In this excerpt, the interviewer recounts formerly enslaved person George Henderson’s memories of education, religion and emancipation in the first person.
…I saw the slaves in chains after they were sold. The white folks did not teach us to read and write. We had church on the plantation but we went from one plantation to another to hear preaching. White folks preacher’s name was Reuben Lee, in Versailles [Kentucky]. A meeting of the Baptist Church resulted in the first baptizing I ever saw. It was in Mr. Chillers pond. The preacher would say ‘I am baptizing you in Mr. Chillers pond because I know he is an honest man’…
…When the news came we were freed everybody was glad. The slaves cleared up the ground and cut down trees. Stayed with Master Cleveland the first year after the war. Have heard the Ku Klux Klan ride down the road, wearing masks. None ever bothered me or any of Master Clevelands slaves…
…Our clothes were made of jeans and linsey in winter. In the summer we wore cotton clothes. They gave us shoes at Christmas time. We were measured with sticks. Once I was warming my shoes on a back log on the big fireplace, they fell over behind the logs and burnt up. I didn’t marry while on the plantation…
On Christmas and New Years day we would go up to the house and they would give us candy and fruit and fire-crackers. We were given some of all the food that the white folks had, even turkey. Would have heaps of corn-shuckings, the neighbors would come in and then we’d have big dances and old Master would always have a “jug of liquor”…
Enslaved from birth, George Fordman was not Black, but part indigenous and part white. George Fordman explains to his interviewer how he came to be enslaved in a tragic history that begins with White people forcibly driving his indigenous ancestors from their home in Indiana in 1838. After his ancestors walked all the way to Alabama, the George family “automatically” enslaved them, even though they were not Black.
In the full interview (see link below) George Fordman describes the “dark trail” of his childhood, in which the reader learns that George Fordman’s enslaver was his father and his grandfather.
In this first person excerpt, the interviewer records George Fordman’s description of the funeral of Mistress Hester Lam, who had enslaved George Fordman and his family. Mistress Hester Lam emancipated the family five years before the Civil War. Due to the incestuous rape committed by her son, Hester Lam was George Fordman’s paternal grandmother and great-grandmother.
… It was customary to conduct a funeral differently than it is conducted now, he said. I remember I was only six years old when old Mistress Hester Lam passed on to her eternal rest. She was kept out of her grave several days in order to allow time for the relatives, friends and ex-slaves to be notified of her death.
The house and yard were full of grieving friends. Finally the lengthy procession started to the graveyard. Within the Georges’ parlors there had been Bible passages read, prayers offered up and hymns sung, now the casket was placed in a wagon drawn by two horses. The casket was covered with flowers while the family and friends rode in ox carts, horse-drawn wagons, horseback, and with still many on foot they made their way towards the river.
When we reached the river there were many canoes busy putting the people across, besides the ferry boat was in use to ferry vehicles over the stream. The ex-slaves were crying and praying and telling how good granny had been to all of them and explaining how they knew she had gone straight to Heaven, because she was so kind—and a Christian. There were not nearly enough boats to take the crowd across if they crossed back and forth all day, so my mother, Eliza, improvised a boat or ‘gunnel’, as the craft was called, by placing a wooden soap box on top of a long pole, then she pulled off her shoes and, taking two of us small children in her arms, she paddled with her feet and put us safely across the stream…
At the burying ground a great crowd had assembled from the neighborhood across the river and there were more songs and prayers and much weeping. The casket was let down into the grave without the lid being put on and everybody walked up and looked into the grave at the face of the dead woman. They called it the ‘last look’ and everybody dropped flowers on Mistress Hester as they passed by. A man then went down and nailed on the lid and the earth was thrown in with shovels. The ex-slaves filled in the grave, taking turns with the shovel. Some of the men had worked at the smelting furnaces so long that their hands were twisted and hardened from contact with the heat. Their shoulders were warped and their bodies twisted but they were strong as iron men from their years of toil. When the funeral was over mother put us across the river on the gunnel and we went home, all missing Mistress Hester.
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
George Fordman
Unknown (Unknown)
Lauana Creel
Ford George
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Evansville, IN
IN
AL or KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Family, Funeral
Trigg County, First Person, Enslaver Father, Notable
Enslaved from birth, George Fordman was not Black, but part indigenous and part white. George Fordman explains to his interviewer how he came to be enslaved in a tragic history that begins with White people forcibly driving his indigenous ancestors from their home in Indiana in 1838. After his ancestors walked all the way to Alabama, the George family “automatically” enslaved them, even though they were not Black.
