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Pauline Barnett was probably born in upper Spartanburg County near Landrum but her exact birthplace is not known because her father was a carpenter from just over the border in Greenville County, the area called "the Dark Corner" which was known as lawless and was full of moonshiners, and he moved around to where the work was. Henry's father had a two-story wood house for his large family at the base of Hogback Mtn on what is now SC State Hwy 11, the "scenic highway" and he owned land there and half of the small Bird Mountain; her mother's...
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Pauline Barnett was probably born in upper Spartanburg County near Landrum but her exact birthplace is not known because her father was a carpenter from just over the border in Greenville County, the area called "the Dark Corner" which was known as lawless and was full of moonshiners, and he moved around to where the work was. Henry's father had a two-story wood house for his large family at the base of Hogback Mtn on what is now SC State Hwy 11, the "scenic highway" and he owned land there and half of the small Bird Mountain; her mother's father Willie Brannon lived nearby near the Motlow Creek community on what is now known as the New Cut Road (which did not exist until it was built at the beginning of "The Great War" of 1917-1918 to get troops to the NW of the county to hold maneuvers). Both families had farms and owned their own lands and were Christian and Baptist like most of their country neighbors, with the Barnett's attending Glassy Mountain Baptist Church and the Brannon's attending Motlow Creek Baptist Church.
Pauline's mother Sarah Brannon had had a very traumatic childhood, being the oldest child of 3 to a mother who had a complete mental breakdown & was taken to the asylum in Columbia twice when Sarah was a small child; as far as I know Sarah never saw her mother after her last admittance. Pauline was Sarah & Henry Barnett's oldest child and was born the same year her grandmother died in the asylum in Columbia, the 1st of 8 children who were all girls but one.
Pauline's father was blond and blue eyed but Pauline took after her mother, she was black-haired & black-eyed, about 5'2" (shorter than all of her sisters except Bunt), like all her sisters she was educated in the local public schools and according to her sister Mary Rebecca "Bunt" was considered very well educated for a working-class woman; unlike many children who dropped out, Pauline had attended school until she married at 16 & she could not only read & write above the average but could do skilled math, she loved to read. Bunt said her parents emphasized education & made sure all their children got as much schooling as was available in the free public schools. They lived on farms sometimes & raised their own food & animals while her father Henry worked as a carpenter, going wherever the jobs were. Bunt said their parents were good people who attended the baptist church regularly and treated their children well, her father was a quiet, peaceful and well-liked sober man and her mother was his opposite, emotional and passionate.
Pauline met & soon married the tall introverted son of a mountain man whose father had brought his family down from the mountains of Madison County, NC to make money in the textile mills when he was a child. Eddie Rhinehart had virtually no education, being sent to the mills instead of school from a young age, so he could not read or write, but he later went to adult night classes at the mill & learned to read. Eddie had worked all his childhood in the mills, being herniated there at a very young age according to his sister Pearl. Pearl said her older sister Mina had once physically attacked a mean mill manager who made Eddie do work Eddie was not old enough or big and strong enough to do. (This was before child labor laws and children as young as 7 were hired to sweep the mills, by age 10 some were already working the looms, at age 14 on the census Eddie was a weaver supporting his widowed mother and two younger siblings.) Eddie joined the SC National Guard before the war but his hernia kept him out of The Great War when his brothers went to war in 1917, it also put a limit on the kind of physical labor Eddie was able to do throughout his life causing him trouble & pain, he never could do hard physical labor and he had to wear a corset. Being from a working-class family and without much schooling, this severely limited his ability to earn a good living and likely affected his self-esteem.
Pauline's father was a carpenter who worked, among other places, on two big hotels in Asheville & Spartanburg according to his daughter Bunt. Pauline had been born in the countryside, but they lived mostly in Spartanburg city after marriage. Bunt said Pauline was considered a very good cook and seamstress in a time when women were unrelentingly judged on their homemaking skills and no married woman worked outside of her home, Bunt said she kept a spotless house and was well-known for her excellent recipes. This despite the fact that her son Roy said his mother had really bad migraines, often walking the floor for hours in pain. At a time when women were looked down on for working outside the home, her son Roy said he was proud his mother was nevertheless industrious and making money for the family, she grew huge dahlias in her yard & was selling them for a quarter apiece to a local diner on Morgan Square, sending Roy down to the diner to deliver the flowers & collect the money, a job he was proud she trusted him to do; the flowers were as big as a saucer, and the restaurant would put one in the center of each table. This was in the 1920's when few people ate at restaurants and a quarter would feed a family of 4 for several meals. Her son Roy also kept a letter his mother was sent awarding Pauline $25 for entering a national rug-naming contest, she was the 3rd place winner. This was in a time when a mill worker made less than $15 per week, and took home half of that after taxes and mill store deductions.
Daddy said one of his fondest memories of his mother was of sitting underneath a quilting frame while his mother & other women were meeting at her house for a quilting bee, they would push a needle down & he would push it back up for them. He was very proud of the fact that the women trusted him to put the needle where it needed to be. I'm sure he was also getting an earful of what they were talking about, as quilting bee's were times when women discussed the local community problems & people.
Pauline was an emotional and passionate woman like her mother. Bunt said she overheard Pauline in the barn before she married Eddie praying to god to save her little brother HD's life, he was her father's only son and he was sick and did not survive what was probably meningitis. Bunt said Pauline was praying that god should take her youngest sister Bunt instead of her only brother because it would hurt her father so much to lose his only son.
