ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH CLARA ATKINSON FRANK, aunt of Chuck Wharton, interviewed by Charles ("Chuck") Wharton, August 18, 1980.

CW:  What do you remember about Mary Agnes?

CF:  Charlotte and I were crazy about her!

CW:  Was she ever married?

CF:  Was she ever!

CW:  Who was her husband?

CF:  John Shreves

CF:  What do you recall about John Shreves?

CF:  We were crazy about him, too! They tell me, see, that what happened is the painters came to redo the house, and that is how he started drinking.

CW:  How did he and Mary Agnes meet?

CF:  They were born within a block of each other, within an hour of each other, and their birthdays would come around.  John and Mary Agnes would argue about who was oldest.  John was born in the Shreves house, in Cole, Mississippi, and was always in love with Mary Agnes.  You talk about romance--those Pierson girls--did you know that they still referred to Charlotte and me as the Stanley girls--there were those three Pierson girls.  Mary Agnes never gave John a second look.  John was always crazy about her, always good looking, looked a little bit like Van Johnson.  I've got a picture of John and Mary Agnes when they came to Greenville, Mississippi, on their honeymoon, and I'll give it to you.  It's cute of both of them.  I'll send them.  So, they grew up in the same neighborhood and John went into the service in 1918.  Mary Agnes went to school; one man jumped out of the window and tried to commit suicide because she wouldn't marry him.  Hattie Barnes told me this--the fellows were falling over each other.  Mary Agnes told me that every man she ever met fell in love with her, but she didn't love anybody.  She could play every stringed instrument that ever was.  John went into the service, she was in school and John came back and pestered the living daylights out of her.  He finally got engaged to another girl because he knew Mary Agnes would never marry him, he couldn't stand it.  Another man from a very wealthy family--the father had come to Mary Agnes and offered to buy her for his son and she said she didn't want him, and he jumped out of a window--that's what Hattie Barnes told me, so it's true! That was in Georgia when Mary Agnes was in school.  They were always in love with the Pierson girls.  Anyway, John finally succeeded.  I was very young.  It was in the nineteen twenties.  She had all these men, so she said, "Well, I might as well marry John!" And they got married and he was always nuts about Mary Agnes.  They inherited his father's drugstore and John was one of the best pharmacists in Mississippi.  They'd go to John when he was drunk--or to another drug store, then Mary Agnes learned to do those prescriptions.  John became an alcoholic because painters came to do the interior of the drugstore and painters are usually alcoholics.  John started drinking and he remained an alcoholic.  One time we were there from Oklahoma City and Mary Agnes had to go some place, so Charlotte and I went in and set up a lot of Coca-Cola and all that stuff, and he told Mary Agnes when he got home, "Those girls kept making me drink all that Coca-Cola," and, of course, we were keeping him from the booze.  We loved John.  He was darling.  Never used any bad words; he was from a good family.  So, he died.

CW:  What happened to the store?

CF:  Finally, without John, without Mary Agnes, my great aunt, Clara, bought it.  She'd raised those three Pierson girls because Grandpa couldn't do it by himself.  He liked to drink, too.  He'd go down to one of the plantations and stay there with his colored caretaker.  He was attractive--boy, were the women after him! He never remarried, though.  He just loved my grandmother, who died in childbirth with Mary Agnes.

CW:  What was her name?

CF:  Agnes Hammond Pierson.  She was a Hammond who married a Pierson.  That's where one of them comes in with the double kin.