In the full interview (see link below) George Fordman describes the “dark trail” of his childhood, in which the reader learns that George Fordman’s enslaver was his father and his grandfather.
In this first person excerpt, the interviewer records how George Fordman was emancipated and how he came to be called George Fordman.
Note: Mistress Lorainne enslaved George Fordsman. Her husband was Ford George, who was dead at the time of the events described. Ford George incestuously raped Eliza, an enslaved person who was also Ford George’s daughter. The person being interviewed is the child of Eliza and Ford George.
… [Ford George’s mother] named me Ford George, in derision, but remained my friend. She was never angry with my mother. She knew a slave had to submit to her master and besides Eliza did not know she was Master Ford George’s daughter.
… Five years before the outbreak of the Civil War [the enslaver] Mistress Hester called all the slaves together and gave us our freedom….
[George Fordman’s grandmother continued to work for the George family, and George Fordman remained on the George plantation. Several years later, when the Civil War was over,] the Freedmen started teaching school in Kentucky the census taker called to enlist me as a pupil. ‘What do you call this child?’ he asked Mistress Lorainne. ‘We call him the Little Captain because he carried himself like a soldier,’ said Mistress Lorainne. ‘He is the son of my husband and a slave woman but we are rearing him.’ Mistress Lorainne told the stranger that I had been named Ford George in derision and he suggested she list me in the census as George Fordsman, which she did, but she never allowed me to attend the Freedmen’s School, desiring to keep me with her own children and let me be taught at home. My mother [Eliza]’s half brother, Patent George allowed his name to be reversed to George Patent when he enlisted in the Union Service at the outbreak of the Civil War.
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
George Fordman
Unknown (Unknown)
Lauana Creel
Ford George
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Evansville, IN
IN
AL or KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Education, Emancipation, Family, Violence
Trigg County, First Person, Enslaver Father, Notable
Enslaved from birth, George Fordman was not Black, but part indigenous and part white. George Fordman explains to his interviewer how he came to be enslaved in a tragic history that begins with White people forcibly driving his indigenous ancestors from their home in Indiana in 1838. After his ancestors walked all the way to Alabama, the George family “automatically” enslaved them, even though they were not Black. In this excerpt the interviewer recounts the words of George Fordman as he describes the “dark trail” of his childhood, in which the reader learns that George Fordman’s enslaver was his father and his grandfather. At several points in the interview, the interviewer inserts their own narrative and conclusions.
Teachers may need to warn students before reading that this excerpt refers to an enslaver incestuously raping an enslaved person. The excerpt also references an enslaver’s death.
…As Eliza George, daughter of [enslaver] Ford George and [indigneous enslaved person] Courtney Hawk, grew into young womanhood the young master Ford George went more often to social functions. He was admired for his skill with firearms and for his horsemanship. While Courtney and his child remained at the plantation Ford enjoyed the companionship of the beautiful women of the vicinity. At last he brought home the beautiful Loraine, his young bride. Courtney was stoical as only an Indian can be. She showed no hurt but helped Mistress Hester and Mistress Loraine with the housework.
Here George Fortman paused to let his blinded eyes look back into the long ago. Then he again continued with his story of the dark trail.
Mistress Loraine became mother of two sons and a daughter and the big white two-story house… [in Kentucky] became a place of laughter and happy occasions, so my mother told me many times.
Suddenly sorrow settled down over the home and the laughter turned into wailing, for Ford George’s body was found pierced through the heart and the… [half white, half indigenous] Eliza, was nowhere to be found.
The young master’s body lay in state for many days. Friends and neighbors came bringing flowers. His mother, bowed with grief, looked on the still face of her son and understood—understood why death had come and why Eliza had gone away.
The beautiful home on the Cumberland river with its more than 600 acres of productive land was put into the hands of an administrator of estates to be readjusted in the interest of the George heirs. It was only then Mistress Hester went to Aunt Lucy and demanded of her to tell where Eliza could be found.
‘She has gone to Alabama, Ole Mistus’, said Aunt Lucy, ‘Eliza was scared to stay here.’ A party of searchers were sent out to look for Eliza. They found her secreted in a canebrake in the lowlands of Alabama nursing her baby boy at her breast. They took Eliza and the baby back to Kentucky. I am that baby, that child of unsatisfactory birth.
The face of George Fortman registered sorrow and pain, it had been hard for him to retell the story of the dark road to strange ears.
