Peninsula In Passage

Communities Huntersville Growing up in Huntersville in the 1920s inspired happy memories for Catherine Ward Epps who lived there for more than 50 years. I thank God for letting me live to see the progress in Huntersville. Huntersville was a wonderful place to grow up. Every family cared for every other family and the

grandmothers were the spines of the families. Everyone worked. We had dirt roads, outside water pumps and outhouses. Growing up anybody could whip you (for misbehaving) and send you home for another whipping. I grew up a happy child. Daddy loved us, took care of us, and we never wanted for anything. I had three sisters, Edmonia, Maryanne, and Vivian and two brothers, Burris and John T. Ward Jr. We had a set of school clothes and a set of Sunday clothes and would wash them out and hang them to dry when they needed it. (I think that’s why I love clothes and hats now.) We always had a nice clean house, nothing fancy. We slept on hay ticks (mattresses), all the boys in one bed and all the girls in another, two at the top and two on the bottom. We lived off the river shore - crabs, oysters, minnows and fish. Everybody had a vegetable garden and had cows, horses, sheep, chickens and ducks. During the Depression we had plenty to eat - apples, peaches, grapes - and we had stills in the woods. The women would blow a loud horn to warn the men working on stills in the woods when the revenuers were coming. Mr. Hinton and his wife Mariah had an undertaking business. They built a little house next to their house where they would take the bodies. I went to the Joseph S. Gibson School in Huntersville. My husband, Harvey Lee Epps, was from Pughsville, and we lived in Huntersville. He worked in Norfolk, owned a grocery store in Chesapeake and built a corner store in Pughsville. He had a store in Huntersville with my cousins, Eddie and David Ward. I went to Little Grove Church in Huntersville. Now Little Grove is drawing people from all over Harbour View. I want younger people to know what brought all this here and what saved the land. Younger children in Huntersville wouldn’t do much to keep it. They didn’t pay the taxes and bought other places to live so they lost the land. The newer homes have kept Huntersville from becoming a slum.

Catherine Ward Epps

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