John F. Van Hook was a short, stout man with a shining bald pate, a
fringe of kinky gray hair, kindly eyes, and a white mustache of the Lord
Chamberlain variety. His shabby work clothes were clean and carefully
mended, and he leaned on a cane for support.
John was looking for the "Farm Bureau Office," but he agreed to return
for an interview after he had transacted his business. When he
reappeared a short time later and settled down in a comfortable chair he
gave the story of his early life with apparent enjoyment.
In language remarkably free of dialect, John began by telling his full
name and added that he was well known in Georgia and the whole country.
"Until I retired," he remarked, "I taught school in North Carolina, and
in Hall, Jackson, and Rabun Counties, in Georgia. I am farming now about
five miles from Athens in the Sandy Creek district. I was born in 1862
in Macon County, North Carolina, on the George Seller's plantation,
which borders the Little Tennessee River.
"I don't know anything much, first hand, about the war period, as I was
quite a child when that ended, but I can tell you all about the days of
Reconstruction. What I know about the things that took place during the
war was told me by my mother and other old people.
"My father was Bas Van Hook and he married Mary Angel, my mother. Mother
was born on Marse Dillard Love's plantation, and when his daughter, Miss
Jenny, married Marse Thomas Angel's son, Marse Dillard gave Mother to
Miss Jenny and when Little Miss Jenny Angel was born, Mother was her
nurse. Marse Thomas and Miss Jenny Angel died, and Mother stayed right
there keeping house for Little Miss Jenny and looking after her. Mother
had more sense than all the rest of the slaves put together, and she
even did Little Miss Jenny's shopping.
"My father was the only darkey Old Man Isaac Van Hook owned, and he did
anything that came to hand: he was a good carpenter and mechanic and
helped the Van Hooks to build mills, and he made the shoes for that
settlement. Thomas Aaron, George, James, Claude, and Washington were my
five brothers, and my sisters were Zelia, Elizabeth, and Candace. Why,
Miss, the only thing I can remember right off hand that we children done
was fight and frolic like youngsters will do when they get together.
With time to put my mind on it, I would probably recollect our games and
songs, if we had any.
"Our quarters was on a large farm on Sugar Fork River. The houses were
what you would call log huts and they were scattered about
promiscuously, no regular lay-out, just built wherever they happened to
find a good spring convenient. There was never but one room to a hut,
and they wern't particular about how many darkies they put in a room.
"White folks had fine four-poster beds with a frame built around the top
of the bed, and over the frame hung pretty, ruffled white curtains and a
similar ruffled curtain was around the bottom of the bed; the curtains
made pretty ornaments. Slaves had beds of this general kind, but they
warn't quite as pretty and fine. Corded springs were the go then. The
beds used by most of the slaves in that day and time were called
'Georgia beds,' and these were made by boring two holes in the cabin
wall, and two in the floor, and side pieces were run from the holes in
the wall to the posts and fastened; then planks were nailed around the
sides and foot, box-fashion, to hold in the straw that we used for
mattresses; over this pretty white sheets and plenty of quilts was
spreaded. Yes, mam, there was always plenty of good warm cover in those
days. Of course, it was home-made, all of it.
"My grandfather was a blacksmith and farmhand owned by Old Man Dillard
Love. According to my earliest recollection my grandmother Van Hook was
dead and I have no memories about her. My great, great grandmother,
Sarah Angel, looked after slave children while their mothers were at
work. She was a free woman, but she had belonged to Marse Tommy Angel
and Miss Jenny Angel; they were brother and sister. The way Granny Sarah
happened to be free was; one of the women in the Angel family died and
left a little baby soon after one of Granny's babies was born, and so
she was loaned to that family as wet nurse for the little orphan baby.
They gave her her freedom and took her into their home, because they did
not want her sleeping in slave quarters while she was nursing the white
child. In that settlement, it was considered a disgrace for a white
child to feed at the breast of a slave woman, but it was all right if
the darkey was a free woman. After she got too old to do regular work,
Granny Sarah used to glean after the reapers in the field to get wheat
for her bread. She had been a favored slave and allowed to do pretty
much as she pleased, and after she was a free woman the white folks
continued to look after her every need, but she loved to do for herself
as long as she was able to be up and about.
"What did we have to eat then? Why, most everything; ash cakes was a
mighty go then. Cornbread dough was made into little pones and placed on
the hot rocks close to the fire to dry out a little, then hot ashes were
raked out to the front of the fireplace and piled over the ash cakes.
