Digital Scholarship and Initiatives

This Web page announces that an interview with B. W. "Billy" Lowery was done as part of a series of interviews with North Carolina's oldest inhabitants and is being added to the Library of Congress in its Archive of Folk Culture. The interview has been processed by the American Folklife Center; its call number is AFS 11842. People can listen to the recording there. It is less than 30 minutes long and was made in September 1958, when Lowery was 100 years old. Topics touched on during the interview included: turpentine work as a boy (very brief); Sherman's March; school; Lumber River; churches; ox-cart travel; visit of a Cherokee chief; attempt to move local Indians to a reservation; Roanoke Island Lost Colony; berry picking; dugout boat fishing; alligators; blackfish; running races and jumping; the song, "Power in the Blood of Jesus"; and religion. B. W. "Billy" Lowery was the nephew of Henry Berry Lowery. He would have been 97 at the time of this interview. See item 1111.