File #4199: "Transcription"

Transcription

2017-001

Alex Whitehurst
HIST 441
Dr. Friss
11 April 2017
Delawder Interview Transcript
Alex Whitehurst: So, I am here, it is March 24th, 2017. I am here with Mr. Teddy Delawder,
and we are in Mt. Jackson Virginia, correct?
Teddy Delawder: Correct.
AW: Well thank you so much for being here. My name is Alex Whitehurst, the interviewer, and
I really appreciate you taking the time to tell us about your life experiences, your story, and learn
something about Bird Haven, because that’s why we’re here. So I guess my first question, to
start off, would be: are you from this area?
TD: Yes.
AW: And you have lived here your whole life?
TD: Except for the time I was in the service, and then I lived in Arizona for a couple years, and
then I lived in Roanoke for about fifteen years, and then I moved back up here.
AW: So your childhood was here?
TD: Oh, yeah.
AW: And what was that like?
TD: Not very eventful (laughs). When I was a boy growing up, there wasn’t anything around
here like it is today. On the weekends, for fun, we’d just, couple of us boys would just…today
they call it hiking. We just called it running away from home. We used to walk up to the top of
the mountain. We used to go down to the old dodge place, and that was the place where Bird
Haven stored toys that weren’t sold. Basically, the toys that I remember were boats, great big
boxes of boats, and we used to get those boats now and then and take them down to the creek
and float them down the creek down towards Stony Creek. I don’t know, maybe they’re down in
the Chesapeake Bay now, I don’t know (laughs).
AW: So these were miniature boats?
TD: Yes, very, they were small. I don’t know, maybe, less than a foot long, thereabouts. And
they had two different styles. One was like a barge, like it was just a square across the front,
square across the back, and just straight on the side. Then it had a palette-house right on the
deck of the boat. And they had, as I remember, dowels at each corner. And then they had
another one that was shaped more like a boat, a ship, where it was pointed in the front, the bow,
and then tapered back, and it had a palette-house, and I can’t remember if it had a chimney stack
on it or not, but there were two different styles. I always like the ship-looking one better than the
barge. They both floated well (laughs). The dodge barn is no longer there. It was tore down
years ago. But when were kids, it was almost tore down then. It was dilapidated. But that was,
on the weekends that’s what we did a lot. We just, we’d walk. Just visit different things around,
you know, a couple of us boys. No girls involved. There wasn’t a girl within two miles of me
growing up that wasn’t my cousin, so no girls (laughs).
AW: And your grandfather was the one who worked at Bird Haven, is that correct?

TD: No, I don’t know how many of my relatives may have worked there. I know that my
granddad had some pieces of furniture that were made at Bird Haven, but I don’t know exactly
how he got it. I know one of his daughters did work at Bird Haven, my aunt. My aunt that
worked at Bird Haven worked in the department where they varnished stuff, and she was
pregnant when she worked there. She had a daughter that was born with birth defects. And that
daughter is still alive, although she was never a total person. Even as a young girl, she didn’t
have any mentality. She’s still alive, but now she’s, and she never spoke, she made sounds and
all. But she’s totally blind, I believe, and she’s been in a nursing facility in Charlottesville for a
good long time, and she’s probably a couple years younger than I am, and I’m seventy-three, so
she’s probably close to seventy or so now. But they think that maybe the work she did caused
the birth defects. No proof. My dad, well back to my granddad, when my granddad, they had a
sale, personal property, and granddad had a set of dishes from Shenandoah Community Workers,
which is what Bird Haven was called. It was like an eight or twelve place setting of china and all
kinds things to go along with that. Tea cups and saucers, and the auctioneer was going to sell it
as one bulk piece, and so many people wanted to have a piece of that history, cause that’s the
only set that I ever saw. We talked him into selling it a piece at a time. It bought a little bit more
money than it would have it would’ve been bought…
AW: I would imagine.
