GO AND TELL AUNT MOLLY
© 2001 James David Pearce and Rebecca P. Pearce
There always was a lot of mud around the little Chowan River fishing town of Tunis.
The river there is barely above sea level, and heavy rains never did bring a lot of real dangerous flooding, but most of the ground around the place usually was damp and subject to sinking quite a bit under the weight of wagon and cart wheels and mule hoofs.
This kind of country makes for poor walking, and walking was something that most of the neighborhood folk were obliged to do. You couldn't go everywhere with a mule in tow ~ or towing you.
Things began to look up quite a bit when the Atlantic Coast Line railroad came through. The new main line ran from Rocky Mount to Norfolk, and crossed the river right near the village.
Where the railbed approached the water on the Hertford County side, the construction called for a lot of fill dirt that raised it several feet above the water line. On top of this was added a lot of gravel and heavy "ballast" ~ large crushed stone that was piled around the heavy cross-ties to hold them in place.
When the steel rails were added to the cross-ties, the folks climbed up and marveled at their new footpath, which they quickly put to use taking long walks to Cofield, a couple of miles west, and on to the little but booming new hamlet of Ahoskie, nine miles from the river. They knew the line had been built for heavier traffic ~ the new steam engines and passenger and freight cars that followed ~ but the trains were few and far between, leaving a lot of time and space for what people called "shank's mare."
On the east side, the Gates County side, there was little walking to be done. On that low bank, it took almost a mile or more just for the river's little wavelets to quit lapping at the legs of the cypresses, and it was quite a few miles more to any habitable ground where people lived. There were a lot of deer, black bear and bobcats, and the local fellows did like to don their boots once in a while and take their guns on the new tour line to see if anything interesting might be flushed from the swamp. But most of the railroad's foot traffic stayed on the west bank ~ with an occasional fisherman drowning worms or minnows from the trestle.
The trestle was a real piece of work, something the likes of which had never been seen in Hertford or Gates counties, much less Tunis and Cofield.
The river at Tunis is probably at least a half-mile wide, maybe more. Building a trestle that could support rail-cars and still open to allow riverboat traffic ~ most important in the late 1800s ~ was a job that called for real professionals. A lot of heavy pilings were sunk into the river. They were shored up with a lattice-work of heavy-duty cross-braces and supports and topped with large creosoted "runners" that footed the big cross-ties that sat under the steel rails. When the whole thing was tied together, it was a sight to see.
And on some Sunday afternoons, a lot of the more daring local folks would walk out on the trestle, probably just to test it ~ and themselves.
It was tricky walking on the ties of the trestle, because there was no "ballast" here ~ that stuff between the ties. If you weren't careful with your walking, you could take a nasty fall into a deep river quite a few feet below.
But it was better than walking in the mud along the shore.
~~~
Catherine Creek winds lazily
around "downtown" Tunis
~~~
On the Gates County shore across
from Tunis, the Chowan merges
slowly with the forest
And then there were the young folks, spunky and adventurous ~ the young boys and girls who liked to hold hands and take a stroll out on the river.
Molly Greene and Pete Wilson were a pair of them. Though they had lived their entire lives within a few thousand yards of the big river, neither of them could swim a lick. They had been on the water many a time in a rowboat, but strolling the trestle a dozen feet up was to them something magical ~ "walking on the water," they called it. Just the thing to do after a Sunday morning filled with preaching and teaching.
That's where Molly and Pete were that Sunday morning when they heard the train. It was a freight, unannounced.
And they were almost halfway across the river. Almost to the "draw" in the center of the long trestle.
~~~~~~~~~
James Liverman was a fishermen, one of a breed to whom Sunday was just another day to be on the water, particularly in the spring.
James was rolling some trotlines, packing some pound nets and moving some buckets into his work boat when he heard the murmur of the rails that announced the approaching freight, still out of sight in Gates County.
Glancing toward the trestle, which was about 200 yards downstream from his boat, he saw two youngsters, almost as far out as the draw.
He could see they were making hard for the Tunis shore, but because of the space between the ties, their stride was as choppy as the wind-kissed water below.
"Lord have mercy," he said. "They ain't never going to make it."
~~~~~~~~~
The fisherman dropped the buckets he had been moving, and pushed hard to move his boat away from the muddy bank. When it drifted free, he jumped in and grabbed his oars.
Rowing a boat means you can't see what's happening where you're going, but James Liverman was an experienced river-man who could hit the oars hard and steer by the trees and landmarks on the shore he had always known. He aimed for the point on the trestle where he estimated he might intercept the two youngsters.
He rowed with powerful strokes, but he knew he was losing the race with the train. When he was within 100 feet of the trestle, the change in the rattle of the rails told him the freight had left the Gates County roadbed and was on the trestle.
