Bertha Pleasants Daniel: “People don’t do neighborly visits anymore, but they did then. Mama’s cousin would come once in awhile. Mother had a sister who lived in Fuquay, and we’d pack up our car full of children when Mama would decide she wanted to go. She didn’t have to be invited. We’d come riding up at nine, ten o’clock. [She didn’t know we were coming.] It still amazes me because my aunt had a big family too. We always went on Sunday, plenty of dinner. And every now and then, she’d show up with her car full of cousins. There was one to match each of us, and we were always just delighted.”

Margaret Travis: “Our front porch faced east and was a special place in the house. At night when it was dark and cool in the summertime, our whole family would sit on that front porch. The chairs would fill up and the rest of us would sit on the floor, listening to my daddy talk about things long ago, all kinds of things. We’d look at the sky at night when it was cool. We rested and watched the stars. We sat there quietly just talking, being together as a family. One of my favorite memories is [chokes up] that front porch at night with our family together there. It is a dear, dear memory for me.

“We were a singing family. At nighttime in the wintertime, my family would gather in the parlor. Mary would play the piano and we would sing and sing. That was a beautiful memory I have of my family. We’d sing harmony. We were like the Lennon Sisters. My [three] sisters and I, we had a quartet and we sang so pretty, people said. We would sing in churches, the four of us. Our voices were alike. We inherited the same vibrations and our voices harmonized so pretty. One sister could sing base and tenor and alto and soprano. I loved that singing in the parlor. Daddy sang the base, the boys sang the tenor, alto and soprano. We were a musical family, a singing family, always sang in church choirs, all of us did.”

Doris Denning: “People here care about each other and always have and still do. Even though the town is so large, there is still that small community atmosphere. You knew so much about everyone. You had time to talk to people. Then they cared about you and you cared about them, if there was sickness or something. And you always knew it, because everybody had time to stop and have a few words with you. Things move so fast now. And you stop sometimes and think about those good times when you had time to really talk with people and find out what was going on in their lives. And they appreciated it, and you appreciated their interest in you. But it’s seldom anymore.”

Cary’s Heritage is taken from the book “Just a Horse-Stopping Place, an Oral History of Cary, North Carolina,” which is on sale at the Page-Walker Arts & History Center in downtown Cary. The book is a collection of oral history interviews conducted between local citizens and Friends of the Page-Walker Hotel. Proceeds from the sale of this book support the preservation of Cary’s history through the Cary Heritage Museum.