Author: Rhonda Rogers VanDyke

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Betty Jones

In this excerpt, the interviewer records in their own words the background information provided by Betty Jones and also directly quotes her.  This short excerpt provides teachers the opportunity to help students navigate seeming contradictions within a primary source.  The interviewer states that Betty Jones “recalls no unkind treatment” but then Betty Jones herself describes the sorrow of her enslaved friends being sold.  Students may need background information on the WPA interviews and help considering the context of a White interviewer who had not experienced slavery discussing and recording the recollections of a formerly enslaved person.
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Excerpt:


“Yes, Honey, I was a slave, I was born at Henderson, Kentucky and my mother was born there. We belonged to old Master John Alvis…” [Betty Jones answered.]

Betty Jones said her master was a rich man and had made his money by raising and selling slaves. She only recalls two house servants were [mixed race] … All the other slaves were black as they could be.

Betty Alvis [Jones] lived with her parents in a cabin near her master’s home on the hill. She recalls no unkind treatment.

[Betty Jones said,] “Our only sorrow was when a crowd of our slave friends would be sold off, then the mothers, brothers, sisters, and friends always cried a lot and we children would grieve to see the grief of our parents…”

Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person		Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer		Enslaver’s Name
Betty JonesUnknown (Unknown)Lauana CreelJohn Alvis
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Vanderburgh County, ININHenderson, KY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
Third Person, Slave Traders, Veteran or Widow

Jones_B_1

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Betty Guwn

Betty Guwn was an enslaved person on a tobacco plantation in Kentucky.  When her enslaver traveled to Mississippi to do business, he hid his money on Betty Guwn so he would not be robbed.  The interviewer begins by narrating background information provided by Betty Guwn. In the second half of the excerpt, the interviewer uses italics to show that Betty Guwn’s own words are being recorded. 
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Excerpt:

… [Betty Guwn’s] master was very wealthy. He owned and managed a cotton farm of two thousand acres down in Mississippi, not far from New Orleans. Once a year he spent three months there gathering and marketing his cotton. When he got ready to go there he would call all his slaves about him and give them a chance to volunteer. They had heard awful tales of the slave auction block at New Orleans, and the Master would solemnly promise them that they should not be sold if they went down [to Mississippi] of their own accord. 

[The interviewer used italics to show this part of the interview is in the words of Betty Guwn.] My Mistress called me to her and privately told me that when I was asked that question I should say to him: “I will go”. The Master had to take much money with him and was afraid of robbers. The day they were to start my Mistress took me into a private room and had me remove most of my clothing; she then opened a strong box [safe] and took out a great roll of money in bills; these she strapped to me in tight bundles, arranging them around my waist in the circle of my body. She put plenty of dresses over this belt and when she was through I wore a bustle of money clear around my belt. I made a funny figure, but no one noticed my odd shape because I was a slave and no one expected a slave to “know better”. We always got through safely and I went down with my Mistress every year. Of course my husband stayed at home to see after the family, and took them to the fields when too young to work under the task master, or overseer. Three months was a long time to be separated.

Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person		Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer		Enslaver’s Name
Betty Guwn1832 (105)UnknownUnknown
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Muncie, ININCanton, KY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
Third Person, EconomicsFirst Person, Slave Traders, Veteran or Widow

Guwn_B_2

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Betty Guwn

Betty Guwn was an enslaved person on a tobacco plantation in Kentucky.  The interviewer begins by narrating background information provided by Betty Guwn about how enslavers negotiated the marriage of enslaved people. In the second half of the excerpt, the interviewer uses italics to show that Betty Guwn’s own words are being recorded.  In this portion of the excerpt, Betty Guwn recounts how her husband fought for the Union during the Civil War and her emancipation.  
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Source Description:

Mrs. Betty Guwn was born March 25, 1832, as a slave on a tobacco plantation, near Canton, Kentucky. It was a large plantation whose second largest product was corn. She was married while quite young by the slave method which was a form of union customary between the white masters. If the contracting parties were of different plantations the masters of the two estates bargained and the one sold his rights to the one on whose plantation they would live. Her master bought her husband, brought him and set them up in a shack. Betty was the personal attendant of the Mistress. The home was a large Colonial mansion and her duties were many and responsible. However, when her house duties were caught up her mistress sent her immediately to the fields. Discipline was quite stern there and she was “lined up” [to be beaten or whipped] with the others on several occasions…

