Harriet McDougal (interviewed by Lisa Hayes on May 23, 2023)
Dublin Core
Title
Harriet McDougal (interviewed by Lisa Hayes on May 23, 2023)
Creator
Date
2023-05-23
Description
Harriet McDougal was born in Washington, D.C. in 1939. Her father was a naval officer, stationed here in Charleston right after World War II. She grew up downtown and, after college in New York, worked in various publishing houses. She started her own imprint, Popham Press, in 1977. Ms. McDougal met and married James Rigney, also known by his pen name, Robert Jordan, author of the Wheel of Time series, in Charleston. Ms. McDougal reflects on her childhood in Charleston and on the subsequent difficulties of living here as a working woman in the 1970s. She reflects on her uncle Samuel Stoney’s love for the Library and her time on the board.
Contributor
Hayes, Lisa
Cox, Danielle
Format
MP3
Type
Audio
Language
English
Identifier
HarrietMcDougal_OralHistory_20230523
Oral History Item Type Metadata
Duration
47:45/65.6MB
Transcription
00:00:01 Harriet McDougal
I need to put up my, I mean I need to have my exercise clothes on and go to, because I go to DuPont Lattice and I have to be there at noon.
00:00:11 Lisa Hayes
OK, OK. So we'll. I'll, I'll let me get my phone so I can just be sure we have that time right. So my name is Lisa Hayes and I'm here this morning. It's May 23rd, 2023, and I'm with Harriet McDougal in her home on Tradd Street and we're just going to have a nice little chat. All right, well. Thank you again for doing this. It's very nice of you to spend this time with me and for filling out the paperwork, the questions that we sent. So we can just start maybe at the beginning. I, I saw you were born in Washington, DC. And your father was in the Navy. Is that right? So tell, tell me about your parents.
00:01:06 Harriet McDougal
Well, my father was a naval officer. His family was from New York State. His name was Popham, POPHAM, his last name. There's a Popham Beach in Maine, which is the site of his ancestors’ attempt to found a colony, but they took a wrong turn. They thought they were going to Virginia and the weather was such that they gave up after a year. This predates Jamestown. My father was a naval officer, 37 years in the Navy. He served on the court martial about the wreck of the Indianapolis, which features in Jaws, that wonderful speech that the actor himself wrote about how many men went into the water.
00:02:09 Lisa Hayes
Ohh I didn't know the actor wrote that.
00:02:18 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, Robert Shaw. Anyway Daddy, he, when I was a little girl, six, seven, In there, he was the acting commandant of the naval base here and that would have been in ‘47. And he had the unenviable duty of firing, I guess you'd say, or demobbing, the tremendous number of workers who had been at the Navy Yard during World War Two. The number 40,000 sticks with me. But that could be wrong. Anyway, that was his last active duty and he and mother had already decided to retire here to this house, in fact. So they did. Meanwhile, my mother was born Louisa McCord Stoney. She's named for the ancestor who was Louisa McCord, a published, nationally published writer before the Civil War, a South Carolinian. To the utmost to tell Stoney, really. And mother was, through her mother, she was a Stoney and she was born a Stoney that was through her father. Her mother was a Smythe. So that she had roots in very deep and Charleston families. She was a beauty and a wonderful hostess. Was known for the excellence of her dinner table.
00:04:08 Lisa Hayes
But and and they wanted to retire here in Charleston to this, to this home. How long has this lovely house been in your family?
00:04:13 Harriet McDougal
My grandmother bought it in the 1920s because she was a new widow and she found this to be small and manageable. But when I've heard this I'm fell on the floor laughing. I don't think it's either, but I love it a lot. So my grandmother bought it and lived in it for, I guess, just on 10 years and died here the year I was born. Mother inherited a quarter of it. Fortunately for her, my father was at sea because she went to the bank and took out a mortgage to buy the other 3/4, and my father had a horror of debt. Including a mortgage or buying a car on time. Anything of that sort was just anathema to him. So if he had been ashore he would never have agreed to this, but if someone said it was, I guess pretty unusual for a woman to wall send to a bank and get a bank loan. But she did it.
00:05:21 Lisa Hayes
On her own, without her husband's cosigning or something? Yeah.
00:05:26 Harriet McDougal
So she bought it in and then she died in the 70s and I inherited half. And enough money to buy out my sister for the other half. And $5000, which went at once to deferred maintenance. Daddy was old then too. And after that for I then moved back from New York and that year. And I kept for about 5 years finding why certain things have been done that I had thought were just silly and I hadn't let them be, like a pipe out in the garden. I mean, why was it there in a flower bed sticking up? It had to do with the, a sewage pipe underneath it and things of that sort.
00:06:27 Lisa Hayes
Well, and you went to Ashley Hall?
00:06:29 Harriet McDougal
Yes, I did. Well, I went to Charleston Day. Yeah, through eighth grade.
00:06:35 Lisa Hayes
And did do you have fond memories of of Charleston Day?
00:06:39 Harriet McDougal
Yeah. And they really taught me. I thought they were looking back through life, I didn't learn much at Ashley Hall. I really learned pretty much Jack, but actually Charles Day really taught me how to think and how to study and I loved them and dreaded them.
00:07:07 Lisa Hayes
And you, and you're an only child?
00:07:09 Harriet McDougal
Right. Sort of sort of. I have one sister, but she is 20 years older than I am. It's the same parents, we’re four sisters, but she married when I was two. I was sort of raised as an only child.
00:07:31 Lisa Hayes
So you went to you, you graduated from Ashley Hall and then went to to Radcliffe in Massachusetts, in Boston. And was that exciting for you to leave small town Charleston to go to a big city or had, were you waiting?
00:07:47 Harriet McDougal
I didn't think of Charleston as a small town. But it was interesting and exciting to be in the north.
00:08:01 Lisa Hayes
Were you accepted when you went to school?
00:08:04 Harriet McDougal
In what way? How do you mean?
00:08:05 Lisa Hayes
Well, being from the South were people surprised that you wanted to come up there to go to school?
00:08:13 Harriet McDougal
No, no. They assumed everybody wanted to go to Radcliffe. And they were right about that. I started at Wellesley, actually. Which was kind of silly. I was a, I had lots of southern ideas, being a Southerner. And I had been accepted at Radcliffe for the freshman year and named the Anne Radcliffe Scholar. But I thought that the Radcliffe girls are very ugly and they don't get married. And I think Wellesley will be a better place to be pretty and have lots and lots of dates. And so I went to Wellesley and didn't like it. And at the end of the first semester, I went into Radcliffe wearing my suit and a little hat because people did that then and the woman behind the desk sat down and said, “Miss Popham, why do you want to leave Wellesley? I am a Wellesley graduate.” And this was very lucky for me because I've been wanting to do a lot of, oh, I can't stand this and tick business. Oh, he's so suburban. So I thought, well, Lord. I I had to think fast and gave her a great deal of stuff about the various majors that were at Wellesley, I would have had to take a year of Bible. Wellesley was, and as far as I know is, a Methodist institution. And I didn't want to take a year of studying Bible, for one thing, and also they had a shabby idea they gave us, each freshman had an incoming sister at Wellesley, and my sister said, what do you want to major in? And I said, well, I want to major in international relations because I wanted to have my own jet, like a character in the Steve Canyon. And I would have my own international cooperation. And so I said this to my older sister, the international relations part, and she said, “Ohh, that's a wonderful major.” I said you think so? And she said “Yes, they always need interpreters at the UN.”
00:10:53 Lisa Hayes
That wasn't what you had in mind.
00:10:54 Harriet McDougal
No, that wasn't what I had in mind at all. And I thought, damn, oh, they think small. You know, I didn't think it in those terms, but it was they think small round here, don't they?
00:11:05 Lisa Hayes
Well, did you, go ahead?
00:11:06 Harriet McDougal
So I transferred to Radcliffe as a sophomore. Fortunately, having the Wellesley lady as an interviewer so that I was polite about Wellesley.
00:11:15 Lisa Hayes
You you didn't give your real impression of Wellesley before you left.
00:11:19 Harriet McDougal
Well, I did give my impression of the majors and the academic work because I did have a sensible reasons to prefer Radcliffe.
00:11:32 Lisa Hayes
So did you enjoy school at Radcliffe? Have a lot of fun?
00:11:37 Harriet McDougal
Well, it was wonderful classes and a very lively life. I worked hard so.
00:11:49 Lisa Hayes
What is it? What is the general studies degree? What did you, what does that mean?
00:11:55 Harriet McDougal
Ohh well it means is that I got honors. I didn't get honors in the English department, which is where my degree was. It means that I put on a musical comedy for the school which raised money for the school.
