Eliza Williamson
From:
Georgia
[HW: Dist 5]
Josephine Lowell
[HW: ELIZA WILLIAMSON]
[TR: This interview contained many handwritten edits; where text was
transposed or meaning was significantly changed, it has been noted.]
Just a few recollections of life in slavery time, as told me by [TR:
illegible] who was Eliza Taliaferro Williamson, daughter of Dickerson
and Polly Taliaferro. My mother was born at Mt. Airy, North Carolina,
near the Virginia line, and always went to school, across the line, in
Virginia. Her grandfather was John Taliaferro, slave holder, tobacco
raiser, and farmer. The Negro quarters were near the main or Big House.
Mother said that great-grandfather would go to the back door each night
and call every slave to come in for family prayer. They came and knelt
in the Big House, while old marster prayed. Mother said it was like a
camp-meeting when he died--wailing and weeping by the Negroes for their
old Marster. She said the slaves had the same food that the white family
had and the same warm clothes for winter. All clothing, bed sheeting,
table linen, towels, etc. were hand woven. They raised sheep for wool,
and flax for linen, but I don't know where they got the cotton they
used. The work of the house and farm was divided as with a big family.
Some of the women cooked, sewed, wove, washed, milked, but was never
sent to the field. None of the Toliver family believed in women working
in the field. When each of great-grandfather's children married, he or
she was given a few slaves. I think he gave my grandfather, Dickerson
Taliaferro, three slaves, and these he brought with him to Georgia when
they settled in Whitfield County.
My grandfather was a member of the Legislature from Whitfield County for
two terms. He was as gentle with his slaves as a father would have been,
and was never known to abuse one of them. One of his slaves, who was a
small boy at the close of the War, stayed with my grandfather until he
was a grown man, then after a few years away from home, came home to old
Marster to die. This is the picture of good slave holders, but sad to
say all were not of that type. [TR: deleted: 'See next sheet for'] a
picture of horror, which was also told me by my mother. [TR: deleted:
'The thought of it'] was like a nightmare to my childish mind.
The Story of little Joe.
[TR: deleted: 'Mother said there were'] two families lived on farms
adjacent to her father. They were the two Tucker brothers, tobacco
raisers. One of the wives, Polly, or Pol, as she was called, hated the
family of her husband's brother because they were more affluent than she
liked them to be. It [HW: Her jealousy] caused the two families to live
in disagreement.
Little Joe belonged to Pol's family, and was somewhere between ten and
fourteen years old. Mother said Pol made Joe work in the field at night,
and forced him to sing so they would know he wasn't asleep. He wore
nothing in summer but an old shirt made of rough factory cloth which
came below his knees. She said the only food Pol would give him was
swill [HW: scraps] from the table--handed to him out the back door.
Mother said Pol had some kind of impediment in her speech, which caused
her to say 'ah' at the close of a sentence. So, when she called Joe to
the back door to give him his mess of scraps, she would say, "Here, Joe,
here's your truck, ah." Mother was a little girl then, and she and
grandmother felt so sorry for Joe that they would bake baskets of sweet
potatoes and slip [TR: 'to the field to give him' replaced with
illegible text ending 'in the field']. She said he would come through
the corn, almost crawling, so Pol wouldn't see him, and take the sweet
potatoes in the tail of his shirt and scuttle back through the tall
stuff where he might hide and eat it them.
She had a Negro woman who had a baby (and there may have been other
women) but this Negro woman was not allowed to see her baby except just
as a cow would be let in to her calf at certain times during the day,
[TR: 'then' replaced by ??] she had to go to the field and leave it
alone. Mother said that Pol either threw or kicked the baby into the
yard because it cried, and it died. I don't know why the authorities
didn't arrest her, but she may have had an alibi, or some excuse for the
death of the child.
The Burning of the Tobacco Barn
The [HW: other] Tucker brother had made a fine crop of tobacco that
year, more than a thousand dollars worth in his big barn. Pol made one
of her slaves go with her, [HW: when] and she set fire to the tobacco
barn of her brother-in-law's barn, and not being able to get away [HW:
unable to escape] before the flames [HW: brought] a crowd, she hid in
the grass, right near the path where the people were running to the
fire. She had some kind of stroke, perhaps from fright, or pure deviltry
which 'put her out of business'. I wish I could remember whether it
killed her or just made a paralytic of her, but this is a true story.
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Frances Willingham
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