[The interviewer used italics to show this part of the interview is in the words of Betty Guwn.]  When the Civil War came on there was great excitement among us slaves. We were watched sharply, especially soldier timber [enslaved people likely to be selected for fighting] for either army. My husband ran away early and helped [Union General] Grant to take Fort Donaldson. He said he would free himself, which he did; but when we were finally set free all our family prepared to leave, the Master begged us to stay and offered us five pounds of meal and two pounds of pork jowl each week if we would stay and work. We all went to Burgard, Kentucky, to live. At that time I was about 34 years old…

Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person		Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer		Enslaver’s Name
Betty Guwn1832 (105)UnknownUnknown
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Muncie, ININCanton, KY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
Third Person, Civil War, Marriage, Family, EconomicsFirst Person, Slave Traders, Veteran or Widow

Guwn_B_1

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Bert Mayfield

The interviewer recorded the interview as a first person narrative by Bert Mayfield.  In the excerpt, Bert Mayfield describes his living conditions as an enslaved person: clothing, living conditions, food, and his work tapping trees for syrup. 
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Excerpt:

…On Christmas, each of us stood in line to get our clothes; we were measured with a string that was made by a cobbler. The material had been woven by the slaves in a plantation shop…

Our cabins were usually one room with a loft above which we reached by a ladder. Our beds were trundle beds with wheels on them to push them under the big beds. We slept on straw ticks [mattress made of straw] covered with Lindsey quilts, which were made from the cast-off clothes, cut into squares and strips.

(I) would feed pigs; pulled parsley out of the garden for them and the pigs loved it mighty well. No money was paid for work… Possum and coon hunts were big events, they would hunt all night. The possums were baked in the ovens and usually with sweet potatoes in their mouths. The little boys would fish, bringing home their fish to be scaled by rubbing them between their hands, rolled in meal and cooked in a big skillet. We would eat these fish with pone corn bread and we sure had big eatin’s!

Master Stone had a big sugar camp with 300 trees. We would be woken up at sunup by a big horn and called to get our buckets and go to the sugar camps and bring water from the maple trees. These trees had been tapped and … the water dripped to the wooden troughs below. We carried this water to the big poplar troughs which were about 10 feet long and 3 feet high. The water was then dipped out and placed in different kettles to boil until it became the desired thickness for “Tree Molasses”. Old Miss Polly would always take out enough of the water to boil down to make sugar cakes for us boys. We had great times at these “stirring offs” which usually took place at night.

Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person		Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer		Enslaver’s Name
Bert Mayfield1852 (Unknown)Eliza IsonSmith Stone
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Garrard County, KYKYBryantsville, KY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
Garrard County, Food, Daily Life, Work, Christmas

Mayfield_B_3

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Bert Mayfield

The interviewer recorded this excerpt as a first person narrative by Bert Mayfield.  In the excerpt, Bert Mayfield describes “stirring offs” – the social gatherings that accompanied work needed to make food from  maple syrup. Bert Mayfield also describes the role religion played in his life.  This excerpt contains two songs that were recorded by the interviewer. 
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Excerpt:

 …[Bert Mayfield describes how sugar was tapped from the enslaver’s maple trees.  The syrup was boiled down to be useful at]…these “stirring offs” which usually took place at night.

The neighbors would usually come and bring their slaves. We played Sheep-meat and other games. Sheep-meat was a game played with a yarn ball and when one of the players was hit by the ball that counted him out. One song we would always sing was;

“Who ting-a-long?
Who ting-a-long?
Who’s been here since I’ve been gone?
A pretty girl with a josey on”.

My old missus Meg taught me how to read from an old national spelling book, but I did not learn to write. We had no church, but the Bible was read to us on Sunday afternoons by some of the white folks. The first Church I remember was the Old Fork Baptist Church… The first preacher I remember was Burdette Kemper. I heard him preach at the old church where my missus and master took me every Sunday. The first Baptizing that I remember was on Dix Fiver near Floyd’s Mill. Preacher Kemper did the Baptizing and Ellen Stone, one of our slaves was Baptized there with a number of others—whites and blacks too. When Ellen came up out of the water she was clapping her hands and shouting. One of the songs I remember at this Baptizing was:

“Come sinners and Saints and hear me tell

  The wonders of E-Man-u-el,

Who brought my soul with him to dwell

  And give me heavenly union.”

