy Hall had no running water, and baking was done on a large, wood-burning stove.[242] The cla.s.ses were taught by, among others, May Calhoun and Louisa Gla.s.sal. Elizabeth Ellmore, princ.i.p.al of Floris Vocational High School in 1929-1930, noted that because of the school's personal nature the teachers had a fair amount of leeway in the character and depth of the courses they taught--as much, in fact, as their students would allow them.[243] One early teacher found the pupils very apt indeed, with abilities equal to those of the town children she had previously taught.

Stated Lulah Ferguson:

So far as the interest was concerned you'd find that maybe those children in Falls Church were a little more interested in affairs in general, a little better informed generally, than these were, but so far as their att.i.tude towards studying or wanting to know, you wouldn't find any difference. These country children were really just as eager or maybe more so than some of the small town....[244]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The champions.h.i.+p girl's basketball team of Floris Vocational High School, 1924-1925.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The "Floris Follies," a minstrel presented at the Floris school in March, 1939. Such activities were usually staged to benefit a community activity. Photo courtesy of Louise McNair Ryder.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The students of Floris Vocational High School, 1924.

Identified in July, 1970, as follows: Top row left to right: Jay Leith, Warren Rosenburger, Jessie Torreyson, George T. McWhorter, III, Marie Poland Bonde, Stella Sibley Jones, Eunice Milam Middleton (teacher), Audrey Barton, Kelsie Hornbaker; Second row: Irving McNair, Louise Melcher Ritter, Kate Patton Kincheloe, Sarah Patton Middleton, Rebecca Middleton, Bradley Shear, Gilbert Presgrave; Third row: Amy Rogers Nixon, Elsie Andrews Brown, Georgeanna Brogden Harrison, Camilla Carson Harnsburger, Kneeland Leith, Irene Rogers Deuterman, Welby Nalls, Wade Bennett; Fourth row: Frances Leith Greenwade, Lena Andrews, Gladys Robey Embrey, Emma Ellmore, Gem Thompson, Alan Allison Fleming, Howard Armfield, George Harrison, Allan Shear, Edgar Reeves; Fifth row: Sue Creel, Grafton Utterback, Richard Lee, John Keyes; Sixth row: William McWhorter, Martha Smith, Harriet Moulthrop Cheek, Erline Bready, Oliver Keyes, Withers Murphy, Charles Austin, John Hessick, Joseph Beard; Seventh row: Ruth Higdon, Rosalie Smith, Eleanor Bowers Matthews, Mary Smith Douglas, Daniel Nalls, Ralph Armfield, Turner Hornbaker, Frank Kidwell, Carroll Murphy; Eighth row: Bessie Beard Garrett, Ruby Hyatt, Gladys Utterback, Elma Middleton Nalls, Ned Sutphin; Ninth row: Katherine Hummer, Bernice West, Lillian Adrian Munday, Ruby Ambler Bocato, Elizabeth Powell Austin, Mae Blevins, Virginia Presgrave Harrison, Dora c.o.x Robey, Kathlene Adrian Presgrave. Photo courtesy of Emma Ellmore.]

Studious or not, the Floris pupils also had their share of fun at school. Richard Peck recalled playing several pranks during school hours, such as catching copperhead snakes and letting them loose in the cla.s.sroom, or mixing together soil samples painstakingly collected for County agent Derr. Much to the mischievous students' hilarity, a puzzled Derr remarked, "I had no idea the soil was so uniform out here."[245]

Though afternoon farmwork occupied most of the pupils' spare time, some extra-curricular activities were also offered. Plays were given annually by the senior cla.s.s, an example being the 1925 production of "Home Times" billed as "very attractive" by the _Herndon News-Observer_.[246]

The Floris Vocational High School also boasted highly compet.i.tive athletic teams, especially in basketball and track. For a school of its size, it showed unusual competence and enthusiasm, winning both boys'

and girls' county basketball champions.h.i.+ps several years running. In 1928 their track team competed with 800 high schools in the state, finis.h.i.+ng fifth overall and claiming two of the seven records which were broken.[247] In this, as in the academic standing of the vocational school, the community's dynamism and interest influenced its high degree of excellence.