He didn't dare turn his head to look for fear he might lose a stroke, and he pulled with all his strength. But when he heard the train behind him, and then saw it moving into the trees, he knew he was beaten. He pulled his oars and let the boat drift in its forward motion until the bow touched a piling. He tossed a line around one cross-brace and then moved toward the stern to fasten another.
Only then would he look up toward the tracks.
~~~~~~~~~
And just under the rails, about 10 feet up, clinging to the cross-braces with all the arms and legs they had, he recognized Molly Greene, 14, and Pete Wilson, 13.
"Lord help us," he exclaimed. "Are you younguns all right? You have scared the pure heck out of me."
Molly and Pete made their way down the cross-braces and dropped into the boat.
Taking her place on the board seat near the stern, Molly smoothed her soiled dress down over her petticoat and bloomers, and looked at the trembling fisherman.
"Aw, heck, Mr. Liverman," she said. "Pete and me, we weren't even scared at all."
~~~~~~~~~
During the school term, while she was staying with relatives and studying at the academy in Harrellsville, Molly Greene met Lucy Fairless.
Lucy was a "milliner," a maker of ladies' hats in a time when ladies wore lots of hats ~ big hats, with feathers and fake flowers and all sorts of other decorations. They had big crowns and little crowns, some with brims up in front and down in back, and some with brims up in back and down in front, but always with big, big brims. Sometimes the brims would be almost two feet in diameter, requiring a lot of space in the church house for women who usually didn't much more than top five feet.
Lucy took a liking to Molly, and started instructing her in the art of making hats. Molly proved an apt pupil, so apt that by the time she completed school and Lucy and her husband moved up to Baltimore, she was able to take over the little millinery business in eastern Hertford County.
~~~
1906 hat
on Thelma
Christine Leonhirth
Her clientele grew as word spread about the little girl who made such pretty big hats. Somebody suggested that she ride the train into Ahoskie and open a shop there.
The busy train schedule was such that she could climb aboard for a nine-mile morning commute toward the west and a day in Molly's Millinery Shop, and an afternoon ride back toward Tunis.
By the time she was 19, she had proved to be such an adept hat-fashioner and such an astute businesswoman that word of her and her hats had spread 50 miles up the rails to the northeast, to the big busy seaport of Norfolk.
She made the trip often to supply that city's big stores with the latest in top-fashions from Hertford County.
She would usually spend a whole day there, railroading up in the morning and back at night, taking her mid-day lunch in some of the town's finer eateries.
During lunch one day, Molly Greene met Kellinger Cotton.
~~~~~~~~~
Kellinger Cotton was still reasonably young, 29, but a seasoned seafaring man. He was a ship's engineer on the SS Montrose.
His ship, called a "collier," hauled coal. At that time and for most of the recent years, the Montrose worked back and forth between Hampton Roads, Va., and Mobile, Ala. The black gold from western Virginia came by rail to Norfolk, was loaded onto Kellinger's freighter and moved by way of Cape Hatteras and the Florida Straits to Mobile, where it again hit the rails for the trip up to Birmingham, the "Pittsburgh of the South."
The voyage past Diamond Shoals off Hatteras and through the straits at the tip of Florida wasn't the easiest or safest for merchant seamen of the time, but the runs were regular and the pay was good in the pre-World War I steamship days.
Molly and Kellinger began to meet for lunch more frequently during his stopovers to pick up coal in Norfolk.
And Molly became Mrs. Kellinger Cotton and they settled down in Phoebus, up Hampton Roads near Fort Monroe.
She moved her milliner's shop to Phoebus, and her fame spread. With her thriving business and Kellinger's good-paying sea duty, they bought a nice house. And Kellinger Jr. arrived just in time to be wheeled in his carriage to the ferry dock the next time his dad came home.
~~~
1910 hat
on unidentified wearer
with Ernest M. Pearce
But calm waters can get rough, and like many women who watched their mates go down to the sea, Molly Cotton learned a hard lesson.
It was before the time of Marconi and Fessenden, and there was no ship-to-shore communication except when messages might be exchanged by passing ships and relayed when one of them made port. When the sailor left, the wife just waited, tended the kids, and in Molly's case, made her famous hats.
During one run from Norfolk to Mobile, Kellinger's collier joined the roll of ships that never returned. There was no word at all. Nothing from passing freighters or liners.
Whether the Montrose hit a shoal off Hatteras or foundered in the straits, or whether her crew just decided to burn the full load of coal and scuttle her off some South Pacific island, there was no way to know.
The Montrose ~ and Kellinger Sr. ~ were just plain gone.
Molly Cotton was left to wait and wonder, for seven years, and to raise their son, and to make Floradora hats.
~~~
1916 hat
on Rosa Pearce
The seven-year wait was required by law in the case of disappearances at sea. If nothing was seen or heard by then, the missing mariner was officially dead, and then Molly was officially a widow.
