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Oral History Interview with Porter A. Mccray, 1977 Sept. 17-Oct. 4

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Oral History Interview with Porter A. Mccray, 1977 Sept. 17-Oct. 4 Oral history interview with Porter A. McCray, 1977 Sept. 17-Oct. 4 Funding for the transcription of this interview provided by the Smithsonian Institution's Women's Committee. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Porter McCray on September 1, 1977. The interview took place at his apartment on 59th street in New York, NY, and was conducted by Paul Cummings for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Funding for the transcription of this interview provided by the Smithsoinian Institution's Women's Committee. The reader should bear in mind that he or she is reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. Interview PAUL CUMMINGS: Today is the 1st of September 1977 and it's Paul Cummings talking to Porter McCray in his apartment in New York City on 59th Street. Why don't we start at the beginning? You were born in West Virginia, in Clarksburg. Now did you -- just give me some rough family background. Was the family there a long time? Are there brothers and sisters? You lived there a long time? PORTER McCRAY: My mother was from West Virginia and my father was Virginia. They lived in Virginia, but Mother had gone home to have her baby with her mother. MR. CUMMINGS: I see. MR. McCRAY: That's how I happened to be West Virginia, alas. MR. CUMMINGS: So Clarksburg is not where you grew up? MR. McCRAY: No. We were there, I think, only two months after I was born. MR. CUMMINGS: So where did you -- where did you live then? MR. McCRAY: Then we moved to a little town in Virginia called Waynesboro, where we remained until the year I went to college. And we moved at that point to a town nearby called Staunton, spelled Staunton, Virginia, where there are a number of schools and colleges just nearby, the University of Virginia and Washington Lee and VMI and a number of prep schools in the area. In the valley of Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley, between the two -- Allegheny and Blue Ridge Mountain ranges MR. CUMMINGS: Sounds like a nice -- MR. McCRAY: -- a little town, Staunton. As a matter of fact, the Episcopal church there was the site of the meeting of the House of Burgesses from Richmond when it was run out of Richmond when Patrick Henry was the governor of Virginia. MR. CUMMINGS: Oh. MR. McCRAY: The British General Tarleton was in pursuit of him, and they escaped and went over the mountain and settled in Staunton to have the House meet at the church there. And it's country also where there have been a few Jefferson houses done, people who were sort of friends with Jefferson when. At the time, he was in Charlottesville, which is only like 28 miles away. And it is primarily a town of schools, really, the Lyceum Episcopal Finishing School for girls, Stuart Hall, is there, one of the early women's seminaries, Mary Baldwin Seminary, now a flourishing women's college, Presbyterian college, was there. And there was, for a long time, the Staunton Military Academy, which has since ceased to exist. MR. CUMMINGS: Are there brothers and sisters, or not? MR. McCRAY: I have a younger sister, who lives in Staunton. But who lived for a while with me here in New York. MR. CUMMINGS: Well, what was, you know, life like growing up in a town that was -- what was the population, roughly? MR. McCRAY: Oh, about 12,000. MR. CUMMINGS: Twelve thousand? Yeah? MR. McCRAY: As far as my career was concerned, certainly, the -- I think it is quite important to realize what the southern town -- this was -- after all, I was born in 1908, and the South was still -- even Virginia, which was more prosperous than some of the deep South, was still existing on a very low economic level. And in a town that size, for example, Staunton was the capital of the largest county in the state, which was primarily an agricultural -- rather prosperous agricultural and apple and peach-growing region, and had a certain economic stability to it. But the town, for example, I think, oh, the population was about 30/70 -- 30 percent black. So it was a predominantly white town. Of course, there was segregation in education in those days there. And however, the town was -- seemed very -- reasonably well adjusted and the cultural opportunities of the town were very limited. There was a public library, a Carnegie library, there were -- the benefits of these colleges and university, you occasionally had visiting lecturers sometimes on cultural subjects. And who had schools of music and there were concerts and things of that sort. MR. CUMMINGS: Did you have an interest in books or literature, music, at home? Were there -- MR. McCRAY: Well, you know, everybody -- not everybody but a good many people had the victrolas and they had -- MR. CUMMINGS: Right, wind it up. MR. McCRAY: -- a certain number of recordings, classical ones usually, and also popular ones. There was very little actual -- there was a -- from time to time, it didn't have a continuous life, but there was a local theater organization, which did plays and which sometimes attempted rather extravagant things, not too well produced. There was a small group of people who were responsive to this kind of thing. The library was noticeably lacking in any kind of very rich representation of architectural literature. The town had some really quite beautiful Greek revival and Federal buildings in it. It had been this town chosen by the state to accommodate the fist asylum for the insane and the first institute for the deaf and blind. And the buildings that were done were very handsome sort of Greek Doric buildings. And the level of architecture was relatively good. Mary Baldwin had some handsome old houses with which it started, private houses, of rather bold character in Tuscan revival and there was one Jefferson house in the town. And by then, there had been some rather interesting even sort of Swiss gothic revival little houses that people who had traveled had brought back. The influence of Davis was felt a little bit back then in some of the building there. There was a house built, for example, on the highest hill in the town about 1850 by the grand nephew of President Madison who had shortly afterward moved allegedly to be the private surgeon to Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee later when he went to be the president of Washington College and later Washington and Lee. And that house at that point, rather interestingly, was bought by a retiring president of Brown University, who had been named the head of the Peabody foundation that was set up with, at that time, really an enormous amount of $2 million or $3 million granted by the Peabody family in Boston to initiate a system of public education in the South. And Stanton was near the crossroads of the Chesapeake and Ohio and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroads. Charlottesville had the Southern Railway. Waynesboro had the Northwestern, so the spot was chosen primarily so that the -- MR. CUMMINGS: Transportation. MR. McCRAY: -- director could almost anywhere in the South to attend to his business. And he remained in Staunton as long as he lived, and inaugurated of course some very significant things in the training, particularly, of teachers for both black and white. They were interested especially in setting up a system of black -- MR. CUMMINGS: When was that? MR. McCRAY: That was, I think, about -- it was almost immediately after the Civil War. It was quite interesting. MR. CUMMINGS: That early? MR. McCRAY: And I have looked at some correspondence recently when I was home, between him and some of the more educated people, lawyers and so forth, and the rector of the church, the Episcopal church, in Staunton and there was quite an extensive correspondence, in that they all lived in the same town, about ideas. And it was fascinating to me that there could be this kind of rapport [inaudible] discussion of -- MR. CUMMINGS: What was their name? Do you remember offhand? MR. McCRAY: Just offhand, I've forgotten his name. I'll give it to you, so you can fill it in. MR. CUMMINGS: But, no, what was life for you like growing up in this sort of -- MR. McCRAY: Well, I remember vaguely the first world war, particularly the awful winter before the end of the war with the very severe flu epidemic that really hit -- killed a noticeable number of people, even in those small communities. The so-called bubonic plague [inaudible] at the same time. And you have to remember that the climate in that part of Virginia is really not unlike the climate in New York. MR. CUMMINGS: Oh, really? MR. McCRAY: It is -- the valley is about 1,400 feet above sea level, so that it has rather cold winters and cold nights -- cool nights in the summer. So that they have the most severe winter, with heavy ice on the ground for months and months and months and other recollections that I have. Typically, the armistice day, I was young, I was what, nine. That was 1918, I was 10 years old. The madness I can recall, a great deal of which I did not understand at the time, but went on on the streets. My parents took my by the hand and we, like the whole population of the town, gathered in the center of the town to celebrate the victory and there was everything from fireworks to excessive drink to everything else that went with it.
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