THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
INTERVIEW WITH:
INTERVIEWERS:
PLACE :
DATE:
Ange l ina McDonald (Voice, Marie Fleming)
Walter and Janie Sargeant
Nederland, Texas
31 October 1986
JS: Angelina, do you mind saying when and where you were
born?
McD : No, not at all , in New Orleans , Louisiana.
JS : Was your father - had they been living there , had they
been native of that, or had they just come in f rom the ... ?
McD : Well , Daddy came from Holland with Marie's mother and ,
I guess father, too, with your mother , too; they were friends .
JS: They were on the same ship?
McD : I thinkthey were , weren 't they, Marie?
MF: Yeah, I think so .
JS : What was his name?
McD : Kaper , John Kaper - K- A-P-E-R. He was doing jetty
construction work at the mouth of the Mississippi River and
it was just a camp and we were living in New Orleans, when I was
born .
WS: When you say jetson that was like a seawall, is that
the same idea?
McD: Jetties .
WS : The jetson that they built through there?
McD: No, the jetties .
WS: Oh , the jetti es , I 'm sorry. Were they a seawal l in
a sense?
McDonald
McD: Yeah, I guess so, they were a reinforcement for the -
really they are not a seawall in effect because they don ' t
come way up, but they do reinforce the bank; whatever you
are trying to protect against water .
WS: Somebody besides me might not know that.
JS : How old were you when you came into Nederland?
2.
McD: To Nederland? Oh , I was in high school when we moved to
Nederland in 1917. We had lived in Sabine prior to that .
He was also doing - he was Captain of the Old Stella D M
Picton and he was doing jetty construction work in Sabine
and then he was asked to be a pilot, and that ' s when we moved .
After the 1915 storm our house in Sabine was washed ,
almost washed , away, and we did go back and live another year
and then we moved up here.
JS: How old did you say you were when you moved here?
McD: Let me see, I was about twelve or thirteen, fourteen.
JS : When did you come to the United States and leave Holland?
McD: My mother wasn't Dutch, she was from Florida.
MF: Oh, tell about what your Dad did for a long time . He
went to sea when he was nine?
McD: Yes, his father was captain of a sailing boat and his
mother died when he was born and then his father remarried
and I think at that time they could take their families
with them. So he just kind of grew up on the boat, really .
In summertime he was on the boat and stayed in Holland with
a cousin during the wintertime. But at sixteen , I guess
McDonald
McD : they were bringing people over here and Daddy could
speak English and some of the others couldn't so he came
over as an interpreter.
JS: Is that a rank, the captain that you speak of? Does
every harbor pilot have a rank?
McD: They have to be captains. Yes, a number of years .
WS : Is that run by the Federal government?
McD: They're appointed by the governor.
WS: Oh, they're appointed.
McD: the state.
3.
WS: Did he have certain hours that he would be at work, or
did he ... ?
McD: I don 't know what they do now, but at that time he
worked two weeks and then he was off two weeks.
WS: Did he kind of stay right there during his working
sessions?
McD: Sometimes. At one time they had, they called it a
bunkhouse, out at the end of the jetty. And they had living
quarters out there. Daddy usually came home and would leave
about two o 'clock in the morning to go to Port Arthur. And he
would take the interurban lots of times and leave a car in
Port Arthur. And then they'd go on down to Sabine and from
Sabine they 'd go out to the bunkhouse.
JS: Was he still sailing after he came to Nederland?
McD : No , not sailing . He was captain of the boat and they
just stayed around here. But he did work , or Picton would
work, in Sabine for awhile and they'd do work in Port
McDonald 4.
McD: Aransas , Texas. He moved back and forth part of the time.
JS: How many children were there?
McD: Four.
JS: Where are you? Are you the oldest?
McD: I'm the oldest . My sister next to me is deceased.
My brother is in Ho uston. And I have another sister here.
JS: Then with him going to Port Aransas and back and forth,
would you go with him and leave school?
McD: Yes. When I started school, there wasn't even a public
school, just a private school at Port Aransas. But after we
moved to Sabine, there was a public school.
JS : Who ran the private school? A church, or ... ?
McD: No, just an individual.
JS: After you graduated from school , when did you marry?
