Family Interview with Mr. Henry C. Graybeal and Dr. Fritz Buri

Conducted by Dr. David M. Graybeal at Radford, Virginia, 1966

Recorded on audiotape by Dr. William S. Graybeal

Transcribed from CD by Mr. Daniel Y. Graybeal

Foreward, by Daniel Graybeal

Quite by accident, I came upon the task of transcribing these

remarkable interview tapes from CDs. While performing genealogical

research, I asked Dr. William Graybeal, my uncle, about a man whom I had

seen in a family Christmas photograph, dated from the late 1950s or

1960s, and who had been identified in its caption as a Swiss visitor.

One thing led to another, at which point Bill copied for me two CDs made

from the tapes on which an interview with this visitor, Dr. Buri, was

conducted, in 1966, by Dr. David Graybeal, my uncle.

It was this same Dr. David Graybeal who, on learning that I

possessed CD copies, asked me if I could burn him a copy. As the

equipment was unavailable, I offered to spend some time over the

holidays transcribing it for him, and he accepted. The act of

transcribing has forced me to pay stricter attention to the dialogue

and, in the process, revealed much more than I had heard when I listened

to it the first time through. In editing, I leaned more toward

preservation of authentic speech patterns than toward the king’s

grammar, particularly in regard to the Swiss English-speakers. Also, a

more direct rendering retains the electricity in the exchanges.

Dr. Buri was a Swiss religious scholar on sabbatical in the U.S.

and came to the H.C. Graybeal household for Christmas that year, at the

invitation of Dr. David Graybeal, a U.S. religious scholar. When I

first saw the Christmas photograph with Dr. Buri present, I thought it

must have been some genealogical connection. While this did not turn

out to be the case, the interview does reveal, to those knowledgeable of

Krähenbühl history, some surprising coincidences. To illustrate, a

sketch of the Krähenbühl family history is made in the Appendix.

Finally, I call attention now to the first half of the twentieth

century, on which this interview focuses, and during which time rapid

modernization brought sweeping changes to both America and Switzerland.

My grandfather departed the farm to attend college, and the Buris left

typical occupations of farming, milling, and tanning to enter school for

theology and medicine. In the interview to follow, we learn what life

was like in our country a century ago. Moreover, in passages that raise

goosebumps in our own time of financial disasters, we hear first-hand

reports of the conditions in Germany during the Great Depression, as

well as of the rise of the Nazis. Much is of value in this interview

beyond genealogy, including a sense that the modernizing world may be at

least as important as genealogy, geography, and history in bringing the

participants together.

Before I resume my rightful place at their feet, as they tell

their stories, let me offer an invocation.

Ithaca, New York, 1/I/2009

Invocation Schubert, Deutsche Messe, tr. Warren Hall

Segne, Herr, mich und die Meinen,

segne unsern Lebensgang!

Alles unser Tun und Wirken

sei ein frommer Lobgesang.

O Lord, bless me and my loved ones,

bless our life’s course.

May all our works and actions

be a pious hymn of praise.

2

Participants:

Dr. David M. Graybeal (DMG) -- Interviewer, U.S. religious scholar

Mr. Henry C. Graybeal (HCG) -- Education administrator (retired)

Dr. Fritz Buri (FB) -- Swiss religious scholar, on sabbatical in U.S.

Mrs. Buri (MSB) -- His wife

Mrs. L. Clare Graybeal (LCG) -- Occasional interviewer

Mrs. June M. Graybeal (JMG) -- Occasional commentator

Dr. William S. Graybeal (WSG) -- Recorder, occasional commentator

Dr. H. Charlton Graybeal (“Doc”) -- Occasional commentator

Mr. Roland C. Houghton, Jr. (RCH) -- Occasional commentator

Contents:

1. Education of Rev. David M. Graybeal, Father of H.C.

2. Earnings, Jobs, and Other Responsibilities of Rev. Graybeal

3. Preaching and Educational Influence of Rev. Graybeal

4. From the Mountain Farm to the Wider World: 1900--1910

5. Life in a Small, Rural, Virginia College About 1910

6. Dr. and Mrs. Fritz Buri

7. Background of Dr. and Mrs. Buri

8. Changes in Swiss Rural Life Between the Wars

9. Germany and Switzerland in the Great Depression

10. Theology and Acquaintances of Dr. Buri

Appendix: The Buris and the Graybeals Share an Ancestral Homeland

3

The Interview

1. Education of Rev. David M. Graybeal, Father of H.C.

DMG: He had elementary education?

HCG: Yeah, elementary education.

DMG: How many years was that?

HCG: Well, I wouldn’t know. You see, when I began going to elementary

school, the length of the school [year] was about three months,

each winter, and he went to school long before I did. I would say

that three or four months a year was all he had, for six or eight

years.

DMG: Six or eight years?

HCG: Mm-hmm.

DMG: And, then, this one year of academy was beyond that?

HCG: Yes, the one year of academy was beyond that.

DMG: Now, when he was teaching, what subjects did he teach?

HCG: Oh, he knew Webster’s blue-back spelling book, by heart. He’d

begin on the front, first page, and the top, first word, and just

walk up and down the aisle, pronouncing words all the way down

that page.

DMG: Can you remember what was on the first page of Webster’s blue-back

spelling book?

HCG: Oh, it began with A and B and CA, and BA, and just two-letter

syllables. Then, it moved to cat and rat, three-letter words, and

then on over to four, five, and six, and going on up, to two-

syllable and three-syllable words. And, on over to the very long

words. Oh, I’ve got a Webster’s blue-back spelling [book] in

there now [presumably pointing].

DMG: So, what you call a speller is not just a dictionary, but it’s a

book on how to learn to spell.

4

HCG: Yeah, and it had fables in it, in the back, quite a number of

them.

DMG: What kind of fables? Aesop’s fables?

HCG: Yeah. That type of thing.

DMG: What would some of those be?

HCG: Oh, just the common sayings that we have today. An honest man is

a jewel, or something to that effect. Several quotations of

Scripture in those passages, and wise sayings of Shakespeare.

Things of that sort.

DMG: How old were the children who came to this school that he taught?

HCG: He had them all, from first grade, all that wanted to go to

school, up to, I guess, they had a limit of eighteen, I believe.

DMG: How many children were in that school in a usual year?

