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the operation relocated with the Verners to the Stone Street House. Lottie Burton stayed on to help the family
After about six yWtrs the switchboard moved again - this time to the Dudley house next to the old Merrill’s Garage. Another move brought the local phone company to the Bywaters house on Middle Street.
During all the years of operating the switchboard and the many moves, Alice Verner held different jobs around town. At one time she worked at the treasurer’s office and also for the rationing board during World War II.
Born Alice Coates in Harris Hollow in 1898, she finished school in Sperryville and left Rappahannock for Richmond, where she attended Richmond Business College and went to work for a wholesale liquor house there. When Prohibition put an end to this line of work, she moved to Baltimore, worked there for the young phone company anjd transferred to West Virginia. There she met Alfred Miller Verner, a civil engineer. The Depression brought them back to Rappahannock to her family, farming now at the Coates homeplace in the F.T. Valley.
When Mrs. Verner went to work, daughters Mary and Phyllis pitched in at the switchboard. Sometimes they had a little “help” from their younger sister, who sat on her father’s lap to reach the phone.
Phyllis also had another job, working for a while for the Rappahannock News and then for the Culpeper paper. “I’d just listen in on what was going on, then call the people and ask if I could put it in the paper,” Phyllis said.
“Why, she listened in so much that we were always afraid * she’d get us in trouble,” Mrs. Verner said, “but I guess everyone always expected that we’d hear whatever went on in town.” learn.
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