HISTORICAL COMMENTS BY GEORGE CHEVALLIER 6-29-13

Settling Down in Salisbury

When my grandfather finally arrived back in Salisbury in 1910, he never had a chance of leaving again. He married my grandmother in 1911 and began a life fighting prejudice and the establishment. As you can see by the picture of my grandmother, taken when she was just 16, a lot of men would suffer many indignities to win her heart. She was not only Catholic but Irish-Catholic at that. This was in an era when the Methodists and Baptists looked down upon anyone of any other faith. So much so that he couldn’t find anyone to hire him for 15 years.

He once painted a house for a man and couldn’t collect his money for the job. He showed up one Saturday morning and set up a pitch pot. For anyone not familiar with pitch, it is the black, sticky coating that is heated up to a liquid and applied to a roof before shingles are nailed on. When the pitch was being heated to attain its liquid state, the man came running out of the house demanding to know what he thought he was doing. He informed the man that he was going to put pitch on his paint. If the man paid him for the paint it would be his paint and my grandfather could not put anything on it. The man was furious as he went in the house and returned with the money that he owed my grandfather.

He picked up odd jobs until he had enough money to build his own 2 ½ story house. This he did at 703 Gay St. (in Oct., 1952, the city changed all the house numbers in Salisbury and it became 307 Gay St.)

While building his house he missed work for the only time in his life. He was never sick and this was the only time he was injured. It seems he was putting on the slate roof one morning and fell off the roof. A trip to the hospital entailed having the broken leg set and a cast applied. After this interruption, he returned to the house that very afternoon and proceeded to finish the roof. His determination was unmatched by any man I ever knew.

Once he finished building his own house in 1924 and people saw that he could build a fine house, he never had any trouble finding work after that. The only change he made was he started to build commercial buildings because he said the money was better and on time. In Salisbury, he is responsible for many buildings that can be observed today. He built the Perdue plant on Cypress St. for Swift & Co., the Cannon Building, the Colonial Building, the building on Mill St. for the old Martin & Swartz Co., the original Penny’s and the Country House on E. Main St. for Manhattan Shirt Co.. The last large project was the Howard Johnson Restaurant and Motor Lodge on Route 13 North. He also rebuilt Benjamin’s after a fire in the 1930’s. He had the salvage rights to Benjamin’s and hauled out everything he could before he razed it and began rebuilding. The only two departments that had not been completely destroyed were the “linen” and “glassware” departments. I spent my youth in the 1940’s and 1950’s drinking out of Duncan Miller sandwich pattern glasses and I was grown before I knew they made towels in any color except white.

(This is part 7 of a 7 part story of my grandfather’s life. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I recalled in writing it)