Bill Carver's Journal

Most of my Carver and Hubbard family stories come from my father, Orland William Carver Jr.
After he retired in 1976 he wrote a journal, or really it was more like a book draft with multiple revisions.

He wrote longhand, Palmer method, with ballpoint pens, on college-ruled spiral-bound notebooks. I'm working now to get them all scanned to digital format, because the ballpoint pen is fading fast.

Some of his wording is not entirely politically correct, but it was correct for his time. He grew up in a poor white family near the beginning of the century, and race relations between poor whites and poor people of color were often not good during those times. He doesn't mention this often in his stories, but it does come up occasionally.

Dad researched his topic and interviewed as many family members as he could. He clearly states that he doesn't know exactly where his family was when he was little, particularly during the years when they moved around a lot. He knew where they stayed for periods of time, but not necessarily when. He also remembered or had heard stories about specific incidents, but he didn't always know which incident happened in which location.

He continued to write and revise for 15 years, until his hand became so shaky that he had trouble keeping the pen on the page. Sometimes he wrote multiple versions of certain stories, and the only way I could tell which version was the most recent was by the handwriting. Really shaky? Must be recent.