…On Sunday’s we would hold prayer meetings among ourselves… 

Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person		Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer		Enslaver’s Name
Bert Mayfield1852 (Unknown)Eliza IsonSmith Stone
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Garrard County, KYKYBryantsville, KY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
Garrard County, Religion, Songs, Social Gatherings, Education

Mayfield_B_2

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Bert Mayfield

The interviewer chose to record this interview with Bert Mayfield in the first person.  In the excerpt, Bert Mayfield tells the story of an enslaved person who escaped, but was later enslaved again.  The excerpt concludes with Bert Mayfield’s thought on emancipation and Lincoln. 
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Excerpt:

…There was no slave jail on the Stone place, and I never saw a slave sold or auctioned off. I was told that one of our slaves ran off and was gone for three years. Some white person wrote him to come home that he was free. He was making his own way in Ohio and stopped in Lexington, Kentucky for breakfast; while there he was asked to show his Pass papers which he did, but they were forged so he was arrested. Investigators soon found that his owner was Mr. Stone who did not wish to sell him and sent for him to come home…[Mr. Stone sent a White man to bring the enslaved man back to the plantation] … but instead he sold him to a southern slave trader… 

I received the first news of freedom joyfully. I went to old man Onstott’s to live. I lived there two or three years. I think Abe Lincoln a great man. He did not believe in slavery and would have paid the southern people for their slaves if he had lived…

Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person		Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer		Enslaver’s Name
Bert Mayfield1852 (Unknown)Eliza IsonSmith Stone
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Garrard County, KYKYBryantsville, KY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
Garrard County, Lincoln, First Person, Resistance, Slave Trader, Emancipation

Mayfield_B_1

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Belle Robinson

The interviewer chose to recount Belle Robinson’s story in the first person after a brief introduction.  In this excerpt, Mrs. Robinson describes the little she remembers about life as an enslaved person, which she refers to as “the slave days.”  Teachers may need to help students interpret this account which presents a rather benign view of slavery by noting the Belle Robinson’s age when she was enslaved, how much time had passed since then, and the context of the interview.
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Excerpt:

I [the interviewer] found Aunt Belle sitting on the porch… When I went to her and told her who I was and the reason for my visit her face beamed with smiles and she said “Lordy, it has been so long that I have forgotten nearly everything I knew”… Aunt Belle tells me:

…I was born June 3rd, 1853… Harrison Brady bought me from Ole Miss Nancy Graham and when Mr. Brady died and his property was sold Mrs. Brady bought me back; and she always said that she paid $400 for me. I lived in that family for three generations, until every one of them died. I was the only child and had always lived at the big house with my missus. I wore the same kind of clothes and ate the same kind of food the white people ate. My mother and father lived at the cabin in the yard and my mother did the cooking for the family. My father did the work on the farm with the help that was hired from the neighbors. I was too young to remember much about the slave days, but I never heard of any slaves of the neighbors being punished. My missus always took me to the Baptist Church with her. I do not remember any preacher’s names or any songs they sang.

Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person		Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer		Enslaver’s Name
Belle Robinson1853 (Unknown)Eliza IsonNancy Graham, Harrison and Mrs. Brady
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Garrard County, KYKYLancaster, KY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
Garrard County, ReligionFirst Person, Dialect, Sold

Robinson_B_1

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Barney Stone

Barney Stone was 91 years old when interviewed.  He was enslaved for 16 years before he escaped and joined the Union Army during the Civil War.  After the Civil War, Barney Stone was a self-taught teacher at a Black school and then became a preacher.  The interviewer notes that Barney Stone had a “remarkable memory,” which is evident in the excerpt below where Barney Stone recounts multiple examples of his enslaver’s brutal treatment of enslaved people. In this excerpt, Barney Stone recounts how his enslaver sold his sister, mother and brother.  The excerpt ends with Barney Stone  reuniting with his mother and brother. 

*Historically-used terms that are offensive, marginalizing and/or disparaging have been removed from the transcripts and replaced with [redacted].  See more information.
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Excerpt:

…Master would never sell me because I was regarded as the best young slave on the plantation. Different from many other slaves, I was kept on the plantation from the day I was born until the day I ran away…

Many times, as I have said before, our treatment on our plantation was horrible. When I was just a small boy, I witnessed my sister sold and taken away. One day one of the horses came into the barn and master noticed that she was crippled. He flew into a rage and thought I had hurt the horse, either that, or that I knew who did it. I told him that I did not do it and he demanded that I tell him who did it, if I didn’t. I did not know and when I told him so, he secured a whip tied me to a post and whipped me until I was covered with blood. I begged him, “Master, master, please don’t whip me, I do not know who did it.” He then took out his pocket knife and I would have been killed if Missus (his dear wife) had not made him quit. She untied me and cared for me.

