Voices from the past: the elderly speak
These are filmed interviews with the elderly. Not the present-day elderly, but the elderly from almost a century ago.
Most of these clips were made around 1930, which means that a lot of the interviewees were born in the 1840s. Some earlier. I’ve located a number of these videos on YouTube, and rather than post them all at once (some are long) I’m planning to post excerpts now and then as a regular feature.
I find them astounding. Not only do these interviews drive home how long we’ve had the capacity to make movies and record people’s speech, but they make it apparent that, by interviewing the elderly, one can see back farther in time to make the even more distant past come alive in a way that’s startling.
I’ve also been struck over and over by how vigorous these elderly people are. But that makes perfect sense, because they had to be much hardier than people of the same age today. These old folks didn’t have the benefit of antibiotics and all sorts of modern medical interventions to help them along. They had to have remarkable resistance for all sorts of diseases, and they also ordinarily were very physically active by necessity. The number of old people was fewer as a percentage of the population, but the ones that survived were a very special group.
As you will see here.
Note also the old-fashioned accents (some of their lines seem scripted, though), Love this first guy in particular, who has an almost Frostian eloquence at times:
I heard a recording of Theodore Roosevelt once which I believe is the first audio recording of a US president (though I believe it was from his ill fated 1912 Bull Moose run) and the first thing that hits you is the accent. Not how I ever would have thought he sounded.
Would love to hear what Washington, Adams, Lincoln sounded like.
My mother was born in 1898 and died in 2001. My kids when they were early teens would go back to Chicago and spend a week with her. She had great stories. I took her to see the movie, “Titanic” and she had a good laugh at some of it, especially the sex scene in the car, She was no prude. When I was 15, I took her to see the movie, “The Moon is Blue,” which was a scandalous movie for the time. It had the word “Virgin” in it. Rather tame compared to Hickenlooper taking his mother to see “Deep Throat.” I have a blog post about her and her parents. Her father, my grandfather, was 11 when the Civil War began.
It was odd watching the stagecoach in Walnut, California. Having a college friend live there until recently, I have visited pretty much every time I have been to LA or San Diego over the last 25 years. It isn’t bare rolling hills like in the video above, any longer- housing dots the landscape pretty fully now, but the rolling nature of it all still exists.
A couple months back, a coworker and I watched this recording on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHDfC-z9YaE
He was 101 years old in 1947 when he tells his story of the Civil War. His accent fascinated me as much as his story. It was not what I expected.
Here is the Theodore Roosevelt audio from 1912.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVNwLzUcPYk
And his speech is quite interesting also.
Thanks for posting. I really enjoyed this and look forward to more.
Fractal Rabbit
He was 101 years old in 1947 when he tells his story of the Civil War. His accent fascinated me as much as his story. It was not what I expected.
My mother had some first cousins nearly a generation older than her, born in the first decade of the 20th century. Her cousins were born and raised in North Texas- their grandparents had come from Tennessee after the Civil War. One of my mother’s cousins would drop the r, just like in New England. At times she sounded to me somewhat like the old timers I knew growing up in New England.
That last elder, the one who said he hadn’t had a drink of water in 50 years is a man after my own heart. After all, coffee, tea and beer are made of water so why not take it with a little flavor.
After all, coffee, tea and beer are made of water so why not take it with a little flavor.
And avoid typhoid fever, which killed Prince Albert and General Sherman’s son Willy, Tea probably became popular in England as flavored boiled water,
Mike K – and wine was used to disinfect water in antiquity, rather than taken “straight” IIRC.
One interesting point – the two girls in the flapper dresses are a far remove from women’s clothing today, but the men in suits could be dropped into any present city and never be noticed.
Griffin on March 30, 2019 at 7:39 pm at 7:39 pm said:
Here is the Theodore Roosevelt audio from 1912.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVNwLzUcPYk
And his speech is quite interesting also.
* * *
Wow.
I hadn’t realized we lost the first battles against “progressives” that far back.
Too bad he lost.
No edit — Teddy was actually running as a Progressive against Wilson the Democrat and Taft the Republican. Amazing how labels change over the years; however, (per the next video) some of his policies were what we would recognize as “progressive” but combined with the conservative view of personal liberty and responsibility.