00:12:13 Lisa Hayes
Tell me about that. Did you write the?
00:12:15 Harriet McDougal
No, it is possibly Guys and Dolls. I don't remember.
00:12:23 Lisa Hayes
So you grew up liking to read and write it sounds like? From Charleston Day forward, enjoying to write and poetry. Was that your main passion or or writing short stories or novels or what?
00:12:39 Harriet McDougal
Oh, I guess...
00:12:39 Lisa Hayes
Or all of that?
00:12:41 Harriet McDougal
Short stories that didn't go anywhere.
00:12:45 Lisa Hayes
Do you still write now? No, no. Well, so so you graduated from college. Tell us about what happened after that.
00:12:56 Harriet McDougal
Well, so I got engaged and then I broke that off, getting engaged to somebody else. That was that first summer. Behaving badly and I guess I got engaged to somebody else. Anyway, I decided I was back at home, that I'd better go to New York because I was behaving badly and it would be less noticeable in New York. So I went to New York.
00:13:25 Lisa Hayes
Were your parents supportive of that? yeah, yeah.
00:13:31 Harriet McDougal
They didn't give me a, a an allowance or anything, but I got a job. I went to work for John Wiley and Sons. I think that's in the, yeah. The rest of it's in my resume pretty much.
00:13:48 Lisa Hayes
So you started copy editing and, and were you writing on your own also at the same time?
00:13:56 Harriet McDougal
No, I really wasn't writing after college.
00:14:00 Lisa Hayes
OK.
00:14:01 Harriet McDougal
Just working and.
00:14:03 Lisa Hayes
Editing and having fun? So I know you came back to Charleston eventually. It sounds like after your mother passed away, or maybe at the same time when you started your own press. What was what were you wanting to do with with that?
00:14:17 Lisa Hayes
What were you hoping to do?
00:14:18 Harriet McDougal
Ohh figuring out how to make a living in Charleston in the 1970s for a woman it was very, very difficult. In fact, I couldn't, I never even contemplated figuring out how to make a living in Charleston. It was minimum wage or nothing. As far as I could see, so I was starting my imprint as a way to make a living without having to leave this house.
00:14:52 Lisa Hayes
Hoping to work with, with South Carolina authors or all over the?
00:14:56 Harriet McDougal
I didn't care.
00:14:57 Lisa Hayes
You didn't care. How did you like, how did you find authors that wanted to work with you? How does, how does somebody do that?
00:15:05 Harriet McDougal
Well, the big one I found was was James, who I married. And who then produced every single book in this room. And these are his, of course, translations.
00:15:20 Lisa Hayes
Different editions of translations. OK, so well, tell us how you met your your late husband, James Rigney.
00:15:26 Harriet McDougal
Well, it was part of my hunt for writers. I went into the Book Basement. The book, what were they called? The book bags?
00:15:38 Lisa Hayes
There was a bookstore called The Book Basement.
00:15:40 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, but that wasn't it. Not it that this was. That was a wonderful place from my childhood. And he, it's notable in gay history for Charleston, the Book Basement, because the owners were very obviously a gay couple of men. And nobody cared. As far as I know that, I mean, I was in there as a child, mother was not [wailing].
00:16:14 Lisa Hayes
Uh-huh. Uh, huh. I've heard that I've heard that from several people. John, John Ziegler and and his partner. Yeah, they were openly gay in Charleston.
00:16:24 Harriet McDougal
And a grand bookstore. But anyway, these were owned and operated paperback and magazine stores really. They were owned and operated by the local newspaper. The magazine distributors. And one of them was on King Street, and I went in there and told the gal who was the manager that I was looking for local writers. And this was a full on bookstore, there were hardcovers, paperbacks, magazines. And if, and she said, oh, you're looking for writers. Well, there's a guy who comes in here who's wanting to be a public, wanting to be a writer. And I said, well here do do you have a card? Something I could write on? And I scribbled and pencil on an index card my name and phone number. And so she took that. Why isn't this a printed card? But when Jim next came in, she said, oh, there was this woman here who said what she said and she fished out the card and he looked at it. Said, pencil on an index card? I don't think so. And she said she was vice president of Ace Books when she came in before she came back. Oh, OK. So he came and that's how we met. It didn't take right off the bat. I was looking for bodice rippers. I'm not sure I didn't invent the phrase You grin, you know what they are?
00:18:17 Lisa Hayes
I do, yeah.
00:18:19 Harriet McDougal
And Jim tried to invent a bodice ripper in the car when he was coming in to see me and be interviewed. And it had a duck in it. And I said, a duck? You know, I don't think so. But a year later, I was thumbing through my Rolodex. You know, what can I do? And his name came up and then we, we pretty soon started working together and that's how.
00:18:54 Lisa Hayes
And you fell in love! Well, yes, while you were in New York, you were working with Tour Books. Is that what it's called?
00:19:00 Harriet McDougal
It is now. When I was leaving New York, Tom Doherty was founding Tom Doherty Associates. And I was his editor in chief. He said, I don't care where you live. I want you to edit. And I said OK, so.
00:19:22 Lisa Hayes
And you worked on science fiction, mostly?
00:19:26 Harriet McDougal
And fantasy rather than science fiction.
00:19:28 Lisa Hayes
Do you still love those kind of books?
00:19:35 Harriet McDougal
I love fantasy. Science fiction is not so much my cup of tea.
00:19:41 Lisa Hayes
Well, I'll, let me read some of the names of the authors that you worked with just so people will know. So this is the portion of your resume 1986 to 2007 and editor for Tour Books. And you worked with Robert Jordan (James Rigney), Andrew Greeley, Whitley Strieber, Kathleen and Michael Geer, Morgan Lewellen, Richard Hoyt, Carol Nelson Douglas. Yeah. And you say I have concentrated on editing, editing fiction for the last 25 years. Is that something you're doing now? Do authors still send you their books?
00:20:24 Harriet McDougal
No. I don't edit anymore now.
00:20:28 Lisa Hayes
Are you reading something really great right now?
00:20:29 Harriet McDougal
Now, yes, old but great. Susan Howard wrote a series of novels about life among clergymen in the Church of England. And they're very good indeed and very wise. And we were, I was just talking to somebody about them over the weekend who also loves them. And I bought these books years ago, but had never read them.
00:20:59 Lisa Hayes
Do you like? You like to hold the book, or do you also use ebooks?
00:21:03 Harriet McDougal
No, I like to hold a book.
00:21:07 Lisa Hayes
Well, so you, I know you were on the board at the Library Society for, for a period. Were you, was your family members, were they members of the library when you were growing up? Do you remember coming to the library very much?
00:21:18 Harriet McDougal
Oh yeah, very much so. My Uncle Sam Stoney went in there every day and there, there used to be a picture of him reading the newspaper.
00:21:28 Lisa Hayes
We still have that in the in the reading room.
00:21:34 Harriet McDougal
He would start the day going in there and reading their newspaper.
00:21:40 Lisa Hayes
Tell us about your Uncle Sam Stoney. I know he was a character.
00:21:43 Harriet McDougal
I loved him. I really adored him. And hey, I could write a book about him. You shouldn't get me started on that. But I do love that picture. And I will say that when he, in his later life, my Uncle Luke Simmons. Not Luke. Damn. I'm pulling the Simmons brother, there, there were five of them. And one of them married by Aunt Harriet. So they were all my uncles. Anyway, he had, he was a broker and he told Sam to buy Minnesota Mining and Metallurgical and it made Sam rich. So when he died, he had a big will. When he died, the Post and Courier gave, it was I think 2 full pages of the newspaper to his obituary. Yeah. And then the Library society found out he didn't give them a penny and the society was really cross since he'd been in there every morning, every morning, reading the newspaper didn't give them a penny. But, but he did he he loved being there. And the other thing that reminds me of my childhood is the John Bennett logo up on the wall. John Bennett was my great uncle. On the other side, he married a Smythe. So they were remarkable people.
00:23:37 Lisa Hayes
Did you, would you have grown up and they would have come over to your house for Thanksgiving? Were you all close like that?
00:23:43 Harriet McDougal
Sam was, yeah, until he got to be very, very obstreperous. He didn't like my father. I think he was jealous of him. Liked my mother too much. His sister.
00:23:56 Lisa Hayes
He was very protective of her?
00:23:57 Harriet McDougal
So in at the end, he wasn't coming. It was a sad business there. But before that he would come for the high holidays. Thanksgiving, Christmas, things like that.
00:24:12 Lisa Hayes
Do you, are you close with your cousins? Do you still have cousins in town?
00:24:16 Harriet McDougal
Very few.
00:24:21 Lisa Hayes
Well, so, so you grew up coming to the library society and then you were on the board. Tell me about when you were on our board. What were some of the things that you worked on, do you remember?
