Richard Elijah Lowder (1886 - 1958)

My grandparents had 11 children, the 10th child Sallie died at age two. I do not remember anyone telling me why she died. She is buried at the Chestnut Hill Cemetery in Salisbury, NC.

Richard was my grandfather and he was a very religious man, clergy in the church, he assisted the preacher in Baptism's and would not let us children play cards on Sunday or even watch TV in his house. He was a barber by trade and when my mother made me get a haircut, be used some manual scissors that pulled as much as cut my hair, it was very painful and I came away with tears in my eyes. I remember my grandfather raising chickens in the backyard of the house they lived in at 714 S. Church St., in Salisbury, NC. I saw him catch a chicken with his hands, put it's head on a tree stump and chop it off with an axe. The chicken ran around the yard without a head. Finally, it stopped running and grand father got it and started pulling it's feather's out, then dropped it in a large pot of boiling water. He also made sour kraut in a wooden barrel in the back yard. It was not a very large yard, but it seemed that way when I was little.