Interview with Ada Combs, [n.d.]

Interview Summary

Ada Combs was born in 1905 and grew up on Bear Branch of Poll's Creek in Leslie County. She tells about her windowless one-room school and of wading through the creek to reach it. She recalls farm chores and neighborhood activities such as stir-offs, bean-stringings, and gatherings to play music. She picked duck and goose feathers, made soap, and helped her aunt make maple sugar. Her family pickled beans, made sauerkraut, and sulfured apples as well. Combs especially remembers her grandmother's first cookstove because prior to that time cakes and pies were not made in her home. Combs recalls the flu epidemic of 1918 and comments upon herb doctors and "granny women." She indicates that she was twenty-one when she first visited Hyden. Combs married and left Leslie County before the advent of the FNS.

Interview Keyword

Born in 1905 flu epidemic of 1918 made soap and maple sugar one-room school

Interview LC Subject

Children--Health and hygiene--Kentucky Medical care Nursing

Interview Rights

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Interview Usage

Interviews may be reproduced with permission from Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, Special Collections, University of Kentucky Libraries.