00:24:28 Harriet McDougal
Well, Anne Cleveland had, she was president. And all I did on the board would say Anne you are amazing. Look at what you've done. Keep doing it. So that's really all I remember about it.
00:24:47 Lisa Hayes
You were very supportive of Anne and all the all the initiatives that she implemented.
00:24:53 Harriet McDougal
Yes, and the financial skill. Oh gosh, and the society was pretty close to moribund when she took over.
00:25:03 Lisa Hayes
Had you been a member during those down years, like in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s?
00:25:12 Harriet McDougal
Probably not. I was very, when I moved back, it was ‘77. And I tell you what, I had to stretch a penny.
00:25:26 Lisa Hayes
Is that right?
00:25:26 Harriet McDougal
Ohh yes it was very tight. So I must have joined at some point or they wouldn't have gotten me on the board. Or maybe I had to join in order to serve on the board. Honestly, I don't remember.
00:25:47 Lisa Hayes
Well, and I know you worked for a time at the historic ,South Carolina Historical Society also. Was that fun? Did you work with the manuscripts?
00:25:55 Harriet McDougal
No, that was when I was right out of college and I was the assistant archivist. There were two employees. Mrs. Pryor, the archivist, and me.
00:26:06 Lisa Hayes
Tiny, tiny stuff.
00:26:10 Harriet McDougal
And one of my jobs was to cut the carbon paper in half because we fit the carbons of South Carolina Historical Society letters. The copies were made on half sheets with half carbons to save money. Yeah, but I, Mrs. Pryor was a dear. And I did learn about double entry bookkeeping on that job, which is a marvelous thing to know.
00:26:46 Lisa Hayes
Yes, well and,nd she wasn't she the editor of the historical magazine?
00:26:49 Harriet McDougal
Yes, she was.
00:26:50 Lisa Hayes
Did you get a a sense of, oh, I like this kind of work, editing.
00:26:54 Harriet McDougal
No, I know I wasn't part of her work, but she had one big paper clip which was sacred to the magazine. I mean, it was a giant.
00:27:04 Lisa Hayes
A claw kind of a thing.
00:27:08 Harriet McDougal
And I got to answer letters from people who wanted genealogical information. And that was some source of income because we, I would write back "there are 7, seven entries of this family name. And for $1.50 a day or whatever it was, we would be glad to send them to you.”
00:27:36 Lisa Hayes
I had that exact same job for a time. I was the hired researcher at the Historical Society and people would request genealogy and I would send it to them. That’s funny. We had the same same job.
00:27:48 Harriet McDougal
And did you charge them that way?
1:27:49
We did, yeah.
00:27:50 Harriet McDougal
There's a major source of income. And while I was there, there was an awful thing that happened. The society apparently had a Button Gwinnett signature. And it was stolen.
00:28:03 Lisa Hayes
Tell me what that is. I’m sorry I don't know what that means.
00:28:04 Harriet McDougal
Button Gwinnett signed the Constitution and is the rarest of the signatures.
00:28:11 Lisa Hayes
And they had a document that had his name?
00:28:12 Harriet McDougal
They had a Button Gwinnett and it vanished. I heard about this afterwards. I was completely unaware at the time. Some scholar had been in and allowed to study documents and...
00:28:30 Lisa Hayes
Well, we yeah, there are stories like that even at the Library Society of things people have seen. And then we've said, hey, we would like to see that too and then you can't, can't find them.
00:28:45 Harriet McDougal
Ohh, in a story about Sam, the proceedings of the South Carolina Historical Society in his later years. They said Sam uh, the first years annuals. We don't seem to have a complete set. Do you, and could we talk? Sam said yes, I have them, but I'm not giving them to you. You couldn't take care of the ones you had. Why should I? But I think we gave them back when he died.
00:29:18 Lisa Hayes
Well, so Laura, Mina and I, Laura, mine at the head librarian at the library, she and I have been to the, to Albert and Theodosia Simons, Theodora Simons, excuse me. And they’re relatives of of Sam Stoney and, and you also. And they asked us to, to make a big inventory of all the books in their, in their home and we we did that and on the top floor there they had a box full of Sam Stoney kind of papers, letters and letters and things.
00:29:47 Harriet McDougal
No kidding. Because Albert's, grandfather, Albert's father was executor of Sam's will. And I thought he did an unbelievably bad job. There was a box of letters in the kitchen house there full of cockle jags.
00:30:09 Lisa Hayes
Well, these these may be those they they were just kind of just a box of stuff, yeah.
00:30:13 Harriet McDougal
Just a box. Good.
00:30:17 Lisa Hayes
But there were a lot of copies of the historical magazine up there that that I wonder if he he just had multiple sets.
00:30:23 Harriet McDougal
Well, did he have, was it correspondence letters?
00:30:26 Lisa Hayes
There are letters.
00:30:27 Harriet McDougal
There were a bunch that fell out of the attic, and Sam lived in the backyard. Not not in a tent.
00:30:34 Lisa Hayes
Right, you have another.
00:30:36 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, in the carriage house. But he was in a small piece of the carriage house, this small apartment. And this, the ceiling fell in after Hugo and these letters were cascading down. And after Hugo, it was so busy and frantic and I called the historical and said send somebody over here with a pair of work gloves, a paper bag and a deed of gift. And I gave him all the letters that still had bits of plaster in a bag and signed the deed of gift and gave them the bag and sent them away.
00:31:12 Lisa Hayes
Well, you, you have given the library society some of your business papers from your, from your, from your imprint.
00:31:19 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, you said you wanted them. I said, you do?
00:31:20 Lisa Hayes
Yeah, well, I, I got to catalog them and they were, and they were interesting and there were photos of your parents in there too. Your birth certificate and some other fun stuff like that.
00:31:31 Harriet McDougal
My gosh, hold on to that. It makes me legal.
00:31:37 Lisa Hayes
So you were married to James Rigney, who is who as as as we know, was the the author Robert, Robert Jordan, and has written the Wheel of Time series, which has recently been made into a TV series on Amazon.
00:31:52 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, the second season is coming this fall.
00:31:57 Lisa Hayes
Is that something that you care to watch? Have you been watching it or did you keep up with it?
00:32:01 Harriet McDougal
I watched the first one, yeah. Sure, I will.
00:32:04 Lisa Hayes
Yeah, yeah, I know it.
00:32:06 Harriet McDougal
But I’m not involved in it.
00:32:07 Lisa Hayes
I haven't read his books. And I'm sorry to say, I haven't read his books, but I know they're very popular. Do you follow the sort of fans of his, with his, the people who have read his book and are watching the show now? Is that something that you that you find interesting, sort of his fan base?
00:32:28 Harriet McDougal
Well, his fan base never quits. And it's not, so it's about the books rather than the television. I have a beautiful bowl in the pantry which fans gave me because it looks like the bowl of the winds, which is a major thing in the series. So they sent me this lovely bowl of the winds. They're just, they’re tremendous people and there's a little subset who have, they had an Ogier Con, OGIER, in the books is used as a substitute for Ogre, except they're nice people. Nice ogier. And of course, he called it from the Charleston name. And there is an Ogier Street as you may or may not know, running into Calhoun, which I'm sure is where Jim saw the street sign and said good word. And they had little convention here.
00:33:27 Lisa Hayes
No, I didn't that.
00:33:44 Harriet McDougal
And that was last year. I mean, they don't. These people don't, don't quit.
00:33:51 Lisa Hayes
Well, did he write those books in this house? Yeah?
00:33:57 Harriet McDougal
After, well, he had a study in the the Confederate home.
00:34:02 Lisa Hayes
OK.
00:34:04 Harriet McDougal
But then they were making him move out. And at that point, he moved back in here with his 10,000 books into the carriage house himself. Harriet, if we get a divorce, I'm not leaving. Only death will get me out of here.
00:34:22 Lisa Hayes
Oh yeah, so this room where we're sitting has some stacks of of what you told me are his different translations and different conditions.
00:34:31 Harriet McDougal
Oh yeah, so this is 1 copy of each edition of each book.
00:34:37 Lisa Hayes
And there's a there's several hundred books in here. Do you have, you must have more throughout the house.
00:34:42 Harriet McDougal
No, this is where his books are. And we had to build the bookcases. All of the 1, 2, 3 and the little bookcases too.
00:34:55 Lisa Hayes
OK. Do you have copies of the books that you worked on I guess? Those are in a different place?
00:35:01 Harriet McDougal
Yes I do. Upstairs.
00:35:08 Lisa Hayes
Is there anything, so, so you told us about Sam Stoney. Do you remember some of the other folks from the Library society when you were growing up? Any, did you know, Miss Frampton or let me think of who else was working there. Miss Fitzsimmons.