My white uncles had told Mistress Hester that if Eliza brought me back they were going to build a fire and put me in it, my birth was so unsatisfactory to all of them, but Mistress Hester always did what she believed was right and I was brought up by my own mother.
We lived in a cabin at the slave quarters and mother worked in the broom cane. Mistress Hester named me Ford George, in derision, but remained my friend. She was never angry with my mother. She knew a slave had to submit to her master and besides Eliza did not know she was Master Ford George’s daughter..
[The following is the conclusion of the interviewer:] The truth had been told at last. The master was both the father of Eliza and the father of Eliza’s son…
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
George Fordman
Unknown (Unknown)
Lauana Creel
Ford George
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Evansville, IN
IN
AL or KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Family, Violence, Resistance, Escape
Trigg County, First Person, Enslaver Father, Notable
Celia Henderson moved from Louisville, Kentucky to Natchez, Mississippi when her enslaved mother was sold to pay off the enslaver’s debt. In this excerpt, the interviewer recounts Celia Henderson’s memories about religion in the first person.
*Historically-used terms that are offensive, marginalizing and/or disparaging have been removed from the transcripts and replaced with [redacted]. See more information.
…Never no church for colored people does I remember in Natchez. One time There was a drought, and the water we hauled from way over to the river. Now that was down right work, hauling that water. There was an old man, he was powerful in prayer, and gathered the darkies under a big tree, and we all kneeled down while he prayed for the poor beasts what needs good clean water for to drink. That was a pretty sight, that church meeting under the big tree. I always remember that, and how that day he found a spring with his old cane, just like a miracle after prayer. It was a pretty sight to see my cows and all the cattle trotting for that water. The men dug out a round pond for the water to run up into, out of the spring, and it was good water that wouldn’t make the beasts sick, and we-all was sure happy.
…I was baptized by a white minister in Louisville, and I’ve been a Baptist for sixty years now. Yes ma’am. There are plenty of colored churches in Louisville now, but when I was young, the white folks had to see to it that we [enslaved people] were Baptised and knew Bible verses and hymns. There weren’t smart [redacted] preachers like Reverend Williams … and there ain’t so many now…
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Celia Henderson
Unknown (Unknown)
Miriam Logan
Grohagen
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Lebanon, OH
OH
Hardin County, KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Religion
Hardin County, First Person, Dialect, Enslaver Father, Slave Traders
Celia Henderson moved from Louisville, Kentucky to Natchez, Mississippi when her enslaved mother was sold to pay off the enslaver’s debt. In this excerpt, the interviewer recounts Celia Henderson’s memories about the Civil War in the first person. Teachers may need to help students navigate the comparison at the end of the excerpt as a critique of how poorly Blacks were treated at the time of the interview rather than wishing she were still enslaved
… All I remember about the close of the war, was that white folks were broken up and poor down there at Natchez (Mississippi); and the first time I heard the EMANCIPATION read out, There was a lot of prancing around, and a big time.
I saw soldiers in blue down there in Natchez on the hill, once I saw them coming down the road when I was driving my cows up the road. I was scared sure, and I hid in the bushes on the side of the road until they went by. I don’t remember that my cows were much scared though. Mammy sais better hide when you see soldiers marching by, so that time a whole line of them came along, I hid…
…Yes ma’am, most I ever earned was five dollars a week. I get twenty dollars now, and pay eight dollars for rent. We got no more–I figure –a working for ourselves than what we’d have were we slaves, for they give you a log house, and clothes, and you eat all you want to, and when you buy things, maybe you don’t make enough to get you what you need, working sun-up to sun down…
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Celia Henderson
Unknown (Unknown)
Miriam Logan
Grohagen
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Lebanon, OH
OH
Hardin County, KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Emancipation, Economics, Civil War
Hardin County, First Person, Dialect, Enslaver Father, Slave Traders
After the Civil War started, Dr. Warren Wortham moved his family and about 40-50 enslaved people (including young Caroline Wright) from Louisiana to Texas. Caroline was 12 when she was freed. In this excerpt, the interviewer records Caroline Wright in the first person. The interviewer recounts a time Caroline Wright was possibly going to be sold and describes broadly cultural aspects of her life.
… in Louisiana, we were all put on the block and valued. I was six years old and I was valued at $1,500. But our family wasn’t sold to anyone. I was given to Miss Muriel, Dr. Wortham’s daughter. Me and my sisters was made house slaves and my mammy and pappy and brothers was made field slaves.
