…You want to know about slavery? Well, a great deal happened besides that, but …
…My Pappy wasn’t afraid of anything. He is light colored from the white blood, and he ran away several times. There are big woods all around and we saw lots of runaways. One old fellow named John has been a runaway for four years and the [slave] patterroller tries all their tricks, but they can’t catch him. They wanted him badly, because it inspired other slaves to run away if he stays a-loose… One day I was in the woods and met a … run-awayer [runaway enslaved person]. He came to the cabin and Mammy made him a bacon and egg sandwich and we never saw him again. Maybe he did get clear to Mexico, where a lot of the slaves ran to.
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.
…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 McIntire
1847 (90)
Unknown
Jim Lane
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Clark County, OH
OH
KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Emancipation, Education, Literacy, Resistance, Union Troops, Civil War
Bath County, First Person, Dialect, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty, Sold, Slave Traders, Notable
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.
… 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 Lewis
1857 (approx. 80)
Estella R. Dodson
Unknown
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Bloomignton, IN
IN
KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Resistance, Violence
Spencer County, First Person, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty, Union Troops, Klan/Mob Violence, Hired Out
The interviewer records the life of Joe Robinson in the third person. In the excerpt below, the interviewer recounts Joe Robinson’s comparison of how two different enslavers treated those they enslaved. The teacher may need to help students critically consider what it means for an enslaver to be “very kind” to the people he is enslaving.
…[Joe Robinson’s] master, Gus Hargill, was very kind to him and all his slaves. He owned a large farm and raised every kind of vegetation. He always gave his slaves plenty to eat. They never had to steal food. He said his slaves had worked hard to permit him to have plenty, therefore they should have their share.
Joe, his mother, a brother, and a sister were all on the same plantation. They were never sold, lived with the same master until they were set free.
Joe’s father was owned by Rube Black, who was very cruel to his slaves, beat them severely for the least offense. One day he tried to beat Joe’s father, who was a large strong man; he resisted his master and tried to kill him. After that, he never tried to whip him again. However, at the first opportunity, Rube sold him.
The Robinson family learned the father had been sold to someone down in Louisiana. They never heard from, or of him, again…
M.S. Fayman was born free to wealthy free parents in Louisiana. Her family was Creole – her grandmother was Haitian (Black) and her grandfather was French. Her parents sent her to a private boarding school when she was five years old. When she was ten, she was kidnapped at school and forcibly enslaved in Kentucky by Buckram Haynes, who forced M.S. Fayman to teach his children French until she escaped. After her escape, she returned home, attended Fisk University and became a French teacher there. In this excerpt, the interviewer recounts M.S. Fayman’s kidnapping and description of her enslavement in the first person.
… [My family] lived in a large and spacious house surrounded by flowers and situated on a farm containing about 750 acres, on which we raised pelicans for sale in the market at New Orleans.
When I was about 5 years old I was sent to a private School in Baton Rouge, conducted by French sisters [nuns], where I stayed until I was kidnapped in 1860. At that time I did not know how to speak English; French was the language spoken in my household and by the people in the parish [county]. Baton Rouge, situated on the Mississippi, was a river port and stopping place for all large river boats, especially between New Orleans and large towns and cities north. We children were taken out by the sisters after school and on Saturdays and holidays to walk. One of the places we went was the wharf. One day in June and on a Saturday a large boat was at the wharf going north on the Mississippi River. We children were there. Somehow, I was separated from the other children. I was taken up bodily by a white man, carried on the boat, put in a cabin and kept there until we got to Louisville, Kentucky, where I was taken off. After I arrived in Louisville I was taken to a farm near Frankfort [Kentucky] and installed there, virtually a slave until 1864, when I escaped through the kindness of a delightful Episcopalian woman from Cincinnati, Ohio.
As I could not speak English, my chores were to act as a tutor and companion for the children of Pierce Buckran Haynes, a well known slave trader and plantation owner in Kentucky. Haynes wanted his children to speak French and it was my duty to teach them. I was the private companion of three girls and one small boy, each day I had to talk French and write French for them. They became very proficient in French, and I in the rudiments [basics] of the English language. I slept in the children’s quarters with the Haynes’ children, ate and played with them. I had all the privileges of the household accorded me with the exception of one, I never was taken off nor permitted to leave the plantation. While on the plantation I wore good clothes, similar to those of the white children.
Haynes was a merciless brutal tyrant with his slaves, punishing them severely and cruelly both by the lash and in the jail on the plantation…On the farm the slaves were assigned a task to do each day and In the event it was not finished they were severely whipped. While I never saw a slave whipped, I did see them afterwards, they were very badly marked and striped by the overseers who did the whipping….
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
M.S. Fayman
1850 (approx. 87)
Rogers
Pierce Buckram Haynes
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Baltimore, MD
MD
Saint-Nazaire, LA
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Education, Kidnapped, Resistance, Escape
First Person, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty, Slave Traders
The interviewer recounts her interview with Peter Bruner in the third person. Enslaver John Bell Bruner was “very cruel” to Peter Bruner. John Bell Bruner and his wife frequently whipped Peter Bruner and never gave him enough to eat. In the excerpt below, the interviewer describes Peter Bruner frequent attempts to escape, including his successful escape after which he enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War.
…Peter endured torture as long as he could and finally decided to escape. He went to Richmond, Kentucky on to Lexington. On his way, he made a contract with a man to drive his horses to Orleans, but was caught while in Lexington. On his way, they caught him and took him to jail and he remained until his master came for him. This did not down him, for just as soon as he could he escaped again, and this time got as far as Xenia, Ohio, but was again caught and brought back. This time he was severely beaten for three hours.
When 17 years old, Peter was hired out to Jimmy Benton, who was more cruel than John Bruner, but was again brought back. It was then that he tried again to escape… This was about the year 1861, when the war had begun. Again he was caught and taken back…. He escaped several times but never could seem to get anywhere. Once when he and another slave, Phil, escaped they were caught and made to walk the entire distance barefoot. After this Peter was chained each night to a chair. One morning while eating his breakfast he heard a knock at the door and on opening it he found a troop of Union Home Guards. Jim Benton and John Bruner were taken to prison…
When John Bruner was taken from [released from] Prison, he was much better to Peter. Soon after John was released from Prison, Peter escaped again. This time he had joined a regiment in the war. He went through hardships, cold, hunger, and illness…
Interviewee Formerly enslaved person
Birth Year (Age)
Interviewer WPA Volunteer
Enslaver’s Name
Peter Bruner
1845 (91)
Evelyn McLemore
John Bell Bruner
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Estill County, KY
KY
Winchester, KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Escape, Resistance, Violence
Estill County, Clark County, Third Person, Whipped, Union Troops, Veteran or Widow, Hired Out
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.
…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 Hume
Unknown (Unknown)
Grace Monroe
Daniel Payne
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Jefferson County, IN
IN
KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Resistance, Emancipation, Abraham Lincoln
Trimble County, Third Person, Witnessed Extreme Cruelty, 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
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
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.
…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 Mayfield
1852 (Unknown)
Eliza Ison
Smith Stone
Interview Location
Residence State
Birth Location
Garrard County, KY
KY
Bryantsville, KY
Themes & Keywords
Additional Tags:
Garrard County, Lincoln, First Person, Resistance, Slave Trader, Emancipation