00:35:28 Harriet McDougal
A lovely lady. I'm sorry to say the way I remember her is that she had a bad arm. Middleton? Fitzsimmons? Just a lovely person.
00:35:45 Lisa Hayes
That's what I've heard is that the ladies that worked there during sort of the mid 20th century were just delightful, sweet, kind, welcoming people.
00:35:54 Harriet McDougal
And I remember one saying when I couldn't find an overdue book, have you looked under the front seat of the car? And of course I hadn't, and, but then I did look in there, there it was.
00:36:06 Lisa Hayes
She knew. And I did want to ask you about your activism. So your family, your parents must have raised you and your sister to be independent thinkers. And I saw that it, that, or maybe that maybe they were, maybe they didn't and maybe just ended up to be really independent. But you worked with them to get the first one of the first Planned Parenthood clinics here.
00:36:30 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, my cousin Harriet Simons, my first cousin, and I clubbed in together for that. And her mother was really the activist, Harriet Stoney Simons. Mrs. Albert Simons was my mother's sister, and she was a strong influence on my life. She was a tremendous activist. She introduced Planned Parenthood into South Carolina. She traveled to Columbia to work on the legislature a lot. And she would arrive here for midday, midday dinner and immediately get on the phone, which irritated Mother to no end. But she was, she was on the first interracial committee in the city, if I understand it properly, about 1950. She was great.
00:37:32 Lisa Hayes
She was an inspiration to you?
00:37:33 Harriet McDougal
Yes, she was. And she got busy and did things. And my, my grandmother was sort of an activist too. I don't know how true the stories are that I grew up on, but one was that Carrison’s had a rule that the sales women had to stand behind the counters all day and she made them change it that they could sit down when they weren't serving a customer. She organized a low, a part of the peninsula city around Tradd Street to put down rat poison all at the same day to deal with wharf rats which are very big and ugly.
00:38:24 Lisa Hayes
Was that affecting the department store, those rats?
00:38:26 Harriet McDougal
No, that was affecting people. They were probably gathering in her backyard. No, it, that was just it was a one time thing about Carrison’s. She was standing up for women. And she must have been a very interesting character. I know my cousin Harriet had memories of her reading to children in this house upstairs and her feet bothered her so she would sit there reading to them, rolling a coke bottle back and forth.
00:39:07 Lisa Hayes
And that helped relax the muscles or something?
00:39:07 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, and we could hold on to the bottle in that in that...
00:39:16 Lisa Hayes
In her arch.
00:39:20 Harriet McDougal
It was a good bottle to use.
00:39:24 Lisa Hayes
Well, so, so that Planned Parenthood, any other kind of things that you were passionate about?
00:39:28 Harriet McDougal
Oh, neither Women Voters too. And I keep trying to think. I have been trying to think how to increase voter registration. It's apparently a very difficult one call on one house at a time thing to do.
00:39:51 Lisa Hayes
Well, I know in South Carolina they're redistricting and the attempts at disenfranchising people. It's like an ongoing battle all the time here.
00:40:01 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, yeah. And persuade people to, persuading people to register to voters is, 1, 1, 1.
00:40:02 Lisa Hayes
So registering those. Well, are you still you, you do that kind of thing now, do you make phone calls?
00:40:17 Harriet McDougal
No, no, I don't. My. my work is mostly done by writing a check thanks to the books. And I had a good friend who said don't marry him. Well, because he was penniless.
00:40:37 Lisa Hayes
You married him before he was well known.
00:40:39 Harriet McDougal
I certainly did.
00:40:41 Lisa Hayes
And you had been married before, and you have...
00:40:43 Harriet McDougal
I married him before he was published.
00:40:45 Lisa Hayes
Oh, is that right?
00:40:47 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, I think so.
00:40:48 Lisa Hayes
And you have a son. I forgot to ask about your son. Where does he live? What is his name?
00:40:54 Harriet McDougal
Is William Popham McDougal, and he lives in McClellanville.
00:41:00 Lisa Hayes
Do you see him very often?
00:41:05 Harriet McDougal
Not often enough. But I love him and it's always a great pleasure to see him.
00:41:09 Lisa Hayes
Well, I thank you for your time. I, I, there's probably other things I could ask, I'm sorry I'm, just let me look here right quick. Well, three big topics that you wrote down and we have about 15 minutes that if you want to choose one or or we could talk about all of them. The first nuclear bomb, the electronic revolution, and the improvement in black and white justice. Is there something? Did you? I know that in Charleston in the 1970s there was a movement through the Circular Church I think, about banning nuclear bombs. Were you involved in in that somehow?
00:42:20 Harriet McDougal
One of the lost causes. No, I wasn't. And our local, in a way I'm remembering. Gosh, getting into a car to go to Washington for New York. The bus drivers who had said they were going to be taking us decided they weren't going to be part of this and we were going down. Nixon was in the, what was it? Vietnam?
00:42:59 Lisa Hayes
You knew you were hoping to protest the war and the bus drivers wouldn't, wouldn't drive you to do that? Yeah.
00:43:05 Harriet McDougal
So we got there, you know, rattle track cars among other other people in other cars that they stood up. So I really didn't do...
00:43:23 Lisa Hayes
So your dad was in the military during World War Two when we used the nuclear bomb. What was that something that you were ever remember him talking about?
00:43:34 Harriet McDougal
No. I remember when it happened. I remember getting a phone call from somebody who had the radio on. It's amazing how slow information was to move around.
00:43:49 Lisa Hayes
Was that something that you thought you that, was like a, I know for me, it's 9/11 sort of a. This all happened before 9/11 and this has all happened after 9/11. Was that it? I guess you were pretty little.
00:44:06 Harriet McDougal
No it wasn’t. And when did Roosevelt die? That seemed like an...
00:44:09 Lisa Hayes
‘45 maybe? ‘44?
00:44:12 Harriet McDougal
I was six in '45. What I remember that mother was pulling out one of my teeth. You know, string in the door.
00:44:26 Lisa Hayes
Well, and you have been alive to see a lot of changes in technology for sure. Do you, do you use a smartphone or you, is that something that you enjoy?
00:44:34 Harriet McDougal
No, I don't. No. I don't seem to be able to work it very well. I love the computer.
00:44:44 Lisa Hayes
You love e-mail or?
00:44:46 Harriet McDougal
That's OK. Yeah. It's very nice that it's so fast. Instead of a scribbled notes and...
00:44:54 Lisa Hayes
Well, and for doing research, I know you can. I don't know how much I mean, you can do so much online. You don't have to visit places, you can do so much, you know.
00:45:03 Harriet McDougal
I was looking up the difference between porcelain and bone China the other day, yesterday.
00:45:11 Lisa Hayes
You don't even have to get a book out. Look at it online. And you certainly have seen a lot of changes in Black and white relations throughout your lifetime. I mean we, you probably could do a whole other interview about what you've seen here in Charleston. But do you remember growing up here on Tradd St. having Black neighbors South of Broad?
00:45:36 Harriet McDougal
Well, yes, I do, but they were not in this block. In the next block.
00:45:42 Lisa Hayes
And was that, were you, did you play? With the kids. The Black kids. Or were you?
00:45:46 Harriet McDougal
No, I don't know whether they had any kids.
00:45:51 Lisa Hayes
And they moved to New York and I guess it was all, you know, really different there. And then when you came back to Charleston in the ‘70s, did you feel like things had sort of been frozen in time here as far as the race relations? Or had things improved or?
00:46:11 Harriet McDougal
This seems much the same.
00:46:14 Lisa Hayes
Well, and I know lots of Black folks have moved out of this of sort of this part of the peninsula for sure. But even, even though you know north, the neck people are people are leaving. And yeah, Charleston must just seem really different from when you were growing up. And, and tourists, of course, but also just the the buildings and the development and...
00:46:41 Harriet McDougal
Yeah. Gosh, these big things.
00:46:44 Lisa Hayes
Yeah, these apartments and condos, yeah.
00:46:47 Harriet McDougal
Tremendous buildings going up.
00:46:53 Lisa Hayes
Well in the... Do you have to go? Oh, you need to go.
00:47:00 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, sorry. Looking at my watch.
00:47:01 Lisa Hayes
No, no, no, it's fine. Well, so anything else that you would like to to mention?
00:47:09 Harriet McDougal
I can't think of anything.
00:47:09 Lisa Hayes
I can't think of anything either. You were so lovely to to do this with me.
00:47:15 Harriet McDougal
Well, you're very welcome.