TD: And I know…to show you how silly some people can be, I’ve got a couple of cracked tea
cups and cracked saucers, but I got them. There were some, I don’t know what they would call
them, but they were things that you put jam in, with a little spoon. They weren’t very big,
something like that, perhaps, and I think we got two or three of those that came in a set of them.
But we have those that we bought at that sale. And he had some other things, and then my wife,
she goes on the internet all the time, and anytime she finds something for sale from Bird Haven
she’ll bid on it. As a matter of fact, one of you guys interviewed with some people in Ortney,
and her mom worked at Bird Haven when she was, I don’t know if she was even alive then, but
her mom worked there, and she made puzzles. Bird Haven made wooden jigsaw puzzles back in
those days. My wife had a jigsaw puzzle from Bird Haven that she had bought someplace
online. And then we have some bowls and things like that we’ve gotten off the internet.
Whenever we go out and see a sale, any place that they have things like that, if it’s reasonable,
we’ll get it. They didn’t just make toys, although it was called the Toy Factory. It had Bird
Haven, Shenandoah Community Workers, Toy Factory. They made different things. I
remember they had birds, like cardinals and robins that were just on a stick that you stuck in the
ground in your yard. And I remember, as a boy, you’d see those around different people’s
homes and stuff. As a matter of fact, I think we have one or two of those, too, that we got
someplace. My granddad had a fold-up table, and it was kind of dilapidated when we got it, but
it was a memory of my granddad in Bird Haven. We have that. I don’t remember what year
Bird Haven closed down from making anything, but the last things I know that they did
manufacture was bowls, salad bowls. They had different size bowls, and then they had
individual salad bowls, and then bigger ones, and wooden spoons. One of the guys that worked
there worked in the department, I say department, it was a small, standalone, cinderblock
building where they had two lathes in there, and he and another fellow would make those bowls.
I remember, as a kid, going in there and watching them on the lathe. It was fascinating to watch
how artistic they could be with a lathe and all and turned out the bowls. The other thing that
Bird Haven did when I was a boy was, there was no place around here where you could go and
have lumber planed. A lot of the old buildings and all around here you would see, the lumber in

them would be rough lumber. It wasn’t planed or anything, it was rough from the sawmill. And
if you wanted it planed off, you had to go someplace to get it done. I know that Bird Haven used
to do that, to some extent, for people. I don’t know how much they were willing to do at one
time or how large of pieces you could do or anything, but I know…I was about twelve or
thirteen, and my dad was building a house, and I remember that we got some lumber planed,
then, for the house that we built. I say “we” because I dug a lot of the footers for it. That was
one of the other things they would do, you know, just for the community. There was a post
office there at Bird Haven. As a matter of fact, I meant to look on by birth certificate, I think my
birth certificate says I was born in Bird Haven.
AW: Really?
TD: Because that was the post office. And I can remember the mail carrier had a van, well it
wasn’t called a van then…whatever they were called back then, multiple-passenger vehicle, and
that’s what he used to go to town and get the mail and bring it back. Mr. Will was his name. He
used to go down there to Bird Haven, to the post office. I don’t know when they actually closed
the post office, at Bird Haven and then finally moved it to Basye, but that’s the address of it now.
AW: You talked a lot about how the people around here are interested in collecting the things
from Bird Haven, buying them online and at these estate sales and things. Do you know why
there’s so much interest in them?
TD: It’s local. It’s local stuff, and I guess back, during the war, that time period, that was one of
the places that stayed in business. I hear a lot of people talking about the female of the family
working there, so, you know, like my aunt did, and I know some other people, their mothers
worked there. It’s just, it’s local, and of interest to people. At least, I think that’s why. My wife
is too young for her to remember Bird Haven, but she’s still interested in the Bird Haven stuff.
