Part 11 (1/2)

The telephone operator was particularly helpful in locating rural doctors when they were needed in an emergency. Like the veterinarians, doctors were not relied on for minor illnesses but were called on in extreme cases. Jack Day and William Robey were among the doctors who travelled by horse and buggy (and later in early model Fords) to make housecalls. They were loved and accepted by the community: ”We thought of a family doctor about like we did our minister.”[230] Fees were usually $1.00 for a housecall though farmers would sometimes offer a bushel of corn or a chicken in payment for their treatment.[231]

The doctors contributed a great deal to the well-being of the community.

Rural families, however, were resourceful in finding home remedies for many ailments. Some of these were long-respected herbal preparations, but others were used more because of tradition than effectiveness.

Frances Simpson described the special folk medicines of her family near Herndon:

When an epidemic was reported in the village during the winter, she prepared the dreadful smelling _asafetida_ bags which she tied about our necks under our dresses. They were supposed to ward off diseases.

When my sisters and I had colds, mutton _tallow plasters_ were put on our chests and fastened to our underwear. These sticky, clammy plasters were worn until all signs of cold had disappeared.

_Sulpher and mola.s.ses_ by the spoonful were given in the spring 'to help clear out our systems....' Calomel was an often used remedy for the liver until the doctor forbade its use.

My mother had a bad case of erysipelas and her leg was in a fearful state. Nothing seemed to help it. One night she dreamed my sister Dora, who had recently died, came to her, told her to make _poultices of cabbage leaves_ wrung in hot water and apply them to her leg. She followed instructions and in due season her leg was healed.[232]

[Ill.u.s.tration: G. Ray Harrison, c. 1925. Photo courtesy of Ray Harrison.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Harrison family's mule team on a shopping trip to Herndon about 1914. A young Ray Harrison is riding in the wagon. The stores in Herndon provided basic supplies and services for the Floris community. Photo courtesy of Ray Harrison.]

The Floris community was an early outgrowth of a mining settlement near Frying Pan Run. Robert Carter, of Nomini Hall in Westmoreland County, owned the land which he believed contained rich copper ore. Though roads were built and several mining attempts made, the mineral proved to be of poor quality. The access offered by roads built by the miners (for example, West Ox Road on which Frying Pan Farm is located) opened the area to agriculture. The first permanent community was formed by a group of Baptists, who successfully pet.i.tioned Carter for permission to build a church on his property. One of their early churches, a simple, frame structure built in 1791, still stands near the center of the community.[233]

The origins of the area's unusual name are obscure--some believe either Indians or early miners who camped in the vicinity mislaid a frying pan and named the creek after their loss. Others feel that the circular shape of a round pool into which the run flows influenced its appellation. Until 1879 the community at the crossroads of the West Ox and Centreville Roads was also called Frying Pan, at which time it was thought too undignified a name. It was rechristened Floris, according to one source, after the prettiest girl in the neighborhood. Another story relates that summer boarders near Frying Pan Post Office thought such a lowly name would cause ridicule among their city friends. They called the town Floris, which means ”flower” in Latin, to tone up the image of their warm weather ”resort.” By the time of the name change, the village had expanded somewhat from an 1801 description of ”four log huts and a Meeting House,”[234] but it retained its small personal character. In the 1920s and 1930s it consisted of a blacksmith shop, general store and post office, a boarding house, three churches and two schools, as well as the surrounding farms.

The focal point of the Floris community during this period, and the factor which gave it a countywide importance, was the Floris Vocational High School. The school was the result of the Smith-Hughes Act, pa.s.sed in 1917 to organize agriculture and home economics courses on the secondary level of education. H. B. Derr tried unsuccessfully for two years to establish such a course in Fairfax County but met with little support from the members of the school board, who favored traditional academics. It was finally through the farmer's clubs and community leagues (forerunners of the PTA), especially those in the Floris area, that Derr was able to convince the county of the program's potential. By 1919 farmers and merchants had donated some $17,000 to start construction of a building, and in honor of the special efforts of agriculturalists in Floris, it was decided to locate the school there.[235]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A sketch of the plot of land originally deeded to the school board in 1876 by George Kenfield for a Floris school. Fairfax County Deedbook H-5, p. 617.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mr. Jack Walker, the engineer in charge of the construction of the Floris School 1920. Copy of photo in Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Floris Vocational High School under construction, c.