HCG: When he was teaching, it’d be twenty-five, thirty. See, he had an

elementary school. My father taught two schools, quite often.

He’d teach one of them in the fall of the year, and then one in

the spring. Of his education, I would say, very little was

acquired in public schools. He read a lot -- the paper, a

magazine or two, and had many books. He enjoyed reading

biography, geography, travel, and things of that sort. Anything

he could get a hold of.

DMG: Now, was the school held in your home?

HCG: No.

DMG: Or, did you have a school house?

HCG: Had a school house.

DMG: In Damascus?

HCG: Oh, no. No. I just happen to have been born there.

DMG: Yeah.

HCG: I grew up in Ashe County, North Carolina.

5

DMG: This is in Ashe County, North Carolina?

HCG: They took me home at ten weeks of age. My father’s school was

out. He was teaching school when I was born, the first day of

February. And, I guess, school was out about the last of March.

We went across the mountain to my home, to his home. He had just

left for the winter. See, I was the first-born, and my mother

wanted to go back to her home, for the event.

DMG: Yeah.

HCG: So, he got to school in Virginia, and taught there, not far from

Damascus. Oak Hill, they called it.

DMG: Now, when did he get interested in the ministry?

HCG: Soon after he was married.

DMG: Was he preaching at the same time he was teaching school?

HCG: Yeah. He found a circuit in the Blue Ridge District of the

Western North Carolina Conference for many, many years, and held

his revivals in the summertime, when he was not teaching school.

DMG: Did he have much trouble getting licensed to preach for the

Methodist Church?

HCG: He took the courses that were required.

DMG: Took them by correspondence?

HCG: By correspondence, yeah. I can remember when he was reading his

courses, reading his books and sending in his reports on the

books, that sort of thing.

FB: Could we hear more about the revivals?

DMG: Yes, would you tell us something about a revival?

HCG: Well, the preacher, in that day and time, was supposed to hold a

revival in his churches. That would be preaching every night,

and, probably, sometimes in the morning. They’d have preaching

services and the whole membership of the church would get very

6

busy reaching the people in the neighborhood, the community,

getting them into the church to hear the preacher. That was what

they were trying to do.

2. Earnings, Jobs, and Other Responsibilities of Rev. Graybeal

HCG: [Continuing] And, he held them in every church. Now, his circuit

would have four, five, or six churches on them. He had to preach

at one, one Sunday. He had appointments on the first Sunday, the

second Sunday, and the third Sunday of the month. Then, he’d go

back to the same church on the first Sunday of the month. He

seldom preached Sunday night; he had afternoon services, but not

on Sunday night. In the country, you know, it’s hard.

FB: May I ask another question?

DMG: Yes.

FB: What was the specialty of these revivals, in view of these

ordinary services?

HCG: No, they were scheduled for, oh, sometime ahead. They’d usually

have prayer meetings in the homes, and things of that sort,

getting ready for it. They’d get the whole community stirred up

for the revival, sometimes even finding a visiting preacher to

help him [presumably Rev. Graybeal] in the revival.

FB: And, what was the main aim and result of these revival actions?

HCG: Build up the church, strengthen the church.

FB: Ah, for the church life?

HCG: Oh, yes. Yes. Yeah. Brought in numbers of new members.

FB: New members? And, church activities?

HCG: He had baptisms. He baptized a great many, and I know today that

they had immersion, you know. They baptized by both sprinkling

and immersion.

7

DMG: Putting people under the water entirely?

HCG: Yeah. And, they’d have those in a stream nearby.

DMG: Uh-huh. Let’s break for a minute.

DMG: [Resuming] On horseback?

HCG: Yeah. Had his saddlebags, like the old-fashioned Methodist

preachers. Carried his pistol, his Bible, and his songbooks. He

usually carried several songbooks, so that he could have enough.

FB: Like Francis Asbury?

HCG: Francis Asbury, very much like it, in those old days, back in my

country.

DMG: Would this be, say, about 1910?

HCG: Yeah, or earlier than that.

DMG: Nineteen hundred?

HCG: Yes, about, yes, 1900. Beginning in 1900, or about that time.

DMG: Uh-huh.

HCG: You see, I was eleven years old in 1900, and I remember it, that

year. I helped with the crops, while he was out preaching

somewhere. He had a man who would help us, and I would go with

him, working on the farm.

DMG: Did he have one horse, or more than one horse?

HCG: Oh, he had to farm a hundred acres, and we had several horses and

machineries, plows, and things of that sort.

DMG: Would you mean that he was farming as well as teaching?

HCG: Oh, yeah, we had the farm; we lived on the farm, and had our own

farm crops and everything, yeah. Beef cattle, sheep, hogs, and

chickens. Everything.

DMG: What would be the largest number of cattle that he ever had at one

time, do you think?

8

HCG: Well, milk cows and calves and all, I expect he had forty head, at

one time. But, he’d sell, I’d say, fifteen a year, something like

that.

DMG: How much money would he make from teaching school for a year?

[Woman laughing a whinnying laugh in the background.]

HCG: I just don’t remember what his salary was, but it couldn’t have

been high. The first school I taught, I got twenty-five dollars a

month.

DMG: You got twenty-five dollars a month?

HCG: I taught four months for a hundred dollars, and took that in a

county warrant that they didn’t pay for a little while afterward.

DMG: What year was that?

HCG: Nineteen and eight.

DMG: Now, how much money would he earn in a year of preaching?

HCG: Well, I would say, again, a very small amount.

DMG: Would it be a hundred dollars a year?

HCG: I would say more than that, probably. Yeah. He had, usually,

four or five churches, and they’d pay him, I think, forty or fifty

dollars a church, something like that.

DMG: So, he might have earned two hundred and fifty dollars.

HCG: Yeah, I’d say two hundred, two hundred fifty dollars.

DMG: Would he have been thought of as a well-off man, a rich man?

HCG: No, his father was a rich man. My grandfather was probably, at

one time, said to be the wealthiest man in Ashe County.

DMG: Uh-huh.

HCG: He had, oh, I guess, two thousand acres of land, and he had a

hundred or hundred and fifty head of cattle. And, horses. Yeah,

he was very well-to-do. My father’s brother, Uncle Rufus, was

older, a good deal older, than my father, and he was well-to-do.