~~~~~~~~~
Years ~ and war ~ came and went. Kellinger Jr. became a man. Molly became a suffragette, and kept making hats that now were being sold as far north as Baltimore.
~~~~~~~~~
Molly Greene Cotton had a brother, Dorsey Greene, back in Hertford County. When their father died, their mother married a farmer named Hoggard. From this union came several more offspring, one of whom was Betty Bee, a half-sister to Molly and Dorsey.
Betty Bee married a farmer named Copeland, and from this union there were several children, among them Annie Elnora, or Nora.
Nora became the second wife of a widowed carpenter named Pearce, and from this union there came three girls and two boys, all of whom were reared with stories of the famous woman whose hats were sold as far north as Baltimore ~ the wife of a seafarer ~ who as a child had climbed down the trestle at Tunis to escape the train.
~~~~~~~~~
Go and tell Aunt Molly, go and tell Aunt Molly,
Go and tell Aunt Molly, the old gray goose is dead.~~~~~~~~~
One of Nora's boys married, and he and his wife moved to Raleigh and reared a family of their own. Occasionally Nora stayed at their house.
Dorsey Greene came by to visit one day, telling Nora, "Oh, by the way, you remember my sister Molly"?
"Oh, yes," said Nora. "Aunt Molly Cotton! Where is she now"?
"Well," said Dorsey, "she may be here in Raleigh before long. Kellinger Jr. works for the Alamo Plaza motel chain, and travels around the country opening new motels. I understand they're planning one here. Molly stays with them some."
When Nora's boy brought home a newspaper that said Alamo Plaza indeed was opening a new motel on the north side of Raleigh, his wife made a few phone calls and found that the temporary manager in charge of opening was Kellinger Cotton Jr., and that Molly would be in town for a while.
Nora was overjoyed, and everybody else in the family was interested, so it was arranged that when Molly came to town, Nora and all her children would gather around to meet her.
~~~
1962 hat
on Cricket
with mother Becky
When the day came, Nora, her daughters Marie, Gwendolyn and Lois gathered at Jim and Becky's place. Stanley was off somewhere in the Air Force.
The big Buick turned into the yard, and Kellinger Cotton Jr. jumped out and ran around to the passenger side to assist his mother, now in her 70s.
He needn't have bothered. The spry lady, big hat perched on her head, already had the door open and was dismounting. She made her way to the front porch several steps ahead of him.
As she was ushered into the dining room, where the table already was set for a family dinner, Kellinger Jr. said, "Now, mother, as soon as you are ready to come home, you have Mrs. Pearce call me and I'll be right over to get you."
The hat pin was coming out and the hat was coming off when Molly replied:
"Kellinger Cotton, don't you fret one minute about me. I could take care of myself before you were born, and I can take care of myself now.
"When I get ready to come home, I'll take a trolley."
When Becky started to demur, Molly went on:
"And if they don't have a trolley, I'll take a bus. And if they don't have a bus, I'll call a taxi. And if they don't have a taxi, he (Jim) will take me home. You run along now, and I'll get myself back to your motel."
~~~~~~~~~
The lunch went wonderfully, with a fascinated family sitting enthralled as Molly Cotton told her story. The younger women, all of whom now were married with kids of their own, gave particularly rapt attention to the tales of Tunis, the trestle, the sailor, the suffragette and the hats from Harrellsville that were sold in Baltimore.
And Molly kept talking. And kept talking.
She didn't really get boring, but Nora's girls were beginning to show signs of unease ~ cases of the " nervous fidgets."
They all had become fans of cigarettes, and the long spell without their doses of nicotine was beginning to have an effect.
One by one they would excuse themselves to go the bathroom.
After several hours, with Molly still going strong, two and even three began to steal away at the same time, into one of the back bedrooms.
~~~~~~~~~
Molly, taking note of the growing quiet around her, suddenly stopped talking.
"Where are the girls?"
As she arose from her chair at the table and moved toward the living room, she glanced down the hallway and saw Gwendolyn open a bedroom door on the way to the bathroom, with a cigarette in her hand and trailing a thin line of blue smoke.
Molly stalked down the hall, stopping Gwendolyn cold.
She opened the bedroom door and in one glance took in the full situation.
The girls were milling around the bedroom, ashtrays at hand and cigarettes at full puff, with a smoky haze hanging a few inches below the entire ceiling.
"Smoking!" she exclaimed.
"Good Lord, have mercy," she said. "You girls!"
She reached into her pocketbook and removed a slender, palm-sized silver-coated case, from which she extracted a Chesterfield King.
"I've been sitting here for three hours, just sitting and talking, and just about to die for a cigarette ~ and didn't want to light one because I didn't want to be responsible for corrupting you girls!
"Give me a light. Quick!"
~~~~~~~~~