Our master, Dr. Wortham, sure was a fine doctor. He never whipped us. The young missus learned us our A B C’s ’cause there was no school for the slaves. There wasn’t no church on the plantation, but we all went occasionally to a big log cabin and camp shed. Sometime a white would preach and sometimes a colored preacher…
On Christmas, the white folks always give us presents and plenty to eat, and we always had a big dance five or six times a year. Dr. Wortham lived in a great big log house made from cedar logs…
[Describing enslavement in Texas:] we got up about four in the morning and ate breakfast about nine o’clock. All the slaves had to work from sun to sun, and when we were sick, the master treated us…
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Caroline Wright
Unknown (about 90)
Unknown
Hayes White, Miss Muriel, Dr. Warren and Annie Wortham
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Waco, TX
TX
Jones Creek by Baton Rouge, LA
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Education, Religion
First Person, Third Person, Dialect, Enslaver Father, Hired Out
Carl Boone’s parents were both enslaved people who gained their freedom in 1829, and Carl Boone was born a free man in 1850. In this excerpt, the interviewer records an example of an enslaver named Daniel Thompson brutally killing an enslaved person. In what Carl Boone describes as Daniel Thompson’s “punishment for this terrible deed,” the excerpt goes on to describe the death of Daniel Thomspon’s son. These stories are told to the interviewer by Carl Boone, who is retelling stories he heard from his father. The interviewer notes that he is documenting Carl Boone’s story “word by word.”
…I was born a free man, fifteen years before the close of the Civil War. All the colored folk on plantations and farms around our plantation were slaves and most of them were terribly mistreated by their masters…
The most terrible treatment of any slave, is told by my father in a story of a slave on a neighboring plantation, owned by Daniel Thompson. “After committing a small wrong, Master Thompson became angry, tied his slave to a whipping post and beat him terribly. Mrs. Thompson begged him to quit whipping, saying, ‘you might kill him,’ and the master replied that he aimed to kill him. He then tied the slave behind a horse and dragged him over a fifty acre field until the slave was dead. As a punishment for this terrible deed, master Thompson was compelled to witness the execution of his own son, one year later. The story is as follows:
A neighbor to Mr. Thompson, a slave owner by name of Kay Van Cleve, had been having some trouble with one of his young male slaves, and had promised the slave a whipping. The slave was a powerful man and Mr. Van Cleve was afraid to undertake the job of whipping him alone. He called for help from his neighbors, Daniel Thompson and his son Donald. The slave, while the Thompsons were coming, concealed himself in a horse-stall in the barn and hid a large knife in the manger.
After the arrival of the Thompsons, they and Mr. Van Cleve entered the stall in the barn. Together, the three white men made a grab for the slave, when the slave suddenly made a lunge at the elder Mr. Thompson with the knife, but missed him and stabbed Donald Thompson.
The slave was overpowered and tied, but too late, young Donald was dead.
The slave was tried for murder and sentenced to be hanged. At the time of the hanging, the first and second ropes used broke when the trap was sprung. For a while the executioner considered freeing the slave because of his second failure to hang him, but the law said, “He shall hang by the neck until dead,” and the third attempt was successful.”
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Carl Boone
1850 (87)
Robert C. Irvin
Miley Boone (Carl’s father’s enslaver)
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Anderson, IN
IN
Marion County, KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Resistance, Violence
First Person, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty, Marion County
Callie Williams was four years old when the Civil War ended. In this first person excerpt, the interviewer documents Callie Williams’ description of the life of enslaved people that was passed on to Callie Williams by her mother. In this excerpt, Callie Williams describes the role of song in the life of enslaved people.
…Most of the time the slaves would be too tired to do anything but go to bed at night, but sometimes they would sit around and sing after supper and they would sing and pray on Sunday. One of the songs that was used most was ’Yon Comes Old Master Jesus.’ If I remember, it went something like this:
‘I really believe Christ is coming again He’s coming in the morning He’s coming in the morning He’s coming with a rainbow on his shoulder He’s coming again by and by’
They tried to make them stop singing and praying during the [Civil] war because all they’d ask for was to be set free, but the slaves would get in the cabins and turn a big wash pot upside down and sing into that, and the noise couldn’t get out….
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Callie Williams
Approx. 1861 (Unknown)
Mary A. Poole
Hiram McLemore
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Mobile, AL
AL
Unknown
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Religion, Songs
Third Person, Dialect, Slave Patrollers, Hired Out
Williams_C_3
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