9

And, my grandfather’s brother, Uncle Elijah, my great-uncle,

wasn’t worth as much as my grandfather, but he was well-to-do.

DMG: Mm-hmm.

HCG: You see, my father was the County Commissioner for eight years,

and three men are told the same thing as supervisors here. They

ran the business of Ashe County. They’d meet once a month; first

Monday in the month, he’d go to Jefferson [the county seat].

DMG: Were they paid anything for that work?

HCG: Oh, yes, they were paid, and got their dole for travel.

DMG: How much would that pay him in a year?

HCG: I think he got five dollars a day.

DMG: So, that would be sixty dollars a year?

HCG: Yeah.

DMG: Now, you’ve named four things that he, four jobs that he had:

supervisor, teacher, preacher, and farmer.

HCG: Yeah, and he was on the Board of Education, the county Board of

Education, for twelve years, but not at the same time as he was

County Commissioner.

3. Preaching and Educational Influence of Rev. Graybeal

HCG: The courthouse exception has his [father’s] name on it now, having

been built by the County Commission. Uncle Elihu, my great-uncle,

was County Commissioner after he’d served.

DMG: Uh-huh.

HCG: Uncle Elihu was a Democrat, and my daddy was a Republican.

[Laughter.]

DMG: That sounds like the Graybeals have always been split,

politically.

HCG: Yeah.

10

[More laughter.]

DMG: Do you think that he was a hard-working man?

HCG: Yes, he was a very hard-working man. Not at manual labor so much,

but he was studying or reading, or working with people practically

all the time.

DMG: Mm-hmm.

HCG: He had more to do with, just as I’m telling you today, as Burke

[his son] was saying he heard, and so many people say, he worked

with young people. When he taught school, he went out and played

with them at the noon hour, played ball just the same as anyone.

JMG: Now, let me tell you about that.

HCG: [Continuing] And batted the balls, and run, even though he was a

large man.

LCG: Dad, tell him about the croquet game in the front yard.

HCG: Well, he organized that we had bought a croquet set, and we had a

level lawn, you know, and played croquet. Uncle Elihu came along

and claimed to be rather religious. Playing croquet one Sunday

afternoon [sic], Uncle Elihu called him to the fence and said,

“David, you’re just ruining this community, playing croquet here

on Sunday, letting your children play.” And, Dad said, “Well,

Elihu, I’d rather my children be here in my yard, playing croquet,

on Sunday, than being [sic] running up and down the road and I

don’t know where they were.” Elihu went on, rather mad, in the

mud.

JMG: Now, tell about the time when he took the saw and sawed the knobs

off the top of the high posts of the bed for them to play croquet

with.

[Spirited laughter.]

HCG: He was a believer in recreation and play.

11

DMG: Let me interpret that. They played the game of croquet, and one

time, they did not have croquet balls to play with. But, they had

a bed that had a post on each corner. And, it came up to the top

and a ball on top. He went in and sawed the ball off all four of

them, took them out, and said, play croquet.

[More laughter.]

HCG: He played, played ball always, round-cat, and enjoyed it.

Doc: That’s baseball, now, isn’t it? Round-cat?

HCG: A little bit of round-cat, yeah.

DMG: Something like baseball.

FB: Where did your father get instruction for to be a teacher?

HCG: Well, it’s what we were saying. He had very little actual, formal

training for being a schoolteacher, very little. I don’t know how

in the world he did it. He went to two or three short tuition, or

what we call tuition -- they paid tuition, you know. And, some

man would come into the community [from] somewhere -- [from] where

he never had one of his own; he had to go somewhere else -- to a

boarding school. Studied mathematics and grammar. He was an

expert in Harvey’s grammar; he just knew it from, as we say,

kivver to kivver [cover to cover].

DMG: Yeah.

HCG: He just knew it, I’ll declare, and he could teach grammar. Just

everybody recognized him as an authority on the English grammar.

DMG: Did he preach long or short sermons?

HCG: I would say moderate. He didn’t preach long sermons.

DMG: Now, did he preach emotional sermons?

HCG: Yeah, very.

JMG: I don’t know.

DMG: How long would a sermon be?

12

HCG: I’d say twenty-five minutes. He wasn’t long-winded. He did use a

great many illustrations that were, more or less, emotional.

DMG: Yeah.

HCG: My mother complained to him, a few times, about his using that

type of material.

DMG: Do you recall what his favorite text was? Or, do you recall any

text that he used?

HCG: Yeah. The man planted the garden in, what was it, Isaiah? No,

it’s in the New Testament. But, it refers back. He planted a

vineyard, and put the people in charge of the vineyard, you know.

They treat it poorly. And, he sent his son to be -- you remember

that passage? Where is it? I can’t place it.

Doc: Then, he murdered him. Right?

HCG: And, they murdered him, yeah.

DMG: Or, Jamie’s got the Bible.

HCG: It was typical, you know, of what happened to Jesus. He was the

son, and they, and that was the...

DMG: And, so he’d read that analogy.

HCG: He’d read that analogy.

JMG: I remember when H.C. was first telling me about him. He said that

so many of his sermons were based on farmers and farm life, cattle

and plows, weather and all those things.

DMG: Would you say he enjoyed his ministry?

HCG: Oh, very much. Yeah, very much.

DMG: Did he see any conflict between teaching and preaching?

HCG: They were coordinate; they would supplement each other. He had

his chapel service every day, and that sort of thing, with his

schooling.

DMG: When did you decide to go to college?

13

HCG: I didn’t decide; he decided it for me.

[Loud laughter.]

DMG: How many other young men in your community were going to college?

HCG: Not any. He’d been instrumental in getting Charlie and Tom, Uncle

Rufus’s boys, who were older than I, to go to Peabody. They went

to Peabody. A man by the name of Roarke, Fayette Roarke, had gone

to Peabody before that. He was instrumental in getting Fayette

Roarke to go up to school. Then, Uncle Hugh came along -- his

brother, youngest brother -- and he persuaded Granddad. Uncle

Rufus just didn’t like it at all, because he persuaded his boys to

go to school. But, they were a little older than I. [At any

rate,] he was instrumental in their going. Charlie always said,

“I’m never going to school.” “Tom was never going to school,

hadn’t been through a day.”

DMG: Mm-hmm. How much money did you have, when you went to college?

