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"Yeah, at one time, they would catch and sell rabbits during the Depression. You know. And they sold more rabbits than anyone else around. And that’s the reason they said the Chatham rabbits. So, you know, that’s uh, that’s where that comes from. It’s all in the history books about how they had to maintain the rabbit population and everything. And--[Has it depleted now?] What’s that? The-- [The rabbit population?] Oh well...you know, Chatham county still has rabbits for sure. But uh, it’s-- you know, they raise them for food. They, they would catch them and raise them for food because there was rabbits everywhere… that’s what I’ve always been told. But, uh, hey, you know, there was a thriving population at that time, you know? [they have like some rabbit boxes in the, in the, Chatham--in the historical society, they have like two]"

"That's just an old saying, that, I mean, everybody's been saying since I was little. There obviously used to be a lot of rabbits around here, there's not now with all the development and stuff because they don't have the habitat. People would pay—there was a guy that lived here, he had what they call a rabbit pen, where he would run rabbit dogs, and when I was little he'd pay me five dollars for every rabbit I caught in a rabbit box."

"But going back before I was born, I had a cousin that momma and daddy, that lived with momma and daddy until he was probably nine for ten years old, something like that. And just last month he was telling me the story that he had two dogs that an uncle had given him and they were sorta just dogs, but they were rabbit dogs. They would hunt rabbits. And he named his dogs Tater and Popeye. And this would have been during the 30s and the Depression era when there was just not much money around. And so probably like a lot of people of the area, people had their teeth pulled and got false teeth. And so daddy had his teeth pulled and did not have his false teeth, okay. Dr. Rosco Farell was the local Pittsboro dentist, and so daddy was trying to figure out how he was going to pay for his teeth. And Dr. Farell was a rabbit hunter and so they worked out a deal and daddy gave Tater to Dr. Farell as payment for his false teeth. And everyone said that they felt so sorry for Bill because daddy had given away his dog, you know. But Bill said, "I didn't mind at all" he said, "because I was trying to figure out how dad was going to come up with some money to get his false teeth." So it turned out. Well, so anyway, Dr. Farell would take Tater hunting along with whatever, I don't know much about his hunting habits. But, wherever he went hunting, when it was time to come home, Tater was always missing. And Tater would always wind up at daddy's house. So after a while Dr. Farell just told daddy to keep the dog, that his teeth were paid for. "

"If you had asked me before I would have told you, "Well there's a band in Chatham County named the Chatham Rabbits and they're pretty good." But if you had asked me like historically where it came from and I will tell you I have taught many people now where the Chatham Rabbits came from from our county too because we have little rabbits now but we don't have the big rabbits that they used to have and sell up what to New York I believe it was. So I think that's pretty cool that we had some big export and now we don't have it at all. Like of course I don't think anybody, I don't think my parents--well granted they didn't necessarily grow up in Chatham County--I don't think could tell you about the Chatham Rabbits either. I think you have to go back like to people in their 60s and 70s to really know about the Chatham export business so. "

"Rabbit hunting was a big thing. I rabbit hunted a little bit, but I didn't never have a rabbit dog. Uh. They used -- our neighbor down here used to have a rabbit hunt every Thanksgiving. About six or eight men would come with their beagles and they'd hunt rabbits 'til lunchtime and then they'd go hunting in the afternoon. My father never was a hunter, but there was a lot more rabbits around then. They're starting to come back now, more than they were."

"At one time, Chatham County was famous for an abundance of really big rabbits, and really great tasting rabbits, according to most people. And the story my dad said was, all the kids around here, in the 30’s and 40’s, that’s how they could make some money. And I’ve actually still got some of my dad’s original rabbit boxes at home, that he built out of wood, scrap wood, and you know the rabbits gonna get trapped. And at one time, he said you could actually hang your rabbits on the mailbox and the mailman would pick em up for you, carry them to town, and drop them off in town to the guy who bought rabbits. And that meat would get packed into a train car, and a lot of it went to New York, and it was on a menu up there supposedly for the “Chatham Rabbit”. It was famous.'

"When, when I was, when I guess when I was a teenager maybe twelve to fifteen when I would come home from school in the winter time, you know, we had a few rabbit dogs and I would take and go out and hunt wild rabbits in the afternoon when it was in season but other than that's--that was the biggest thing but yeah Chatham, Chatham used to be the rabbit capital of the world back, but that's way back before my time that was way back there and [interviewer: what did they do with the rabbits?] They boxed them up and shipped them up North for sale so and [interviewer: Did they eat them?] Oh yeah yeah that's that's what they would send them up North for was for, was for food so um [interviewer: And then they used the furs too?] I'm not sure if they used the fur or not but, you know, rabbit fur is kind of tender so you have to be really careful with it but I know they would way back there you know you hear stories not so much in Pittsboro but over near Siler City they they really shipped the rabbits North so."

"That term actually came from, I'm not sure when, but during the Depression this place was renown for it's abundance of rabbits and local lore is they would fill up rail cars where the rail car depot was right down here and send them all over the country as table fare. I've seen some pictures of it but I mean, after that, it got turned into, I think kind of a, of a slang term for somebody from Chatham. They might have been a "Chatham Rabbit." But then after that, people kinda took it on as a mascot too."

"Yeah, so. I have always heard that rabbit hunting was a really big thing in Chatham county and that we had, like, the finest rabbits in North Carolina or something and they would be exported for their fur, for their meat, or whatever else they were gonna be used for. And that that was just kind of like a thing for a while. That that was one of the big, um I guess, exports, but just one of the cultural things here that people knew the area for...knew, knew what it was. There’s actually a bluegrass band called Chatham Rabbits, now. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them. If you haven’t you should look them up. But that’s where they got their name from was all the, the history of Rabbits in Chatham county. So they called themselves the Chatham Rabbits."

"I used to send box car loads of rabbits out of Chatham county. That’s how it was– came the nickname Chatham rabbit. I mean, I’m talking about box car loads of rabbits would come out of Chatham and sent all over the country. Oh yeah. We used to sell them but you have to leave the back feet on them, you couldn’t cut the back feet off. Because if you skin a cat out and you skin a rabbit out, you can’t tell them apart if you cut the feet off."

"Well, they were a lot of income for Chatham County, there in the early nineteen hundreds. [Interviewer: I think I heard that Chatham County used to export them.] They did, from here on the rail, from here and from Siler City. One of the store keepers down here bought dressed rabbits with the skin on. And they salted them and packed them in barrels. And the kids around they could get ten to twenty cents a piece for the rabbits. So, I think my dad said he had twenty boxes set and he made a round every morning and got rabbits before he went to school, whatever he caught."