That video was followed by this interesting speculation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=einBOivpm8M
What if Teddy Roosevelt won in 1912?
AesopFan,
The election of 1912 was one of the most interesting in US history. TR regretted not running again in 1908 and was massively disappointed in his hand picked successor Taft so after going on a world tour he decided to run again but the Republican Party chose to stick with Taft and he ended up finishing behind both Wilson and TR.
TR was a very, very interesting man but his presidency was a real turning point in the history of national US governance. The executive branch started its march to dominance over the legislative branch with TR.
neo. speak it sister.
In the election of 1912, Wilson won 40 states and 435 electoral votes with 41.7% of the vote. Roosevelt and Taft divided 50%.
I don’t know how elderly I am. I want you to decide. I just did 22 pushups. But I’m pretty much done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh169rVMveA
I walk the line, neo.
Wilson had 41% TR 27% Taft 24% and the Socialist Debs (who Wilson would throw in prison) got 6%.
The rift between TR and Taft gave the presidency to Wilson almost certainly.
Hard to say what would have happened if TR won. He was pro-war so got to think US would have entered WWI sooner.
I suppose this goes here, as I am a dinosaur. I didn’t even get paid for it but I could sit in the back seat of a Tomcat and work the mighty, mighty AWG-9.
Never got a hop. I went to SERE school. But still, never. And I knew why. Then Lieutenant (I don’t know how he finished) “Sucker” Cox put his arm around my shoulders and said, “We like you Holy.”
My last name rimes with Toledo. They where disappointed when it turned out my last name wasntd Toledo.
“But you’re not in a paid flight status. And if we give you a ride, we have to let “No Lock Doc” have a ride.
The flight surgeon who let a nothing of an SU-15 Flaggon get on the six of an F-14.
I was like, “OK, but I’m going to SERE because I want you to know I respect you. And that’s how bad I want a ride.”
I must have the paperwork proving I’ve been there, done that, locked up on three continents because I never want to go through that again.
Europe, Asia, and North America. I spent time in Africa. Dunno. I may have the paperwork locked up there. I checked the closet. It’s here.
I’ve seen these. What struck me was that you have people from various parts of the country with a quite ‘rustic’ way of speaking, but you do not hear much in the way of a truly Southern accent. Old recordings of Woodrow Wilson (who was nearly 30 when he relocated to New Jersey) reveal a way of speaking you’d expect of an accountant from Scranton. My great-uncle didn’t have much of one, but by the time I got acquainted with him, he’d lived outside the South for 60 years. I never heard my grandfather’s voice bar in my mother’s rendering. She averred that her father did not have a recognizable Southern accent either; the midpoint of her time with him would have been around 1940, when he’d lived up north for 20-odd years. (Some of his collaterals in East Tennessee had accents, per my aunt and my mother). My grandfather and his brother were born ca. 1895, fifty years after some of the people depicted in this videos. I consult the maps produced by linguists and see that vernacular speech there is supposed to be of the ‘inland Southern’ variety (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cic8Vp0Av5o). It does cause you to wonder if the Southern accent as we’ve known it (sadly disappearing) is something of fairly recent vintage.
Once I got to a certain age where “old people” would speak frankly to me,…20ish IIRC… I decided they SUCK, and I’ll tell you why!
They helped me realize I WASN’T “all that”, NOT a “special snowflake”, that it was my turn to “step up”, and DIDN’T invent (eg) the wheel in a moment of my own personal, brilliant, “super genius”, epiphany!
I sure did learn a lot about not wasting food, money, and perceived integrity though.
The executive branch started its march to dominance over the legislative branch with TR.
The ratio of federal expenditure to domestic product in 1929 was 0.028. The ratio of postal revenue to domestic product was 0.007. Of the total (3.5% of GDP), 22% was accounted for by military expenditures, 19% by postal revenue, 19% by debt service, and 14% by veterans benefits. That’s the better part of a generation after TR left office. There were a handful of federal regulatory agencies in 1909: the Comptroller of the Currency, the Interstate Commerce Commission, and two bureaux within the Department of Agriculture. You also had customs, immigration, and postal inspectorates. In addition, there was the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. The Anti-trust DIvision and the two components of the Department of Agriculture date from Roosevelt’s tenure. The rest were established earlier.