HCG: Well, I had that hundred-dollar warrant, [from having] taught

school, and they accepted it. No, I think I let Granddad have it,

and he cashed it for me. A hundred dollars. And, I’d sold a coat

for seventy-five dollars. My dad let me have a coat, and that was

all I had had.

LCG: Tell them about taking Greek, or something, for a whole year and

one semester. Didn’t you do this, in order to make up some

prerequisite?

HCG: Yeah, my first year at college. See, I went in, and I taught my

school, and I entered Emory and Henry College in January. Classes

always started -- freshman classes -- in September, and they

didn’t have any entering classes in January. So, they had to fix

me up some special courses. I enrolled in the fitting school with

her [presumably pointing to JMG]; she was in the fitting school at

14

that time, and several others. I took several courses that

spring, preparatory, to enter the freshman class. Like, I took

Latin. I hadn’t had...well, I’d had one year of Latin, I think.

So, I took Latin and plane geometry, and I think I had an

elementary course in science. And, they insisted -- I had several

preacher friends who were taking Greek, and had started in

September. So, they persuaded me to enroll in Greek, and ol’ Dr.

Milden said, if I wanted to take it, he’d meet me an hour after

school each day, or in the afternoon. He met me an hour a day,

and I caught up with the class, and came up, into the freshman

class, with Greek.

4. From the Mountain Farm to the Wider World: 1900--1910

DMG: Where did you teach school, before you went to Emory and Henry?

HCG: Where’d I teach?

DMG: Yes.

HCG: In Ashe County, on the Little Laurel. I taught the Little Laurel

Elementary School.

DMG: How many years had you gone to school, before you taught?

HCG: Well, I’d had about three months at Helton, in high school, and

about four months at Liberty Hall, in Washington County. Same as

Uncle Dave Mock. Then, we had a ten-months’-tuition school, there

at my home. We had boarders, all of us in the community had

boarders. That’s all I had, before I began teaching.

DMG: What subjects did you teach then?

HCG: Elementary school, it was.

DMG: Oh, reading, writing, arithmetic?

HCG: Yeah.

DMG: Did you have any discipline problems?

15

HCG: No, no. Not a thing. Dewey was one of my best students, one of

my best athletes on the playground. You couldn’t hit him with a

ball to save your life.

[Laughter.]

DMG: Did you tell me one time that your father once operated a mill,

too?

HCG: Yeah, it used to be up on Big Branch. Then, we built down on the

Big Laurel. We had to have a good deal of lumber. We sawed our

own lumber, of course. That way we’d get it already dressed and

ready. So, we bought a mill, right there above us. A man wanted

to sell his mill.

DMG: A saw mill?

HCG: Saw mill, and grist mill, and everything.

DMG: How was the saw mill powered?

HCG: Water power.

DMG: Water power. Did it have a circular saw, or...?

HCG: Circular saw.

DMG: Uh-huh.

HCG: There was a sash saw in our county over there. I knew about it

(I’d seen it) but we had a circular saw.

DMG: Did you saw the lumber for your own house, then?

HCG: A good deal of it, yeah. See, we moved an old house from up on

Big Branch. Moved that house down, just took it down, piece by

piece, and moved it down.

WSG: They even went up and got the soapstone for the fireplaces, up in

the mountains there.

HCG: We went away up on Buffalo Creek, to get the soapstone. Tom McCoy

took one team, and I took another. Each one of us had one full

fireplace, eleven pieces of soapstone. [Each] was about, oh, two

16

inches thick and two feet long, by ten inches wide. Some of them

were larger than that. We had an arch across that was four feet,

five feet long.

DMG: What was the value of the soapstone for that?

HCG: It was impregnable to fire, better than your fire-brick. It’s

still right there, now.

Doc: We saw it this summer.

WSG: We went there this summer and saw that; it’s still right there.

DMG: How did you get that stone out?

HCG: It was mined up there; they were selling it.

Doc: Did you saw it, or do anything to it?

HCG: No, they had it. They had the fireplace cut exactly the shape and

everything, the salt and shape, so that your chimney would draw,

you know. Put in the back pieces up here [demonstrating], and

come up in the slope and then turn back.

Doc: That was the day you ate the thirteen apple dumplings, too, wasn’t

it?

[Laughter.]

DMG: How long did that trip take you, to go get that?

HCG: Two days.

DMG: Where did you stay, when you went over there?

HCG: We slept in the wagon.

DMG: Did you have a team of two horses?

HCG: Two horses; each one had a two-horse team. And, it was hard to

pull, too, I’ll tell you; that was heavy, for a team. Coming up

in the hill, much, they had turns.

DMG: How were your roads then?

HCG: Muddy, if it rained.

17

LCG: Tell him to tell them about taking the produce, your apples, over

to Bristol, from the farm, to sell.

HCG: Oh, yes, every fall, we had a lot of apples and chestnuts, butter

and eggs, some eggs and things of that sort, on the farm. And,

beans. So, we’d load up the wagon with twenty-five bushels of

apples, and we didn’t have to spray apples in those days. Law and

mercy, they just grew perfect. And, there’d be vines. Load up

twenty or twenty-five bushels of apples and a few bushels of beans

and chestnuts. Chestnuts were very, very plentiful in those days.

JMG: After a rain, you could go out and rake them up.

DMG: How long would it take you to take them to Bristol?

HCG: Three days, going, usually, and a day selling.

FB: In what year was that?

DMG: What year would that be, Dad?

FB: When was that?

HCG: That’s about nineteen and...

FB: About?

HCG: I was...you see, I wouldn’t be driving a wagon until I was fifteen

or sixteen years old. That would be about nineteen five and six,

seven and eight.

MSB: [To her husband] When you were born, eh?

HCG: You see, I left for school, for college, when I was twenty-one,

and it was before that time. I taught the school the year I was

twenty, I guess.

JMG: Talking about selling those apples, I remember one of the first

things I heard him bragging about was, he’d been on the third

floor of Martha Washington College when school was in session.

DMG: Uh-huh.

JMG: That’s a girls’ school.

18

WSG: Selling apples in there?

JMG: He didn’t say what, he just said.

DMG: Let’s get that off the record, what do you say?

[Laughter.]

LCG: Jamie says, “Like father, like son.”

[More laughter.]

JMG: I was told to come in here, so...

Doc: Please edit that last remark.

JMG: But, he bragged about it, so I don’t see why he’ll object.