Many has been the time, I have seen my mammy beaten mercilessly and for no good reason. One day, not long before the out-break of the Civil War, a [redacted] buyer came and I witnessed my dear Mammy and my one year old baby brother, sold. I saw her taken away, never to see her again until I found her twenty-seven years later at Clarksburg, Tennessee. My baby brother was with her, but I did not know him until Mammy told me who he was, he had grown into a large man. That was a happy meeting. After those experiences of sixteen long years in Hell, as a slave, I was very bitter against the white man, until after I ran away and joined the Union army.

Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person		Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer		Enslaver’s Name
Barney Stone1847 (91)Robert C. IrvinLemuel Stone
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Noblesville, INKYKY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
Family, Violence, Escape, ResistanceFirst Person, Third Person, Whipped, Witness Extreme Cruelty, Sold, Slave Traders, Union Troops, Veteran or Widow, Notable, Spencer County

Stone_B_3

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Barney Stone

Barney Stone was 91 years old when interviewed.  He was enslaved for 16 years before he escaped and joined the Union Army during the Civil War.  After the Civil War, Barney Stone was a self-taught teacher at a Black school and then became a preacher.  The interviewer notes that Barney Stone had a “remarkable memory,” which is evident in the excerpt below where Barney Stone explains the practice of buying and selling enslaved people. 

*Historically-used terms that are offensive, marginalizing and/or disparaging have been removed from the transcripts and replaced with [redacted].  See more information.
See full document • Visit the Library of Congress to see the original document

Excerpt:

My master was a hard man when he was angry, drinking, or not feeling well, then at times he was kind to us. I was compelled to pick cotton and do other work when I was a very small boy. Master would never sell me because I was regarded as the best young slave on the plantation. Different from many other slaves, I was kept on the plantation from the day I was born until the day I ran away.

Slaves were sold in two ways, sometimes at private sale to a man who went about the Southland buying slaves until he has many in his possession, then he would have a big auction sale and would re-sell them to the highest bidder, much in the same manner as our live-stock [farm animals] are sold now in auction sales… He came to the plantation with a doctor. He would point out two or three slaves which looked good to him and which could be spared by the owner, and would have the doctor examine the slave’s heart. If the doctor pronounced the slave as sound, then the [redacted] buyer would make an offer to the owner and if the amount was satisfactory, the slave was sold. Some large plantation owners, having a large number of slaves, would hold a public auction and dispose of some of them, then he would attend another sale and buy new slaves, this was done sometimes to get better slaves and sometimes to make money on the sale of them.

Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person		Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer		Enslaver’s Name
Barney Stone1847 (91)Robert C. IrvinLemuel Stone
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Noblesville, INKYKY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
EconomicsFirst Person, Third Person, Whipped, Witness Extreme Cruelty, Sold, Slave Traders, Union Troops, Veteran or Widow, Notable, Spencer County

Stone_B_2

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Barney Stone

Barney Stone was 91 years old when interviewed.  He was enslaved for 16 years before he escaped and joined the Union Army during the Civil War.  After the Civil War, Barney Stone was a self-taught teacher at a Black school and then became a preacher.  Earlier in the interview, Barney Stone explains how he witnessed his enslaver sell his sister, mother and brother.  He also recounts how his enslaver brutally whipped him, and other examples of cruelty towards enslaved people.  In this excerpt, Barney Stone explains how he joined the Union Army and his experience during the Civil War.  

*Historically-used terms that are offensive, marginalizing and/or disparaging have been removed from the transcripts and replaced with [redacted].  See more information.
See full document • Visit the Library of Congress to see the original document

Source Description:

… After those experiences of sixteen long years in Hell, as a slave, I was very bitter against the white man, until after I ran away and joined the Union army.

At the out-break of the Civil War and when the Northern [Union] army was marching into the Southland, hundreds of male slaves were shot down by the Rebels [Confederates], rather than see them join with the Yankees [Union soldiers]. One day when I learned that the Northern troops were very close to our plantation, I ran away and hid in a culvert [tunnel for water], but was found and I would have been shot – had the Yankee troops not scattered them – and that saved me. I joined the Union army and served one year, eight months and twenty-two days, and fought with them in the battle of Fort Wagnor, and also in the battle of Milikin’s Bend. When I went into the army, I could not read or write. The white soldiers took an interest in me and taught me to write and read, and when the war was over I could write a very good letter. I taught what little I knew to [redacted] children after the War…

Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person		Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer		Enslaver’s Name
Barney Stone1847 (91)Robert C. IrvinLemuel Stone
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Noblesville, INKYKY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
Civil War, Literacy, EducationFirst Person, Third Person, Whipped, Witness Extreme Cruelty, Sold, Slave Traders, Union Troops, Veteran or Widow, Notable, Spencer County

Stone_B_1