00:47:16 Lisa Hayes
I really appreciate it. Well come back to the Library society sometime and, have you seen the Shakespeare Igoe collection? Have you been in since we've got that? Oh, you would love it. Beautiful and, and fascinating. So if you come back I'll give you a tour.
00:47:33 Harriet McDougal
One of Anne's triumphs.
00:47:33 Lisa Hayes
Well, thank you. It's really nice to talk with you.
00:47:40 Harriet McDougal
Always nice to talk with you.
I need to put up my, I mean I need to have my exercise clothes on and go to, because I go to DuPont Lattice and I have to be there at noon.
00:00:11 Lisa Hayes
OK, OK. So we'll. I'll, I'll let me get my phone so I can just be sure we have that time right. So my name is Lisa Hayes and I'm here this morning. It's May 23rd, 2023, and I'm with Harriet McDougal in her home on Tradd Street and we're just going to have a nice little chat. All right, well. Thank you again for doing this. It's very nice of you to spend this time with me and for filling out the paperwork, the questions that we sent. So we can just start maybe at the beginning. I, I saw you were born in Washington, DC. And your father was in the Navy. Is that right? So tell, tell me about your parents.
00:01:06 Harriet McDougal
Well, my father was a naval officer. His family was from New York State. His name was Popham, POPHAM, his last name. There's a Popham Beach in Maine, which is the site of his ancestors’ attempt to found a colony, but they took a wrong turn. They thought they were going to Virginia and the weather was such that they gave up after a year. This predates Jamestown. My father was a naval officer, 37 years in the Navy. He served on the court martial about the wreck of the Indianapolis, which features in Jaws, that wonderful speech that the actor himself wrote about how many men went into the water.
00:02:09 Lisa Hayes
Ohh I didn't know the actor wrote that.
00:02:18 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, Robert Shaw. Anyway Daddy, he, when I was a little girl, six, seven, In there, he was the acting commandant of the naval base here and that would have been in ‘47. And he had the unenviable duty of firing, I guess you'd say, or demobbing, the tremendous number of workers who had been at the Navy Yard during World War Two. The number 40,000 sticks with me. But that could be wrong. Anyway, that was his last active duty and he and mother had already decided to retire here to this house, in fact. So they did. Meanwhile, my mother was born Louisa McCord Stoney. She's named for the ancestor who was Louisa McCord, a published, nationally published writer before the Civil War, a South Carolinian. To the utmost to tell Stoney, really. And mother was, through her mother, she was a Stoney and she was born a Stoney that was through her father. Her mother was a Smythe. So that she had roots in very deep and Charleston families. She was a beauty and a wonderful hostess. Was known for the excellence of her dinner table.
00:04:08 Lisa Hayes
But and and they wanted to retire here in Charleston to this, to this home. How long has this lovely house been in your family?
00:04:13 Harriet McDougal
My grandmother bought it in the 1920s because she was a new widow and she found this to be small and manageable. But when I've heard this I'm fell on the floor laughing. I don't think it's either, but I love it a lot. So my grandmother bought it and lived in it for, I guess, just on 10 years and died here the year I was born. Mother inherited a quarter of it. Fortunately for her, my father was at sea because she went to the bank and took out a mortgage to buy the other 3/4, and my father had a horror of debt. Including a mortgage or buying a car on time. Anything of that sort was just anathema to him. So if he had been ashore he would never have agreed to this, but if someone said it was, I guess pretty unusual for a woman to wall send to a bank and get a bank loan. But she did it.
00:05:21 Lisa Hayes
On her own, without her husband's cosigning or something? Yeah.
00:05:26 Harriet McDougal
So she bought it in and then she died in the 70s and I inherited half. And enough money to buy out my sister for the other half. And $5000, which went at once to deferred maintenance. Daddy was old then too. And after that for I then moved back from New York and that year. And I kept for about 5 years finding why certain things have been done that I had thought were just silly and I hadn't let them be, like a pipe out in the garden. I mean, why was it there in a flower bed sticking up? It had to do with the, a sewage pipe underneath it and things of that sort.
00:06:27 Lisa Hayes
Well, and you went to Ashley Hall?
00:06:29 Harriet McDougal
Yes, I did. Well, I went to Charleston Day. Yeah, through eighth grade.
00:06:35 Lisa Hayes
And did do you have fond memories of of Charleston Day?
00:06:39 Harriet McDougal
Yeah. And they really taught me. I thought they were looking back through life, I didn't learn much at Ashley Hall. I really learned pretty much Jack, but actually Charles Day really taught me how to think and how to study and I loved them and dreaded them.
00:07:07 Lisa Hayes
And you, and you're an only child?
00:07:09 Harriet McDougal
Right. Sort of sort of. I have one sister, but she is 20 years older than I am. It's the same parents, we’re four sisters, but she married when I was two. I was sort of raised as an only child.
00:07:31 Lisa Hayes
So you went to you, you graduated from Ashley Hall and then went to to Radcliffe in Massachusetts, in Boston. And was that exciting for you to leave small town Charleston to go to a big city or had, were you waiting?
00:07:47 Harriet McDougal
I didn't think of Charleston as a small town. But it was interesting and exciting to be in the north.
00:08:01 Lisa Hayes
Were you accepted when you went to school?
00:08:04 Harriet McDougal
In what way? How do you mean?
00:08:05 Lisa Hayes
Well, being from the South were people surprised that you wanted to come up there to go to school?
00:08:13 Harriet McDougal
No, no. They assumed everybody wanted to go to Radcliffe. And they were right about that. I started at Wellesley, actually. Which was kind of silly. I was a, I had lots of southern ideas, being a Southerner. And I had been accepted at Radcliffe for the freshman year and named the Anne Radcliffe Scholar. But I thought that the Radcliffe girls are very ugly and they don't get married. And I think Wellesley will be a better place to be pretty and have lots and lots of dates. And so I went to Wellesley and didn't like it. And at the end of the first semester, I went into Radcliffe wearing my suit and a little hat because people did that then and the woman behind the desk sat down and said, “Miss Popham, why do you want to leave Wellesley? I am a Wellesley graduate.” And this was very lucky for me because I've been wanting to do a lot of, oh, I can't stand this and tick business. Oh, he's so suburban. So I thought, well, Lord. I I had to think fast and gave her a great deal of stuff about the various majors that were at Wellesley, I would have had to take a year of Bible. Wellesley was, and as far as I know is, a Methodist institution. And I didn't want to take a year of studying Bible, for one thing, and also they had a shabby idea they gave us, each freshman had an incoming sister at Wellesley, and my sister said, what do you want to major in? And I said, well, I want to major in international relations because I wanted to have my own jet, like a character in the Steve Canyon. And I would have my own international cooperation. And so I said this to my older sister, the international relations part, and she said, “Ohh, that's a wonderful major.” I said you think so? And she said “Yes, they always need interpreters at the UN.”
00:10:53 Lisa Hayes
That wasn't what you had in mind.
00:10:54 Harriet McDougal
No, that wasn't what I had in mind at all. And I thought, damn, oh, they think small. You know, I didn't think it in those terms, but it was they think small round here, don't they?
00:11:05 Lisa Hayes
Well, did you, go ahead?
00:11:06 Harriet McDougal
So I transferred to Radcliffe as a sophomore. Fortunately, having the Wellesley lady as an interviewer so that I was polite about Wellesley.
00:11:15 Lisa Hayes
You you didn't give your real impression of Wellesley before you left.
00:11:19 Harriet McDougal
Well, I did give my impression of the majors and the academic work because I did have a sensible reasons to prefer Radcliffe.
00:11:32 Lisa Hayes
So did you enjoy school at Radcliffe? Have a lot of fun?
00:11:37 Harriet McDougal
Well, it was wonderful classes and a very lively life. I worked hard so.
00:11:49 Lisa Hayes
What is it? What is the general studies degree? What did you, what does that mean?
00:11:55 Harriet McDougal
Ohh well it means is that I got honors. I didn't get honors in the English department, which is where my degree was. It means that I put on a musical comedy for the school which raised money for the school.
00:12:13 Lisa Hayes
Tell me about that. Did you write the?
00:12:15 Harriet McDougal
No, it is possibly Guys and Dolls. I don't remember.
00:12:23 Lisa Hayes
So you grew up liking to read and write it sounds like? From Charleston Day forward, enjoying to write and poetry. Was that your main passion or or writing short stories or novels or what?
00:12:39 Harriet McDougal
Oh, I guess...
00:12:39 Lisa Hayes
Or all of that?
00:12:41 Harriet McDougal
Short stories that didn't go anywhere.
00:12:45 Lisa Hayes
Do you still write now? No, no. Well, so so you graduated from college. Tell us about what happened after that.
