Thomas McIntire

Thomas McIntire’s father was “taken by slave traders from Africa,” brought to the United States, sold, and enslaved.  Jim Lane enslaved around 550 people, including Thomas McIntire.  In this excerpt, the interviewer recounts in the first person Thomas McIntire’s thoughts on topics connected to freedom.  Thomas McIntire describes how enslaved people sought a better life and discussed freedom in code.  Thomas McIntire also shares memories of learning about the Underground Railroad, the Civil War, emancipation and famous activists.  
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Excerpt:

…The slave quarters were about 300 yards from the big house, and every family had their own cabin and eight acres of land for themselves, and all the vegetables and garden truck they needed.  They [enslaved people on Jim Lane’s plantation] raised their own chickens and turkeys.  But the hogs and cattle were butchered and shared with all the different families, and so was the milk.  But I remember hearing my folks talking and it wasn’t just eats they wanted.  They wanted to be free, and educate their children, like Master Jim’s children, so they could grow up and have something for themselves.  I’d often  hear them saying “Never mind, children, for your auntie is sure coming.”  That was just a blind for saying, “Freedom’s coming”.  We children soon learnt what it meant, but the white folks never did learn. 

… I remember all the slaves that could get out from the quarters coming to meetings in the woods to talk about getting away to freedom or going off to war.  Some from our place did go off.  We all knew the Underground Railroad through the whole country.  Because lots of Quakers had come and bought property on those parts and they were teaching the slaves to not be afraid of their rights. 

…When the war came on, lots of the Lane slaves went in.  My father and brother Wash went, and Wash was in the battle, between [Confederate] General Morgan and [Union] General Burden around Mt. Sterling [in Kentucky].  Lots of women and children went into Camp Nelson and lived at what they called the Woman’s Hall.  The men who cared to go there went to the barracks at Camp Nelson.         

When the war was over Father and Wash both came home.  Jim Lane freed us before the war was over and gave us all a little money or paid some if  they were staying on till the war was over.  Those that stayed after the war he gave ten acres of land and built them a little place to live in…. 

I knew Ben Arnett [a Black minister and civil rights advocate who was elected in 1885 to the Ohio state legislature]  personally and heard him speak lots of times; and too I heard Booker T. Washington, and Douglas, and almost all the big men among [Black people]…  I read a little, and I read lots about most of the ones I ain’t heard. 


Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Thomas McIntire1847 (90)UnknownJim Lane
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Clark County, OHOHKY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
Emancipation, Education, Literacy, Resistance, Union Troops, Civil WarBath County, First Person, Dialect, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty, Sold, Slave Traders, Notable

McIntire_T_3

Thomas McIntire

Thomas McIntire’s father was “taken by slave traders from Africa,” brought to the United States, sold, and enslaved.  Jim Lane enslaved around 550 people, including Thomas McIntire.  In this excerpt, the interviewer recounts in the first person Thomas McIntire’s description of religious practice on enslaver Jim Lane’s plantation. 
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Excerpt:

…There was a log church right on our plantation for us to attend, and other slaves from other plantations came and had meetings with us.  They used to sing lots of good old fashioned songs, but I just can’t think of them right  now.  Lane and some of his friends had a little church they built for themselves, and they always walked from our plantation because he was quite religious, and didn’t allow any work on Sundays.  No horses were hitched up for them, and the only work done was just milk the cows.  The cooking was done Friday and Saturday, but one or two of the slaves that worked at the cooking and setting of the tables had to kind of stick around, but got home in time to go to meeting.  When there were weddings, or funerals on holidays, there wasn’t work done except what couldn’t be got around doing…         


Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Thomas McIntire1847 (90)UnknownJim Lane
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Clark County, OHOHKY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
ReligionBath County, First Person, Dialect, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty, Sold, Slave Traders, Notable

McIntire_T_2

Thomas McIntire

Thomas McIntire’s father was “taken by slave traders from Africa,” brought to the United States, sold, and enslaved.  Jim Lane enslaved around 550 people, including Thomas McIntire.  In this excerpt, the interviewer recounts in the first person Thomas McIntire’s recollection of the slave trade and how his enslaver treated enslaved people.
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Excerpt:

…Lane and the people who owned mother were friends, and betwixt them they gave father and mother in order so they could be man and wife.  You see, in those days all they did was to give an order in writing for a man and woman to be man and wife.  Lane was a little more human than some of the slave owners back in those times, so he allowed Mother and Father to go by the name of McIntire as the married name…       

I never saw a Lane slave whipped nor treated cruel, and he never allowed any of his families to be separated.  That was the reason he had so many slaves, because when he went to sales, he’d just buy a whole family before he’d allow them to all be separated. Then when his children married he’d give them four or five families, but he never gave it in writing to them.  So, they couldn’t sell them…      

The folks that owned the next plantation to ours, the Bigstaffs, were cruel to their slaves, and some the Bigstaffs boys would know the patrollers and help to catch slaves and whip them if they couldn’t show a pass from their masters. 

