Esther Ivey: Weddings were usually at the church, but my brother Albert was married in the home of his bride.

I remember the funeral of my baby sister, Ruth. The cemetery was an acre lot that was given by Rufus Jones to Cary for that purpose. Pine Valley was woods, and we could come to the cemetery from Shirley Drive. On Sundays we would go to the cemetery.

The Jones lot was surrounded by cedar trees. Adolphus and Rufus Jones and their children were buried there. One of the graves had what looked like an open Bible on it. We always thought a great deal of that, surrounded by cedar trees. You had to go in between the trees to get to it. The cemetery has grown as the town has grown.

Mary Crowder: A lot of people got married in the parsonage. They would come in after church on Sunday morning or Sunday night and get married. During World War II, the whole congregation would stay after Sunday service for a wedding. I don't remember receptions or anything like that going on. A lot of people got married at home.

My granddaddy's funeral occurred when I was 10 years old. He had a stroke on Tuesday, died on Friday. His funeral was on Saturday afternoon. They brought him back to the house on Saturday morning, quite early. The family came and the neighbors. The funeral was held just like in a church or a funeral home.

The Brown Funeral Home, which is now Brown-Wynne, conducted his service. Brown Funeral Home was located in the parking lot of Good Shepherd Church behind the old revenue building on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh.

Jerry Miller: My father came to Raleigh from Salisbury. He wanted to start a funeral home down in Sanford, Fla.

In 1906, he got on the train and met a man who talked him into moving to Sanford, N.C., instead of Sanford, Fla., to open up a funeral home. There were no funeral homes anywhere around there.

He went to work for Carter Furniture Company. In those days the furniture companies furnished the caskets for the dead. Then about 1911, he opened the first funeral home in Sanford.

Raymond Johnson: They had a different cemetery for the slaves. At the intersection at High House and N.C. 55, in the northwest quadrant was a slave cemetery. When they straightened the road out, they had to move some of them.

Elva Templeton: At funerals, they tolled the bell according to the number of years the person was old. John Taylor used to ring the bells for Sunday school, church and funerals. Nobody could toll it like he did.