So, whenever we can get the opportunity, we’ll buy a piece. And sometimes we don’t even
realize that’s what it is until we get it and look at it. Sometimes, they had a stamp of some type
on the bottom. It may have been a paper label. Every now and then, you’ll see a metal-type tag,
and sometimes it’s just burnt into the wood, “Bird Haven.” I don’t know to what extent
Shenandoah Community Workers was, but I do know that, like that china, that was actually the
name on the china. I wrote down a couple of things I wanted to be sure to mention. I don’t
know if you guys will be the ones that talk with a guy named Richard Barb. Richard’s dad,
Stuart Barb, was the fellow that ran the lathe, and Stuart is about two years older than I am. If
anyone remembers things firsthand, I believe it might be Richard, because he was a little older
than me, and his dad worked there, and their home was adjacent to Bird Haven. I don’t know if
it was on the Bird Haven property or not, but I know that you had to go past the Toy Factory to
get to their house. That was the only access that they had, so it may have been part of Bird
Haven proper. Richard will probably know as much as anybody about the things. That’s the
extent of my notes (laughs).
AW: You talked about how you would go and watch them working sometimes. Was it kind of
open? Like could the kids walk through the work area?
TD: Well, I guess they had two doors, but it was a small building, probably it wasn’t twelve by
twelve. I can’t remember if it had any windows in the front of it or not, but that lathes faced the
one wall, and when you walked in you would be behind the lathes, or in front of the lathes I
guess, actually, and the worker would be in front of you as you faced that wall. They had two
lathes in there, side by side. So there wasn’t, you really didn’t walk through and…you know,
they would run it a little bit while you were in there, but you couldn’t talk or anything because of
the noise that the lathe made, you know the motor and the cutting the wood. I think that they

used maple, for the most part, for the bowls and stuff they made. At least that’s what it looked
like. Usually, when it was varnished, it was a dark color. I guess food-grade varnish, whatever.
AW: Is the building you’re talking about the main building? You said that there was
something…
TD: No.
AW: This was an auxiliary building?
TD: The building where they planed the lumber was a separate building, the building where the
post office was was a separate building, and the main building was another separate building,
and that’s where they made a lot of the other stuff. The one where the lathe was was just a small,
standalone building. They were all separated, they weren’t adjoining in any way. All the
buildings except the one where the planer was and the one where the lathe was…those two were
block. The others were frame. Country-style, weatherboarding type, wood siding.
AW: So block would be, like, a cinder block?
TD: Right.
AW: Do you know why, if there was any motivation for building them that way? That’s just
how they were?
TD: Time, perhaps. I don’t know. I do know that, when I was younger, Hepner Brothers at Mt.
Jackson was a large maker of concrete cement blocks, and it’s possible that that was it. And the
lathe, where it was, it was a lot of shavings and all, and it was a possibility of sparks, you know,
if it would catch, you know, the building would go up pretty quick. So, the fact that it was block,
cinderblock, it was less apt to happen. And the fact that Hepner Brothers was available, and
made it easy to get the cinderblocks. That’s possibly why they did it. I never heard a reason
behind it, but those were the only ones that were not wood frame.
AW: And you said the Hepner family. I saw, we were walking around before you got here and
we saw that they’re everywhere back here. Is that a big family in the area?
TD: In the area, yes. Even now, the Hepners are still part of the church. I know that the first
person that was ever buried here at the church was buried in 1887, I believe, before the church
was completed. It was a young person that passed away, and their name was Hepner. And they
were buried at the very corner of the church out here. And then some members of the Hepners
have been part of the church forever. I can’t remember the actual founders of the church, I’m
sure there were some Hepners in there. In the main part of the church, we have a tree, and the
trunk of the tree are the founders. All of their names are on the trunk, and then all the members
are leaves on the tree. That’s from the beginning of the church, and my wife, she’s had a lot to
do with that. She tries to keep that up with baptisms and everything, church members. That
cemetery thing, she’s done, and she’s in the process now of getting a thing out in the churchyard
to show all the locations of all the graves and who’s there, so that people visiting, you know, can
see if they know the person’s name they can look at the listing and find it. The church had its
hundredth anniversary in 1987, and she did a church history, and she’s in the process of updating
that now, because that’s been a while. I know, when she and first got together, she was living in
Waynesboro and I was living in Roanoke, and I used to go to Waynesboro in the evenings, after
work, and we’d go to the library in Waynesboro, and she would get newspapers from this area
from the Library of Congress sent to Waynesboro library. And we’d go over to the library and
look through microfish at old newspapers, and get out old tidbits of history and things like that.