McD : In '26.
JS: Was your husband from this area?
McD: He was from Georgia.
WS: What brought him out here?
McD : His sister. His brother-in-law owned the Nederland
Pharmacy. Mr. Roach ...
MF: Where we had lunch today.
McD : Mrs. Roach was his sister and he came out here to work
for Mr. Roach. And I met him there.
WS: How old was he then, in his twenties?
McD: He was eight years older than I was, so ...
McDonald
JS: Then you've been involved with some of the buildings
right around, in Nederland.
McD: Oh, yes, most of it. We moved up here, there wasn't
a paved street.
WS : When you say, "Up here", where were you living?
McD : From Sabine. After the 1915 storm, we moved up here.
WS: Whereabouts in the city?
McD: Fifteenth Street.
MF: The home is still there. We'll drive by and show you
where i t is.
5 .
McD: Where the street is, really, a Captain Allen had a home.
He was also a pilot , I think. He was instrumental in getting
us to move over here.
JS: Seems like it would be quite a ways from where they were
McD: It was, but they had an automobile to take them back
and forth. Then they could stay down there. One week they
worked, they would bring the ships in and the next week
they would stay home and then leave from here and take
ships out .
JS: What was the name of some of the shipping companies?
McD: Well, they would bring in Texaco and all the big ships
were in here. Would pilot them up the canal.
JS: Mostly oil , or refinery ships?
McD: Yes. Mostly oil .
WS: the old Orange Hotel?
MF: The only thing I was told was when it was torn down,
McDonald 6.
MF: Mr. McNeill bought all of the brick and p laster and every­thing
like that and he moved it over to where they built their
home. And if you remember that house, it sits way up.
He had come from North Carolina to Texas and he could
not get over the flat land here in Nederland. So he wanted
everything to be built up and he was going to build t his
home. And he bought all the foundation, and the brick from
the fireplaces and everything, and just crushed it all up
and used that as a foundation of his home. We'll go by there
and show you, also.
The house is built way up and that's the only thing and
they said that some of the other lumber was bought by other
people and used fo r other buildings. I haven't been able
to trace anyone else that has any of it.
And they also said, you see Mr. McNeill had a grocery
store, and if someone couldn't pay their bill, a lot of times,
there was a lot of bartering going on in those days. If they
couldn't pay for their staples, they'd bring in eggs, or
whatever they had, on their grocery bill. Well, instead of
taking those , he would ask for a l oad of dirt. And every lot,
he owned several lots around town, and he'd dump that dirt on
his lots. He was going to build his land up.
McD: I hadn't heard that. I know the house was finished
just before we moved up here. So I guess the hotel was
torn down just before that.
WS: You went to housekeeping then in this area? When you
were married?
McDonald 7.
McD: No, I wasn't married then. Oh, no, when I was married,
I went back to Georgia.
WS: Oh, you went back to Georgia.
McD: To Atlanta.
WS: How long did you live there, then?
McD: About eight years.
WS: What year did you return?
McD: Oh, about '34, I believe.
WS: Did you have a family then, at that time?
McD: I had one daughter.
WS: How many other children did you have?
McD: Just had the one daughter.
We didn't move back here; we moved to Dallas before we
came here.
WS: What was your husband doing?
McD: He was working for MRC Ball Bearing Company out of
Jamestown, New York.
WS: What company was it, again?
McD: MRC, Jamestown, New York.
JS: Talking about the storms; do you remember any storms?
Your f ather must have gotten involved in some storms.
McD: I remember the 1915 storm.
JS: Was he out on the ship then?
McD: No. He was Captain of the Stella. We stopped at the
old Plaza Hotel because the bridge, the e l ectricity went off,
and we couldn't get on. We were going to Beaumont. But the
bridge was down and we couldn't get through so we had t o stay
in Port Arthur. The Plaza Hotel was almost washed away.
McDonald
McD: There was no food ... so many people. But Daddy,
after it got better, would go to the boat and get supplies
and bring ' em back to the Hotel .
JS: That's interesting.
WS: Was there quite a bit of damage during that storm?
McD: Sabine was almost washed away; quite a lot of Port
Arthur.
MF: Sabine never did come back after that.
8.
