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For the last 92 years, Goldring Satchell has called Belhaven her home. She was born in a small three-bedroom home right behind City Hall, where her father, Ben Cox, and her mother, Belle, raised her and her four other siblings.

“I got my name from a white lady who lived out west of Belhaven,” said Satchell. “She knew my daddy made White Lightning and come by one day to get her some. She saw Mamma was pregnant, and she said, ‘Ben, if that a girl when it is born, name her Goldring. I was a girl when I was born, and Daddy named me Goldring.’”

Her father worked for the city, bringing home $2.50 per week. Her mother stayed at home. He always made sure the kids got a little spending money.

“Every week, my daddy made sure to give me and my sister, Myrtle Belle, ten cents each,” said Satchell. “Back then things were cheap. And oh, Lordy, we could go to the store and buy us a big ol’ bag of candy and two nice big cookies at Mary Janes, and still have some change left over.”

As a child, Satchell spent countless days running and playing with her friends, climbing trees and catching minnows. She used to find some “good dirt” as she called it, and make some pies and cookies, that she and her friends would sit down and pretend to eat. And, there was the wheelbarrow that she would often turn upside down and sit between the legs and pull the wheel. “I would spin that wheel for hours,” said Satchell. “Going to New York, going to New York, I used to say. I also used to love to fish. I would get me a safety pin for a hook and tie it on the end of a line––find me a stick and a cork, and get some worms. I would then head down to the ditch out back and catch me some fish.”

Satchell never attended school until she was ten years old. To this day, she assumes that her father wasn’t able to send her. But that all changed when the principal of the school paid her father a visit. “The principal at the school came by one day and told my daddy, ‘you aren’t sending your children to school, and you got to start sending them. If you don’t, I will have you arrested.’ So sure enough my daddy got me ready and I started going to school.”

Satchell attended school until she was around 16 years old. It was at that same time that she also started working at the Fish and Oyster, a seafood factory in Belhaven, picking crab meat. And she never thought once about going back to school.

“I just didn’t want to go to school, because I wasn’t dressed decent like the rest of the girls,” said Satchell. “Mamma used to go down to Miss Wendy’s, the women’s shop, and buy me a dress for five cents that I had to wear until it fell off me, umm, huh.”

So, for the next 40-plus years, Satchell worked as a crab picker at Fish and Oyster, retiring when she was 62. It meant going to work at four or five in the morning, five days a week. “When we first came into work, we would wash our hands and sterilize them, go get our pans and cups, and sit down at the big long table and get to work,” said Satchell. “A man by the name of James would already have the crabs laid out on the table and ready for us. We had three different cans. One for the larger lumps of meat we would remove from the backs of the crabs, one for the regular pieces we would remove from the claws, and one for the scraps. This meant using a knife to pull the back off the crab to get to the large clumps, and cracking the legs with a hammer, and pulling the smaller meat out by hand. The more you picked in a day, the more you made. I usually brought home $200 per week, sometimes more.”

Satchel was known for her prowess at the crab table and her ability to get things done quickly and efficiently. So much so that she was asked to participate in a crab-picking contest. “I told them no,” Satchell exclaimed. “When asked why, I said it was against my religion.”

Four years after starting work at Fish and Oyster, Satchell married Theodore Roosevelt Satchell, who was a commercial fisherman and would often be out to sea for months at a time. They went on to have eleven children––always making sure they didn’t go wanting, even if it meant borrowing money from a neighbor or a friend, to make sure there was always food on the table for them. “I always thought that by being poor, I wouldn’t be able to send just one of them to college,” said Satchell. “I prayed to the Lord and told Him I had a lot of children and asked if He could bless me so I could send at least one to college. I had ten of my children attend college.”

The struggles have been many over the last 92 years, but so have the rewards, but not once did Satchell ever think of herself as being poor, particularly when she was growing up. “I thought I was living the life of a queen when I was a child. Now that is the truth,” said Satchell. “I didn’t know we were poor. Mamma and Daddy always kept us fed with potatoes, peas, collards, beans, and sometimes fish. We had pork chops, gravy, and biscuits on Sunday. Now that was some good eating. And I always got my ten cents a week from my daddy.”

As for any regrets, “I don’t know nothing I would change,” said Satchell. “I loved going to work early in the morning and picking crabs, so I did it my whole life. I have been very fortunate as God blessed me and my family,” said Satchell with a glowing smile of appreciation.