That was before we got married, and it was quite interesting to do that research because, in those
days, they published everything in the newspaper. You would almost call it a gossip column,
but, then, it wasn’t gossip; it was news (laughs). One article…my wife’s family, her great-

grandfather…in the newspaper, it said, “Anybody interested in any pigs? Mr. Lemmey’s old
sow had fourteen pigs,” or somethings like that (laughs). It was actually an article in the
newspaper about it. Anything was news back then. My kids pick on me all the time, “Dad,
when you were young, it wasn’t history. You were living it.”
AW: Well that’s part of the reason we’re here. Is to get those histories down, so that’s
awesome.
TD: I know that my wife used to go to my dad, when he was still alive, and talk to him, and he
would tell stories. Not untrue stories, usually, on purpose. She did a lot of writing, and all,
about things that he would tell her about. And then I had an uncle, he was the last living relative
from my grandmother’s ear. When my little girl was, she must have been a year, year and a half
old, we would go over to his house. Back then, VHS was the first media, and we would take the
VCR and set it up and just run it and let him talk. So, we have that. History has always been one
of my wife’s things that she’s really interested in, and we have a lot of newspaper articles and
different things like that that she collects and is interested in. The old hotel at Ortney, 1980s, it
was renovated. They actually, I don’t know if you all have been to the hotel at Ortney, but it’s a
pretty big building, and it four or five stories, the main building. Four or five stories tall, and
then the other building are only, maybe, like two or three stories tall. But that main building,
five stories, they jacked that whole thing up off the ground. You could see right through
underneath of it, all the foundation and everything, and they completely restored all the footers
and all the timbers and everything underneath of it. They renovated a lot of the inside and the
outside. And after they had it renovated, basically, they put black plastic over the whole building
and fumigated it. At night, you could drive by there, and there was a light upstairs in the top
floor. I don’t know what color it really was, but it shined blue through that black tarp. I don’t
know how many rolls of film I took of the hotel being renovated. Because I’d come up most
every weekend, because I was living in Roanoke, and I’d come up, and I’d take pictures of the
hotel as the process went on. After my wife and I got married, we started comparing pictures,
and she was doing the same thing.
AW: It was a sign.
TD: (laughs) So, we have a lot of pictures of the hotel being renovated. Around here, you don’t
talk about people, because you’re probably talking about my relatives. Or somebody’s relatives,
because it all gets linked back somehow or another. My wife and I were married, I think about
two years, and her mom gave her a collage for Christmas one year. It was a picture of her
mother’s mother’s mother, I believe it was. Anyhow, it was back several generations. The man
and woman were Mary and Chris Barb. And that was my wife’s mother’s mother’s mother. I
told my wife, I said, “I’ve seen that picture before.” And my granddad, he lived with us the last
few years he was alive. He was ninety-one when he passed away, and he had a suitcase that he
had pictures in. I went to that suitcase, and there is that picture of Mary and Chris Barb. Mary
and Chris were my grandfather’s mother’s mom and dad.
AW: Okay.
TD: So, my wife and I are third cousins or something like that, but had no idea. My wife made
thing that we take to family reunions all the time, and it’s a family tree type thing. They have my
family on one side and her family on the other one, and they start out with Mary and Chris Barb
(laughs).
AW: Not something you expected, huh?

TD: No, no, and we never even had any idea before. But that’s the way it was. I remember my
granddaddy’s mother…I remember her quite well. She was pretty old when I was younger, but
she and my wife’s mother’s mother were sisters. It’s fascinating.
AW: Is that something that happens a lot around here? In this are? Just because it’s so
enclosed?
