*Charley Mitchell, farmer in Panola Co., Texas, was born in 1852, a
slave of Nat Terry, an itinerant Baptist preacher of Lynchburg,
Virginia. Charley left the Terrys one year after he was freed. He worked
in a tobacco factory, then as a waiter, until 1887, when he moved to
Panola Co. For fifty years he has farmed in the Sabine River bottom,
about twenty-five miles southeast of Marshall, Texas.*
"I's born in Virginia, over in Lynchburg, and it was in 1852, and I
'longed to Parson Terry and Missy Julia. I don't 'member my pappy,
'cause he's sold when I's a baby, but my mammy was willed to the Terrys
and allus lived with them till freedom. She worked for them and they
hired her out there in town for cook and house servant.
"They hired me out most times as nuss for white folks chillen, and I
nussed Tom Thurman's chillen. He run the bakery there in Lynchburg and
come from the north, and when war broke they made him and 'nother
northener take a iron clad oath they wouldn't help the north. Durin' the
war I worked in Massa Thurman's bakery, helping make hard tack and
doughnuts for the 'federate sojers. He give me plenty to eat and wear
and treated me as well as I could hope for.
"Course, I didn't git no schoolin'. The white folks allus said niggers
don't need no larnin'. Some niggers larnt to write their initials on the
barn door with charcoal, then they try to find out who done that, the
white folks, I mean, and say they cut his fingers off iffen they jus'
find out who done it.
"Lynchburg was good sized when war come on and Woodruff's nigger tradin'
yard was 'bout the bigges' thing there. It was all fenced in and had a
big stand in middle of where they sold the slaves. They got a big price
for 'em and handcuffed and chained 'em together and led 'em off like
convicts. That yard was full of Louisiana and Texas slave buyers mos'
all the time. None of the niggers wanted to be sold to Louisiana, 'cause
that's where they beat 'em till the hide was raw, and salted 'em and
beat 'em some more.
"Course us slaves of white folks what lived in town wasn't treated like
they was on most plantations. Massa Nat and Missy Julia was good to us
and most the folks we was hired out to was good to us. Lynchburg was
full of pattyrollers, jus' like the country, though, and they had a
fenced in whippin' post there in town and the pattyrollers sho' put it
on a nigger iffen they cotch him without a pass.
"After war broke, Lee, you know General Lee himself, come to Lynchburg
and had a campground there and it look like 'nother town. The 'federates
had a scrimmage with the Yankees 'bout two miles out from Lynchburg, and
after surrender General Wilcox and a big company of Yankees come there.
De camp was clost to a big college there in Lynchburg and they throwed
up a big breastworks out the other side the college. I never seed it
till after surrender, 'cause us wasn't 'lowed to go out there. Gen.
Shumaker was commander of the 'Federate artillery and kilt the first
Yankee that come to Lynchburg. They drilled the college boys, too, there
in town. I didn't know till after surrender what they drilled them for,
'cause the white folks didn't talk the war 'mongst us.
"Bout a year after the Yankees come to Lynchburg they moved the cullud
free school out to Lee's Camp and met in one of the barracks and had
four white teachers from the north, and that school run sev'ral years
after surrender.
"Lots of 'Federate sojers passed through Lynchburg goin' to Petersburg.
Once some Yankee sojers come through clost by and there was a scrimmage
'tween the two armies, but it didn't last long. Gen. Wilcox had a
standin' army in Lynchburg after the war, when the Yankees took things
over, but everything was peaceful and quiet then.
"After surrender a man calls a meetin' of all the slaves in the
fairgrounds and tells us we's free. We wasn't promised anything. We jus'
had to do the best we could. But I heared lots of slaves what lived on
farms say they's promised forty acres and a mule but they never did git
it. We had to go to work for whatever they'd pay us, and we didn't have
nothing and no place to go when we was turned loose, but down the street
and road. When I left the Terry's I worked in a tobacco factory for a
dollar a week and that was big money to me. Mammy worked too and we
managed somehow to live.
"After I married I started farmin', but since I got too old I live round
with my chillen. I has two sons and a boy what I raised. One boy lives
clost to Jacksonville and the other in the Sabine bottom and the boy
what I raised lives at Henderson. I been gittin' $10.00 pension since
January this year. (1937)
"I never fool round with politics much. I's voted a few times, but most
the time I don't. I leaves that for folks what knows politics. I says
this, the young niggers ain't bein' raised like we was. Most of them
don't have no manners or no moral self-respect.
[Illustration: _Charley Mitchell_]
"I don't 'lieve much in hants but I's heared my wife call my name. She's
been dead four years. If you crave to see your dead folks, you'll never
see them, but if you don't think 'bout them they'll come back sometime.
"Two nigger women died in this house and both of them allus smoked a
pipe. My boy and me used to smell the pipes at night, since they died,
and one mornin' I seed one of them. I jus' happened to look out the
window and saw one of them goin' to the cow-pen. I knowed her by her
bonnet.
"They's a nigger church and cemetery up the road away from my house
where the dead folks come out by twos at night and go in the church and
hold service. Me and the preacher what preaches there done seed and
heared them.
"They's a way of keepin' off hants. That's done by tackin' an old shoe
by the side the door, or a horseshoe over the door, or pullin' off part
of the planks of your house and puttin' on some new boards."