“Once I got to a certain age where “old people” would speak frankly to me…”
I am that old person. But I’m still young enough to back it up.
Don’t believe it, if you don’t want to.
My Judo instructor in the seven years I spent in Japan wanted to go out for sake with me. I considered that an honor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musha_shugyo
https://www.lfjcc.org/
The Lawrence Family Center in San Diego. I can learn something from anyone.
It’s Jewish. I didn’t mean to leave that out. I just didn’t think I had to mention it.
The rift between TR and Taft gave the presidency to Wilson almost certainly.
Yes and Wilson was our first Fascist president. Roosevelt was #2 although the Supreme Court stopped the worst of it (The NRA) and Trump prevented the third.
We can do without the videos of George Barnard Shaw of the period…
Art Deco,
I’m talking more about the executive branch governing by sheer will and power. Manipulating Panamanians to break from Colombia in order to get the rights to a future canal being one. TR was the first president (McKinley half heartedly did in Cuba also) that actively sought to influence international matters far beyond are borders.
And TR was almost certainly the first president that used sheer personality and charisma to build on his policy goals. That has become standard fare now.
There’s the phrase “The executive branch started its march to dominance over the legislative branch with TR.”
And then there’s this phrase.
I’m talking more about the executive branch governing by sheer will and power. Manipulating Panamanians to break from Colombia in order to get the rights to a future canal being one. TR was the first president (McKinley half heartedly did in Cuba also) that actively sought to influence international matters far beyond are borders.
These phrases refer to different things. While we’re at it, foreign policy was as much the President’s domain in 1805 as it was in 1905, the U.S. was a participant in the Napoleonic Wars (a sequence of events which began with Jefferson’s Embargos), separatist sentiment was not a novelty in Panama (Panama could only be reached from Colombia by ship), and you’d be hard put to locate much sentiment in Panama in favor of re-attaching the isthmus to Colombia in the years since 1903.
And TR was almost certainly the first president that used sheer personality and charisma to build on his policy goals. That has become standard fare now.
You’d be hard put to find a President after Washington who possessed something akin to ‘charisma’, a term coined by Max Weber to refer to exceptional inspirational ability. No clue where you got the idea that Andrew Jackson never existed. Or that the string of Presidents we had between 1969 and 1981 and between 1989 and 2017 had particularly forceful personalities.
Griffin, I love TR as much as anyone. He had his flaws, Don’t we all. I all he did was not shoot the bear that was tied up for him, I would love him. I’m a hunter, not a killer. Maybe I can get you someone to mamsplain this to you. Who here needs a Teddy Bear?
If all he did…*
Sorry for getting peeps confused.
Can you say elderly?
Art Deco,
Yes, Jackson was certainly an exception but other than him I’m not sure any president had that in the first 100 plus years of the republic.
The Barbary wars were one that the US was involved in but not in a widespread way. Cuba was really the first foreign adventure, boots on the ground war for the US.
And where in the hell did I say that the Panamanians didn’t support independence. The difference was they got a big backer in the US and that pushed them over the top. There also were many that supported a Nicaraguan canal so this was a choice made by the US. Again I’m not saying these were wrong or incorrect.
Finally, where did I say that every president after TR had charisma? But it became a much bigger factor as audio and visual media became dominant. I would also argue that agree with them or not (I definitely don’t) Clinton and Obama were very charismatic and connected with people very well.
Mr Whatsit and I noticed that the voices of the elderly were not as different from the modern day as those of the young women who acted as hosts and spoke in a recognizable long-gone upper-class or Hollywood drawl. An affectation, apparently, in sharp contrast with the straightforward, slightly nasal country voices of the elders. “A-tall.” I could hear my own, only a little bit younger grandparents.
I don’t think that most Northerners have much of an idea of what any of the various Southern accents really sound like when pronounced and projected normally and non-theatrically.
