DADDY TOM AND DADDY PRINCE--DEATH OF LITTLE MOTHER SO BELOVED
The farms of the up-country as a rule required few hands, and so each
farmer owned only a few negroes, and, of course, the relations between
master and slave were different from those in the low-country, where
each plantation had a hundred or more negroes, which necessitated
separate villages, where the negroes lived more or less to themselves.
In the up-country it was more like one large family. In my mother’s home
there were three quite remarkable, tall, fine-looking, and very
intelligent Africans who had been bought by her grandfather from the
ship which brought them to this country. Tom, Prince, and Maria--they
occupied an important place in my mother’s recollections of her early
childhood. They had been of a royal family in their own land, and had
been taken in battle by an enemy tribe with which they were at war, and
sold to a slave-ship. No one ever doubted their claim to royal blood,
for they were so superior to the ordinary Africans brought out. They
were skilled in the arts of their own country, and had artistic tastes
and clever hands. Daddy Tom and Daddy Prince told tales of their wild
forests, which the children were never tired of hearing nor they of
telling. Maum Maria made wonderful baskets and wove beautiful rugs from
the rushes that grew along Long Cane Creek. One day as she sat on the
ground weaving a rug which she had hung from a tree, and my mother was
listening to her stories of her home in Africa, the little girl said in
a voice of sympathy: “Maum ’Ria, you must be dreadfully sorry they took
you away from all that, and brought you to a strange land to work for
other people.” Maum Maria stopped her work, rose to her full height--she
was very tall and straight--clasped her hands and said, dropping a deep
courtesy as she spoke: “My chile, ebery night on my knees I tank my
Hebenly Father that he brought me here, for without that I wud neber hev
known my Saviour!” She remained, hands clasped, and a look of ecstasy on
her face, for some time before she sat down and resumed her work, and
the little girl, greatly impressed, asked no more questions that day.
When grandmother died, she left these three free, with a little sum to
be given them yearly; not much, for she had little to leave. Daddy Tom
took his freedom, but Daddy Prince and Maum Maria said they were
grateful to their beloved mistress, but they would rather remain just as
they were; they had all they needed and were happy and loved their white
family, and they did not want to make any change.
My grandfather Pettigrew, with all his charming qualities of wit and
good humor, had no power to make or keep money. And among the few sad
memories my mother had of her childhood was that of seeing her beloved
little mother sitting at the window looking out, while tears coursed
down her cheeks, as she saw the sheriff taking off all their cattle, and
two families of their negroes to be sold!... her husband having gone
security for a worthless neighbor. My mother told it with tears, even
when she was very old, the scene seemed to come so vividly before her of
her mother’s silent grief.
It is curious to me that my paternal grandfather, Ben Allston, also lost
his plantation for a security debt, having signed a paper when he was
under age for a cousin who was in trouble pecuniarily. Grandfather was
advised by a lawyer to contest the matter, as he had been a minor and
it was not valid, but he would not avail himself of that plea, I am
thankful to say, and lost the beautiful and valuable plantation which he
had inherited, Brook Green on the Waccamaw. That is the only point of
similarity between my two grandfathers, however, as they were totally
different types, one Scotch-Irish, the other pure English.
The little Frenchwoman, so beloved by her children, did not live to show
any sign of age, and the memory remained with my mother of her beauty,
her olive skin and black hair, in which no strands of white appeared,
and her graceful, small, active figure and tiny hands and feet. She
always spoke broken English, but, as her husband did not speak or
understand French, she never spoke it with her children through courtesy
to him, and none of them spoke French. Her illness was short and the
family had no idea it was to be fatal, but evidently she recognized it,
for she called my mother and kissed her, and said: “My child, I want to
tell you that you have been my greatest comfort. I want you to remember
that always.”