1920. Note the tennis game being played in the front of the old building. Copy of photo in Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Public Library.]

The Floris Vocational High School was the third to be built in Virginia.[236] It was extended from an existing, two-year high school, founded in 1911, but the property on which it was built had actually been deeded to the school board over forty years earlier. In 1876 George Kenfield deeded about six acres of land to the Frying Pan School a.s.sociation and the property remained in school use through several owner changes.[237] One- and two-room schools stood on the land until 1911 when a larger building was completed.[238]

The citizens of Floris had worked together to raise money for the vocational school; they also contributed their skills and time to its construction. Under the direction of two (often dissenting) contractors, a Mr. Sheffield and Jack Walker, pupils and parents helped to raise the three-story brick structure, and later to build a smaller agricultural shop a short distance from the main schoolhouse. The school was open to the entire county but the immediate community continued to feel a special interest in it. The Floris Home Demonstration Club served hot lunches in the school for many years and around 1924 they sponsored the hiring of a music teacher at their own expense until the county and state finally gave support to the teacher.[239]

Floris Vocational High School was an immediate success. In 1924 it had 150 pupils, evenly divided between primary and secondary grades, and hailing chiefly from the Herndon area. Students walked or rode horseback to reach their cla.s.ses; some, such as Virginia Presgraves Harrison from Loudoun County, boarded with local families.[240] The high school offered the standard curriculum courses of English, American and European history, algebra, geography, physics and chemistry. Courses in higher mathematics (plane geometry and trigonometry) were optional as were English history and foreign languages. The school differed from the county's other secondary inst.i.tutions in the varied agriculturally oriented courses it taught. Boys learned the principles of agronomy, animal husbandry, soil control and veterinary science, and were expected to put the theoretical knowledge into practice with test animals and acreage on their home farms. They also sharpened their skills in agricultural shop courses. Under the guidance of Ford Lucas and, later, Harvey D. Seale, they were taught carpentry, motor repair, blacksmithing, indeed, everything from building chicken coops to ”how to put a roof on a barn and keep it from leaking.”[241] Cla.s.ses for the girls also stressed the relations.h.i.+p between theory and practice. The rudiments of nutrition, food preparation, fabric and clothing construction, were carried over into ”Hominy Hall,” a house owned by William Ellmore, which housed the kitchen and serving areas for domestic science courses. The girls spent several hours a week in this building, gaining proficiency in the work which would probably occupy most of their lives. Like the majority of the students' homes, Hominy Hall had no running water, and baking was done on a large, wood-burning stove.[242] The cla.s.ses were taught by, among others, May Calhoun and Louisa Gla.s.sal. Elizabeth Ellmore, princ.i.p.al of Floris Vocational High School in 1929-1930, noted that because of the school's personal nature the teachers had a fair amount of leeway in the character and depth of the courses they taught--as much, in fact, as their students would allow them.[243] One early teacher found the pupils very apt indeed, with abilities equal to those of the town children she had previously taught.

Stated Lulah Ferguson:

So far as the interest was concerned you'd find that maybe those children in Falls Church were a little more interested in affairs in general, a little better informed generally, than these were, but so far as their att.i.tude towards studying or wanting to know, you wouldn't find any difference. These country children were really just as eager or maybe more so than some of the small town....[244]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The champions.h.i.+p girl's basketball team of Floris Vocational High School, 1924-1925.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The ”Floris Follies,” a minstrel presented at the Floris school in March, 1939. Such activities were usually staged to benefit a community activity. Photo courtesy of Louise McNair Ryder.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The students of Floris Vocational High School, 1924.