Pauline told her family that she fell in love with Eddie Rhinehart when she first laid eyes on him, she was desperate to marry him despite being only 15 yrs of age. Bunt said Pauline was totally determined to marry Eddie Rhinehart, and she did as soon as she was of legal age in 1916. They first lived on Clinchfield St. in Beaumont Mills where their 1st son Roy was born, then they moved to the northwest county area near where Pauline's family was from & sharecropped several years. Bunt said when Pauline went into labor with her 2nd child Albert in 1920, Eddie Rhinehart got on his mule & rode for the doctor, stopping at a neighbor's to ask the wife to go sit with Pauline. But the neighbor woman didn't want to go, she dawdled & did chores thinking it would be a customary long painful labor. But the Barnett girls had short labors. By the time the neighbor arrived, Albert had already been born for half an hour and was lying on the bed still attached to his mother, his mom afraid to move for fear of damaging him, there was no one there to cut the umbilical cord and clear his airway passages. Bunt thought perhaps this was why Albert had a learning disability, she said everyone believed for years that Albert was a deaf mute because he did not speak until he was 5 yrs old; Albert also had behavioral difficulties in school, getting beaten up often because he impulsively spoke his mind to everyone, something I remember him still doing later in life. My father Roy remembered Albert's birth as a terrifying time when his mother was in great pain & he could not help her, he was only 2 1/2 yrs old, it had a profound impact on him. Roy said he later beat up bullies in school who picked on his younger brother Albert who never understood he needed to guard his tongue.
Pauline & Eddie did not stay sharecropping in the country but a few seasons, they moved back to Spartanburg & Eddie went back to work in the mill. Their 3rd & last son J.C. was born in Spartanburg in 1923.
But after 3 children, evidently life was not so good. Her oldest son was aware something was wrong, Roy was having strong stomach pains & ulcers and eventually developed appendicitis from the stress, which almost caused his death at age 9, he only survived after 2 emergency operations. Weathering that crisis, things did not get better in the marriage, and in 1930, Pauline left her husband after what her sister later described to me as abusive behavior by Eddie Rhinehart, who was drinking heavily by that time. After a particularly bad day when Eddie came home from work early and accused her of having an affair, Pauline ran away in the middle of the night, taking little with her, stopping at her mother's house to ask for train fare she went to Georgia on the train & applied for a divorce (SC did not allow divorce). Returning to town about a month later, she got a job at Beaumont Mill & rented a house of her own on Garrett St, and then Roy said she met her oldest son walking on the way to school and asked him to move in with her, he was 13 yrs old. At this time, it was considered scandalous to leave your husband, so the social pressure on the children by the neighbors & at school was enormous; They spent their time alternating between their parents and sometimes lived with relatives. Her oldest son Roy quit going to school altogether in the 6th grade because of the verbal abuse at school & with trying to help his mother out at home, taking on the responsibility of the house; Roy learned to cook & soon became a helpmate to his mother, cleaning house & helping to get his younger brothers off to school, but Roy never went back to school himself, he said the other kids made life impossible for him in school & it was too painful to hear them putting his mother down. Both his younger brothers went to high school.
Pauline soon met & eventually married a car mechanic in town, Z. Eddie Roebuck, and Eddie Rhinehart also remarried a 2nd time to Mabel Pye of Spartan Mills. Pauline's life seemed settled and Bunt said Eddie Roebuck was a good stepfather to the boys, he didn't let them get away with bad behavior. Pauline got pregnant in the spring of 1937. But she had a tubal pregnancy and it ruptured, sending her to the hospital where they eventually performed a full hysterectomy. At that time, they kept patients in bed for several weeks following surgery, causing Pauline to develop a blood clot which went to her brain & killed her. Her sister Bunt was with her, she said Pauline suddenly sat straight up in bed & said, "Who turned out the lights?" It was broad daylight. A few minutes later, she was dead. Roy said they called him at work at the mill, he was devastated. She was only 36 yrs old.
Pauline's 2nd husband Eddie Roebuck, not having a burial plot or the money to buy one, accepted an offer from Zion Hill Baptist church for a free double plot and buried her here. He soon remarried, then left town. Pauline's grave had no stone until I put one in the 1990's after her sister Bunt showed me where she was buried, Bunt said their mother had paid to put the low cement wall around her grave, the only way to identify its location. A grandson Johnnie Ray Rhinehart is buried next to Pauline, Albert's son died of infection at a few weeks old caused by spina bifida sometime in the late 40's or early 50's. He has no stone and I cannot find a death certificate but I was told both by my father and Albert that he was buried here.
I do not know what happened to Eddie Roebuck, Bunt said she had heard that after Pauline died, he had left the state and later she heard from his brother that he was working in an oil field near the border of Mexico in Texas. The last I heard of him he was in his 90's in the 1990's when my sister said she cashed a Social Security check for him at a local Community Cash grocery store, he was then hardly able to walk, but when she recognized his name and asked if he had ever been married to Pauline Rhinehart, he remembered Pauline clearly, he told her that Pauline's first husband had mistreated her and she didn't deserve that. I wish I knew what happened to Eddie Roebuck, at that time he met my sister he was renting a cheap trailer in a mobile home park and was barely able to walk and could not drive.
--Jennie Rhinehart 2/2018 |
