Oral history interview with Margaret Skinner Parker, March 7, 1976

Margaret Skinner Parker was born in Ireland, but in this interview she discusses her experiences working at the company store of a cotton mill in Cooleemee, NC. She and Mrs. Isaac Hall Huske, another Cooleemee resident, remember some of the daily routines of this mill town, dwelling on what they did for fun: singing, attending church suppers, competing for prizes at craft fairs, and watching movies. But life in Cooleemee was not all fun. The pair remembers also the privations of the World War II period and the strike that shut the mill down and led to some economic hardship. This interview is not particularly detailed, but will be useful to researchers trying to form a broad picture of southern mill town life in the first half of the 20th century.