00:12:56 Harriet McDougal
Well, so I got engaged and then I broke that off, getting engaged to somebody else. That was that first summer. Behaving badly and I guess I got engaged to somebody else. Anyway, I decided I was back at home, that I'd better go to New York because I was behaving badly and it would be less noticeable in New York. So I went to New York.
00:13:25 Lisa Hayes
Were your parents supportive of that? yeah, yeah.
00:13:31 Harriet McDougal
They didn't give me a, a an allowance or anything, but I got a job. I went to work for John Wiley and Sons. I think that's in the, yeah. The rest of it's in my resume pretty much.
00:13:48 Lisa Hayes
So you started copy editing and, and were you writing on your own also at the same time?
00:13:56 Harriet McDougal
No, I really wasn't writing after college.
00:14:00 Lisa Hayes
OK.
00:14:01 Harriet McDougal
Just working and.
00:14:03 Lisa Hayes
Editing and having fun? So I know you came back to Charleston eventually. It sounds like after your mother passed away, or maybe at the same time when you started your own press. What was what were you wanting to do with with that?
00:14:17 Lisa Hayes
What were you hoping to do?
00:14:18 Harriet McDougal
Ohh figuring out how to make a living in Charleston in the 1970s for a woman it was very, very difficult. In fact, I couldn't, I never even contemplated figuring out how to make a living in Charleston. It was minimum wage or nothing. As far as I could see, so I was starting my imprint as a way to make a living without having to leave this house.
00:14:52 Lisa Hayes
Hoping to work with, with South Carolina authors or all over the?
00:14:56 Harriet McDougal
I didn't care.
00:14:57 Lisa Hayes
You didn't care. How did you like, how did you find authors that wanted to work with you? How does, how does somebody do that?
00:15:05 Harriet McDougal
Well, the big one I found was was James, who I married. And who then produced every single book in this room. And these are his, of course, translations.
00:15:20 Lisa Hayes
Different editions of translations. OK, so well, tell us how you met your your late husband, James Rigney.
00:15:26 Harriet McDougal
Well, it was part of my hunt for writers. I went into the Book Basement. The book, what were they called? The book bags?
00:15:38 Lisa Hayes
There was a bookstore called The Book Basement.
00:15:40 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, but that wasn't it. Not it that this was. That was a wonderful place from my childhood. And he, it's notable in gay history for Charleston, the Book Basement, because the owners were very obviously a gay couple of men. And nobody cared. As far as I know that, I mean, I was in there as a child, mother was not [wailing].
00:16:14 Lisa Hayes
Uh-huh. Uh, huh. I've heard that I've heard that from several people. John, John Ziegler and and his partner. Yeah, they were openly gay in Charleston.
00:16:24 Harriet McDougal
And a grand bookstore. But anyway, these were owned and operated paperback and magazine stores really. They were owned and operated by the local newspaper. The magazine distributors. And one of them was on King Street, and I went in there and told the gal who was the manager that I was looking for local writers. And this was a full on bookstore, there were hardcovers, paperbacks, magazines. And if, and she said, oh, you're looking for writers. Well, there's a guy who comes in here who's wanting to be a public, wanting to be a writer. And I said, well here do do you have a card? Something I could write on? And I scribbled and pencil on an index card my name and phone number. And so she took that. Why isn't this a printed card? But when Jim next came in, she said, oh, there was this woman here who said what she said and she fished out the card and he looked at it. Said, pencil on an index card? I don't think so. And she said she was vice president of Ace Books when she came in before she came back. Oh, OK. So he came and that's how we met. It didn't take right off the bat. I was looking for bodice rippers. I'm not sure I didn't invent the phrase You grin, you know what they are?
00:18:17 Lisa Hayes
I do, yeah.
00:18:19 Harriet McDougal
And Jim tried to invent a bodice ripper in the car when he was coming in to see me and be interviewed. And it had a duck in it. And I said, a duck? You know, I don't think so. But a year later, I was thumbing through my Rolodex. You know, what can I do? And his name came up and then we, we pretty soon started working together and that's how.
00:18:54 Lisa Hayes
And you fell in love! Well, yes, while you were in New York, you were working with Tour Books. Is that what it's called?
00:19:00 Harriet McDougal
It is now. When I was leaving New York, Tom Doherty was founding Tom Doherty Associates. And I was his editor in chief. He said, I don't care where you live. I want you to edit. And I said OK, so.
00:19:22 Lisa Hayes
And you worked on science fiction, mostly?
00:19:26 Harriet McDougal
And fantasy rather than science fiction.
00:19:28 Lisa Hayes
Do you still love those kind of books?
00:19:35 Harriet McDougal
I love fantasy. Science fiction is not so much my cup of tea.
00:19:41 Lisa Hayes
Well, I'll, let me read some of the names of the authors that you worked with just so people will know. So this is the portion of your resume 1986 to 2007 and editor for Tour Books. And you worked with Robert Jordan (James Rigney), Andrew Greeley, Whitley Strieber, Kathleen and Michael Geer, Morgan Lewellen, Richard Hoyt, Carol Nelson Douglas. Yeah. And you say I have concentrated on editing, editing fiction for the last 25 years. Is that something you're doing now? Do authors still send you their books?
00:20:24 Harriet McDougal
No. I don't edit anymore now.
00:20:28 Lisa Hayes
Are you reading something really great right now?
00:20:29 Harriet McDougal
Now, yes, old but great. Susan Howard wrote a series of novels about life among clergymen in the Church of England. And they're very good indeed and very wise. And we were, I was just talking to somebody about them over the weekend who also loves them. And I bought these books years ago, but had never read them.
00:20:59 Lisa Hayes
Do you like? You like to hold the book, or do you also use ebooks?
00:21:03 Harriet McDougal
No, I like to hold a book.
00:21:07 Lisa Hayes
Well, so you, I know you were on the board at the Library Society for, for a period. Were you, was your family members, were they members of the library when you were growing up? Do you remember coming to the library very much?
00:21:18 Harriet McDougal
Oh yeah, very much so. My Uncle Sam Stoney went in there every day and there, there used to be a picture of him reading the newspaper.
00:21:28 Lisa Hayes
We still have that in the in the reading room.
00:21:34 Harriet McDougal
He would start the day going in there and reading their newspaper.
00:21:40 Lisa Hayes
Tell us about your Uncle Sam Stoney. I know he was a character.
00:21:43 Harriet McDougal
I loved him. I really adored him. And hey, I could write a book about him. You shouldn't get me started on that. But I do love that picture. And I will say that when he, in his later life, my Uncle Luke Simmons. Not Luke. Damn. I'm pulling the Simmons brother, there, there were five of them. And one of them married by Aunt Harriet. So they were all my uncles. Anyway, he had, he was a broker and he told Sam to buy Minnesota Mining and Metallurgical and it made Sam rich. So when he died, he had a big will. When he died, the Post and Courier gave, it was I think 2 full pages of the newspaper to his obituary. Yeah. And then the Library society found out he didn't give them a penny and the society was really cross since he'd been in there every morning, every morning, reading the newspaper didn't give them a penny. But, but he did he he loved being there. And the other thing that reminds me of my childhood is the John Bennett logo up on the wall. John Bennett was my great uncle. On the other side, he married a Smythe. So they were remarkable people.
00:23:37 Lisa Hayes
Did you, would you have grown up and they would have come over to your house for Thanksgiving? Were you all close like that?
00:23:43 Harriet McDougal
Sam was, yeah, until he got to be very, very obstreperous. He didn't like my father. I think he was jealous of him. Liked my mother too much. His sister.
00:23:56 Lisa Hayes
He was very protective of her?
00:23:57 Harriet McDougal
So in at the end, he wasn't coming. It was a sad business there. But before that he would come for the high holidays. Thanksgiving, Christmas, things like that.
00:24:12 Lisa Hayes
Do you, are you close with your cousins? Do you still have cousins in town?
00:24:16 Harriet McDougal
Very few.
00:24:21 Lisa Hayes
Well, so, so you grew up coming to the library society and then you were on the board. Tell me about when you were on our board. What were some of the things that you worked on, do you remember?
00:24:28 Harriet McDougal
Well, Anne Cleveland had, she was president. And all I did on the board would say Anne you are amazing. Look at what you've done. Keep doing it. So that's really all I remember about it.
00:24:47 Lisa Hayes
You were very supportive of Anne and all the all the initiatives that she implemented.
00:24:53 Harriet McDougal
Yes, and the financial skill. Oh gosh, and the society was pretty close to moribund when she took over.
00:25:03 Lisa Hayes
Had you been a member during those down years, like in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s?
00:25:12 Harriet McDougal
Probably not. I was very, when I moved back, it was ‘77. And I tell you what, I had to stretch a penny.
