| Narrator: Kathryn Dean |
| Interviewer: Dr. Mildred Pratt |
| Date: September 20, 1985 |
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| Side A |
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| MP |
Today is Friday, September 20, 1985. I'm interviewing Mrs. Kathryn Dean. Mrs. Dean,
I know that you are a long time resident of Bloomington and that you have a lot of
interesting history, so if you would just begin by telling us your name and kind of
following through with the outline we have there and telling in your own way the story
of your life.
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| KD |
Well, I was born January 14, 1910. My mother's name was Mae Gertrude Williams. She was
one of eleven children from Amos and Anna Williams. My mother was born March 19, 1893.
I didn't know my father, but I came to know his people in later years. My grandfather
was Jeremiah Williams. He was born in 1847 of slave parents. He was born in Georgia,
and when the war started, he joined the Union Army and was with Sherman's Army on his
march to the sea. After the war, he came to Bloomington and settled in Bloomington and
Normal. Then he met and later married Anna Foster.
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| MP |
Excuse me. Do you know how he happened to have come to Bloomington? |
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| KD |
He came with a man by the name of Dunn, and they stayed here for a little while. Then
they went to Washington D. C. Then he came back to Bloomington, and then he married
Anna Foster. They had eleven children. One of them died. My grandfather died in [1905].
Anyhow, he was a Methodist preacher for thirty-eight years, and they lived at 606 South
Main Street in Normal. My grandmother was born in Du Quoin, Illinois in 1855, and she
came to Bloomington in 1872. They moved to Normal in 1887. They lived in that house,
and I was born in that house. That property was in our hands until finally about the
fifties the Shell Oil Company bought it. We lived there all that time.
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| MP |
Now, did your grandparents construct that house? |
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| KD |
They built it in 1887. |
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| MP |
They built it. Now your grandmother, you said, was born in. |
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| KD |
Du Quoin. |
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| MP |
Du Quoin? Is that southern Illinois? |
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| KD |
It's southern Illinois. |
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| MP |
Southern Illinois and so that . . . |
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| KD |
She didn't know anything about her parents. My grandfather's parents were slaves.
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| MP |
I see. |
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| KD |
I attended the schools in Normal until about-well, my uncles and aunts raised me until I
was eleven. Then when I got eleven, I decided I wanted to go live with my mother.
I had an aunt who was going to take me to Chicago to live, and I guess I didn't want to
do it. I ended up moving to Bloomington to live with my mother. I was eleven years old
then, but my uncles and aunts raised me. I don't remember too much about my early
childhood. I can remember during the war, I guess they were getting toys for kids.
I can remember taking some money from my uncle and buying a brand new doll and taking
it to school. But I don't think I got whipped. I know my folks sat me down and explained
how wrong it was, but they let the school keep the doll. They were getting these toys
for the unfortunate kids, and I guess I felt I'd better have a doll. There was a grocery
store maybe a block and a half. It was called Laskey's. I think on that corner now is
where McDonald's and them are out there in Normal.
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| MP |
Oh, in Normal. |
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| KD |
It used to be Laskey's Grocery, and that's where we used to get groceries and whatnot.
That's where I got the doll. I was either second or third grade. I got that doll at
that store and took it to school, but anyway he told me how wrong I was, and it was
one of those things.
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