WPA Interviews

Weber, Mrs. Fred

INTERVIEWS, VOLUME IV

Interview with Mrs. Fred Weber concerning the Thomas Kay Family.

Mrs. Weber was first asked as to how long ago the Thomas Kay House was built. Her conversation was, in substance, as follows:

I cannot tell you just how old that house is, but it is very old. The house was built a little at a time and I do not know just when it was begun.

Thomas Kay was an Englishman, and a very heavy drinker. When he first came to Brownsville to work in the woolen mills he, and his wife, lived at the rooming house. (Situated a short distance east of the mill. The building was later burned.) Kay drank all his money up as fast as he got it until they were so poor that they could no longer board. In order to live they secured, either by lease or purchase, the lot where the house now stands. Here they put up, first a tiny one-room shack. They lived, ate, and slept, all in one room.

Little by little, as they were able they added to the house until it was as it now is, but that took them a good many years. Some of the house is much older than other parts.

Mrs. Kay was an English girl and a mill girl. She told me that it would be impossible to describe how frightened she was when she first came to Brownsville. Everything was very strange to her. She had always lived in mill towns and before she came to America she had never "so much as seen a live chicken running at large." At first she knew nothing about housekeeping. All that she knew was mill work.

After two children were born the Kay's circumstances became so bad that Mrs. Kay was compelled to work in the mill to feed her children. She took her two babies with her to the mill and had them beside the loom in a big box where she could watch them. One day as she was weaving the shuttle flew from the loom and barely missed the head of one of the children. Mrs. Kay looked hastily around and thought that no one had observed the incident, so she went on with her work, but another weaver had seen what had happened.

He left his work and went into a small room where Thomas Kay was working by himself. (Kay was an expert workman, and was turning out samples of new fabrics). The observer brought Kay out into the open mill and berated him soundly saying: "You drunken sot, if that shuttle had hit your child's head you would have been to blame, and a murderer. You have got to straighten up and fix things so that your wife and children can live decently and in safety."

Later other English weavers came to work at the mill. They enjoyed Mrs. Kay's English cookery and begged her to take them as boarders. They still had only one room in which to live, but she finally consented to do so. She insisted that the men pay her only, and so the family had somewhat better times, though at best barely able to exist. The children went almost naked.

Someone gave the Kays a dog, and to make a place for it to live they dug a hole underneath the side of the house. One day Mrs. Kay was at work in the house and she heard the dog struggling with something beneath the house.

This frightened her greatly. Not ever having even seen a live chicken, she did not know what terrible thing might be beneath the house-a fierce wild beast, perhaps. Finally the dog came out of its hole dragging a great dirty bundle of clothes. The mill workers in those days almost never had their working clothes washed. They wore them in the mill until they were so permeated with grease and dirt that they were no longer wearable, and then threw them away. It was such a bundle of dirty mill clothes which some workman had thrown into the dogs shelter, which the dog had dragged out.

Mrs. Kay took these old rags and washed them up, and from them made clothing for her children. She did this for a long time, but at last she told the men not to throw their garments away, because she would wash them and make them fit to use for a longer time.

In the course of time the Kays became slightly more prosperous and completed their house. In later years Mr. Kay attended the preaching of a traveling evangelist and quit his drinking. The Kays became well-to-do."

Copyright © 2000 Patricia Dunn. All rights reserved. This transcription may not be reproduced in any media without the express written permission by the author. Permission has been given by the Transcriber to publish on the LGS web site.