LCG: Did you camp out?

HCG: Oh, yeah, camp out, sleep in the wagon.

LCG: And, how many miles was that, from your house to Bristol?

HCG: It was about sixty.

LCG: Sixty miles, so you’d go twenty miles a day.

HCG: Twenty miles a day; it was hard day’s driving.

DMG: Ford the streams?

HCG: We’d load up, yeah, ford the streams.

DMG: Excuse me; I was just going to ask if you’d carried feed for the

horses, or if you’d get it at night.

HCG: Oh, yeah, we’d carry feed for the horses, yeah.

LCG: And carried their own food.

RCH: Somebody was standing by one day, saying you’re not going to make

it? Or something, that you were going through a stream? Then,

you said you were going to have to try it anyway, and you took it

on through? Very rapid, forceful?

HCG: Yeah. The stream was up some.

LCG: Who was the man at Emory who took such a personal interest in you,

when you were so ill? Was he Fred Nelson?

19

HCG: I don’t know that anyone took to any man, any one person. Bess

Walker was the one who went after the doctor.

LCG: I thought some professor had gone up with you at night.

HCG: Well, one was called High Pockets.

LCG: High Pockets?

HCG: Yeah, he was sitting up with me one night, and I was delirious.

Didn’t know a thing in the world I was saying. He asked if I knew

who he was. His nickname...his name was Saint John, and his

nickname was High Pockets. He was six feet and more tall, slim as

a bean pole, and we all called him High Pockets. So, he asked me

that night if I knew who he was. I said, yeah, I know who you

are. He said, well, who am I? I said, you’re the Right Honorable

Saint High John.

[Laughter.]

HCG: He says I said that about him. Right Honorable Saint High John.

JMG: Well, that was when Bess Wampler thought you were dying.

LCG: I had heard Dad thought he was dying. He’d said his legs had

gotten cold.

JMG: Well, she ran all the way up the railroad to get the doctor.

LCG: Yeah, in the rain, to get the doctor.

5. Life in a Small, Rural, Virginia College About 1910

LCG: His doc said he was dying, or something. Put him in a bath, with

hot water, to get the circulation going.

HCG: Oh, he got the washing tub and just filled it with hot water and

bathed me for a time, until the circulation started again. Yeah,

I was cold to the waist. They didn’t know I was sick, though, and

my people never had the measles. My grandfather died right while

I was sick, and my father had to be with him.

20

JMG: Well, you ought to finish the story.

DMG: What were you sick with?

HCG: Measles. I’d had measles, and then I had the relapse. Anxious to

get back in school.

DMG: Now, what you say we ought to have...

JMG: I think he ought to talk about where his room was, in the old

college building, and what their facilities were: lights, water,

and so on.

HCG: Well, they had the spigot out in front of the main college

building. It was five stories high, you know.

DMG: This was 1910?

HCG: Yeah, 1909.

DMG: Yeah, okay.

HCG: The only water we had in the building was this spigot out in the

front. Wasn’t any in the building at all. We all had buckets in

our rooms to carry to our rooms from that spigot.

DMG: How did you heat your room?

HCG: We had fireplaces, and we carried coal. Janitor carried coal, and

Uncle Squire Henry carried coal. They weren’t very warm.

JMG: They didn’t stay in them very much.

WSG: Where were they, if they weren’t in the rooms?

JMG: Well, they’d be down at the Y.

WSG: Working at the library?

HCG: No, we were in our room at night, mostly.

DMG: Well, let me ask the Buris some questions now, about a period not

as long ago as this. Are you both from very close together, in

Switzerland?

21

6. Dr. and Mrs. Fritz Buri

MSB: Our grandmothers had been friends. I had just told Mrs. Graybeal

that my grandmother always told me she was also a daughter on a

farm. She had to go to school rather far. When she went to

school, she had to go one hour and a half, by walking. When she

arrived at school, she first had to go to the oven and sit on the

oven, to get her frozen shoes and stockings thawed.

DMG: Ooh, boy.

MSB: Yes. [Giggles.] And, she couldn’t go home during midday, and

since she always hoed, she had a box of honey with her, and a bowl

of her own beans, peas, and bread. That was her daily food that

she had.

FB: At this time, our grandmothers were friends. Then, later, we went

together to school.

MSB: We were at the same school.

DMG: Now, was that in a village or a town?

FB: That was a small town, in the neighborhood of Bern, called

Burgdorf. There is a big castle on one hill, and on the other

hill, the church. By the church is a high school, and that’s

where we were together, in high school.

DMG: Now, how many months in a year did you go to high school?

Gymnasium?

FB: All year.

[Discussion.]

DMG: Nine months?

FB: At least.

DMG: And, in the morning, what time would your classes begin?

FB: At seven.

DMG: At seven in the morning?

22

FB: At seven.

DMG: And, how long, until noon?

FB: Noon? Ja. And, then, into afternoon from two to four, sometimes

to six.

DMG: And, what subjects did you study in the high school?

FB: German, French, and Latin. And, then, you can choose between

Greek, English, and Italian.

[Remarks of astonishment.]

FB: Then, in the last time for us, Hebrew. Then, history and science,

geography, natural science, chemistry, physics.

[A couple people suggest mathematics.]

FB: Even math...oh! It is typical that I let it away.

[Laughter.]

FB: She [gesturing] was, did very well in mathematics.

MSB: He copied from me.

[Loud laughter.]

FB: I helped her with Latin.

WSG: It worked the other way with Mother and Dad.

MSB: Always helping.

DMG: Fritz, what did your father do?

FB: He was a miller and farmer. He had a farm and a mill.

DMG: Now, what kind of things did he grow on the farm?

FB: Corn, wheat, and cattle. Milk cattle and horses. Potatoes.

DMG: How many acres did he have on his farm?

FB: Seventy Juchart?

MSB: Acres. It’s about the same.

FB: About the same.

DMG: Seventy acres?

23

FB: Ja. Seventy is, for our circumstances, in Switzerland, a big

farm.

HCG: What kind of a mill was it?

FB: For wheat and...

HCG: You didn’t have a sawmill, or anything?

FB: No, no, no, for flour.

HCG: Flour and meal. Well, we had that, too. I just wanted...

DMG: Did you have water power for the mill?

FB: Water power, with a water wheel. And, electricity.