McD: Sabine was a very thriving place . At one time it was
bigger than Port Arthur.
MF: Angelina , do you remember, were you frightened, or was
it an adventure, or ... ?
McD: I think it was more of an adventure. I wasn't old
enough, I guess, t o really be frightened.
MF: You know Marya when she was here last time , I taped her,
she experienced the storm , too. They were living in Port
Arthur and it was very interesting to get her ideas about
the storm. So I was wondering what about yours.
McD: I remember we moved from one room to the other because
the ceiling would fall in, there was so much rain. The first
night we came up, it was just as clear as could be. It was
just a big adventure. We'd thought we'd go back the next day.
I think Mom had made a dress for each of us and that' s all the
clothes we had left. And I remember that night we went out
and had dinner. Of course, that was really a big thing. And
the next morning we thought we'd go back and that's when the
storm struck .
McDonald
WS: They didn't have much advance warning system then,
did they?
McD: No. We'd been hearing about it. It had been SO many
years, people just didn't pay any attention.
9 .
JS: I suppose your father being a pilot like that around the
water would know ...
McD: They did give warning but nobody paid any attention.
A l ot of people stayed in Sabine. He said, yes , we'd have
to leave. So we all got on the boat and came as far as Port
Arthur.
JS: Had he had any experience before he started at Port
Arthur? Here in Sabine Pass?
McD: What do you mean?
JS: In New Orleans, you said he worked on the jetties .
As far as piloting ships, had he had any experience?
McD: No. Except that he was captain ; he had passed his
examination. He was a captain for quite a few years.
MF: Angelina, what did he do about bringing the Dutch people
here? Now we have some papers of his that Theresa, I think,
gave us. I finally had a lot of those translated.
McD: Did you?
MF: Yes, they were in Dutch. But he had brought, I under­stood,
that he had been commissioned by the queen to help
bring some of those Dutch people over . And they had the menus
and everything that they were served. He is mentioned in
McDonald 10.
MF: there and I wondered then if he h ad already , of course
he had been going to sea with his father. So I thought he
already must have quite a bit of knowledge about sailing.
McD: I imagine so, probably . His fathe r and his stepmother
was buried in South America. Died while they were down there
on one of their trips.
JS: I wonder if they sailed just a certain time of year.
In the wintertime ... ?
McD: No, I don 't think so . I think they sailed the whole
year but I guess it takes probably six months to go from
Holland to South America or wherever they happened to be
going . I don't ever remember their saying that they had come
over here until he came over with the Dutch settlers .
JS : Did he and Rienstra have , when they came back into this
area , I suppose they renewed their friendships?
McD: He always thought Marie ' s mother was such a beautiful
woman. And I remember they were real good friends. But
I don't remember if Daddy knew him or not.
MF: Somebody said, now I hadn't heard this until just real
recently, you know we moved to Arkansas for a brief time, and
one of the boys , I think, said that Captain Kaper had been
intereste d in buying our house before he located that other
one. But at that time, Papa wasn't thinking about selling.
But it was a year or two after you all came back , that we
went to Arkansas briefly and he sold the house to Mr. Freeman.
And then Mr. Freeman sold it back to us when we came back.
McDonald 11.
McD: I know he always used to tell us what a beautiful young
girl Marie's mother was.
JS: Did your family bring many of their customs along?
McD: Well, I guess he did, but Mom being American ... I
remember he always thought everything had to shine, like
floors. We used to have a terrible time. Mama didn't care
whether the floors were shiny. We'd have to move out once a
year and he'd have to do all the floors, supposed to be just
like on a boat.
MF: There are certain traits you can't take out of the Dutch.
JS: Did he have any brothers or sisters?
McD: No. He was an only child.
JS: He was an only child, that's right. I just wondered
if he had any family ties in Holland.
McD: He had a cousin but I don't know whether ... I don't
know of any
MF: Did he ever go back to Holland after he came here
to live?
McD: I don't think he ever went back.
WS: I suppose at that time, Holland had quite a few colonies
in the ... and they bought produce from those colonies.
McD: Maybe so, I don't know. I guess that's what they took
on the boats. On the sailing boats.