When thoroughly done they were taken out and the ashes washed off; they
were just like cake to us children then. We ate lots of home-made lye
hominy, beans, peas, and all kinds of greens, cooked with fat meat. The
biggest, and maybe the best thing in the way of vegetables that we had
then was the white-head cabbage; they grew large up there in Carolina
where I lived. There was just one big garden to feed all the folks on
that farm.
"Marse George had a good 'possum dog that he let his slaves use at
night. They would start off hunting about 10 o'clock. Darkies knew that
the best place to hunt for 'possums was in a persimmon tree. If they
couldn't shake him out, they would cut the tree down, but the most fun
was when we found the 'possum in a hollow log. Some of the hunters would
get at one end of the log, and the others would guard the other end, and
they would build a fire to smoke the 'possum out. Sometimes when they
had to pull him out, they would find the 'possum in such a tight place
that most of his hair would be rubbed off before they could get him out.
Darkies hunted rabbits, squirrels, coons, all kinds of birds, and
'specially they was fond of going after wild turkeys. Another great
sport was hunting deer in the nearby mountains. I managed to get a shot
at one once. Marse George was right good about letting his darkies hunt
and fish at night to get meat for themselves. Oh! Sure, there were lots
of fish and they caught plenty of 'em in the Little Tennessee and Sugar
Fork Rivers and in the numerous creeks that were close by. Red horse,
suckers, and salmon are the kinds of fish I remember best. They were
cooked in various ways in skillets, spiders, and ovens on the big open
fireplace.
"Now, about the clothes we wore in the days of the war, I couldn't
rightly say, but my Mother said we had good comfortable garments. In the
summer weather, boys and men wore plain cotton shirts and jeans pants.
The home-made linsey-woolsy shirts that we wore over our cotton shirts,
and the wool pants that we wore in winter, were good and warm; they had
brogan shoes in winter too. Folks wore the same clothes on Sundays as
through the week, but they had to be sure that they were nice and clean
on Sundays. Dresses for the women folks were made out of cotton checks,
and they had sunbonnets too.
"Marse George Sellars, him that married Miss Ca'line Angel, was my real
master. They had four children, Bud, Mount, Elizabeth, and, and er; I
just can't bring to recollect the name of their other girl. They lived
in a two-story frame house that was surrounded by an oak grove on the
road leading from Franklin, North Carolina, to Clayton, Georgia. Hard
Sellars was the carriage driver, and while I am sure Marse George must
have had an overseer, I don't remember ever hearing anybody say his
name.
"Really, Miss, I couldn't say just how big that plantation was, but I am
sure there must have been at least four or five hundred acres in it. One
mighty peculiar thing about his slaves was that Marse George never had
more than 99 slaves at one time; every time he bought one to try to make
it an even hundred, a slave died. This happened so often, I was told,
that he stopped trying to keep a hundred or more, and held on to his 99
slaves, and long as he did that, there warn't any more deaths than
births among his slaves. His slaves had to be in the fields when the sun
rose, and there they had to work steady until the sun went down. Oh!
Yes, mam, Marse Tommy Angel was mighty mean to his slaves, but Miss
Jenny, his sister, was good as could be; that is the reason she gave my
mother to her sister, Miss Ca'line Sellars; because she thought Marse
Tommy was too hard on her.
"I heard some talk as to how after the slaves had worked hard in the
field all day and come to the house at night, they were whipped for
mighty small offenses. Marse George would have them tied hand and foot
over a barrel and would beat them with a cowhide, or cat-o'-nine tails
lash. They had a jail in Franklin as far back as I can recollect. Old
Big Andy Angel's white folks had him put in jail a heap of times,
because he was a rogue and stole everything he could get his hands on.
Nearly everybody was afraid of him; he was a great big double jointed
man, and was black as the ace of spades. No, mam, I never saw any slaves
sold, but my father's mother and his sister were sold on the block. The
white folks that bought 'em took them away. After the war was over my
father tried to locate 'em, but never once did he get on the right track
of 'em.
"Oh! Why, my white folks took a great deal of pains teaching their
slaves how to read and write. My father could read, but he never learned
to write, and it was from our white folks that I learned to read and
write. Slaves read the Bible more than anything else. There were no
churches for slaves on Marse George's plantation, so we all went to the
white folks' church, about two miles away; it was called Clarke's
Chapel. Sometimes we went to church at Cross Roads; that was about the
same distance across Sugar Fork River. My mother was baptized in that
Sugar Fork River by a white preacher, but that is the reason I joined
the Baptist church, because my mother was a Baptist, and I was so crazy
about her, and am 'til yet.