What we probably reference most often is some newsreel episode wherein Senator Foghorn of the Sovereign State of Misscolusa was recorded while declaiming from the Capitol steps.
Even worse are Hollywood caricature performances of the kind delivered by Vivian Leigh. Of course that was not even near the bottom of a barrel overflowing with Hollywood badness. A hundred examples could easily be adduced.
The ludicrous attempts at mimicry by Rod Steiger, Carroll O’Connor, and Joseph Wiseman are certainly noteworthy, but even they probably only deserve an honorable mention in the Awfulness Sweepstakes.
When I was a boy, what I most noticed about the Upper South accents I was exposed to, was what they lacked: i.e., the whiny, weary yet anxious, nasally drone of so many Northern urban speech patterns. It’s funny, that some of those characteristics are precisely what critics of lower class southern speech patterns would also mention.
Referring back once again to what some of us saw on TV as children, I cannot think of what sounded to me like a “normal” yet distinctly Northern man’s voice as represented in Hollywood, apart from, say, Charlton Heston, or William Holden, or … well, there were several, actually many, others too. It’s possible that in the 1950’s Midwestern born males came to represent a larger proportion of Hollywood men in relation to Eastern Seaboard types than before. Or maybe that is just what I saw – or chose to see – when it was rerun on television.
And speaking of old movies and such in relation to accents; my guess is that a lot of people get a kick out of hearing James Best [Twilight Zone] or Arthur Hunnicutt [The Big Sky] talk in the old ’50’s movies …. when they are not going over the top with their performances, that is.
DNW, “I don’t think that most Northerners have much of an idea of what any of the various Southern accents really sound like when pronounced and projected normally and non-theatrically.”
You could be right. Just imagine how confused the Chinese are.
Used to live in Northern Virginia–as someone (presumably someone who actually was a Southerner) once quite loudly said, surveying the line at the local grocery store and pointing–“this isn’t the real South, look at all these Yankees,” and they were right.
Well, I once went a couple hour’s drive further south in Virginia, down to the town of Amelia Courthouse, and stopped to ask a couple of old codgers, who were sitting and rocking on the front porch of a local store, for directions.
Unfortunately, what I took to be their real Southern accents were so thick that–even after several tries–I still couldn’t decipher a word they said.
Now those were accents!
I don’t think that most Northerners have much of an idea of what any of the various Southern accents really sound like when pronounced and projected normally and non-theatrically.
I don’t think you’re doing much thinking.
the whiny, weary yet anxious, nasally drone of so many Northern urban speech patterns. I
You’re projecting
I had an aunt who was born in Opelika Alabama early in the last century. She sounded like Scarlet O’Hara. Both of my parents families were native to southeastern Virginia and they all bore the very distinct accent.
Can you hear me now?
Art Deco responds:
Well, Art, I was giving examples as well as drawing an inference based on other evidence. And, having lived most of my life in the north, I have had plenty of opportunity to hear a great many northerners attempt to mimic a “southern accent”, and have yet to hear a successful attempt made by someone who did not have relatives from the south or the west, whom they grew up listening to talk on a regular basis.
Now for all I know, you may be the fair haired inheritor of cattle ranch in west Texas you got from your great granddaddy; or the proud scion and possessor of a 3 thousand acre Virginia Piedmont estate you’ve received from 300 years of direct ancestors and predecessors in seizen, and yet still feel that the clownish cases of failed Hollywood mimicry I specifically mentioned, sounded just right to you. Like the perfect porridge. That’s fine: So many ears, so many opinions.
And you are certainly more than welcome to yours.
When I lived in Houston, I used to occasionally talk to guys in the oil business in Louisiana. Not executives, but field managers and the like. They were tough to understand.
I have had plenty of opportunity to hear a great many northerners attempt to mimic a “southern accent”, and have yet to hear a successful attempt made by someone who did not have relatives from the south or the west, whom they grew up listening to talk on a regular basis.
I take you’re now of the view that recognizing something aurally means you can mimic it precisely. Which isn’t well thought out.
and yet still feel that the clownish cases of failed Hollywood mimicry I specifically mentioned, sounded just right to you.