MF: A lot of the Dutch people, I don't know whether your
family did or not, Angelina, but for years they would order
cheese from Holland. They'd order always cheese. We were
always so thrilled when the order came in from Holland to
McDonald 12.
MF: have ... The cheeses are a lot more delicious than any
we ever get here.
McD: Daddy would get them off the ships lots of times)from
Dutch boats. They'd always bring him cheese. It is better.
JS: We hear of Edam cheese. Was it that, or other ... ?
McD: Edam and then Gouda cheese. Then there was one that
had caraway seed in it.
MF: There was one that I liked the best and I have never found
it anywhere. Did you all ever get the little one that looked
like a bell? It was sort of like Parmesan cheese and you
would grate it. And, of course, we always had fresh butter.
And we'd get hot bread and put the butter on it and grate this
cheese ... very, very sharp. The best ... every now and
then I think if I could just taste some of that!
When we went back to Holland, I couldn't find it. I
don't know, it was sort of grainy.
WS: Was it made of cow's milk, would you guess, or was there
something ... ?
MF: I guess so. We have ordered from cheese places, you
know you get all this kind of things that looked like
it but they didn't taste like it. The closest I could come to
would be Parmesan cheese. That isn't really as good, it was
very sharp. Just really delicious.
JS: In your thinking, and as you think back over your life
here in Nederland, what strikes you as being the biggest change?
McD: I guess the mall because I often think what would Mama
and Daddy think of the mall.
McDonald 13 •
JS: A whole new concept of the economy, isn't it?
McD: All of the buildings, they were just ... even when you
all came, Marie, all shell-made roads and just mud holes,
really.
JS: When did the Malls start here?
MF: Well, we've only had one here in Nederland about I
think four or five years, but, of course, we've had them in
the area. The one that people think is in Port Arthur is
really in Nederland (laughter).
WS: Your daughter, did she go on to college?
McD: She went to Denton and taught in the Dallas schools
until oh, about two years after she married. And her
husband finished SMU and went with Dupont and stayed with
Dupont until he retired. They retired him a little bit over
a year ago.
JS: Of course, up north, we have a lot of snow. We always
heard our mother and father talk about the old days when they'd
have a big snowstorm. They seemed to think the winters were
harsher. Of course, you don't have that snow here. Do you
think there is much change in the weather from what it used
to be?
McD: I don't think so.
JS: I wouldn't think you would notice it so much. You don't
have that contrast the way you would if you had snow.
Hurricanes might be worse sometimes than ...
MF: The winters used to be a lot more bitter only because
the houses were not constructed to protect us from the cold.
McDonald 14 .
JS: No central heat or anything like that.
MF: The winters were pretty miserable. And it rained so
much during the winters and the mosquitos years ago were a
terrible thing.
WS: Do they spray for those now , or something?
MF: Yes. They organized a mosquito contr ol here in the late
'50's.
WS: It's been very effective?
MF: I think so.
WS: Has it practically e liminated them, or do you still
have some bad?
MF: We still have in fact, they're pretty bad right now.
McD: You know living upstairs, we don't get very many.
MF: It's been worse the last few days again. But a cool
spell, we always get you know, when the weather changes,
the rain, they always get worse.
McD: I guess they spray in Sabine, Sabine Pass.
MF: Of course, spraying has its .,. there are things that
are bad about that, too. The insects that used to protect
the gardens, would keep whatever it was that ate the vege­tables,
they are also killed when you spray for mosquitos.
So, it's sort of hard to keep a balance.
McD: When I first went to school in Sabine, the mosquitos
were so bad that we had to have smudge pots by our beds to
keep the mosquitos off . Daddy had to get up early in the
morning and Mama made him a kind of mask thing to wear over
his head so the mosquitos would ... And a lot of sailors that
McDonald 15.
McD: would come off the ships were found dead from mosquitos
down there . So I'm sure they're better now than they were
in those days.
MF: You can still go down to the beach occasionally and if
the wind is right, they're just allover you. We always just
turned a round and leave.
WS: How about pollution? Have you seen a ... were the beaches
a lot cleaner in the old days?
McD: Oh, goodness yes. We went to Galveston in September
when my son and daughter were here. There wasn't any beach.