"There were no funeral parlors in those days. They just funeralized the
dead in their own homes, took them to the graveyard in a painted
home-made coffin that was lined with thin bleaching made in the loom on
the plantation, and buried them in a grave that didn't have any bricks
or cement about it. That brings to my memory those songs they sung at
funerals. One of them started off something like this, _I Don't Want You
to Grieve After Me_. My mother used to tell me that when she was
baptized they sung, _You Shall Wear a Lily-White Robe_. Whenever I get
to studying about her it seems to me I can hear my mother singing that
song again. She did love it so much.
"No, mam, there didn't none of the darkies on Marse George Sellar's
place run away to the North, but some on Marse Tommy Angel's place ran
to the West. They told me that when Little Charles Angel started out to
run away a bird flew in front of him and led him all the way to the
West. Understand me, I am not saying that is strictly so, but that is
what I heard old folks say, when I was young. When darkies wanted to get
news to their girls or wives on other plantations and didn't want Marse
George to know about it, they would wait for a dark night and would tie
rags on their feet to keep from making any noise that the paterollers
might hear, for if they were caught out without a pass, that was
something else. Paterollers would go out in squads at night and whip any
darkies they caught out that could not show passes. Adam Angel was a
great big man, weighing about 200 pounds, and he slipped out one night
without a pass. When the paterollers found him, he was at his girl's
place where they were out in the front yard stewing lard for the white
folks. They knew he didn't belong on that plantation, so they asked him
to show his pass. Adam didn't have one with him, and he told them so.
They made a dive for him, and then, quick as a flash, he turned over
that pot of boiling lard, and while they were getting the hot grease off
of them he got away and came back to his cabin. If they had caught Adam,
he would have needed some of that spilt grease on him after the beating
they would have give him. Darkies used to stretch ropes and grapevines
across the road where they knew paterollers would be riding; then they
would run down the road in front of them, and when they got to the rope
or vine they would jump over it and watch the horses stumble and throw
the paterollers to the ground. That was a favorite sport of slaves.
"After the darkies got in from the field at night, ate their supper, and
finished up the chores for the day, on nights when the moon shone bright
the men would work in their own cotton patches that Marse George allowed
them; the women used their own time to wash, iron, patch, and get ready
for the next day, and if they had time they helped the men in their
cotton patches. They worked straight on through Saturdays, same as any
other day, but the young folks would get together on Saturday nights and
have little parties.
"How did they spend Sundays? Why, they went to church on Sunday and
visited around, holding prayermeetings at one another's cabins. Now,
Christmas morning! Yes, mam, that was a powerful time with the darkies,
if they didn't have nothing but a little sweet cake, which was nothing
more than gingerbread. However, Marse George did have plenty of good
things to eat at that time, such as fresh pork and wild turkeys, and we
were allowed to have a biscuit on that day. How we did frolic and cut up
at Christmas! Marse George didn't make much special to do on New Year's
Day as far as holiday was concerned; work was the primary object,
especially in connection with slaves.
"Oh-oo-h! Everybody had cornshuckings. The man designated to act as the
general would stick a peacock tail feather in his hat and call all the
men together and give his orders. He would stand in the center of the
corn pile, start the singing, and keep things lively for them. Now and
then he would pass around the jug. They sang a great deal during
cornshuckings, but I have forgotten the words to those songs. Great
excitement was expressed whenever a man found a red ear of corn, for
that counted 20 points, a speckled ear was 10 points and a blue ear 5
points, toward a special extra big swig of liquor whenever a person had
as many as 100 points. After the work was finished they had a big feast
spread on long tables in the yard, and dram flowed plentiful, then they
played ball, tussled, ran races, and did anything they knew how to amuse
themselves.
"Now, Ladies," John said, "please excuse me. I left my wife at home real
sick, and I just must hurry to the drug store and get some flaxseed so I
can make a poultice for her." As he made a hasty departure, he agreed to
complete the story later at his home, and gave careful directions for
finding the place.
A month later, two visitors called on John at his small, unpainted house
in the center of a hillside cotton patch.