00:25:26 Lisa Hayes
Is that right?
00:25:26 Harriet McDougal
Ohh yes it was very tight. So I must have joined at some point or they wouldn't have gotten me on the board. Or maybe I had to join in order to serve on the board. Honestly, I don't remember.
00:25:47 Lisa Hayes
Well, and I know you worked for a time at the historic ,South Carolina Historical Society also. Was that fun? Did you work with the manuscripts?
00:25:55 Harriet McDougal
No, that was when I was right out of college and I was the assistant archivist. There were two employees. Mrs. Pryor, the archivist, and me.
00:26:06 Lisa Hayes
Tiny, tiny stuff.
00:26:10 Harriet McDougal
And one of my jobs was to cut the carbon paper in half because we fit the carbons of South Carolina Historical Society letters. The copies were made on half sheets with half carbons to save money. Yeah, but I, Mrs. Pryor was a dear. And I did learn about double entry bookkeeping on that job, which is a marvelous thing to know.
00:26:46 Lisa Hayes
Yes, well and,nd she wasn't she the editor of the historical magazine?
00:26:49 Harriet McDougal
Yes, she was.
00:26:50 Lisa Hayes
Did you get a a sense of, oh, I like this kind of work, editing.
00:26:54 Harriet McDougal
No, I know I wasn't part of her work, but she had one big paper clip which was sacred to the magazine. I mean, it was a giant.
00:27:04 Lisa Hayes
A claw kind of a thing.
00:27:08 Harriet McDougal
And I got to answer letters from people who wanted genealogical information. And that was some source of income because we, I would write back "there are 7, seven entries of this family name. And for $1.50 a day or whatever it was, we would be glad to send them to you.”
00:27:36 Lisa Hayes
I had that exact same job for a time. I was the hired researcher at the Historical Society and people would request genealogy and I would send it to them. That’s funny. We had the same same job.
00:27:48 Harriet McDougal
And did you charge them that way?
1:27:49
We did, yeah.
00:27:50 Harriet McDougal
There's a major source of income. And while I was there, there was an awful thing that happened. The society apparently had a Button Gwinnett signature. And it was stolen.
00:28:03 Lisa Hayes
Tell me what that is. I’m sorry I don't know what that means.
00:28:04 Harriet McDougal
Button Gwinnett signed the Constitution and is the rarest of the signatures.
00:28:11 Lisa Hayes
And they had a document that had his name?
00:28:12 Harriet McDougal
They had a Button Gwinnett and it vanished. I heard about this afterwards. I was completely unaware at the time. Some scholar had been in and allowed to study documents and...
00:28:30 Lisa Hayes
Well, we yeah, there are stories like that even at the Library Society of things people have seen. And then we've said, hey, we would like to see that too and then you can't, can't find them.
00:28:45 Harriet McDougal
Ohh, in a story about Sam, the proceedings of the South Carolina Historical Society in his later years. They said Sam uh, the first years annuals. We don't seem to have a complete set. Do you, and could we talk? Sam said yes, I have them, but I'm not giving them to you. You couldn't take care of the ones you had. Why should I? But I think we gave them back when he died.
00:29:18 Lisa Hayes
Well, so Laura, Mina and I, Laura, mine at the head librarian at the library, she and I have been to the, to Albert and Theodosia Simons, Theodora Simons, excuse me. And they’re relatives of of Sam Stoney and, and you also. And they asked us to, to make a big inventory of all the books in their, in their home and we we did that and on the top floor there they had a box full of Sam Stoney kind of papers, letters and letters and things.
00:29:47 Harriet McDougal
No kidding. Because Albert's, grandfather, Albert's father was executor of Sam's will. And I thought he did an unbelievably bad job. There was a box of letters in the kitchen house there full of cockle jags.
00:30:09 Lisa Hayes
Well, these these may be those they they were just kind of just a box of stuff, yeah.
00:30:13 Harriet McDougal
Just a box. Good.
00:30:17 Lisa Hayes
But there were a lot of copies of the historical magazine up there that that I wonder if he he just had multiple sets.
00:30:23 Harriet McDougal
Well, did he have, was it correspondence letters?
00:30:26 Lisa Hayes
There are letters.
00:30:27 Harriet McDougal
There were a bunch that fell out of the attic, and Sam lived in the backyard. Not not in a tent.
00:30:34 Lisa Hayes
Right, you have another.
00:30:36 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, in the carriage house. But he was in a small piece of the carriage house, this small apartment. And this, the ceiling fell in after Hugo and these letters were cascading down. And after Hugo, it was so busy and frantic and I called the historical and said send somebody over here with a pair of work gloves, a paper bag and a deed of gift. And I gave him all the letters that still had bits of plaster in a bag and signed the deed of gift and gave them the bag and sent them away.
00:31:12 Lisa Hayes
Well, you, you have given the library society some of your business papers from your, from your, from your imprint.
00:31:19 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, you said you wanted them. I said, you do?
00:31:20 Lisa Hayes
Yeah, well, I, I got to catalog them and they were, and they were interesting and there were photos of your parents in there too. Your birth certificate and some other fun stuff like that.
00:31:31 Harriet McDougal
My gosh, hold on to that. It makes me legal.
00:31:37 Lisa Hayes
So you were married to James Rigney, who is who as as as we know, was the the author Robert, Robert Jordan, and has written the Wheel of Time series, which has recently been made into a TV series on Amazon.
00:31:52 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, the second season is coming this fall.
00:31:57 Lisa Hayes
Is that something that you care to watch? Have you been watching it or did you keep up with it?
00:32:01 Harriet McDougal
I watched the first one, yeah. Sure, I will.
00:32:04 Lisa Hayes
Yeah, yeah, I know it.
00:32:06 Harriet McDougal
But I’m not involved in it.
00:32:07 Lisa Hayes
I haven't read his books. And I'm sorry to say, I haven't read his books, but I know they're very popular. Do you follow the sort of fans of his, with his, the people who have read his book and are watching the show now? Is that something that you that you find interesting, sort of his fan base?
00:32:28 Harriet McDougal
Well, his fan base never quits. And it's not, so it's about the books rather than the television. I have a beautiful bowl in the pantry which fans gave me because it looks like the bowl of the winds, which is a major thing in the series. So they sent me this lovely bowl of the winds. They're just, they’re tremendous people and there's a little subset who have, they had an Ogier Con, OGIER, in the books is used as a substitute for Ogre, except they're nice people. Nice ogier. And of course, he called it from the Charleston name. And there is an Ogier Street as you may or may not know, running into Calhoun, which I'm sure is where Jim saw the street sign and said good word. And they had little convention here.
00:33:27 Lisa Hayes
No, I didn't that.
00:33:44 Harriet McDougal
And that was last year. I mean, they don't. These people don't, don't quit.
00:33:51 Lisa Hayes
Well, did he write those books in this house? Yeah?
00:33:57 Harriet McDougal
After, well, he had a study in the the Confederate home.
00:34:02 Lisa Hayes
OK.
00:34:04 Harriet McDougal
But then they were making him move out. And at that point, he moved back in here with his 10,000 books into the carriage house himself. Harriet, if we get a divorce, I'm not leaving. Only death will get me out of here.
00:34:22 Lisa Hayes
Oh yeah, so this room where we're sitting has some stacks of of what you told me are his different translations and different conditions.
00:34:31 Harriet McDougal
Oh yeah, so this is 1 copy of each edition of each book.
00:34:37 Lisa Hayes
And there's a there's several hundred books in here. Do you have, you must have more throughout the house.
00:34:42 Harriet McDougal
No, this is where his books are. And we had to build the bookcases. All of the 1, 2, 3 and the little bookcases too.
00:34:55 Lisa Hayes
OK. Do you have copies of the books that you worked on I guess? Those are in a different place?
00:35:01 Harriet McDougal
Yes I do. Upstairs.
00:35:08 Lisa Hayes
Is there anything, so, so you told us about Sam Stoney. Do you remember some of the other folks from the Library society when you were growing up? Any, did you know, Miss Frampton or let me think of who else was working there. Miss Fitzsimmons.
00:35:28 Harriet McDougal
A lovely lady. I'm sorry to say the way I remember her is that she had a bad arm. Middleton? Fitzsimmons? Just a lovely person.
00:35:45 Lisa Hayes
That's what I've heard is that the ladies that worked there during sort of the mid 20th century were just delightful, sweet, kind, welcoming people.
00:35:54 Harriet McDougal
And I remember one saying when I couldn't find an overdue book, have you looked under the front seat of the car? And of course I hadn't, and, but then I did look in there, there it was.