I saw them driving long lines of slaves chained together, with the little ones pitched up in an ox cart, and I don’t know how many men on horseback with long whips slashing them and driving them along the road.  The slave traders went all around and bought up men and women, some of them right from the field; no time for them to say goodbye to the families, buying and selling them worse than cattle.   

The slave traders took them to a halfway house on the Tennessee highway close to us, owned by Billy Wurtz.  He had a big cellar where they put the slaves till they were going to sell them or else take them further south. They used to make a big sale day at Mt. Sterling and auction off the slaves.  They’d whip them on the block to make them holler.  I saw all that, and more… 


Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Thomas McIntire1847 (90)UnknownJim Lane
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Clark County, OHOHKY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
Slave Traders, ViolenceBath County, First Person, Dialect, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty, Sold, Slave Traders, Notable

McIntire_T_1

Thomas Lewis

In this interview, the interviewer recounts in the first person formerly enslaved person Thomas Lewis’s explanation of why enslaved people resisted and the consequence of that resistance. 
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Excerpt:

… There was no such thing as being good to slaves. Many people were better than others, but a slave belonged to his master and there was no way to get out of it. A strong man was hard to make work. He would fight so that the white men trying to hold him would be breathless. Then there was nothing to do but kill him. If a slave resisted, and his master killed him, it was the same as self-defense today. If a cruel master whipped a slave to death, it put the fear into the other slaves…


Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Thomas Lewis1857 (approx. 80)Estella R. DodsonUnknown
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Bloomignton, ININKY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
Resistance, ViolenceSpencer County, First Person, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty, Union Troops, Klan/Mob Violence, Hired Out

Lewis_T_3

Matthew Hume

The interviewer documents this interview in the third person.  In the excerpt below, the interviewer shared a story from Matthew Hume about an enslaved person who issued fake freedom papers to free other enslaved people before describing Matthew Hume’s emancipation.    

*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:

…One way of exacting obedience was to threaten to send offenders South to work in the fields. The slaves around Lexington, Kentucky, came out ahead on one occasion. The collector was Shrader. He had the slaves handcuffed to a large leg chain and forced on a flatboat. There were so many that the boat was grounded, so some of the slaves were released to push the boat off. Among the “blacks” was one who could read and write. Before Shrader could chain them up again, he was seized and chained, taken to below Memphis Tennessee, and forced to work in the cotton fields until he was able to get word from Richmond identifying him. In the meantime, the educated [redacted] issued freedom papers to his companions. Many of them came back to Lexington, Kentucky where they were employed…

Mr. Hume thought the Emancipation Proclamation was the greatest work that Abraham Lincoln ever did. The [redacted] people on his plantation did not learn of it until the following August. Then Mr. Payne and his sons offered to let them live on their ground with conditions similar to our renting system, giving a share of the crop. They remained here until Jan. 1, 1865 when they crossed the Ohio River at Madison. They had a cow that had been given them before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued but this was taken away from them. So they came to Ind. homeless, friendless and penniless…

He could not understand the attitude of his race who preferred to remain in slavery receiving only food and shelter, rather than to be free citizens where they could have the right to develop their individualism


Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Matthew HumeUnknown (Unknown)Grace MonroeDaniel Payne
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Jefferson County, ININKY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
Resistance, Emancipation, Abraham LincolnTrimble County, Third Person, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty, Notable,

Hume_M_1

Eli Coleman

Eli Coleman was born in 1846 and has a long memory of enslavement.  He also lived a long life after Emancipation.  In this excerpt, he describes his experiences immediately after being freed, and his ultimate move to Texas from Kentucky.  He also reflects on the state of African Americans in the early 20th century, notably discussing sharecropping as re-enslavement.

*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:

When Master said we were free, we all began to take on. We didn’t have no place to go and asked Master could we stay, but he said no. But he did let some stay and furnished teams and something to eat, and work on the halves. I stayed and was sharecropper, and that was when slavery started, for when we got our crop made, it took every bit of it to pay our debts and we had nothing left to buy winter clothes or pay doctor bills.  

. . . I’d heard the railroad was building in Texas and they hire lots of [redacted]. I get a horse from Master, and roll up a few clothes and get my gun.  I never got very far before the Indians took my horse away from me. It was about fifty miles to a train and I didn’t have any money, but I found a White man who wanted wood cut and I work near a month for him and get $2.00. I get on a train and come a hundred miles from where that railroad was going across the country, and I had to walk near all that hundred miles. Once and now a White man coming or going let me ride. But I got there, and the job pays me sixty cents a day. That was lots of money those days. Near as I remember, it was 1867 or 1868 when I came to Texas.  