A tall, thin Negress appeared in the doorway. "Yes, mam, John Van Hook
lives here. He's down in the field with his hoe, digging 'taters." She
leaned from the porch and called, "Daddy, Daddy! Somebody wants to see
you." Asked if John was her father, she answered "No, mam, he is my
husband. I started calling him Daddy when our child was little, so I've
been calling him that ever since. My name is Laney."
The walls of the room into which John invited his callers were crudely
plestered with newspapers and the small space was crowded with furniture
of various kinds and periods. The ladder-back chairs he designated for
his guests were beautiful. "They are plantation-made," he explained,
"and we've had 'em a mighty long time." On a reading table a pencil and
tablet with a half-written page lay beside a large glass lamp.
Newspapers and books covered several other tables. A freshly whitewashed
hearth and mantel were crowned by an old-fashioned clock, and at the end
of the room a short flight of steps led to the dining room, built on a
higher floor level.
"Now, let's see! Where was I?," John began. "Oh, yes, we were talking
about cornshuckings, when I had to leave your office. Well, I haven't
had much time to study about those cornshucking songs to get all the
words down right, but the name of one was _General Religh Hoe_, and
there was another one that was called, _Have a Jolly Crowd, and a Little
Jolly Johnny_.
"Now you needn't to expect me to know much about cotton pickings, for
you know I have already told you I was raised in North Carolina, and we
were too far up in the mountains for cotton growing, but I have lived in
a cotton growing country for forty-odd years.
"As to parties and frolics, I guess I could have kept those things in
mind, but when I realized that being on the go every night I could get
off, week in and week out, was turning my mind and heart away from
useful living, I tried to put those things out of my life and to train
myself to be content with right living and the more serious things of
life, and that's why I can't remember more of the things about our
frolics that took place as I was growing up. About all I remember about
the dances was when we danced the cotillion at regular old country
break-downs. Folks valued their dances very highly then, and to be able
to perform them well was a great accomplishment. _Turkey in the Straw_
is about the oldest dance tune I can remember. Next to that is _Taint
Gonna Rain No More_, but the tune as well as words to that were far
different from the modern song by that name. _Rabbit Hair_ was another
favorite song, and there were dozens of others that I just never tried
to remember until you asked me about them.
"My father lived in Caswell County and he used to tell us how hard it
was for him to get up in the morning after being out most of the night
frolicking. He said their overseer couldn't talk plain, and would call
them long before crack of dawn, and it sounded like he was saying, 'Ike
and a bike, Ike and a bike.' What he meant was, 'Out and about! Out and
about!'
"Marriage in those days was looked upon as something very solemn, and it
was mighty seldom that anybody ever heard of a married couple trying to
get separated. Now it's different. When a preacher married a couple, you
didn't see any hard liquor around, but just a little light wine to liven
up the wedding feast. If they were married by a justice of the peace,
look out, there was plenty of wine and," here his voice was almost
awe-stricken, "even whiskey too."
Laney interrupted at this stage of the story with, "My mother said they
used to make up a new broom and when the couple jumped over it, they was
married. Then they gave the broom to the couple to use keeping house."
John was evidently embarrassed. "Laney," he said, "that was never
confirmed. It was just hearsay, as far as you know, and I wouldn't tell
things like that.
"The first colored man I ever heard preach was old man Johnny McDowell.
He married Angeline Pennon and William Scruggs, uncle to Ollie Scruggs,
who lives in Athens now. After the wedding they were all dancing around
the yard having a big time and enjoying the wine and feast, and old man
McDowell, sitting there watching them, looked real thoughtful and sad;
suddenly he said: 'They don't behave like they knew what's been done
here today. Two people have been joined together for life. No matter
what comes, or what happens, these two people must stand by each other,
through everything, as long as they both shall live.' Never before had I
had such thoughts at a wedding. They had always just been times for big
eats, dancing, frolicking, and lots of jokes, and some of them pretty
rough jokes, perhaps. What he said got me to thinking, and I have never
been careless minded at a wedding since that day. Brother McDowell
preached at Clarke's Chapel, about five miles south of Franklin, North
Ca'lina, on the road leading from England to Georgia; that road ran
right through the Van Hook place."
Again Laney interrupted her husband. "My mother said they even had
infare dinners the next day after the wedding. The infare dinners were
just for the families of the bride and groom, and the bride had a
special dress for that occasion that she called her infare dress. The
friends of both parties were there at the big feast on the wedding day,
but not at the infare dinner."
