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Long Live Porterdale!!!

Porterdale Mill on the Yellow River
NAMED for: Oliver S. Porter, Mill Owner

 

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Sent: 2/28/2004 7:36:24 AM
 
Subject: Hi from Ruth Baird Shaw in Georgia's Rome
 
Memories of Porterdale from Ruth Baird Shaw:

I am enjoying  your great Webpage of memories from my hometown of Porterdale.   Thank you!   I keep reading  all the memories and can relate to them.


I was born and reared in Porterdale ,  the youngest of 9  children of Benjamin Wilson Baird and Eula Dick Baird.   I was born on Laurel Street  but grew up on Hazel Street. 
 
Mama always said that the boll weevil ran us off the farm, where my older siblings had been born. The farm was in the community of Oak Hill. Oak Hill is in Newton County near the Henry County line and also near Rockdale County.
   
Cotton was king in the South
then.  When the boll weevil infested the cotton plants, it wiped out the cotton farmers' profits. Many farmers lost their whole year's wages. My father was in failing health when he got a job in one of the mills in Porterdale and moved his family " fresh off the farm" into that model mill town in the fall of 1923. I was born the next year.
 
My Father died when I was nine.  My mother continued to work in the Cord Weave Shop in Osprey Mill and my brothers and sisters did as they got old enough.  I worked briefly during World War II In the Cord Weave Shop with my mother where heavy cloth for army tents was woven.

Two of my brothers, John Thomas (Tom) Baird  and Jackson Irvin (Jack ) Baird served in World War II.  They spoke so highly and longed so fervently to get back to Porterdale , many of their World War II buddies vowed they would someday visit Porterdale.  My brothers came home from the war but Carroll Adams ,Red Cole, and Homer Cook, my friends and classmates were among those who did not.  My brother Tom Baird did work briefly as a policeman in Porterdale after WW II and later was on the Georgia State Patrol, living with his family in Cedartown until his death in 2000.  Jack worked as a Pipe Fitter in construction in South Carolina until his death in 1989.

Porterdale was a great place to grow up in the 20's and 30's.   Our school teachers were the best, hired by Bibb Manufacturing Company and lived in the Teachers Cottage near the city managers home. The city manager during my early school years was, I believe,  Mr. H. W. Pittman.  I started to school at five, skipped a half grade and was the youngest in my class from the Fifth grade on.

My teachers in Porterdale school were:

First Grade- Miss Jones
Second Grade- Miss Webb
Third Grade- Miss Wright\
4th Grade- Mrs. Tommie Hood
5th Grade- Miss Bura Bohanan
6th Grade- Mrs. Pearl Hacket
7th Grade- Miss Willie Hayne Hunt
8th Grade- Mr. John F. Allumns
9th Grade- Mrs. Willie Hayne Hunt
 
Miss Ethel Belcher was Principal of the school when I started to school . Miss Maud King was Principal  when I finished at Porterdale and started to Covington High.  We had to pay tuition and find transportation  to go to Covington. The Ninth was the last grade in Porterdale school in the late thirties. 
   
I married Charles Shaw from Milstead after finishing the 10th grade and did not go back to graduate from High School until 1943 when Porterdale had established a high school.  After our children were grown I finally graduated from Georgia State University by taking courses in my spare time and learned my Porterdale schooling was a pretty good educational foundation.

The large red brick Methodist Church was an important part of my childhood and my life as it was there I first accepted Jesus Christ as my s Savior and Lord.
  
My brother, James Leon Baird (who died at age 3 of measles , complicated by Pneumonia)   is buried in the Liberty Methodist Cemetery in Porterdale (where Mama and Papa are also buried.) This, I am told, was where Porterdale's first Methodist Church  building (Liberty) had been. I vaguely remember seeing the small white frame building which was burned down in 1935 after being vacant for several years. 
 
I loved being in  The Girl Reserves, a civic club for all the girls in town, provided by Bibb Manufacturing Company .  It was similar to Girl Scouts in that we had regular meetings and wore uniforms. Our uniforms were white dresses with blue belts and  blue scarves and blue dresses with white belts and scarves. The shirtwaist type dresses were made by our mothers or a dressmaker from cotton material woven in one of the mills and sold at a discount.

One of the advantages of belonging to the Girl Reserves was the opportunity to make a trip each summer. I remember at least two trips to Savannah by train. The first time I saw the ocean and the first time I stayed in a hotel was in Savannah on one of those outings when I was about ten or eleven years old. I especially remember the large formal dinning room in the Desoto Hotel in Savannah. It was at the Desoto where , for the first time, we were served fish that still had it's head.  None of us would eat the fish, and we little girls giggled and whispered into the night about the ridiculous idea of eating a fish while it looked at us.

Our neighbors, who were so much a part of my life included  Obie and Grace Moore, Albert and Blanche Fincher, the Hornings, Capes, Moody's, Johnsons, Parnell's, Martins, Loyd's

My mother used the term "We were neighbor to..." instead of saying "We lived next door to..." or "We lived near..." so and so. I have fond memories as a child of being in and out of the homes of the Finchers, the Parnells, and the Moores. And they visited with us daily.  We did not locked our doors -- even at night. Neighbors were in and out all the time -- often to borrow a cup of sugar or flour or an egg or two to finish out a recipe for a cake. Often they stopped in to share vegetables or cookies or cake.  Sometimes the visits were late in the evening  just to sit on the front porch and talk while the children played "hide and seek" or "kick the can" out in the front yard or on the unpaved road in front of the house.  My Hazel street playmates included Dorothy , Hazel and Lamar Fincher, Mamie Miller,  E. F. Parnell, Obie and Billie Moore. Jeanette and Betty Martin.   Other Hazel Street friends were Julia Sellers, Mildred Yancey and  Frank Ingram.  I kept in touch with Julia Sellers Smith until her death in 2000 but have not heard from most of the others in many years but think of them often and would like to hear from them and their family and friends.

Ruth Baird Shaw
Email: [email protected]

Click HERE to Visit Some of Ruth's Family

Click HERE to Visit Ruth at her 9th Grade Graduation

Click HERE to Visit Ruth at her 1943 Graduating Class

Click Here to Visit Ruth's Personal Web Pages