. . . Since the [redacted] been free it’s been Hell on the poor old [redacted]. He has advanced some ways, but he’s still a servant and will be, long as God’s curse still stay on the [redacted] race. We were turned loose with nothing and have been under the White man’s rule so long we couldn’t hold any job but labor. I worked almost two years on that railroad and the rest my life I farmed. Now I get a little pension from the government and the White folks are sure good to give it to me, because I ain’t good for work no more.   


Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Eli Coleman1846 (91)UnknownGeorge Brady
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
TexasTexasKentucky
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
Emancipation, Sharecropping,First person, witnessed extreme cruelty, Union Troops,

Coleman_E_2

John W. Fields

John W. Fields lived in enslavement and gained freedom shortly before the Civil War ended.  In this excerpt, he describes an example of extreme cruelty, in which an enslaved person was whipped severely, and the other enslaved people were forced to pour salt water on her wounds.
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Excerpt:

My Mistress had separated me from all my family but one brother with sweet words, but that pose was dropped after she reached her place. Shortly after I had been there, she married a northern man by the name of David Hill. At first he was very nice to us, but he gradually acquired a mean and overbearing manner toward us. I remember one incident that I don’t like to remember. One of the women slaves had been very sick and she was unable to work just as fast as he thought she ought to. He had driven her all day with no results. That night after completing our work he called us all together. He made me hold a light, while he whipped her and then made one of the slaves pour salt water on her bleeding back. My innards turn yet at that sight.


Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
John W. Fields1848 (89)Cecil C. MillerDavid Hill
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Lafayette, INIndianaOwensboro, KY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
ViolenceFirst person, witnessed extreme cruelty, hired out

Fields_J_2

John Eubanks

The excerpts below provide teachers a unique opportunity to consider perspective and decisions made by an interviewer.  The interviewer Archie Koritz submitted two separate documents for his interview with John Eubanks.  

The first, featured in “Part 1” below is written in the third person.  In the excerpt, Archie Koritz  shares the story of how the enslavers of John Eubanks allowed him to join the Union army during the Civil War, how John Eubanks enlisted, and his experience returning after the war.

The second interview is labeled “Part 2” and is written in the first person.  The excerpt from this interview covers the same content as that in “Part 1” but the details included in this part of the interview do not appear at all in “Part 1.”  The reader can speculate that “Part 2” is similar to a transcript of the interview and “Part 1” is closer to a report of the interview submitted by interviewer Archie Koritz.  
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Source Description:

[Part 1: Recorded by the interviewer in the third person.]

Shortly after the beginning of the Civil War, when the north seemed to be losing, someone conceived the idea of forming negro regiments and as an inducement to the slaves, they offered them freedom if they would join the Union forces. John’s mistress and master told him that if he wished to join the Union forces, he had their consent and would not have to run away like other slaves were doing. At the beginning of the war, John was twenty-one years of age. When Lincoln freed the slaves by his Emancipation Proclamation, John was promptly given his freedom by his master and mistress.

John decided to join the northern army which was located at Bowling Green, Kentucky, a distance of thirty-five miles from Glasgow where John was living. He had to walk the entire thirty-five miles…

[The interview lists the battle John Eubanks fought in during the Civil War, then describes return home after the Civil War ended.] Upon his return to Glasgow, Ky,  he saw for the first time in six years, his mother and other members of his family who had returned free.


[Part 2: What follows is a different version of the interview, recorded by the same interviewer, but this time in the first person. Below are excerpts that cover the same topics described in Part 1.]  

I was twenty-one when war broke out. Master Eubanks said to me, ‘You all don’t need to run away if you all want to join up with the army.’ He’d say, ‘There would be a fine if slaves ran off. You all don’t have to run off, go right on and I do not pay that fine.’ He said, ‘Enlist in the army but don’t run off.’ 

Now, I walk thirty-five miles from Glasgow to Bowling Green to this place—to the enlisting place—from home for miles—to Glasgow—to Bowling Green, thirty-five miles. On the road I meet up with two boys, so we go on. They ran away from Kentucky, and we go together.  