"And there was no such a thing as child marriages heard of in those
days," John was speaking again. "At least none of the brides were under
15 or 16 years old. Now you can read about child brides not more than 10
years old, 'most ever' time you pick up a paper.
"I don't remember much, about what I played until I got to be about 10
years old. I was a terrible little fellow to imitate things. Old man
Tommy Angel built mills, and I built myself a little toy mill down on
the branch that led to Sugar Fork River. There was plenty of nice
soapstone there that was so soft you could cut it with a pocket knife
and could dress it off with a plane for a nice smooth finish. I shaped
two pieces of soapstone to look like round millstones and set me up a
little mill that worked just fine.
"We run pretty white sand through it and called that our meal and flour.
My white folks would come down to the branch and watch me run the little
toy mill. I used to make toy rifles and pistols and all sorts of nice
playthings out of that soapstone. I wish I had a piece of that good old
soapstone from around Franklin, so I could carve some toys like I used
to play with for my boy."
"We caught real salmon in the mountain streams," John remarked. "They
weighed from 3 to 25 pounds, and kind of favored a jack fish, only jack
fishes have duck bills, and these salmon had saw teeth. They were
powerful jumpers and when you hooked one you had a fight on your hands
to get it to the bank no matter whether it weighed 3 or 25 pounds. The
gamest of all the fish in those mountain streams were red horses. When I
was about 9 or 10 years old I took my brother's fish gig and went off
down to the river. I saw what looked like the shadow of a stick in the
clear water and when I thrust the gig at it I found mighty quick I had
gigged a red horse. I did my best to land it but it was too strong for
me and pulled loose from my gig and darted out into deep water. I ran
fast as I could up the river bank to the horseshoe bend where a flat
bottom boat belonging to our family was tied. I got in that boat and
chased that fish 'til I got him. It weighed 6 pounds and was 2 feet and
6 inches long. There was plenty of excitement created around that
plantation when the news got around that a boy, as little as I was then,
had landed such a big old fighting fish."
"Suckers were plentiful and easy to catch but they did not give you the
battle that a salmon or a red horse could put up and that was what it
took to make fishing fun. We had canoes, but we used a plain old flat
boat, a good deal like a small ferry boat, most of the time. There was
about the same difference in a canoe and a flat boat that there is in a
nice passenger automobile and a truck."
When asked if he remembered any of the tunes and words of the songs he
sang as a child, John was silent for a few moments and then began to
sing:
"A frog went courtin'
And he did ride
Uh hunh
With a sword and pistol
By his side
Uh hunh.
"Old uncle Rat laughed,
Shook his old fat side;
He thought his niece
Was going to be the bride.
Uh hunh, uh hunh
"Where shall the wedding be?
Uh hunh
Where shall the wedding be?
Uh hunh
"Way down yonder
In a hollow gum tree.
Uh hunh, un hunh, uh hunh.
"Who shall the waiters be?
Uh hunh
Granddaddy Louse and a
Black-eyed flea.
Uh hunh, uh hunh, uh hunh."
Laney reminded him of a song he used to sing when their child was a
baby. "It is hard for me to formulate its words in my mind. I just
cannot seem to get them," he answered, "but I thought of this one the
other night and promised myself I would sing it for you sometime. It's
_Old Granny Mistletoe_.
"Old Granny Mistletoe,
Lyin' in the bed,
Out the window
She poked her head.
"She says, 'Old Man,
The gray goose's gone,
And I think I heard her holler,
King-cant-you-O, King-cant-you-O!'
"The old fox stepped around,
A mighty fast step.
He hung the old gray goose
Up by the neck.
"Her wings went flip-flop
Over her back,
And her legs hung down.
Ding-downy-O, ding-downy-O.
"The old fox marched
On to his den.
Out come his young ones,
Some nine or ten.
"Now we will have
Some-supper-O, some-summer-O.
Now we will have
Some-supper-O, some-supper-O."
"The only riddle I remember is the one about: 'What goes around the
house, and just makes one track?' I believe they said it was a
wheelbarrow. Mighty few people in that settlement believed in such
things as charms. They were too intelligent for that sort of thing.
"Old man Dillard Love didn't know half of his slaves. They were called
'Love's free niggers.' Some of the white folks in that settlement would
get after their niggers and say 'who do you think you are, you must
think you are one of Dillard Love's free niggers the way you act.' Then
the slave was led to the whipping post and brushed down, and his marster
would tell him, 'now you see who is boss.'
