Biography

“I was born in December 27, 1918, in Wilkes County, North Carolina. I was put out in other people’s homes when I was eight years old. I had a white daddy and a brown skinned mama. My daddy was from well to do people but he never owned up to me and I never saw him. My mother was Lilly Wards.

How We Helped:
Nora Milner joined the Music Maker Relief Foundation family in 1995. The organization has assisted her with professional development, including touring with Music Maker Revue, and she is featured in he book Music Makers: Portraits and Songs from the Roots of America (2004).

I started working before I was 9 years old. I could cook and I could do most any old thing. I started digging out in the fields at the same time. I got married in 1938 and we started sharecropping and I worked out on the farm until I was 68 years old. I have been on Roby and Besse Fulk’s farm since I was 20 years old, I’m still on that farm. We are family. I then started working as a caregiver out in a neighbor’s home. I can pray the fire out of a burn or cure a baby of thrush and stop bleeding. I can do these things because I never laid eyes upon my father.

I belong to the old Primitive Baptist church. We make our music with our mouth and our feet. We do not have any instruments in our church. I was neighbors with Tim and Denise and met many wonderful people. I helped raise Lucas; he is a very special boy. When they left, Tim gave me a guitar.”
– Nora Milner