I don’t work in film production and never bothered to grade the accents of actors working outside their usual register.
Now for all I know, you may be the fair haired inheritor of cattle ranch in west Texas you got from your great granddaddy; or the proud scion and possessor of a 3 thousand acre Virginia Piedmont estate you’ve received from 300 years
Whether that is or is not my biography is perfectly irrelevant to the point at hand. Again, not a whole lot going on between your ears.
LOL. I am of the opinion that those who purport to know how a particular accent sounds, should be able to recognize it when their own attempts, or worse, the attempts of supposed professionals, come out sounding comically ridiculous and pathetic. And thus, when they, or you, seemingly don’t cringe at the difference between what they have wretchedly produced and the real thing, it’s one reasonable inference that they don’t have a good grasp on the real. Or they are just shamelessly cynical types who figure they can count on your not noticing, or caring much if you do.
Now, that said, I wish you well and I hope you manage to extract that bug you’ve got up your ass; whoever put it there.
Have a nice evening Artie.
I have had plenty of opportunity to hear a great many northerners attempt to mimic a “southern accent”, and have yet to hear a successful attempt made by someone who did not have relatives from the south or the west, whom they grew up listening to talk on a regular basis. –DNW
I’ll vouch for DNW. I lived about 20 years in Florida, Texas and Louisiana. My impression is most non-Southerners, whatever their talents for mimicry, only know the stereotypical Southern accent they hear in the movies. They get the Southern accent about as well as Dick Van Dyke did Cockney in “Mary Poppins.” Over fifty years later his Cockney is still a standard joke in England.
I’m not sure I have ever heard a convincing Southern accent in the movies, though bad ones abound. Kevin Costner in “JFK” gets my award for worst New Orleans accent. It’s like he read a book on how to sound New Orleans.
But hey! I can’t do a Southern accent either. We didn’t move to the South until I was seven. There are brain reasons for why it’s hard to overcome one’s accent.
My Irish friend tells me Jon Voight managed an uncannily precise Irish accent in “The General,” a John Boorman film about a Dublin crime boss. Voight played the Inspector on the gangster’s trail. My friend said Voight got the accent down to the Dublin neighborhood.
I don’t know about that, but Voight has long impressed me as a serious, yet under-appreciated actor.
When I lived in Houston, I used to occasionally talk to guys in the oil business in Louisiana. Not executives, but field managers and the like. They were tough to understand..
Was it the Cajun accent?
When I worked in Trinidad, I had no trouble understanding most Trinis. However, when I drove on country roads, I had trouble understanding some of the people I picked up hitching. I needed to remind myself that like myself, they were native English speakers.
Was it the Cajun accent?
Gringo: Could be. That’s a strange accent. The classic New Orleans “Yat” accent is different in that it sounds like Brooklyn. William S. Burroughs speculated it was because New Orleans is a port.
This brings up an important point, which trips up non-Southerners. There is no “Southern Accent.” There are many Southern accents. I haven’t heard much of the stereotypical “Southern Accent.” That seems to be from the Carolinas into Georgia and Alabama. But it’s not Florida, Louisiana, Texas or Kentucky (if one considers KY part of the South).
I’ll go out with the Meters singing a classic New Orleans song, “They All Ask’d for You.” A closer transliteration is “They All Axed for You.” A lot of people in New Orleans, black and white, talk that way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSZzsWRx_IE
This brings up an important point, which trips up non-Southerners. There is no “Southern Accent.”
There are lumpers and splitters among the generators of taxonomies. This map identifies two notable Southern dialects, with some localized exceptions.
https://aschmann.net/AmEng/#LargeMap5Right
LOL. I am of the opinion that those who purport to know how a particular accent sounds, should be able to recognize it when their own attempts, or worse, the attempts of supposed professionals, come out sounding comically ridiculous and pathetic.
Ordinary adults who’ve heard recordings of their own voice understand that what they think they hear as they speak isn’t what others are hearing. Evidently, you didn’t get the memo.
Now, that said, I wish you well and I hope you manage to extract that bug you’ve got up your ass; whoever put it there.
