The participants in the Getting Word project tell stories that show the skills, values, and powerful bonds of family that have been passed down over more than seven generations.
Stories
“We Lived And Labored Together”
“We Lived And Labored Together”
Madison Hemings recalls his marriage and move to Ohio.
In 1831 I married Mary McCoy. Her grandmother was a slave, and lived with her master, Stephen Hughes, near Charlottesville, as his wife. She was manumitted by him, which made their children free born. Mary McCoy’s mother was his daughter. I was about 23 and she 22 years of age when we married. We lived and labored together in Virginia till 1836, when we voluntarily left and came to Ohio. We settled in Pebble township, Pike county. We lived there four or five years….
When we came from Virginia we brought one daughter (Sarah) with us, leaving the dust of a son in the soil near Monticello. We have had born to us in this State nine children. Two are dead. The names of the living, besides Sarah, are Harriet, Mary Ann, Catharine, Jane, William Beverly, James Madison and Ellen Wales. Thomas Eston died in the Andersonville prison pen, and Julia died at home. William, James and Ellen are unmarried and live at home, in Huntington township, Ross county. All the others are married and raising families. My post-office address is Pee Pee, Pike county, Ohio. (Madison Hemings recollections, Pike County Republican, 15 Mar. 1873)
Themes: Family
“My Father Made An Agreement”
“My Father Made An Agreement”
Peter Fossett relates his struggles to escape slavery and join his family in Ohio.
“Born and reared as free, not knowing that I was a slave, then suddenly, at the death of Jefferson, put upon an auction block and sold to strangers. I then commenced an eventful life. I was sold to Col. John R. Jones. My father was freed by the Legislature of Virginia. At the request of Mr. Jefferson, my father made an agreement with Mr. Jones that when he was able to raise the amount that Col. Jones paid for me he would give me back to my father, and he also promised to let me learn the blacksmith trade with my father as soon as I was old enough. My father then made a bargain with two sons of Col. Jones–William Jones and James Lawrence Jones–to teach me. They attended the University of Virginia….
Col. Jones, when he bought me, promised my father to let him have me when he could raise the money, but in 1833 he refused to let him have me on any conditions. Mrs. Jones declared that she would sooner part with one of her own children….
My parents were here in Ohio and I wanted to be with them and be free, so I resolved to get free or die in the attempt. I started the second time, was caught, handcuffed, and taken back and carried to Richmond and put in jail. For the second time I was put up on the auction block and sold like a horse. But friends from among my master’s best friends bought me in and sent me to my father in Cincinnati, and I am here to-day.” (Peter Fossett, New York World, 30 Jan. 1898)
Excerpts: Ebony, Nov. 1954.
“Let Us Provide To Adorn Their Minds”
“Let Us Provide To Adorn Their Minds”
Lewis Woodson writes about the importance of education.
Advantages are opening for educational purposes among us, but we must prepare our minds to avail ourselves of these advantages; and if we cannot adorn our children’s bodies with costly attire, let us provide to adorn their minds with that jewel that will elevate, ennoble, and rescue the bodies of our long injured race from the shackles of bondage, and their minds from the trammels of ignorance and vice. (Lewis Woodson, 1856, in History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 404)
“An Act Of Separation”
“An Act Of Separation”
Lewis Woodson uses the Declaration of Independence in his argument for separate black settlements.
…When you asserted that the whole history of the past was in favor of “contact,” as being the most powerful means of destroying antipathies, the history of our own country must have entirely escaped your memory. The very act which gave it political existence, was an act of separation. Is the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, therefore, a “weak and foolish” document, and were its framers “weak and foolish” men? Have you forgotten the history of the separation of the Friends, the Methodists, and even the Presbyterians? Of the utility of these several separations I do not now pretend to speak. My object in referring to them is, to show that other men than me, or old father Abraham, have been “weak and foolish” enough to resort to separation, and the formation of societies of their own, as a means of curing existing antipathies.
The principle which I have endeavored to maintain in my three preceding letters on separate settlements is this, that it is right, and in accordance with the mind of God, for men whose condition has been rendered unhappy in one place, to better it if they can, by removing to another; and that the manner, time, and place of such removal, should be exclusively matters of their own choice. And through what kind of glasses you were looking, Mr. Editor, when this simple principle appeared to you like “colonization magnified,” I am at a loss to know. Those which I use are a plain pair of Parisian manufacture;–and when I look at it through them, it has no such appearance. Purchasing contiguous tracts of land from the Congress of our native country, and settling upon them, so as to have society, churches, and schools of our own, without being subject to the humiliation of begging them from others, looks very much like being exiled to the cheerless coast of Africa, don’t it? Surely your readers will be able to distinguish the difference….
But I can assure you that in the West it [issue of separate black settlements] is not merely a matter of theory; it has long since been reduced to practice. My father now resides, and has been for the last eight years residing in such a settlement, in Jackson county, Ohio. The settlement is highly prosperous and happy. They have a church, day and Sabbath school of their own. The people of this settlement cut their own harvests, roll their own logs, and raise their own houses, just as well as though they had been assisted by white friends. They find just as ready and as high market for their grain and cattle, as their white neighbors. They take the newspapers and read many useful books, and are making as rapid advancement in intelligence and refinement as any people in the country generally do. And when they travel out of their settlement, no colored people, let them reside where or among whom they may, are more respected, or treated with greater deference than they are….” (“Augustine” [Lewis Woodson] to editor, 13 July 1838, in Colored American, 28 July 1838)
Themes: Struggle for Equality