Then some Bushwackers [during the Civil War, these were people who supported the Confederacy in states that remained in the Union (like Kentucky) and practiced guerilla warfare even though they usually were not in the Confederate army.] come down the road. We were scared and ran to the woods and hid. As we ran through the woods, pretty soon we heard chickens crowing. We filled our pockets with stones. We were going to kill chickens to eat. Pretty soon we heard a man holler, ‘You come ’round outta there’—and I see a white man and come out. He said, ‘What are you all doing here?’  I turn around and say, ‘Well boys, come on boys,’ and the boys come out. The man said, ‘I’m a Union Soldier. What are you all doing here?’ I say, ‘We’re going to enlist in the army.’ He says, ‘That’s fine’ and he says, ‘come along’ He says, ‘get right on white man’s side’—we go to the station. Then he says, ‘You go right down to the station and give your information… 

…When I came back from the army, I went home to Mother and said ‘Don’t you know me?’ She says, ‘No, I don’t know you.’  I say, ‘You don’t know me?’ She says, ‘No, I don’t know you.’  I say, ‘I’m John.’ Then she cried, and said how I’d grown, and she thought I’d been dead this long time. I explained how the many fights I’ve been in with no scratch and she was happy…


Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
John Eubanks1836 or 1839 (approx 98)Archie KoritzEverett Family, Tony Eubanks
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Gary, ININGlasgow, KY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
Civil War, Family, Emancipation, Enlistment, InterviewerBarron County, First Person, Third Person, Dialect, Whipped, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty, Union Troops, Veteran or Widow, Notable

Eubanks_J_3

Kate Dudley Baumont

Kate Baumont was very young when slavery ended, but she has specific memories from her childhood, which she shares.  This excerpt describes how the enslaved on the plantation she worked were all given their own land to work while they were enslaved.  They were also given similar plots of land when they were freed, which many continued to live on and work for years after emancipation.
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Excerpt:

When we lived on the Preston farm something happened that raised a lot of talk.  One of the Preston girls fell in love with the Negro coachman and ran off and married him in Canada.  Said she never wanted to marry a white man.  She never did have white beaux as a girl.  Her father was so hurt, and he said he was going to disown her.  But he did give them $10,000, then he said he never wanted them to come back to visit him or his folks, but his folks could go up to Canada and visit with her and her family.  Before, the Prestons threatened to kill the man, but the girl said if they killed him, she would kill some of them and herself, too.  She told them

that she persuaded him to take her, and that she had been in love with him for years, and had tried ever so long to get him to run off with her and marry her.  Ole Miss like to died, but she got over it, and took trips up to Canada when she wanted to see her daughter.  But the girl and her husband, they never came back to her old home.  They had a family, so we heard, and he was doing well and had some kind of business, and later, it was said he made a lot of money.  He was a nice-looking man; dark, but fine featured. 


Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Kate Dudley BaumontUnknownUnknownPreston
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Clark County, OHOhioBath County, KY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
FamilyFirst person, dialect

Baumont_K_2

Samuel Watson

Samuel Watson was very young when the Civil War ended and Emancipation was granted to those enslaved.  However, he clearly remembers the struggles his family had after Emancipation.  In this excerpt, he describes the struggle his mother had supporting the family, how his siblings became indentured servants, and his life as an indentured servant to an unkind employer.
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Excerpt:

Uncle Samuel remembers when the war ended and the slaves were emancipated. “Some were happy and some were sad!” Many dreaded leaving their old homes and their masters’ families.

Uncle Samuel’s mother and three children were told that they were free people and the master asked the mother to take her little ones and go away.

She complied and took her family to the plantation of Jourdain James, hoping to work and keep her family together. Wages received for her work failed to support the mother and children so she left the employ of Mr. James and worked from place to place until her children became half starved and without clothing.

The older children, remembering better and happier days, ran away from their mother and went back to their old master.

Thomas Watson went to Dixon, Kentucky and had an article of indenture drawn up binding both Thomas and Laurah to his service for a long number of years. Little Samuel only remained with his mother who took him to the home of William Allen Price. Mr. Price’s plantation was situated in Webster County, Kentucky about half-way between Providence and Clay on Craborchard Creek. Mr. Price had the little boy indentured to his service for a period of eighteen years. There the boy lived and worked on the plantation.

He said he had a good home among good people. His master gave him five real whippings within a period of fourteen years but Uncle Samuel believes he deserved every lash administered.

It was the custom for a slave indentured to a master to be given a fair education, a good horse, bridle, saddle and a suit of clothes for his years of toil, but Mr. Price did not believe the boy deserved the pay and refused to pay him. A lawyer friend sued in behalf of the N***o and received a judgement of $115.00 (one hundred and fifteen dollars). Eighteen dollars repaid the lawyer for his service and Samuel started out with $95.00 and his freedom.


Interviewee 
Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)Interviewer
WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Samuel Watson1862Lauana CreelThomas Watson
Interview LocationResidence StateBirth Location
Evansville, INIndianaClay, KY
Themes & KeywordsAdditional Tags:
Emancipation, Economics, EqualityThird person, Dialect, Bound out after war, whipped, notable,

Watson_S_1

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