2/15 interview

2/15
On this day Joy and I decided to answer the questions that the packet gave us.
1. When did your family first move to Henry County?
Joy said her family first moved to Iowa in 1839 when Iowa was still a territory. She said that her mom’s family came first and settled in northern Henry County, and her dad’s family soon came after and settled in Mahaska County.
2. Where did your family live in before Henry County?
Joy said that her mom was Pennsylvania Dutch but not from Holland but actually from Germany. Joy’s dad’s family was from North Carolina, but they were originally English from Scandinavia.
3. What type of house did you live in as a child?
Joy said that her father was a hired hand so it meant that they moved a lot as kids. It wasn’t until Joy was eleven when her parents got divorced that her family moved to Mediapolis where they got their first indoor toilet. The reason they got their first bathroom when they moved to town was because before that they had always lived in farms that had outdoor toilets. Joy mentioned that they used to use the poop from the outhouse for manure, and that they used to use catalogs as toilet paper.
4. How was your home heated?
Joy said that when she lived on farms they had fuel oil stoves that heated their homes. And to this day Joy doesn’t have heat in the upper story in her house because she loves the cold. Something she mentioned was that as a child she would sometimes had icicles hanging from her bedroom ceiling.
5. How did you keep cool in the summer?
Joy said that to keep cool in the summer, she would sleep outside. And she also mentioned that she slept with her sisters till she was fourteen.
6. Did your family have a cellar?
Joy said that yes her family did have a cellar when she was growing up. Her family did a lot of gardening, canning, and butchering. They grew literally everything so they could eat, they raised chickens for eggs, and they milked cows for milk.
After this Joy went on to talk about how only once they moved to town they had running water along with flushing toilets. She also mentioned that her family had the only kids from a divorced family in the district. Joy went on to talk about how when they moved into town they moved into a house that was right next to the town dump. She also mentioned how they always had to have the toilet seat down because rats would come up the toilet if it wasn’t. To this day Joy still checks the toilet before sitting down because of her child tendency.
Joy went on to talk a bit about her family after that. Joy has three living sisters and one living brother. She also has four siblings that passed away as little babies. Joy also has a daughter named Kathy that was born in 1975, and has a son named Edward Eugene that was born in 1976. Joy mentioned that Edward Eugene was also her husband’s name and that he was a descendant from King Edward of England. And that every first male born since then has been named Edward.
After that Joy said that the house work she did as a child was pretty much just house work. Things like gathering eggs, doing the dishes, helping around the farm, carrying trash to the dump, hung laundry, and helped butcher.