*Interview with Ed Craddock,*
*Janitor, Saline County Court House,*
*Marshall, Missouri.*
_Veteran Janitor_
Marshall, Missouri has a life-long negro citizen who was born in
slavery, but was too young to remember actual slave conditions. He is Ed
Craddock, born a few years before the Civil War, the son of slaves owned
by leading pioneer families. Craddock lived through the hard days of
reconstruction. His own father was a school building janitor in Marshall
in the 1870's, and Ed Craddock was apprenticed under his sire, finally,
upon death of the latter, succeeding to the job, which he has held for
forty-seven years. Years ago he married and reared a large family.
Craddock belongs to the Methodist Church, serving as "second
minute-man", which he explains is something like a secretary, and also
belongs to the Colored Masonic Lodge. Craddock's brother is a practicing
physician in St. Louis.
"Stories told me by my father are vivid," Craddock said in an interview.
"One especially, because of its cruelty. A slave right here in Marshall
angered his master, was chained to a hemp-brake on a cold night and left
to freeze to death, which he did. My father said slaves had to have a
pass to go places. 'Patrollers' usually went in groups of three. If they
caught a slave off his plantation without a pass the patrollers often
would flog them."
Craddock relates that his father suffered from chills and fever which,
quinine, the only remedy known then, failed to cure. Someone advised
him, next time the chill came on, to plunge into a deep and cold hole in
the river. Ed says his father, out of desperation, tried the suggested
cure, and it worked, in a way squaring with the modern medical theory of
setting up a counterirritant in certain cases.
Craddock's mother was owned by the family of Marmadukes, one of whom was
an early-day governor of Missouri.