TD: Small, today. Although…well, I was going to say that my wife and I aren’t related, but then
that’s true either, is it (laughs). What do they say, if you go back fifty generations, or something
like that, we’re all related? You might be my cousin.
AW: How would we know? (laughs)
TD: I lived in Salem, Virginia for a while, and I had a mailbox. I lived in an apartment, but we
had mailboxes around, and this girl came over to me one day, and she said, “How do you spell
your last name?” I told her, and she said, “Because that was my maiden name.” Come to find
out, she was from over in West Virginia, over around Mathias. Mathias, West Virginia is just on
the other side of the mountain. It’s only like five miles from where my home is over to Mathias,
but the mountain is in between us. There’s a lot of Delawders that lived on the mountain. My
family was on this side of the mountain, and hers was on the other side of the mountain. We
were probably third cousins or something like that, because my dad told me about her side of the
family, that the one guy had like thirteen kids. That wasn’t uncommon back when I was
younger, either. I know that my cousins…Dave Klein was one of ten. And then I think they had
at least one…it may have been more than ten in his family. But at least one died when they were
young. Wasn’t another uncommon thing, early deaths. I know my mom lost her brother when
he was just a young teenager, and one of the ladies that used to run the post office at Ortney,
when I was in my teens, I was around there, I worked at Ortney, and she used to call me by my
mother’s brother’s name. Because she knew him, and we were about the same age when he
passed away. And that’s all that she ever called me. I don’t know if she ever knew my real
name or not (laughs). It’s interesting things like that. I was born and raised around here, until I
was twenty. I went in the service, was drafted in 1964. Spent two years in Arizona, and I got
out of the service and came back here and worked for Shantel for about a year. Fifth of
December, 1966, I was up on a telephone pole, and it was about thirty degrees, and the wind was
a-blowing, and it was snowing. I haven’t been up a telephone pole since. I went to Maryland
and got a job as a dispatcher for Maryland State Police, University of Maryland Campus Police.
I worked for them for a couple of years, and then I went to work for IBM, fixing computers.
Never saw a computer. Back in those days, not very many people had seen computers. But it
wasn’t just computers. Equipment, keypad punch and things like that, monitors, different kinds
of displays and stuff. Worked for them for thirty-four years. Transferred from Maryland to
Arizona, spent three years in Phoenix, then moved back to Roanoke, Virginia, lived there fifteen,
eighteen years, then, in 1989, transferred back up here so that our kids could go to the same
school we did when we were kids, because we both went to Stonewall. Stonewall Jackson High
School, Mount Jackson. When we first moved up here, our kids had multiple grandparents that
were still alive. That’s something that we felt was important, that kids know family. My
grandfather, he was ninety-one when he passed away, and my son was about one and a half, two.
Whenever my son would come into the room and Pappy, by grandfather, would see him, the two
of them, both of them’s faces would just light up. Pappy couldn’t hear very well, and my son
couldn’t talk very well, but the two of them had a wonderful relationship. We didn’t realize how
much young kids can remember until my son was three, and he was ring-bearer at my brother-inlaw’s wedding. His wife’s grandfather was there, and my son went up to him and said, “You

remind me of Pappy. I’m going to call you Pappy.” And that’s what he did. He was only a year
and a half old, maybe, when Pappy passed away, but he did remember. People used to pick on
us, my wife and I, because our kids, when they were teenagers, they’re now twenty-seven and
thirty, but when they were teenagers, in their early teens, had seen forty-eight states.
AW: Really? Wow.
TD: And my wife and I have seen fifty. Not when we were teenagers, but we used to do things
like…we’d go to the zoo in D.C. when they were little. People would say, “Why?” Hey, they
remember. And they enjoy seeing the critters as much as anybody, so why not? My son, he was
five when we went out west, and we went to Mount St. Helens. He still remembers Mount St.
Helens because…that was 1980s when it exploded, and we were there in ’95. The place was still
desolate. I mean every tree was just gone. The rivers were running murky grey because of the
ash. We bought a salt and pepper shaker, and it was the top of Mount St. Helens. They took and
split it, one half salt and one half pepper, and it fit in the cone that was left. He still remembers
Mount St. Helens “blew its top.” He was more fascinated with Mount St. Helens than he was
with the Grand Canyon.
