Dade County History Book

RALPH YORK, SR

Ralph York, born January 30, 1907, son of Ellen Everline York and stepson of Sanford Weldon, married Bertha Mae Hartline, born December 25, 1913, daughter of Alexander Hartline and Flora Avans. They married in Murphy’s Hollow at Whiteside, TN. According to Bertha, they walked from their old home place, the area now known as Hartline Road on Sand Mountain, to Murphy’s Hollow to be married. She said they were married while standing in the middle of the road.

Bertha and Ralph met at a saw mill, at the old Liederman place in Whiteside, when she was only eleven years old. She was thirteen years old when they married; he was twenty.

After they married, (July 26, 1927), they lived in Cole City Hollow, right down in the bottom, near the coke ovens. “The houses we lived in were called Green Rowe, they were good houses and we used to walk the railroad tracks in the area,” she said.

They lived in several places before moving to the home place, as she calls it, and built a two room log house. They used an old hoe flattened out to scrape the bark off the logs, and built a fire place by using clay mud and rocks. Most of their children were raised there. Ralph worked at saw milling and truck farming, and she said their children worked hard, too.

Ralph and Bertha had eleven children: Iva Lee, Dorothy, Ralph, Jr., Arvia (Shorty), Aimon, J.P., Curtis, Martha, Lebron, Jeanette, and Larry.

Also, if members are correct, they have thirty six grandchildren, twenty eight great-grandchildren, and five great-great-grandchildren.

Ralph died December 3, 1979 and is buried in Shanty Town Cemetery in the New Home Community on Sand Mountain. (Submitted by Gayla York Bethune, granddaughter of Ralph and Bertha Hartline York.)