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“Woman, my God, this ain’t no time to pray”: Memories from a Bethel Church Member

By: Lisa Timmerman, Executive Director

Living in the Town of Dumfries during the early 1900’s meant you relied on products available from traveling salesmen and local shops. Meet James Woodrow (Woody) Taylor, an active member of Bethel Methodist Church. Thanks to Mr. Taylor’s willingness to share his memories and experiences, we gain insight into an incredible variety of people and places he visited along with poems he composed! Enjoy some of the extracts of his extensive interview with The Prince William Historical Commission as we included a quick humorous story about a local couple along with his memories of visiting salesmen, their remedies, and travel on local roads.

TN: Tom Nelson, PWC

WT: Woody Taylor

Date: 09/30/1980

Subject: The Cannon Cocker

TN: Woody, we’re going to talk about a variety of subjects and let’s start off by talking about a Mr. Adams that you know.

WT: Well, Mr. Adams carried the mail out here for quite a while. He was a retired chief gunner’s mate in the Navy. Mr. Dallas Davis down at Woodbridge promptly named him “Cannon Cocker.” So he carried the mail. He was quite a character, and he had a wife that was as much Christian as he was on old rough-and-ready. One Sunday evening they went for a little ride in an old car they had. I think it was a Studebaker Roadster, and the roads around here then were right rough. And over here someone or other they got stuck and she got out and knelt down and started to pray. And he said, “Woman, my God, this ain’t no time to pray. Get behind and push.” And she promptly got behind and pushed and I think they finally got it out there. That was Mr. Adams.

Subject: Home Remedies, Traveling Salesmen, & Mules

TN: Did you ever have any home remedies or anything?

WT: Oh, we had a few little things we could take. A lot of people for indigestion you could take a slug of Watkins Liniment, and it was so hot and burned so bad that you soon forgot the indigestion. Another remedy was baking soda. That was for indigestion. And then if you had an epidemic of boils or something like that, which we had quite often, they’d make all kinds of poultices and put on it to draw that infection out of there. One of them was flaxseed meal. I forgot how they want about fixin’ that but they would slap that down over the boil and they would bind it. And you could feel that drawin’ that stuff out of there. Then for cuts and bruises, why they had all kinds of salve. One of them was Watkins. That was a product of some company out west, I believe, but we had our local agents that went around and peddled that stuff along with the liniment. That was about the end of the home remedies.

Then there was another old fella that would come around selling’ what they called “Pain Killer.” And that was supposed to be good for most any pain you had, but I told Daddy that anybody that had nerve enough to take a dose of that would have to havin’ some pain. But they all relied on it, they thought it was great stuff.

A lot of the stuff, I guess, that doctors prescribed wasn’t much better than the old home remedies. It tasted just about as vile anyhow, I can tell you that.

TN: Talking about salesmen, do you recall any of the early salesmen and how they operated in the area?

WT: Well, about the only salesman that we had to amount to anything was the fellow like I just mentioned, this Watkins products. Then there was another company by the name of Raleigh’s. We had a salesman for that, and they sold a lot of extracts like vanilla, lemon, and all that. And you could take that lemon extract and mix it with water and something else they added, I forgot what that made – it had a right good alcoholic content. We had one agent that traveled through, long since dead, by the name of Will Smith and he would take the extracts and mix that all up and when he’d get around to the house he had very little left to sell. It would get you a cheap drunk, in other words.

And of course, we had insurance, agents, a number of them. I believe the first one that I can remember that come down from People’s was a fellow by the name of Hoy. And he got everybody pretty well insured in the neighborhood and of course others followed him. The one that lasted the longest was Avery Reid up at Hoadly. He really made good at it. He kept that agency going for about 25 or 30 years until he got old enough to retire, and now he lives in a nice home up here the other side of Hoadly. That was about all the salesman we had.

Oh, we had some that went around and sold little old knickknacks. There was one old fellow down here that lived down at Smoketown by the name of Horace Turner, and he used to go around sellin’ little things they called “Mend-its.” And if you had a hole come in an old boiling kettle, that would fix that. If one come in the water bucket, you could fix it, put a “Mend-it” in it and have it fix that. They were right useful…

TN: Roads in the area, especially David Ford Road by your house here, have been changed considerably since those early years.

WT: Yes. In 1916, I believe it was, down at the corner of 123 on up to where the road forks up here at Hoadly, Davis Ford goes to the right and then the old Hoadly Road, we called it, went left on to Manassas. Well, they straightened this old road out and rebuilt. And there was a contractor by the name of Boatright, A.S. Boatright, that done that work. My mother and I were goin’ along to what is now Mr. Russell’s store. It was run by a man then by the name of Ed Dewey. Right down here at the bottom of the hill, just as we got there where they was fillin’ in, a team of mules come up over the bank hooked to what we called a “wheel scoop.” Just as he got his head up over that bank, he brayed and I’d never seen a mule. So I took off down through Mr. Glasscock’s old cornfield. My mother finally caught me and brought me on back. She said, “It’s only a mule,” but I wasn’t very well satisfied. Mr. Russell for a big kick out of that when I told him that.”

Mules were common in Virginia thanks partly to George Washington! Thanks to his persistence with the Spanish monarchy, he eventually acquired Spanish jacks, aka mules, for Mount Vernon. While the north continued to embrace horses and oxen, the south generally preferred the mule as their draft animal of choice.

(Sources: “An Oral History: “Woody” an interview with James Woodrow Taylor. “The Bethel Methodist Church and its Neighborhood” by Tom Nelson, 01/1982. Transcribed by Rhoda Durkan, Typed: Lynne Barbeau, Project Director: Roger F. Endert; Coe, Alexis. George Washington Saw a Future for America: Mules. Smithsonian Magazine, 2020, accessed 20221130)

Note: Ready to craft a gift for your friends & family or even yourself? Craft elegant holiday winter swag for your home using fresh greenery and pinecones from The Weems-Botts Museum. Walk away with the skills and swag after joining us for an hour of arts & crafts! All supplies included. Program scheduled for Merchant Park Pavilion if weather allows. If not, program will be held in the Annex. Masks are required for entering any HDVI building. Tickets here!