Annie Mills Archbold

1847 – 1920

[I was] digging the cellars. Tell you a very interesting story. The house on the West Road which is Harrington’s I think now, Mr. Archbold who was president of Standard Oil Company had built. Course we use to dig the cellars with a scoop shovel.

So, Mrs. Archbold when they were building that house, I was tuckered out, you know. You’d go in the cellar and go around in the circles and when you went in the cellar these two old guys would take the handles of the scoop shovel and dig it in and load it. Then I’d go out and I’d tip it, just lift it up and pull it. So you went around and around, hour in and hour out. Kept going around and, oh, it was so monotonous. So Mrs. Archbold came down one day to see what progress we were making. Of course she wanted to hustle it. She was in a hurry to get in, you know. She’d go alongside me, “Can’t you make the horses go faster?” Finally she went out and she got some handfuls of grass, and she’d walk backwards in front of the horses, “Come on horses. Come on horses.” So when I’d go in, these two old guys, George Case and Abner Case, they’d go out of the corner of their mouth, they’d say “Hold ‘em back. Hold ‘em back.” Of course I had those horses so they’d just about go. She’d just tease the horses. But these old timers, she couldn’t hustle them.

[Editor’s note: in the original printing, Archbold is misspelled as Archibald.]

Based on an oral history interview with Winston Hart.

First published in “Remembering Adamsville” by the Little Compton Historical Society, 2013.

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