Graduation exercises were also community events. The students worked for weeks planning a memorable evening for proud parents, friends and relations. The 1927 graduation from Floris Vocational High School featured an invocation by Reverend Glenn Cooper of the Floris Methodist Church, valedictory and salutatory addresses given by Virginia Presgraves and Joseph Beard, respectively, and a talk on the promising future for farmers by Professor Walter Newman of VPI which the local paper described as "worthy of the attention of any farming community in our state." These formalities were followed by musical selections, including a duet by Gilbert Presgraves and Joseph Beard, who sang the school song, "Our Old High." Next came the presentation of diplomas "in a most pleasing fas.h.i.+on." Wrote the _Herndon News-Observer_: "Each student was complimented on his success while his cla.s.smates were roused to great hilarity by some well-directed humor."[248]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A maypole dance held at the Floris Elementary School in 1923. Celebrations of this sort were held each May 1. Miss Katie Grok is the teacher on the right. Photo courtesy of Margaret Mary Lee.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A 1910 photograph of the Floris Elementary School, built in 1900. The building was replaced by a two-year high school the next year. Copy of photo in Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.]

Floris Vocational High School graduated its last cla.s.s in 1930. The previous year the school board had voted to consolidate the county's schools. The school consolidation movement was aimed princ.i.p.ally at small one and two-room schoolhouses; by combining these local inst.i.tutions, better facilities could be afforded and, consequently, teachers of high caliber attracted. The county's farm families had clamoured for just such a reorganization for many years, but the measure was contingent on the availability of good roads because rural children would have to travel some distance to the new district schools. The purpose of the judgment as pa.s.sed did not really pertain to the Floris School, yet it came under the school-board's jurisdiction and consequently the Floris High School pupils were moved with those of Forestville to join Herndon High School.[249]

Agriculture courses were also offered at Herndon High School, for example, in 1933, 43 boys were enrolled in farm-oriented programs. Yet, the closing of the Vocational High School was a decisive loss for Floris. The school had been built and maintained by local money and labor and was thus a strong focal point in the neighborhood. It had encouraged community self-esteem and the area's pride had been reflected in the strong academic programs the school produced. The district high schools were less personal in nature and broader in scope; they did not so accurately fulfill an individual locale's needs. An ill.u.s.tration of this was the rigid adherence to school attendance regulations at Herndon High School. Whereas a neighborhood school would often allow a farm boy or girl to be excused from cla.s.ses during peak work periods of harvesting or butchering, the new consolidated schools were less flexible. In one case a student who persisted in helping his family was continually kept behind and never did graduate. Like other "progressive"

movements, consolidation of rural schools advanced the quality of life in only some areas. It made available more modern equipment and a wider range of teachers and curriculum, but in social relations and community benefit, the advantages were not so clearcut.[250]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Home Economics and Future Farmer's Club of Floris Vocational High School in the mid-1920s. Photo courtesy of Emma Ellmore.]

The other main inst.i.tutions which gave character and definition to the Floris community were the churches. There were three places of wors.h.i.+p there in the 1920s and 1930s, all of them protestant. The old Frying Pan Baptist Church had been a continuous congregation since the mid-eighteenth century. They were the least social and most dogmatic in their religious practice; members of the other churches used adjectives such as "old school" or "hard-sh.e.l.l" to describe the Baptists. After the turn of the century and during the Depression, the Baptist Church was less regenerative than the others in Floris and most of the members were older people.[251]

Less doctrinaire, the Floris Methodist Church and Floris Presbyterian Church, were a more active part of the community. The church buildings, with their large seating capacity, made natural auditoriums for farmers'

meetings, lectures and entertainments. The two churches cooperated in sponsors.h.i.+p of an Epworth Youth League, which, though it held its Sunday night meetings in the more centrally located Methodist Church, was non-denominational in character. The Reverend Glenn Cooper reported in 1927 that "the Floris League, being an independent and a community organization does not take up any denominational work, but is interested in local charities and its own entertainment."[252] The Presbyterian and Methodist churches also worked together in planning holiday programs and avoided conflicts by considerately scheduling their important festivals on different dates. At Christmastime, they were especially careful to plan their carol programs so that the entire community could attend both services. As there was a great deal of intermarriage between the two churches, this also reduced family strife.[253] Both groups welcomed members of other faiths. One Presbyterian recalled an occasion when his father greeted a new family just moving into the neighborhood and invited them to attend the local services. "This man said, 'Well, you know I'm a Roman Catholic.' My Dad said, 'It doesn't make any difference what you are, we'd sure like to have you come if you can.' This was the general att.i.tude."[254] Indeed, so ec.u.menical had the organizations become that the General Conference of the Methodist Church became somewhat alarmed. As early as 1905 this body noted that although its members were leading quiet, orderly lives and attended church services frequently, still the congregation was "not satisfactory in some very essential respects." "Our people have been in the past and are now very negligent and indifferent as to the duty of informing themselves about our doctrines and church policy," stated the minutes of the church's quarterly conference. "There must be a more general study of the church discipline and a larger circulation and a close and careful reading of our church papers."[255]

The churches were rarely used for political purposes. Instead, the farmers relied on their farmer's clubs to exert this kind of pressure and seemed to feel that the religious bodies should concentrate on paving the spiritual road to heaven rather than the connecting road to the market. In addition to the regular activities of Sunday school, Bible cla.s.ses and regular wors.h.i.+p services, however, these inst.i.tutions fulfilled a strong need for fellows.h.i.+p and social interaction.

