Moses Grover Frye

1920 United States Federal Census about Moses G Frye

Name: Moses G Frye

[Moses G Frys]

Home in 1920: Wake Forest, Wake, North Carolina

Age: 35 years

Estimated Birth Year: abt 1885

Birthplace: North Carolina

Relation to Head of House: Head

Spouse's Name: Maggie

Father's Birth Place: North Carolina

Mother's Birth Place: North Carolina

Marital Status: Married

Race: White

Sex: Male

Home owned: Rent

Able to read: Yes

Able to Write: Yes

Image: 916

Neighbors: View others on page

Household Members:

Name Age

Moses G Frye 35

Maggie Frye 36

Coy Frye 15

Carl Frye 10

Commie Frye 8

Charles Frye 5

Charles Dollar 64

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Moses worked at a Cotton Mill as a child...he was a doffer from at least 10 years old. I am not sure if the following story completely applies to Moses as he worked in 1894 and I am not sure of the conditions at that time.

Doffers at Lincolnton.

Submitted by Anonymous Tipster on Sat, 10/25/2008 - 1:22am.

Doffers were called to remove finished work [bobbins wound with thread or yarn] by alarm bells serving their machines. It was irregular work in that they were doffing about 15 to 20 minutes out of each hour. Commonly they could be seen around the back doors and on staircases around them, where they played around. The Lincolnton mill owners (or at least some of them) were somewhat backward from evidence discussing Mill Schools that you can find in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC Chapel Hill. These kids would have gotten six months of schooling for a minimum of five hours a day at mill expense.

Children under 6 received day care in nursery schools so their parents could work. Cannon and Irwin among the more enlightened mill owners provided eight months of six hour schooling. In any case boys working all night would have been a spring-summer phenomenon (i.e. when schools were

not in session).

The state of North Carolina providing public schooling for non-mill kids was a sometime thing. In 1910 the state provided 11 cents per annum per schoolchild. Under these conditions rural farm children were commonly offered two months of schooling on a traditional 9 a.m.-4 p.m. day. If seasonal farm work interfered with this so be it. Teachers operated upon a circuit for the most part moving from all-in-one grade schools on two monthly cycles.

By the time of the Great War the school year in market towns was three months, and in most cases the teacher stayed in a location while the classes moved through their three month year, and grades 1-3 always came in at fall harvest time so that field harvesters would be available from the older children.

Thus the doffers had an educational advantage not available to their working-class white contemporaries. The middle class children in the mass of N.C. towns would attend privately operated schools. In cities like Greensboro, Winston and Raleigh there were full-season public schools, where clothing and supply costs precluded the poor from attending. In other words like the state university they were set up with inherent barriers to exclude the poor, while using tax funds to allow the middle and upper class to obtain favored services from the state. It was what an oligarchy is all about.

However, the mill schools provided the foreman and clergymen to their community. The brightest graduates obtained scholarships provided by various Episcopalian and Methodist missionary boards, mill company benefit societies and veterans organizations that allowed them to provide the doctors, lawyers, CPAs and professional and management classes that held this society together.

Good luck, and remember the doffers were the lucky ones in the mass of Southern working class people.

-- Peter Boylan