DMG: And electricity?

FB: Ja.

DMG: Now, what year was that, when you first had electricity, would you

think?

FB: Oh, before I was born.

DMG: So, that would be 1900, perhaps.

[The Buris confer with each other.]

FB: Ja. Probably. Ja. We are born in 1907. Ja. Ja. Ja ja.

DMG: When a farmer would bring his wheat to the mill to be ground, what

kind of terms did he pay for the flour? Did you father take a

share of the wheat?

FB: No, he had to pay.

DMG: He paid, in money.

FB: Ja ja. Ja ja. You see, that was not only a mill for these

farmers, but also we had a commercial mill. We had wheat from

Canada and from Wisconsin. I remember these sacks with names of

American states. That was my first encountering of this country.

Also, Russian wheat from Odessa.

DMG: Now, did your father employ men to help him with the mill and with

the farm?

24

FB: Ja. Ja.

DMG: How many men in the mill?

FB: One or two.

DMG: And, how many on the farm?

FB: On the farm, that was dependent on...not the whole year the same.

In harvest, there were more, but in wintertime, fewer. Usually,

there were six in wintertime.

DMG: Did he sell the milk in liquid form, or make it into cheese?

FB: They brought the milk in a, what?

DMG: A tank?

FB: In a milk shop, and all farms brought it in a milk shop, and there

was cheese fabrication.

MSB: No farmer does his cheese.

FB: That is only in the mountains. In the mountains there, these

small farms do it themselves, in the Alps.

DMG: Now, we stayed one night in Gruyères. How far is your home from

Gruyères?

FB: That’s quite on the other side of Bern.

DMG: On the other side of Bern.

FB: It’s in the middle, in the center of Swiss.

[Gruyères is in Fribourg, a canton neighboring Bern to the southwest.]

[End of track 6 and CD 1.]

7. Background of Dr. and Mrs. Buri

FB: Near Bern.

HCG: Difference in your mill, and ours, then: you were commercial. You

sold your flour, while we just ground for the farmers around that

came and brought it in. And, we had a little toll.

FB: My father did both.

25

HCG: Did both?

FB: Ja.

HCG: We had a little toll box, and we’d take a toll out of the wheat

and pour it in our box. Take a toll out of the corn.

DMG: What percentage toll would you take, would you think? Would you

get ten percent for grinding it?

HCG: No, hardly, I’d say. It wouldn’t have been that much, I don’t

believe. A twelfth, or maybe a little less than that. The toll

box wouldn’t hold all that much.

DMG: When you were a young man, did you help on the farm and in the

mill?

FB: No, very few. No, I had more interests in studying, in reading

books, and it was always of all those...

MSB: We’re sophisticated.

FB: Ja ja.

MSB: As a baby?

FB: He will be a minister.

DMG: At what age did you decide to be a minister?

FB: Oh, I never decided. My grandfather said it.

[Laughter.]

DMG: Like, “You’re going to college.”

MSB: His grandfather said, when he was five years old, Fritz is a very

tired boy. He would be a minister.

HCG: These young people ought to be hearing that.

MSB: And so he had to work at the...

FB: Ja, and so I was saved from work. My brother had to do it.

HCG: My father had seven children, and he never talked about any of

them.

26

DMG: Then, when you finished your high school, where did you go to the

university?

FB: To Basel.

DMG: To Basel?

FB: Ja. Two years to Basel, and then a year to Bern. No, one year to

Basel, and one year to Bern. That means four semesters, and after

four semesters, we have made our first examination. We are quite

free of studies. We have no such...

MSB: No tests and...

FB: Grades, that you would study. A first examination. We would

meet, at minimum, for two years, and then you make your first

examination. Then, I went to Marburg, and then another semester

to Berlin, to come back to Bern and finish exams. In between

Marburg and Berlin, I was in Holland, in these parts, as a

student. These parts of Germany were, in this time, colonized.

There were German people, and they had no money. So, I had the

opportunity, as a student, during the vacancies, to go there.

And, I came back and made my final examination.

[The Buris discuss briefly.]

FB: We are obliged to make some practice before we can finish our

studies for exam to be elect as a minister. The time in Holland

was acknowledged as a practice. During the year, [I became] our

youngest minister in our country.

DMG: Now, let me ask Mrs. Buri some questions. What did your father

do?

MSB: My father was a tanner.

DMG: A tanner?

MSB: A tanner, yes.

DMG: Yes.

27

MSB: That’s a profession that nearly no more exists now.

DMG: Yes?

MSB: He only made leather for mountain shoes and for military shoes,

very thick leather.

DMG: Uh-huh.

MSB: And, his father and his grandfather had been tanners. His

grandfather and father had also been, at the same time, farmers.

He, with his brother together, had a little bit developed, and so

he was only a tanner.

8. Changes in Swiss Rural Life Between the Wars

DMG: Was it hides from cows or from horses, or from both?

MSB: Only from beef cattle.

DMG: Beef cattle?

MSB: Beef cattle, yes. He even had, also, heifer, from here, from

Chicago. Our cattle are not heavy enough for the kind of leather

he makes.

DMG: Did he employ several men in this? Or, did he do it all himself?

MSB: He had three. He was with his brother, together, and they had

three or four workers.

DMG: Was that in a building separate from your house?

MSB: No, all was together. There were three big houses. One, our

house, was from 1729. In this house, on the first floor, there

was part of the tannery. Then, there was the old farmer’s house,

where they had half the cattle, and it was only used for this

purpose. The first building was only for the tanners. All those

together, it was very nice. But, now, I’m very, very sad. My

father died suddenly. He was very young, fifty-four; he had a

heart attack and died. Then, we sold the tannery. We were very

28

privileged to have sold it, because it was already very bad with

his industry. The chemical of that tannery was already in

development.

DMG: Mm-hmm.

MSB: They had this tannery twenty, no, fifty years, and they sold it.

And, now, all is destroyed, and all is away. There are new

blocks, oh! for blocks. It’s in a district of our place where I

lived, Langenthal; that is a village, of ten thousand inhabitants.

That was such a nice soul of a place. There were a mill and all

kinds of things, and also the tannery. Now, that is away, and

these blocks appeared in such a bad manner and a bad character.

Oh! It’s really only a building of speculation. And, someone

from Bern! Not a person from the place, the village; somebody who

had no interest and no feeling for this place. So, it’s really a

very, very bad end of this.