I wasn’t the one offering self-aggrandizing insults directed at categories of people. I contented myself with insulting one person who deserved it.
Making a Science of Categories, Tags, and Site-Improvement
Archives are a wonderful thing. Other examples of this interview-format exist.
A big problem with all archives, be it recordings of Those Who Knew and Those Who Were There … or one’s own burgeoning website-archive – is knowing/documenting whether anybody is paying attention. Is there a benefit?
On a website, we have many ways to try to ‘up our act’. Some of them are sophisticate, complex, and a large load (on multiple levels). Some of them are simple. KISS is a great touch-stone.
If we are going to tinker with Tags, and improments to Categories, we can make the effort more Scientific by anticipating the need & importance of, and including the means to know & record what is working, and what isn’t.
This broadly translates to Server Logs. There is a large body of Guru Grade server stuff. But because most people are not webserver-gurus, there are also products that tone down the techno-orgy.
The trick is to find plugins, or otherwise employ methods to know whether a new way of presenting Tags etc on a post encourages more readers to click on them, and go look at an index of other posts dealing with the same topic.
Comments are important. Comments on archived posts are catalytic. To be able to know that this is happening (or not) turns a scatter-gun approach into engineering, even science.
Gringo on April 1, 2019 at 1:22 am at 1:22 am said:
I don’t know what it was precisely. It was a very rounded, and to my ears incomplete pronunciation, that sounded mumbled, as if they had a mouth full of something.
Another interesting accent – if it can be classified as such – that I came across, was something you “might can” call Tex-Mex; or better, Hispanic Texan. It was a vaguely broadened and usually somewhat slowly delivered, Texas style drawl … just varying by a few noticeable degrees.
I have no idea if these few guys I encountered were descendants of the Hispanic Texians of the 1830s, or whether their families had simply been American long enough to have acclimated fully, but they had the full rig. Boots, truck, hat, manner, and drawl.
You’d make quite the little hall monitor Artie. Certainly have the personality for it.
You’d make quite the little hall monitor Artie. Certainly have the personality for it.
You keep coming back for more. I’m not the one with the personality problem.
There was a destroyer during WWII that employed the Georgia boys as phone talkers. It was kind of like the Navajo code speakers. It confused the f*** out of the Japanese. Hence my comment about how confuzzled the Chinese must be, trying to figure out what we’re talking about.
If you can speak in incomprehensible English you can talk in the clear. If you can then later explain it to the rest of us more’s the good.
I said phone talkers. I meant to say communicators.
Another interesting accent – if it can be classified as such – that I came across, was something you “might can” call Tex-Mex; or better, Hispanic Texan. It was a vaguely broadened and usually somewhat slowly delivered, Texas style drawl … just varying by a few noticeable degrees.
A former neighbor of mine, whose grandparents came to the US fleeing the Mexican Revolution in the 1920s, is from a small Texas town. He has a bit of a Texas drawl.
A Tejano neighbor of mine has traced his ancestry back to a Converso conquistador in Monterey, Mexico (bit of a contradiction there, but so it goes..) . He has a standard Midwestern/American accent.
In Guatemala, I was once identified as speaking “Border Spanish.” When I taught school in Texas, Hispanic students born in the US ) whose first language was probably English) sometimes reacted to my Spanish by saying I “spoke Chinese,” which meant that I spoke too fast. (You work in Maracaibo and other places, you learn to speak fast.)
Regarding your not being able to identify the Louisiana accent, I don’t know what to say. I would have to hear it. I identify a Cajun accent as being a somewhat French accent, which I first heard on offshore rigs in the Gulf. A plumber did some work on my place whom I thought was from Louisiana. It turned out that his father was French Canadian raised in New Hampshire, but had moved to Montreal, where the plumber spent his childhood. He told me had been mistaken many times for being from Louisiana.
At the same time, I have worked with Cajuns who haven’t had much French in their accents- from standard American to Southern.
New Orleans is another case. The first time I heard someone from New Orleans, I thought he was from Brooklyn. Others from the Bayou City have sounded more Southern to me.
Louisiana is a mish-mash.