"Marse Dillard often met a darkey in the road, he would stop and inquire
of him, 'Who's nigger is you?' The darkey would say 'Boss I'se your
nigger.' If Marse Dillard was feeling good he would give the darkey a
present. Heaps of times he gave them as much as five dollars, 'cording
to how good he was feeling. He treated his darkies mighty good.
"My grandfather belonged to Marse Dillard Love, and when the war was
declared he was too old to go. Marse George Sellars went and was
wounded. You know all about the blanket rolls they carried over their
shoulders. Well, that bullet that hit him had to go all the way through
that roll that had I don't know how many folds, and its force was just
about spent by the time it got to his shoulder; that was why it didn't
kill him, otherwise it would have gone through him. The bullet was
extracted, but it left him with a lame shoulder.
"Our Mr. Tommy Angel went to the war, and he got so much experience
shooting at the Yankees that he could shoot at a target all day long,
and then cover all the bullet holes he made with the palm of one hand.
Mr. Tommy was at home when the Yankees come though.
"Folks around our settlement put their darkies on all their good mules
and horses, and loaded them down with food and valuables, then sent them
to the nearby mountains and caves to hide until the soldiers were gone.
Mr. Angel himself told me later that lots of the folks who came around
pilfering after the war, warn't northerners at all, but men from just
anywhere, who had fought in the war and came back home to find all they
had was gone, and they had to live some way.
"One day my father and another servant were laughing fit to kill at a
greedy little calf that had caught his head in the feed basket. They
thought it was just too funny. About that time a Yankee, in his blue
uniform coming down the road, took the notion the men were laughing at
him. 'What are you laughing at?' he said, and at that they lit out to
run. The man called my father and made him come back, 'cause he was the
one laughing so hard. Father thought the Yankee vas going to shoot him
before he could make him understand they were just laughing at the calf.
"When the war was over, Mr. Love called his slaves together and told
them they had been set free. He explained everything to them very
carefully, and told them he would make farming arrangements for all that
wanted to stay on there with him. Lots of the darkies left after they
heard about folks getting rich working on the railroads in Tennessee and
about the high wages that were being paid on those big plantations in
Mississippi. Some of those labor agents were powerful smart about
stretching the truth, but those folks that believed them and left home
found out that it's pretty much the same the world over, as far as folks
and human nature is concerned. Those that had even average common sense
got along comfortable and all right in Tennessee and Mississippi, and
those that suffered out there were the sort that are so stupid they
would starve in the middle of a good apple pie. My brother that went
with the others to Tennessee never came back, and we never saw him
again.
"My father did not want me to leave our home at Franklin, North
Carolina, and come to Georgia, for he had been told Georgia people were
awful mean. There was a tale told us about the Mr. Oglethorpe, who
settled Georgia, bringing over folks from the jails of England to settle
in Georgia and it was said they became the ruling class of the State.
Anyway, I came on just the same, and pretty soon I married a Georgia
girl, and have found the people who live here are all right."
Laney eagerly took advantage of the pause that followed to tell of her
mother's owner. "Mother said that he was an old, old man and would set
in his big armchair 'most all day. When he heard good news from the
soldiers he would drum his fingers on his chair and pat his feet, whilst
he tried to sing, 'Te Deum, Te Deum. Good news today! We won today!'
Whenever he heard the southern armies were losing, he would lie around
moaning and crying out loud. Nobody could comfort him then."
John was delighted to talk about religion. "Yes, mam, after the war,
darkies used to meet at each others' houses for religious services until
they got churches of their own. Those meetings were little more than
just prayermeetings. Our white folks were powerful careful to teach
their slaves how to do the right thing, and long after we were free Mr.
Tommy would give long talks at our meetings. We loved to listen to him
and have him interested in us, for we had never been treated mean like
heaps of the slaves in that neighborhood had.
"One white man in our county needed the help of the Lord. His name was
Boney Ridley and he just couldn't keep away from liquor. He was an uncle
of that famous preacher and poet, Mr. Caleb Ridley. One day when Mr.
Boney had been drinking hard and kind of out of his head, he was
stretched out on the ground in a sort of stupor. He opened his eyes and
looked at the buzzards circling low over him and said, sort of sick and
fretful-like, 'Git on off, buzzards; I ain't dead yet.'"