DMG: That’s not progress, is it?

MSB: No, no, no. When I was for the last time in my village, everybody

was disturbed about this event.

DMG: Uh-huh.

MSB: But, nobody can change it.

DMG: Now, when you and Fritz married? After he finished his

examinations?

[Dr. Buri fumbles.]

MSB: You don’t know?

[Spirited laughter.]

FB: Nineteen thirty. Here it is written, 1930. That was the

engagement. We had to finish.

MSB: We were students.

FB: We were students. We studied together in Berlin.

29

DMG: You were twenty-four years old then?

MSB: Three.

DMG: Twenty-three?

FB: Twenty-three.

DMG: Yes.

FB: She was medicine. And, so, we were together in Berlin. Ja,

because our love didn’t date from the high school.

MSB: He knows.

[More laughter.]

9. Germany and Switzerland in the Great Depression

FB: I was so clever, you see. I have thirty places.

[Laughter.]

FB: And, we married in 1930.

MSB: No, in ’31. The reason was that we married so soon, because my

father died.

FB: Ja.

MSB: When we were in Berlin, my father died. It was two years. Then,

he would have finished, and he would have made his doctorate.

But, then, my father died, and you see, medicine is so expensive,

and I was engaged. I had to have my furniture for a man. So, I

couldn’t complete my studies. So, I get them out, and we met.

DMG: Was 1932 a difficult year in Berlin? We were in our economic

depression here.

FB: Ja. I remember that was the first time I have seen brownshirts

marching in the routes. I thought they were Boy Scouts!

[Laughter.]

FB: And, then, they came. I remember a noise. We had class, and then

a noise. They put shoes through the windows. The police came in

30

the university. That was in 1929. That was the beginning of this

Nazi terror. In summertime, in 1928...

MSB: ‘Nine.

FB: ‘Nine, and I was in Marburg, there was the time Bismarck, no,

Hindenburg. In this time, Hindenburg was against the Nazis. The

so-called Stahlhelm, a patriotic German national party, but not

yet the Nazis, were against the Nazis. That was the beginning.

Also, in this time, there were big scandals in Berlin, some

finance scandals. That was just the beginning of the Nazi time.

MSB: And, I was, in the summer of ’29, in Jena, for my semester. Soon

there were many signs that something had to happen. I had a

nervous ailment. As my own gang would say, you see, we can’t go

on so. There was such a menace about our situation. He said, as

you know, we must have help from someone. We don’t know how and

when; there must be something. Of course, it was a very good

ground for the Nazis. Soon after, of course, they were very

influential. Even the grandson of his uncle, he had told us how

they had exercised always, and how the men about had coats.

FB: In this time, I remember, I was in Marburg, the army was forbidden

for Germans. They had no soldiers, no military. But, they paid

the students, in this time. For instance, we had, I remember,

courses for horseback, and also for car timing. I was there, too.

I had courses for driving and for horseback. That was for the

officers.

DMG: Well, now, you married in ’32. Did you go back to Switzerland

then and take a parish?

FB: We realize that was in Switzerland??

DMG: You were married in Switzerland.

FB: Ja, yes.

31

DMG: Ah, yes.

FB: Ja ja. Ja ja. We had, our first parish, a very small parish,

with a big, old manse, until I make my thesis.

DMG: How long were you in that place?

FB: Three years.

MSB: Just for making his thesis.

FB: Just when I was finishing my thesis.

DMG: And, then, you went to the place on the shore of the lake?

[Mumbled discussion amongst the three.]

DMG: But, now, this was on the lake where, on the other shore, where we

were, at [La Chaux de Fonds?]?

FB: Ja.

DMG: And, where we spent the night, up on top of the mountain?

FB: Yes, and then we were on this lake.

HCG: Neuchâtel?

DMG: Neuchâtel. How do you say? “Noy’-chattel?”

FB: “Neu’-chattel.”

DMG: What was the subject of your thesis?

FB: The meaning of eschatology for modern Protestant theology.

10. Theology and Acquaintances of Dr. Buri

DMG: [Turning toward his family] Would you like to know more about

that?

[Laughter.]

FB: Eschatology, that is the doctrine of the last things: the coming

kingdom, God, and the end of the world. It’s personal and cosmic.

MSB: He was so young, and he knows about this.

[Laughter.]

FB: Help me! This theme was very [much] discussed at this time.

32

HCG: Have you changed your beliefs since you wrote the book?

[Staccato, female laughter.]

FB: I hope I have developed it.

WSG: Well put. Well put. Well put.

FB: Because, when I made this theme, it was in connection with a

crisis, in this time. From the preachings of Jesus, [we sought]

the meaning of eschatology for the relationship to the crisis. It

was especially in connection with ideas. From this time, we were

in personal contact all the years until this day.

DMG: Was that by writing, or did you meet with him sometime?

MSB: He was also in our house.

FB: In our house, in Basel.

MSB: It was special, when he went with his friends. His wife always

interrupted him when we had him over and he was talking.

[Laughter.]

FB: Neuchâtel, where he lived when he was in Europe, is quite near to

Basel. And, so, he had many contacts there.

MSB: And, you know, he always went to Basel, when he went to Europe,

because he had all his medicaments, and free, from his chemist.

HCG: Who is that, now, Dave?

DMG: Albert Schweitzer.

HCG: Schweitzer, yeah. That’s what...when I went to Europe.

MSB: And he said that his best side of medicine was pharmacology.

HCG: What school, when he took his doctorate?

DMG: Well, I guess Schweitzer was already in Africa by the time you

took your theology.

HCG: Where did he get it? In what school, now?

FB: In Basel. In Bern. I made my doctor, my doctorate, in Bern.

HCG: And, Schweitzer had connections with that, so you could get...

33

FB: Ja. Ja. Ja. My teacher there was a pupil of Schweitzer, too.

DMG: What was his name?

FB: Werner.

DMG: Werner.

FB: You can find his history of dogma in the bookstore.

JMG: I didn’t know we were entertaining angels unawares, did you?

[Gentle laughter.]

HCG: Well, I saw the halo when he came in.

[Loud laughter.]

MSB: Our son’s first painting he made of somebody was a mug of

Schweitzer. The first painting he bought was a last edition when

he was seventy years old. That was a very nice feeling for the

family.

