This oral history annotation activity was the most difficult activity for this course as of yet. I chose to use a segment of the oral history of George Corbin that was conducted by Edward Garvey and Paul Lee conducted on April 20th, 1969. This oral history is apart of the Shenandoah National Park Oral History Collection held at James Madison University. I have attempted to upload the audio file for this interview several times and cannot figure out how to, even with reading through the OHMS guides and watching the videos I could not get the audio file to upload. I understood the oral history had to be on an online source, which it is and I tried to link it in the metadata page and it did not take. I also shorten the transcript and reuploaded that which did take, but without the audio I was not able to actually annotate the oral history. Below I have embedded the audio file that I had shorted from the original file.

I was able to upload the transcript to OHMS which I will include below. I can see how the OHMS tool may be helpful for creating oral histories that are more accessible to others and when I was looking at the other existing oral histories it was definitely helpful.

Interview with George Corbin

Part of the Shenandoah National Park Oral History Collection, SdArch SNP-033

(SC# 4030)

Interview conducted at Nicholson Hollow, Madison County, Virginia

By Unknown Interviewer on April 29, 1969

Transcribed by Victoria M. Edwards, October, 2009

Updated by Mary M. Darrough, January, 2010

Key

[PL:] Interviewer, Paul Lee (of the National Park Service)

[EG:] Interviewer, Edward Garvey

[GC:] Interviewee, George Corbin

[MH:] Interviewee, Mary Hudson (former postmaster)

[UM:] Unknown Male

[UF:] Unknown Female

[Notes regarding transcription technique]

[unintelligible] Unable to understand more than one word

________ (??) Transcriber’s best guess

— Speaker makes abrupt change in sentence

Refer to the Baylor University Style Guide for consistency in transcription

There is an older gentleman who sounds very much like Mr. Corbin who speaks with him at

times. Around 00:25:45 there is a background exchange where this man responds to being

called “Carter.” All speakers not identified by name are given the identifiers “UM” and

“UF.” At times, there may be more than one unidentified male or female speaker, but it

is difficult to say who is who.

Total interview length: 01:05:46 min.

[Begin audio file, 00:00:01]

PL: The following is an interview with George Corbin, on a hike through Nicholson

Hollow. On this hike, Mr. Corbin will be pointing out some of the old home sites and

giving an account of the life in the Hollow. During the interview, I will number each

home site. These numbers will correspond to numbers on an enlarged section of the 1930

topographical map. Parts of this interview will be conducted by Mr. Edward Garvey of the

Potomac Appalachian Trail Club.

[00:00:34, the tape makes a very quick break and renews with a good deal of background

noise, apparently the sounds of walking and moving outdoors.]

GC: This one’s Mr. Pollock’s [unintelligible].1

UM: Yeah, liked to have killed him! (chuckle)

GC: Because, Pollock was up [unintelligible].

UM: Huh?

GC: We never did know where Fletcher come from. He’d visit my father.2 He wouldn’t

take nothing, carried his gun and his buckle on him all the time. (chuckle)

EG: Well his wife did, too, didn’t she?

GC: Yeah. (laughter) Nobody never did know where he’d come from.

UM: Nor where he went.

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GC: No, that’s right.

UM: Some said he’d get his wife to hold a gun on ’em while he’d beat ’em, wouldn’t he?

GC: That’s what they said. I know it was true about Pollock, he come across Kin (??)

Mountain and thought Pollock was a spy taking pictures, [unintelligible] he took him and

he smashed him [unintelligible] for good. (laughter) They never [unintelligible] him or

his book, he added a lot there, a lot of stuff. (laughter)

UM: Well, you have to make it, you know—

GC: Yeah.

UM: Yourself.

GC: And the pathway, from the top to the cabin.

[00:01:45, loud MH for a few seconds before resuming with continued MH of walking

combined with wind.]

GC: [unintelligible] just lived over in, what they called Corbin Hollow.

PL: Right.

GC: And he lost his first wife and he come down in here for some reason, and he met my

mother and married her.

PL: She was a Nicholson, though, wasn’t she? 3

GC: She was a Nicholson. She was Old Man Aaron Nicholson’s daughter. One they call the

King of the Blue Ridge, got pictures in the book. (chuckle)

PL: Got a beautiful home there, too.

GC: Yeah.

PL: But, so he just married—what sort of Nicholsons was this [unintelligible]?

GC: She was my mother, was Old Man Aaron Nicholson’s daughter. They called him the King

of the Blue Ridge, claimed everything in here one day. (chuckle)

PL: Right here, yeah.

GC: From my cabin here to Nethers, is originally called it Nicholson Hollow.

PL: Are they most of your own—

GC: We MH all Nicholsons.

PL: We can’t figure it out, he knows of a preacher would go up there, you say all the

houses were MH. I was thinking, you came up, two months ago, we came up from Meadows, we

took a side track right in the hollow and I don’t know who had the place, but there was

no Model T, rusting away around the place.

GC: Oh. That was way down below the cabin.

PL: Yeah.

GC: Yeah, that was way down.

PL: They still deliver from down that road?

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GC: Yeah, they was buying when you lived there in far on down, within a mile of

Nethers. You could lift that Model T.

PL: Well, parts of it there, the car itself is gone, but like, there was a radiator and

a fender.

GC: I see.

PL: And it was very obvious one had been there.

[00:03:28, audio clears up slightly after this point.]

GC: MH the old chestnut trees. Me and my first wife—MH We chopped one tree and got a

sack of chestnuts, bushel of them, sixty pound. But I lived with my father then, I never

did go them with her, she never lived long, my first wife—right out in back of that rock

somewhere—and we got that chestnut so at four o’clock the next morning, I’d put them on

my back, walk this two miles and down the other side three and five through the valley to

Luray. Got there and weighed them, they weighed plum sixty pound. They give me twelve

dollars for them. It was the early e’en and I got, hauled the groceries I could tote

back and had money left.

EG: Yeah, well, twelve dollars was good money then.

GC: Yeah. Big money.

EG: This was an old chestnut area, then?

[00:04:21, someone close to the microphone speaks indecipherably while ED and GC speak]

EG: Different prices, huh?

GC: He tried for five years to catch me.

EG: Well, I’m sure of that.