Sunday school picnics and ice cream socials were perennial favorites sponsored each summer by the churches. The picnics were frequently held on attractive parts of neighboring farms, or sometimes as far away as Seneca or Great Falls. Each family would bring a large hamper of food, but the fried chicken, watermelon and pies were spread out on the tables to be shared by everyone. While the parents gossiped or talked politics, the children played and sometimes went swimming. These picnics, like other community events, were held jointly by the Methodists and Presbyterians.[256] The ice cream socials, however, were another story.

Here a mild rivalry set in as ladies vied with one another to produce the most admirable cake, and even a slight compet.i.tion arose over the ice cream. An area resident confided that there was some speculation about which denomination's members owned cows giving the creamiest milk, thus producing the "most sinfully rich" ice cream.[257] No doubt this comparison diminished in importance when one was faced with the wide variety of homemade flavors, using fresh fruits and extracts. Sometimes in early summer the socials would feature strawberries along with the ice cream. On a quiet summer evening, with the fireflies flickering like beacon lights and a whispering breeze lapping at tableclothes and skirts, these must have been particularly pleasant events.[258]

Significant holidays also brought about special church programs. At Easter the churches were banked with flowers and a singular rejoicing occurred, and on Mother's Day an appropriate program was offered. The 1926 service included a suitable sermon and original Mother's Prayer by the minister and several selections by the choir, among them "When Mother Sang to Me," "Don't Forget the Old Folks," and "Our Mother."[259]

The year's main celebration was, of course, at Christmas. Each church had a Christmas tree, cut by an adult, but decorated with "feet and almost miles" of popcorn strings by the neighborhood's young people, including those just returning home for the holidays. The warm ambiance of these services is evident in the following description, recounted by Joseph Beard:

They always had the little people from what you consider the primary grades on up to sixth or seventh grade recite some little poem or some story or something of this kind. You nearly always had a chorus or choir, small, of people in the neighborhood that would sing Christmas carols. You always had a minister who read or recited the Christmas story from the Bible.... The churches were lighted with oil lamps, and they would put candles on the Christmas tree, wax candles and they would light those wax candles and then blow out the lights. It's a wonder we never set the church on fire.... But there would be this beautiful tree with all these lights on it, and hidden down under the tree somewhere would be a great big crate of oranges. Santa Claus usually came in and ... he would ring sleigh bells and walk down through the aisle and make some kind of remark. He would have a sack on his back. This always held tiny little sacks of candy. They started with the smallest children and gave each one of them one orange and one sack of hard candy. They went on up the line as far as the oranges and the candy lasted. If you didn't have a crowd even the adults would get a sack of candy and an orange, but if you had a large crowd, why it stopped at whatever age it ran out along the line. This was an affair at which the program would probably take an hour, an hour and fifteen minutes. But it was cold in there you know ... they'd have a great big, old pot bellied stove, but it was in one place in the church. Everybody couldn't sit around that stove, so you sat there in your overcoats sometimes.[260]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Miss Gladys Thompson and the Floris Community Orchestra, 1929. The members at this time included: Front row: Haley Smith, Louise c.o.c.kerill, Louise McNair; Second row: Richard Peck, unidentified, Miss Gladys Thompson (director), Jack Patton, Mary Peck, Franklin Ellmore; Back row: Helen Presgraves, Ethel Andrews, Mary Win Nickell, Elizabeth Ellmore, Helen Peck. The old car in the background is the one in which Miss Thompson first traveled. Note the old four-room schoolhouse also in the background. Photo courtesy of Louise McNair Ryder.]

Other groups offered activities to fill the farm family's leisure hours.

An elementary school teacher who taught music as a sideline, Gladys Thompson, organized an orchestra about 1928. It consisted of her violin pupils and other musically inclined citizens and was called the Floris Community Orchestra. Twelve violins, and mandolins, saxophones, piano, drums and banjo made up the group which played for school plays and community events. They also put on an annual recital and one year even gave a vaudeville show. "I remember she used to fill up her small one-seated roadster with music students going to practices and performances," fondly wrote a member of the orchestra, Louise McNair Ryder. "One of my greatest pleasures was clambering into the rumble seat with my violin."[261]