Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2021/Summer/105/Section 06/Zebulon Hamilton

Overview

Zebulon Hawkins Hamilton was interviewed for the Federal Writer’s project on November 25, 1938. He spent most of his life providing for his family by working as a blacksmith and a State Highway Commissions employee.

Biography

Early life

Hamilton was born on a small farm in southern Wake County, North Carolina. Hamilton believed he was an ancestor of Alexander Hamilton and a Cherokee Princess. Hamilton was one of eight children and lived in a small one-room cabin with his entire family. Growing up poor and in the rural south, Hamilton had little to no education because the nearest school was eight miles away. Hamilton’s father did not believe in education and said that it “made a feller so stuck up that he didn’t know which end of a shovel to dig with.” All Hamilton knew was how to write his name and read a little, but before Hamilton turned twelve, he picked up blacksmithing from his father and helped run a blacksmith shop.

A blacksmith shop in the harbor of Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada in the late 19th century

Family Life

When Hamilton was nineteen, he married Martha Jackson, they met while visiting relatives and married after calling each other “once a month for six months.” They moved into an old house east of Raleigh, North Carolina, and began to build a family. Due to the lack of medical care and birth control knowledge in the rural south, Hamilton had eleven kids, three of which died shortly after birth. Hamilton left his job at the wagon factory and opened his own blacksmith shop to support his large family. The Hamilton family could not eat until a sale was made at the blacksmith shop.

Hamilton’s kids all attended school with only one finishing high school, the rest of the children were kicked out of school because they skipped class every chance they could get or caused fights. The children grew up and all had kids of their own and married.

Hamilton’s sons were drunkards, two of them were even jailed for being drunk. Similarly, Hamilton came home one night drunk and began to fight with his wife, she then cut his arm with a butcher knife to stop his assault. Mrs. Hamilton said that even if they fought every day, she would still not get a divorce, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Hamilton was religious but saw getting a divorce as a sin.

Later Life

Hamilton worked at the blacksmith shop until he was sixty-one and then got a job working for the State Highway Commission. He saved up enough money to build five houses on his land for his sons and daughter’s family as most of them were unemployed during the Great Depression. Hamilton in his late years gave back to the community by giving money to charitable organizations and giving supplies to people in need every winter.

Social Issues

Lack of Education

Education in the rural south was uncommon due to schools being too expensive to enroll in or too far away to be easily accessible. The public education system was very poor in the south and received little to no funds, “One room schools, in which one teacher taught all grade levels in a single classroom were still common, especially in rural areas.” The quality of education in the south was far worse than in the North, schools “were for the most part miserably supported, poorly attended, wretchedly taught, and wholly inadequate for the education of the people.” The people of the rural south were all poorly educated and when the Great Depression hit “Young people began to stay in school longer as employment was increasingly hard to find, resulting in more students seeking an education in under-resourced schools.” The people of the south were unable to get jobs during the Great Depression because of their lack of education.

This page from the 1914 birth control pamphlet Family Limitation describes a cervical cap.

Birth Control in the South

People in the rural south were uneducated in birth control and the use of contraceptives, as a result, families were often large, and mothers would have several miscarriages or infant deaths shortly after birth. Activists during the great depression attempted “to make birth control legal, socially acceptable and widely used” especially in the South and in poor areas. In the South, “North Carolina public health officials were receptive to the idea, and similar—though not as extensive—programs followed in South Carolina and Alabama.”

Removal of liquor during Prohibition

Prohibition and Alcoholism

Prohibition laws were adopted and “aimed to stop manufacture or sale (or both), not consumption” of alcohol starting in the 1920s and through the Great Depression. Although prohibition was successful in decreasing the amount of drinking in the United States an increase in organized crime was observed. Prohibition aimed to decrease “the rise in annual ethanol consumption to 2.6 US gallons (9.8 liters) per capita of the drinking-age population, the highest level since the Civil War.” Alcoholism was common and often led to fights or domestic problems. Alcoholism is typically linked to being the trigger for domestic abuse, “two-thirds of victims of spousal abuse report that the perpetrator had been drinking at the time of the incident(s).”

Divorce During the Early 1900's

The Great Depression affected many families during the Great Depression by affecting marriages and family relationships. Due to economic problems “Marriages became strained, though many couples could not afford to separate.” In the early 1900s marriage was seen “as the epitome of civilization.” Regardless of religious affiliation, marriage was seen as one of the most important aspects of society, “the family is the unit that is the germ of the state, the seed of civilization: where divorce so rends it and scatters its fragments abroad.” People involved in abusive or failing relationships were hesitant to divorce due to the culture of the early 1900s. Economic struggles, religious laws stating people could not remarry, and society prevented people from divorcing.

References

Hicks, Mary A. (interviewer): The Hamilton Family, in the Federal Writers' Project papers #3709, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Koning, Lydia. “Education in the 1930's.” Medium. The Thirties, December 9, 2015. https://medium.com/the-thirties/education-in-the-1930-s-bc0e4b94fb2d

Link, William A. "Making the Inarticulate Speak: A Reassessment of Public Education in the Rural South. 1870-1920." Journal of Thought 18, no. 3 (Fall, 1983): 63. http://libproxy.lib.unc.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/scholarly-journals/making-inarticulate-speak-reassessment-public/docview/1292662362/se-2?accountid=14244

O’Reilly, Kelly . “A ‘Semiofficial’ Program: New Deal Politics and the Discourse of Birth Control in California, 1939–1942.” Journal of Policy History 30, no. 1 (January 2018): 62–82. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898030617000380.

Jr, Blocker, and Jack S. “Did Prohibition Really Work.” American Journal of Public Health 96, no. 2 (February 2006): 233–43. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2005.065409.

Smith, Cooper. “Alcoholism and Domestic Abuse: Finding Help.” Alcohol Rehab Guide, June 22, 2021. https://www.alcoholrehabguide.org/alcohol/crimes/domestic-abuse/.

Konkel, Lindsey. “Life for the Average Family During the Great Depression.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, April 19, 2018. https://www.history.com/news/life-for-the-average-family-during-the-great-depression.

Maiorano, Hannah. “Women of Divorce in High Society.” Molly Brown House Museum, November 24, 2017. https://mollybrown.org/women-divorce-high-society/.