00:36:06 Lisa Hayes
She knew. And I did want to ask you about your activism. So your family, your parents must have raised you and your sister to be independent thinkers. And I saw that it, that, or maybe that maybe they were, maybe they didn't and maybe just ended up to be really independent. But you worked with them to get the first one of the first Planned Parenthood clinics here.
00:36:30 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, my cousin Harriet Simons, my first cousin, and I clubbed in together for that. And her mother was really the activist, Harriet Stoney Simons. Mrs. Albert Simons was my mother's sister, and she was a strong influence on my life. She was a tremendous activist. She introduced Planned Parenthood into South Carolina. She traveled to Columbia to work on the legislature a lot. And she would arrive here for midday, midday dinner and immediately get on the phone, which irritated Mother to no end. But she was, she was on the first interracial committee in the city, if I understand it properly, about 1950. She was great.
00:37:32 Lisa Hayes
She was an inspiration to you?
00:37:33 Harriet McDougal
Yes, she was. And she got busy and did things. And my, my grandmother was sort of an activist too. I don't know how true the stories are that I grew up on, but one was that Carrison’s had a rule that the sales women had to stand behind the counters all day and she made them change it that they could sit down when they weren't serving a customer. She organized a low, a part of the peninsula city around Tradd Street to put down rat poison all at the same day to deal with wharf rats which are very big and ugly.
00:38:24 Lisa Hayes
Was that affecting the department store, those rats?
00:38:26 Harriet McDougal
No, that was affecting people. They were probably gathering in her backyard. No, it, that was just it was a one time thing about Carrison’s. She was standing up for women. And she must have been a very interesting character. I know my cousin Harriet had memories of her reading to children in this house upstairs and her feet bothered her so she would sit there reading to them, rolling a coke bottle back and forth.
00:39:07 Lisa Hayes
And that helped relax the muscles or something?
00:39:07 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, and we could hold on to the bottle in that in that...
00:39:16 Lisa Hayes
In her arch.
00:39:20 Harriet McDougal
It was a good bottle to use.
00:39:24 Lisa Hayes
Well, so, so that Planned Parenthood, any other kind of things that you were passionate about?
00:39:28 Harriet McDougal
Oh, neither Women Voters too. And I keep trying to think. I have been trying to think how to increase voter registration. It's apparently a very difficult one call on one house at a time thing to do.
00:39:51 Lisa Hayes
Well, I know in South Carolina they're redistricting and the attempts at disenfranchising people. It's like an ongoing battle all the time here.
00:40:01 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, yeah. And persuade people to, persuading people to register to voters is, 1, 1, 1.
00:40:02 Lisa Hayes
So registering those. Well, are you still you, you do that kind of thing now, do you make phone calls?
00:40:17 Harriet McDougal
No, no, I don't. My. my work is mostly done by writing a check thanks to the books. And I had a good friend who said don't marry him. Well, because he was penniless.
00:40:37 Lisa Hayes
You married him before he was well known.
00:40:39 Harriet McDougal
I certainly did.
00:40:41 Lisa Hayes
And you had been married before, and you have...
00:40:43 Harriet McDougal
I married him before he was published.
00:40:45 Lisa Hayes
Oh, is that right?
00:40:47 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, I think so.
00:40:48 Lisa Hayes
And you have a son. I forgot to ask about your son. Where does he live? What is his name?
00:40:54 Harriet McDougal
Is William Popham McDougal, and he lives in McClellanville.
00:41:00 Lisa Hayes
Do you see him very often?
00:41:05 Harriet McDougal
Not often enough. But I love him and it's always a great pleasure to see him.
00:41:09 Lisa Hayes
Well, I thank you for your time. I, I, there's probably other things I could ask, I'm sorry I'm, just let me look here right quick. Well, three big topics that you wrote down and we have about 15 minutes that if you want to choose one or or we could talk about all of them. The first nuclear bomb, the electronic revolution, and the improvement in black and white justice. Is there something? Did you? I know that in Charleston in the 1970s there was a movement through the Circular Church I think, about banning nuclear bombs. Were you involved in in that somehow?
00:42:20 Harriet McDougal
One of the lost causes. No, I wasn't. And our local, in a way I'm remembering. Gosh, getting into a car to go to Washington for New York. The bus drivers who had said they were going to be taking us decided they weren't going to be part of this and we were going down. Nixon was in the, what was it? Vietnam?
00:42:59 Lisa Hayes
You knew you were hoping to protest the war and the bus drivers wouldn't, wouldn't drive you to do that? Yeah.
00:43:05 Harriet McDougal
So we got there, you know, rattle track cars among other other people in other cars that they stood up. So I really didn't do...
00:43:23 Lisa Hayes
So your dad was in the military during World War Two when we used the nuclear bomb. What was that something that you were ever remember him talking about?
00:43:34 Harriet McDougal
No. I remember when it happened. I remember getting a phone call from somebody who had the radio on. It's amazing how slow information was to move around.
00:43:49 Lisa Hayes
Was that something that you thought you that, was like a, I know for me, it's 9/11 sort of a. This all happened before 9/11 and this has all happened after 9/11. Was that it? I guess you were pretty little.
00:44:06 Harriet McDougal
No it wasn’t. And when did Roosevelt die? That seemed like an...
00:44:09 Lisa Hayes
‘45 maybe? ‘44?
00:44:12 Harriet McDougal
I was six in '45. What I remember that mother was pulling out one of my teeth. You know, string in the door.
00:44:26 Lisa Hayes
Well, and you have been alive to see a lot of changes in technology for sure. Do you, do you use a smartphone or you, is that something that you enjoy?
00:44:34 Harriet McDougal
No, I don't. No. I don't seem to be able to work it very well. I love the computer.
00:44:44 Lisa Hayes
You love e-mail or?
00:44:46 Harriet McDougal
That's OK. Yeah. It's very nice that it's so fast. Instead of a scribbled notes and...
00:44:54 Lisa Hayes
Well, and for doing research, I know you can. I don't know how much I mean, you can do so much online. You don't have to visit places, you can do so much, you know.
00:45:03 Harriet McDougal
I was looking up the difference between porcelain and bone China the other day, yesterday.
00:45:11 Lisa Hayes
You don't even have to get a book out. Look at it online. And you certainly have seen a lot of changes in Black and white relations throughout your lifetime. I mean we, you probably could do a whole other interview about what you've seen here in Charleston. But do you remember growing up here on Tradd St. having Black neighbors South of Broad?
00:45:36 Harriet McDougal
Well, yes, I do, but they were not in this block. In the next block.
00:45:42 Lisa Hayes
And was that, were you, did you play? With the kids. The Black kids. Or were you?
00:45:46 Harriet McDougal
No, I don't know whether they had any kids.
00:45:51 Lisa Hayes
And they moved to New York and I guess it was all, you know, really different there. And then when you came back to Charleston in the ‘70s, did you feel like things had sort of been frozen in time here as far as the race relations? Or had things improved or?
00:46:11 Harriet McDougal
This seems much the same.
00:46:14 Lisa Hayes
Well, and I know lots of Black folks have moved out of this of sort of this part of the peninsula for sure. But even, even though you know north, the neck people are people are leaving. And yeah, Charleston must just seem really different from when you were growing up. And, and tourists, of course, but also just the the buildings and the development and...
00:46:41 Harriet McDougal
Yeah. Gosh, these big things.
00:46:44 Lisa Hayes
Yeah, these apartments and condos, yeah.
00:46:47 Harriet McDougal
Tremendous buildings going up.
00:46:53 Lisa Hayes
Well in the... Do you have to go? Oh, you need to go.
00:47:00 Harriet McDougal
Yeah, sorry. Looking at my watch.
00:47:01 Lisa Hayes
No, no, no, it's fine. Well, so anything else that you would like to to mention?
00:47:09 Harriet McDougal
I can't think of anything.
00:47:09 Lisa Hayes
I can't think of anything either. You were so lovely to to do this with me.
00:47:15 Harriet McDougal
Well, you're very welcome.
00:47:16 Lisa Hayes
I really appreciate it. Well come back to the Library society sometime and, have you seen the Shakespeare Igoe collection? Have you been in since we've got that? Oh, you would love it. Beautiful and, and fascinating. So if you come back I'll give you a tour.
00:47:33 Harriet McDougal
One of Anne's triumphs.
00:47:33 Lisa Hayes
Well, thank you. It's really nice to talk with you.
00:47:40 Harriet McDougal
Always nice to talk with you.
Citation
McDougal, Harriet, “Harriet McDougal (interviewed by Lisa Hayes on May 23, 2023),” Charleston Library Society Digital Collections, accessed May 18, 2024, https://charlestonlibrarysociety.omeka.net/items/show/1305.