Now my grandson and his wife were here in July and there's
quite a bit of beach. They get a big thrill in riding on the
beach. But when Angelina and Pat were here, the water was
up to the road. There was no beach l eft . I don't know whether
it was just hightide or what.
WS: Do you remember pollution being a problem back in the
I don't remember it being a problem up north. I wonder if
you did down here, if you had much.
McD: I don't think when we first moved up here there was any
pollution, but then after ...
WS: Petrochemicals plants came in and they probably added
to ...
McD: I know when we bought the place, we had a fruit or­chard.
The trees just gradually died. We had plums and
oranges, grapefruit and pears, peaches, most everything and
they gradually died.
McDonald 16.
WS: I guess it was earlier we understood that rice farming,
of course , this was before your time, that the sea water
came in on them and was another contributing factor to ...
MF : They had been irrigating from the Neches River and the
Gulf kept backing up into the river. And when the salt
water came in they had to give up the rice farming.
WS: Will sugar cane grow in a little more salty condition?
MF: I would think it would be almost the same thing .
WS: I guess it killed the grapefruit down in the Valley.
I read somewhere that if they dig down too deep to irrigate
the fruit in the Valley, they get the salt water and something
contributes to the death of the the salt water table, I
guess, rises and when they take the fresh water off , the salt
water rises up and it kills the root system of the ...
MF: When you mentioned pollution, it made me think of something.
Sammy said this morning we didn't have as much pollution like
from the refineries and everything, but there was all this
open sewage . Ditches. Everything was just, you know
McD: Yeah, that's right.
WS: They must have had a lot of sickness from this condition
didn't they, or not? Seems like they'd have epidemics of ...
MF : They did. A lot of typhoid; there were a lot of epidemics
through here. In our research, we found that between 1905
and 1910, I think it was, that at one time over half the people
in Nederland were sick at once. One family lost three children
with measles; they died within a weeks ' time. And a lot of
it was due to poor sanitation.
McDonald
JS: When did they have that drainage ... ? When was that
corrected?
MF: Relatively speaking, i t hasn't been that l ong ago .
McD : When we first moved up here, we had a cesspoo l ...
most everybody did.
17.
JS: Went from open drainage, then they had a cesspool be­f
ore they had the central drainage.
MF: I think it wasn 't 'til Nederland was incorporated that
we had .,. and that was, I be lieve , i n the late 1940's.
JS: Do you have anything speci a l that you can think about
when you were going to school? Stands out?
McD: To finish high schoo l I had to ... they did not have a
graduation class here, I had to go to Beaumont. I wanted to
go to South Park so I went to Beaumont and finished high
school.
WS: You went through the eleventh grade here, was that it,
and then went up?
McD: Tenth grade . I don't think they had twelve grades
then. I think they just had eleven grades.
WS: Then you went up there fo r your final grade? Were you
boarding out , or something , up there?
McD: No. They had an interurban then .
JS: That really played a big part in the community , didn't
i t ?
MF: Did you finish Beaumont High School?
McD: Uh-huh.
MF: Most of them went t o Port Arthur or South Park.
McDonald 18.
McD: I don't know when Henry DeQuir came, do you?
MF: No, I don't.
McD: I don't know if he was here then, or ... when I said
interurban, he used to tell tales about how he and Daddy
would flag down the interurban and he would be going to work
and Daddy would be going on down to the beach and they'd get
out there and flag the interurban. He is up in years ; I know
he's sick. The last time I talked to his daughter, she said
his mind was still clear.
WS: Was it a train or a trolley, we ' re speaking of?
McD: Really, the nearest thing would be a street car. But
it was larger than a street car . And I also have a picture
of that I'll show you . I think there's one in the book.
There it is.
WS: Did they ever pull any other cars with it?
McD: No, just passengers.
WS: I was up in Utah, was there two days and was amazed
when they pulled .,. they had a s treet car going between some
of those
MF: The KCS (Kansas City Southern) had what they called a
plug t rain and it was just one car. I think it was more like
a flat bed that the people rode back and forth on .
McD: It went to Sabine at one time. They used it, also .
WS : You mean the old cover over?
MF: I think it was more just like a flatbed. Then they also
had the passenger train that would go between Beaumont and
Port Arthur.
McDonald 19.