"The Reverend Doctor George Truett was a fine boy and he has grown into
a splendid man. He is one of God's chosen ones. I well remember the
first time I heard him speak. I was a janitor at the State Normal School
when he was a pupil there in 1887. I still think he is about the
greatest orator I ever listened to. In those days, back in 1887, I
always made it convenient to be doing something around the school room
when time came for him to recite or to be on a debate. After he left
that school he went on to the Seminary at Louisville and he has become
known throughout this country as a great Christian.
"I started teaching in old field schools with no education but just what
our white folks had taught me. They taught me to read and write, and I
must say I really was a mighty apt person, and took advantage of every
opportunity that came my way to learn. You know, teaching is a mighty
good way to learn. After I had been teaching for some time I went back
to school, but most of my knowledge was gotten by studying what books
and papers I could get hold of and by watching folks who were really
educated; by listening carefully to them, I found I could often learn a
good deal that way."
Laney could be quiet no longer. "My husband," she said, "is a self-made
man. His educated brother, Claude, that graduated from Maryville School
in Tennessee, says that he cannot cope with my husband."
John smiled indulgently and continued: "We were in sad and woeful want
after the war. Once I asked my father why he let us go so hungry and
ragged, and he answered: 'How can we help it? Why, even the white folks
don't have enough to eat and wear now.'
"Eleven years ago I rented a little farm from. Mr. Jasper Thompson, in
Jackson County. After the boll-weevil got bad I came to the other side
of the river yonder, where I stayed 7 years. By this time most of the
children by my first two wives had grown up and gone off up north. My
first wife's children were Robert, Ella, the twins, Julius and Julia
Anne, (who died soon after they were grown-up), and Charlie, and Dan.
Robert is in Philadelphia, Ella in Cincinnati, and Dan is dead.
"Fred, George, and Johnny, my second wife's children are all living, but
are scattered in far-off places.
"Everybody was powerful sorry to hear about Lincoln's assassination. At
that time Jefferson Davis was considered the greatest man that ever
lived, but the effect of Lincoln's life and deeds will live on forever.
His life grows greater in reputation with the years and his wisdom more
apparent.
"As long as we were their property our masters were mighty careful to
have us doctored up right when there was the least sign of sickness.
There was always some old woman too old for field work that nursed the
sick on the big plantations, but the marsters sent for regular doctors
mighty quick if the patient seemed much sick.
"After the war we were slower to call in doctors because we had no
money, and that's how I lost my good right eye. If I had gone to the
doctor when it first got hurt it would have been all right now. When we
didn't have money we used to pay the doctor with corn, fodder, wheat,
chickens, pork, or anything we had that he wanted.
"We learned to use lots of herbs and other home-made remedies during the
war when medicine was scarce at the stores, and some old folks still use
these simple teas and poultices. Comfrey was a herb used much for
poultices on risings, boils, and the like, and tea made from it is said
to be soothing to the nerves. Garlic tea was much used for worms, but it
was also counted a good pneumonia remedy, and garlic poultices helped
folks to breathe when they had grippe or pneumonia. Boneset tea was for
colds. Goldenrod was used leaf, stem, blossom, and all in various ways,
chiefly for fever and coughs. Black snake root was a good cure for
childbed fever, and it saved the life of my second wife after her last
child was born. Slippery ellum was used for poultices to heal burns,
bruises, and any abrasions, and we gargled slippery ellum tea to heal
sore throats, but red oak bark tea was our best sore throat remedy. For
indigestion and shortness of the breath we chewed calamus root or drank
tea made from it. In fact, we still think it is mighty useful for those
purposes. It was a long time after the war before there were any darkies
with enough medical education to practice as doctors. Dr. Doyle in
Gainesville was the first colored physician that I ever saw.
"The world seems to be gradually drifting the wrong way, and it won't
get any better 'til all people put their belief--and I mean by
that--simple faith, in the Bible. What they like of it they are in the
habit of quoting, but they distort it and try to make it appear to mean
whatever will suit their wicked convenience. They have got to take the
whole Bible and live by it, and they must remember they cannot leave out
those wise old laws of the Old Testament that God gave for men
everywhere to live by."
Laney had quietly left the room, but as the visitors were taking their
departure she returned with a small package. "This," she explained, "is
some calamus root that I raised and dried myself, and I hope it comes in
handy whenever you ladies need something for the indigestion."
"Next time you come, I hope to have more songs remembered and written
down for you," promised John.