[The recording begins to deteriorate, popping and skipping, and with the

voice of Mrs. Buri diminished in relative volume.]

DMG: Do you remember Dietrich Bonhoeffer?

HCG: ...Schweitzer...

[The audio remaining is so poor that transcription must end here.]

Benediction Schubert, Deutsche Messe, tr. Warren Hall

Dort auch bist ja Du mir nahe,

überall und jederzeit,

allerorten ist Dein Tempel,

wo das Herz sich fromm Dir weiht!

There too You are near me,

everywhere and always.

Your temple is wherever

the heart is piously devoted to You.

34

Appendix: The Buris and the Graybeals Share an Ancestral Homeland

The interview reveals some surprising coincidences in the

backgrounds of the Buris and the Graybeals. Dr. Buri and his wife went

to high school in Burgdorf, a town about ten miles northeast of Bern,

and the Buris’ grandmothers were friends. Of the Krähenbühls traced by

Gary Graybeal, Paul Phipps, and others, one of the earliest is given as

having come from a village near Burgdorf, called Höchstetten. Moreover,

Mrs. Buri’s people are from near Langenthal, a town fourteen miles north

of Burgdorf and about the same size. Höchstetten is about midway

between these. Remarkably, the bulk of the Krähenbühl ancestral area,

in an arc eastward from Grosshöchstetten through Zäziwil to Signau, lies

only about twelve miles south of Burgdorf. Thus, while we have no

explicit genealogical connection with the Buris, we do share roots in

places nearby within Canton Bern.

Discussion of roots, though, must invoke temporal bounds, as we

all come from some Adam and Eve, thought to have lived in Africa.

Between the early 1670s and the early 1680s, Krähenbühls in our line

emigrated to Germany from religious persecution in Switzerland. Then,

as early as the 1730s or, more probably, as late as the 1760s, some left

Germany for America. My father’s father descended from those who

traveled westward and southwestward from Philadelphia to the mountains

of northwestern North Carolina, and on to Ohio. We’re now as many as

eleven generations American.

As far as fruit flies are concerned, eleven generations may not be

enough time yet, to adjust to a new home. In a New York Times story

from 6 May 2008, Carl Zimmer interviewed Dr. Tadeusz Kawecki, a

biologist at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland), who said that

fruit flies need about fifteen generations to adapt their intelligence

to the demands of a new environment. While we humans, with our much

35

greater intellectual capacity, may resist the proverb, “Go to the ant, O

sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise” (Prov. 6:6, RSV), another

report offers a curious, and supporting, coincidence.

In the 17 May 2008 issue of the Economist, an article appeared

(“From literacy to digiracy: Will reading and writing remain

important?”), arguing that significant cultural changes tend to play out

over a period of about 300 years, this being approximately the time

needed to transmit living memory from one status quo to the next. For

most of us, the span from a great-grandparent to a great-grandchild is

the maximum range for direct intergenerational transmission by hand or

word of mouth. A living great-grandparent, remembering what his or her

own great-grandparent had passed down, can then pass on the same to his

or her great-grandchildren. About this pivotal great-grandparent, then,

span the Biblical seven generations of influence.

This sphere of influence I call the grandparentsphere. As the

sphere of parents covers the triptych from parent to grandparent and

great-grandparent, so also the sphere of grandparents covers three of

its base units. For example, in Dances with Wolves, a Lakota chief,

himself of at least grandfatherly age, unwraps a morion worn by the

conquistadors in the days, he tells Lt. Dunbar, of the chief’s

grandfather’s grandfather. Conceivably, Dunbar could turn around and

hand down the same story through his own grandchildrensphere. In this

way, thirteen generations are covered, making a sphere of great-great-

grandparents. Assuming 25-year gaps, twelve generations, along with the

birth of a thirteenth, would span 300 years.

If the pater familias of this sphere were carried somewhere as a

child, then the sphere could be extended back to fifteen generations,

thereby matching the range in the reports of Dr. Kawecki. These

interlocking spheres can serve as useful markers of thresholds between

36

significant phases of family or cultural history. For example, Rev.

David M. Graybeal, my great-grandfather and head of my parentsphere, was

the last career farmer, in my direct paternal line, in our ancestral

North Carolina. He marks a transition from a time of settlement to a

time of developing professional careers. Henry Graybeal, Rev. David’s

great-grandfather and head of my grandparent-sphere, was of the last

generation in our line to speak German.

Moreover, Henry was also among the first generation in our line to

have been both born and laid to rest in America. Thus, he marks a

transition from a time of emigrations and movement to a time of

settlement. Peter Krehbiel, thought to have been Henry’s great-

grandfather and head of my great-grandparentsphere, may have been among

the first born outside Switzerland. Finally, Ulie Jost Krähenbühl,

thought to be Peter’s great-grandfather, and head of my great-great-

grandparent-sphere, may have been of the last generation to have been

both born and buried in Switzerland. He marks a transition from the

time of post-Reformation religious upheavals to a time of emigration.

Of what value, then, are the spheres of influence to this

interview, or to its significance? On the one hand, the theories about

the time frame of cultural transmission and intellectual adaptation may

suggest that the days for passing down our Swiss heirlooms is near an

end. We have long since intermarried and are swept up in the rapid flux

of globally reaching, twenty-first century concerns. On the other hand,

a simple telescoping of the spheres of influence suggests that the last

half-millennium can be parsed into three phases, each spanning a

grandparentsphere: a phase of cultural fracturing in the old homeland,

in the time before Ulie Jost; a phase of movement between homelands,

from then until the time of Henry; and a phase of settling and building

a new country. Only as the last phase is being completed, it may be

37

argued, may those whose forebears rode this trough have the opportunity

to reflect on their ancestry.

Thus, in that light, perhaps the Buris were, indeed, angels

unawares, as my grandmother, June, remarked on the tape. In different

language, perhaps they were unwitting emissaries or ambassadors from the

ancestral Swiss homeland of the Krähenbühls, come at just the time when

we were ready to receive them. In nearly half a century since this

interview, Paul Phipps found probable ships of our immigration, and the

Mennonites have built an extensive online, genealogical database that

includes a great deal of information on the Krehbiels. Recovery and

transmission of our family history are well underway.

Daniel Graybeal

Ithaca, New York, 6/I/2009

38