McD: And the passenger train went on to Sabine Once a day.
JS: You said your father had a tour of duty about a week at
a time: on a week and off a week. Is that what you said?
McD : They would work two weeks and then they'd be off two
weeks. I don't know what they do now. I think they have a
different schedule.
JS: So you and your mother would be at home alone during
that time. He was gone at night?
McD : Well , he'd usually come home at night . Even if it was
just an hour or two, he'd come home.
JS: I was going to say , you didn't have to worry so much about
vandalism.
McD: No . We didn't even have a lock on the front door. I
remember when I moved back here from Dallas I thought it
would be so nice and quiet. You wouldn't have to worry
about people breaking in. Wasn't very long, though.
JS: Seems to be the same everywhere .
WS: Mrs. Quarles said the same thing. They wanted to lock
the house and couldn't find the key !
MF: She said they didn't have any locks.
WS : No wonder she couldn't find the key. We lived in rural
New York until just recently. I never l ocked the door. Some-body
said, "You know what they say, let's not in case they
want to ruin the door, we can at least save something. "
McD: I just came back from Memphis about a week ago. Looks
like somebody tried to break in the front door while I was
gone . They took some of my plants off the front porch.
McDonald 20.
WS: They were getting desperate.
JS; Can you think of anything that you would like to bring
.out, Marie?
MF: Not unless Angelina can talk a little more about what
she did for enterta inment - schools and churches.
McD: We a l ways went to church and Epworth League. At
school ... we used to go to McNeill's and play dominoes
more than anything e lse.
MF: That was the drug store.
McD: They had three sons and they were always inviting us
over, to go over there and play dominoes, 42 and just plain
dominoes.
MF: What kind of church socials?
McD: Well, the League, Epworth League.
JS: Was the church , worship serv.i..ces" about like they are
today? Morning Sunday School and worship service? Did you
go back for a night service?
McD: Uh-huh.
MF: They were a little more informal than they are now.
McD: Other than that - well , after we moved up here, they
did have plays in Beaumont. Every once in a while we'd go
to the picture show in Beaumont.
JS: Did the community of Nederland have anything special?
I was thinking, I know the Germans up in our area had the
singing groups .
McD: No, I don't believe they ever had any
MF: The home was the most important thing.
McDonald 21.
WS: The movies, we were talking earlier, the Saturday night
specials of bingo and bank night, do you remember those?
At the l ocal movie theater?
McD: Oh, yes. We were living in Atlanta then.
MF: The '30's, eh?
WS: Yeah.
JS: I was wondering if you had noticed any shifts in the
ethnic ... are there more French here now than there used to
be? Or fewer?
McD: I would say fewer when we first came.
MF : You mean the French? Oh, I think they've multiplied
(laughter), or maybe they just sound like they are .
JS: I thought there were more of them then because so many
of them came in to work in this area.
MF: However, everybody has sort of intermingled. It's hard
to ... because there are quite a few ... I know of several
Dutch people, Dutch boys, that married French girls or
French girls that married Dutch boys. Everything is becoming
more homogenized.
JS: I think that's true.
McD: At that time they kind of stayed all to themselves.
JS: And you noticed it more then than you would now.
MF: I think there's more Mexicans in the area now.
JS: How about the Vietnamese? Are they coming into this area?
MF: Port Arthur and Beaumont. They have a regular community
in Port Arthur where they ' ve built a shrine. It's with
their Catholicism, whatever their ... if it's the same here
as it was in Vietnam.
McDonald 22.
MF: They 've built a regular huge shrine and a kind of a
garden. And then they have all of their facilities, their
little shops, food shops and their beauty shops, their lawyers
and their dentists. One end of Port Arthur is really Viet-namese
.
JS: What brought them in the first place?
MF: Resettlement. A lot of them were brought in by the
Catholic Church and some of them were even brought in by some
of the Protestant Churches . But they were just displaced
people. You know the Americans take them in.
JS: Thank you , Ange lina, for taking the time . We
appreciate it.
McD: I hope I've helped you.
JS: If we just got one little thing that we hadn't learned
before, that's worth the whole thing.
WS: Yes, we're very appreciative .
END OF TAPE I, Side 1, 30 minutes.