AW: Really?
TD: Saguaro cactus interests the kids as much as the Grand Canyon did. They used to have a
name for the saguaros, but I don’t remember what they called ‘em now. Actually, there’s aa
national forest out in Arizona, Saguaro National Forest. Cactus national forest. The cactus is,
well, it’s wood inside, so I guess it is a tree of sorts. You don’t want to hug it, though. (laughs).
AW: Probably not.
TD: I was helping a guy…he built a house out there when I lived in Phoenix, and there was a
pretty big saguaro cactus right at the corner of his house. He left it there on purpose. This one
boy who was working with us, he was from Boston, and he had just moved to Arizona. He
wasn’t used to the Saguaro cactus. We were working on the house, and he leaned up against the
saguaro. (laughs)
AW: Probably didn’t do it twice.
TD: No, he didn’t do it twice. Yeah, they can be very prickly. We used to have a cactus…my
wife had one that was a house plant-type cactus. I don’t know what kind it was, but I know it
had a lot of little needles on it, and my son would put his hand on it, and I mean it just filled his
hand with spines. My wife took Elmer’s Glue, and put it on his hand where the needles were,
and let it set up. When she peeled it off, a lot of the spines came out. She had to repeat it a
couple times. She actually put the article in “Dear Abby,” and it was published. But they didn’t
use Elmer’s Glue, they said “a well-known glue.” Some of the cactus out there, like the cholla,
jumping cactus, you could just walk past it and it would shoot needles at you.
AW: I’ve never even heard of that.
TD: Yeah, it’s real.
AW: Maybe they don’t publicize that one.
TD: Possibly not. (laughs) I enjoyed Arizona, but, in the summer time, one hundred-seventeen
was just too hot. They say “it’s a different heat.” Yeah, hot. It’s just like opening an oven door,
you know, when that heat hits you in the face. I like it around here where we have seasons.
Although, I’d prefer it not to be quite so cold. Especially now, my circulation is not so good, my
hands are always cold. But, then, that means I’ve got a warm heart, so.
AW: I’m sure your family would agree.
TD: Well, most of ‘em. My son tells me I’m older than dirt. My wife and I both enjoy living
around here. It’s home. We’ve been, like I said, we’ve been in fifty states, and the only state

that we even considered was Oregon. And it guess it’s because of the mountains and the trees
and stuff in Oregon. But Virginia is home, the mountains are home. I’ve lived in Phoenix, I’ve
lived in Maryland, I’ve lived in Basye. I’ll die in Basye.
AW: We did some reading about Bird Haven before we were going to conduct the interviews
and everything, and one of the articles we had was talking about how the workers there had a
very strong feeling about being in this community and having the role of nature around them.
Did you ever run into that with them? Or do you remember hearing about that? Because we
don’t know where that information is coming from, we just have that impression of it.
TD: From the time I was a boy, Bird Haven, to me, was a sanctuary for birds. I mean, that’s the
perception that I had. It’s rural, and I would say that was one of the things, is the people, and the
pride in the community. I don’t know that it’s as strong today as it was then, but it’s obvious that
it’s still there. With the ski resort and everything, that’s changed the community. When I was a
boy growing up, there were sixty families that lived in Basye. I knew every one of them. I don’t
know if I know sixty families today. I probably do, but there’s a lot more than that. The pride’s
still there. Been called a hillbilly. And that’s okay. They…my brother does landscaping, he
does tree removal and trimming and stuff like that as well, and he plants flowers and bushes and
trees, whatever. Sells wood. People call him about doing stuff, and he’ll put them down on his
list, and people say that he’s on “mountain time.” “When I get around to it.” (laughs) A lot of
times, that’s kind of the way things are. It used to be that you didn’t interfere with his hunting
season. That was more important than planting a tree. But he does good work, and people are
willing to wait for him, and he’s reasonable so…Yeah, I’m one of six. I have cousins that were
six, seven, eight in the family. I’ve got two kids right now, that’s more of the family size today
than six. Of course, back then, you didn’t worry where you were going to get the money to feed
them. We grew most everything we used, around here anyway. We still can vegetables in the
summertime. My dad always had a big garden, and he sold vegetables. A lot of people knew my
dad from the vegetables. My daughter, she worked for the radio station in Winchester, and she
would visit different companies around here in the valley. She was always running into
somebody that knew the family. That’s what makes it worth living around here. I went to
Madison College, 1962-63, so I lived in Harrisonburg. I’d rather live back here on the hill. I’ve
lived in cities. I’d rather live back here on the hill. When we first moved up here, we sold a
place down in Franklin County, Virginia, near Roanoke. We had five acres. Stream ran through
the back of the property, and we had a three-bedroom brick ranch, full basement. That’s what I
was looking for up here. Forty-thousand dollars more, I might have been able to get something
near that. But not five acres, and not brick ranch. I told my wife, “I want a brick ranch, five
acres. I want to be able to see Basye and the hotel at Ortney. I can see the hotel at Ortney.
Can’t see Basye, don’t have five acres, but I like it where we are. I do see the hotel at Ortney,
especially this time of year, when the leaves are off the trees. I say this is where I’ll be until I’m
out here (gestures to cemetery behind church). My wife and I have a plot out here in the
graveyard, so I’ll always live in the mountains. Bird Haven, to me, was always a bird sanctuary
type of thing, you know. I don’t know how it got its name, “Bird Haven,” although there are a
lot of wild birds around. But I don’t know of a reason for it. There’s a lot of history that goes
along Ortney Springs Hotel. Part of it was used as a hospital during the Civil War. Some people
think it was an R&R during the war. Shenandoah Allum Springs Hotel, it’s no longer in
existence, it’s another one that was similar to Ortney. They advertised the healing effects of the
water. Allums, Shenandoah Allum Springs was allum water. There were three springs right in a
row, and each one was a different strength of allum. And, if you’ve ever had allum in your

mouth, it makes you pucker. I never drank any of the water, they say that’s what it did to you.
The old iron furnace, there at the allum, Henrietta furnace, it burnt, I believe, in the 1850s. They
were smelting iron, and there was a big chunk of iron that came out of the furnace and, according
to the stories my dad told me, they…it was there on the ground, they dug a hole, was able to roll
it into the hole and then covered it up. And there’s a couple of places where it still sticks out of
the ground, down along the edge of the creek. As a boy, used to have dealings with the hotel
there, the old hotel. My dad had worked there when he was younger, and the fields around there
are filled with sled from the old furnace. It looks like glass, obsidian. Different colors, black
and blue, and my wife and I have done some exploring around different furnaces. Depending on
the type of ground in the areas they mined the ore, what kind of rock came out of it, different
colors…green and orange and all. I know that, as a kid, we used to look for the different colors
of rock, or glass, or whatever it is. I’ve got rocks at my house from all over the U.S. You can’t
collect rocks in the National Park, but you can pick it up along the lakes and stuff like that
because they’re private land. Interesting thing about this area is the shale around here, lot of
fossils, and, as a boy, we used to dig in the banks and find all these fossils of critters. We had no
idea what they were. Of course, what are they, three million years old or something like that?
When I went to JMU, I took a class in geology that as fascinating, and there’s a hill between here
and Mt. Jackson called Third Hill. Stands out in the middle of an area, it’s cone shaped.
Volcanic. At least that’s what the professor at JMU told me. (laughs)
AW: Well, and we always believe the professors, right?
TD: Yeah, yup. (laughs)
AW: I think that might be a good place to end it, for my professor. He’ll like hearing that right
at the end. Because we have to go and do his interview too, but thank you so much, I really
appreciate you sharing your story.
TD: You’re welcome. I wish I had more to give you on the things at Bird Haven.