“RECOLLECTION IS THE ONLY PARADISE FROM WHICH WE CANNOT BE TURNED
OUT.”
To the aged, it is a delightful refuge. I found this especially true in
the case of Aunt Gaines Williams, whom I visited May 16, 1911.
She was living with her youngest daughter, Mrs. Sarah Northington, on
Esq. James H. Achey’s farm. Not until I began, several years ago, to
interview these faithful old colored representatives of antebellum
times, did I know how their minds were stored with rich recollections.
I was anxious to talk with Aunt Eliza, because she had been in touch
with the Carr family all her life, and her daughter had been the wife
of the late Rev. Altheus Carr.
[Illustration: Aunt Eliza Gaines Williams. Mother of five generations
of her family.]
Aunt Eliza was born in 1828, as the property of Major James Norfleet,
a prominent citizen of Robertson county, who owned large possessions
on Sulphur Fork Creek; his homestead site being now owned by Greer
Brothers, a mile or two southeast of Port Royal. At her birth, Major
Norfleet gave her to his daughter Louisa, who named her for a favorite
schoolmate, Mary Eliza Wheatley, but for short they always called her
Eliza. Her mind seemed to dwell first, on her white people, of whom she
spoke as follows:
“My young Mistress, Miss Louisa Norfleet, married Mr. Abraham Gaines,
Mr. Billie Gaines’ father, and lived where Mr. Ed. Bourne now lives,
in the village of Port Royal. When Mr. Billie Gaines was a few months
old his mother went to Mr. Sam Northington’s to spend a few days, and
while she was there she ate something that disagreed with her, and died
suddenly from congestion of the stomach.
“I had a baby child nearly the same age of hers, and I nursed them both
at my own breast. That has been sixty odd years ago, but I grieve for
her till yet, for she was good to me. I’m trying to be ready to meet
her. Mr. Billie Gaines does not forget me; he comes to see me, and
sends me a present now and then, and so does Mr. Frazier Northington.
“I was the mother of fourteen children by my first husband, Wiley
Gaines, and there is something in my family that very few people live
to see, the fifth generation. My oldest daughter, Annie, married
Henry Fort, Sister Margaret Fort’s son; their oldest daughter,
Margaret, married Gabe Washington, and their daughter, Amanda, has
grand-children. While I was talking about my white folks, I forgot to
tell you they were kin to the ‘big folks,’ the Bakers, the Dortch’s,
and Governor Blount. These three families lived out on Parson’s Creek,
and Major Baker gave the land on his place for that great camp ground,
called Baker’s Camp Ground. Lor, the good old times the people used to
have at the Baker’s camp meetings. You could hear them shouting for
miles! The little church wasn’t much larger than a family room, but
they had tents all along the creek bottom near the big Baker spring,
and held the meetings two or three weeks at a time. Brother Horace Carr
enjoyed these camp meetings; I’ve heard him tell of some of the big
sermons old Dr. Hanner, Dr. West, and others used to preach there, but
somehow he was partial to Red River Church, above all the rest. It was
through his influence that I, and a host of others joined Red River,
and then when we were freed, and the Lord blessed us with a church of
our own, we followed him to Mount Zion.
“If everybody that Brother Horace influenced to be Christians here on
earth are with him in heaven today, he has a glorious throng around
him. I will never forget the last time I saw him. I heard he was
sick, and I went over and carried him a lunch basket of nice things to
eat. The weather was warm, and he was able to bring his chair out and
sit in his yard. He had dropsy and did not live very long after that.
He talked of heaven most of the time; he would clap his hands and say:
‘I’m nearing my Father’s house,
Where many mansions be,
Nearer the great white throne,
My people are waiting for me.’
“I used to go to Brother Horace’s prayer meetings that he held around
at night in homes that permitted him, and one night he called on me to
pray in public. I was confused, and did not say but a few words, but
he told me that a few from the heart were worth ten thousand from the
tongue. When I told him good bye, the last visit I made him, he held my
hand a long time, and pointed toward heaven and said, ‘In the name of
our Lord, we must set up our banner. Set it high, and never look down.’”
* * * * *
After the first talk with Aunt Eliza, I made a second visit, the same
week, for the purpose of taking her picture, but after reaching her
home a rain storm came on suddenly, and we could not get the sunlight
necessary to picture making. She had been advised by telephone that we
would be there, and was nicely dressed for the occasion. Strange to
say, she was eighty-two years old, and had never had a picture taken.
We succeeded next day however, in securing a very good one.
On my second visit to her she met me at the door in her characteristic
pleasant manner and said:
“I’ve been studying a heap about what you said and read to me the other
evening when you were here, and I told my daughter that I believed the
Lord had directed you to write this history of my people, and their
early struggles. If somebody does not take it up, the old heads will
all soon be gone, and there will be nobody left to tell the story.”
Among the older members of Mount Zion Church who have aided me
materially in securing facts concerning its early history, I would
mention Dan and Jerry Fort. While neither of them were charter members,
they have been prominently identified with the church for many years.
They have seen it rise from the little box house, with its seventy
unlettered members of forty-three years ago, to a reasonably well
educated membership of something over three hundred.
Crude and humble as that first church building was, I have heard it
said that Uncle Horace on preaching days would pause on the hillside
before entering, and praise God for the privileges he enjoyed. It
seemed that a new heart was in his bosom and a new song was on his
lips. He loved the little house of worship as though it had been handed
down to him as a present, direct from heaven.
Uncle Horace was instrumental in organizing two other churches besides
Mount Zion, Antioch, near Turnersville, in Robertson county, and
Nevil’s Chapel, near Rudolphtown, in Montgomery. Along with prominent
mention of the great Christian leader of his people, I must not omit
due tribute to some of his followers; principal among whom was Uncle
John McGowan, a member of Mount Zion Church forty-two years, and all
the time leading a life worthy of emulation.
Uncle John was born on what was known as the George Wimberly place
near Rossview, in Montgomery county, in 1822. He was the property of
Miss Katherine Wimberly, who married Mr. Milton Bourne, brother of the
late Mr. William Bourne, of Port Royal, Tenn. Mr. Milton Bourne owned
and settled the present homestead site of Mr. John Gower, of Port
Royal. After living happily there for a number of years, he became
financially embarrassed, and was forced to sell some of his most
valuable slaves. Among them, in young manhood’s prime, was Uncle John,
who, in no spirit of bitterness, often referred to his sale as follows:
“A large block, or box, was placed in the front yard for us to stand
on, that the bidders might get a good look at us. The bid opened lively
when I was put up, for I was considered a pretty likely man, as the
saying went. When the bidding went way up into several hundred dollars,
I was knocked off to Mr. Lawson Fort. I was glad of that, for I had
lived near him and knew him to be a good man. I hadn’t long settled
my mind down on having a good home the balance of my life, when up
comes somebody and told me Mr. Fort didn’t buy me, he was just bidding
for Mr. Patrick McGowan. ‘My feathers fell,’ as the saying is, for I
didn’t know how me and an Irishman I didn’t know anything about were
going to get along together. But it so happened that we got along fine;
while his ways were a little different from what I had been used to
with Mr. Bourne and the Wimberleys, I soon found him to be a man that
would treat you right if you deserved it. He had his own curious way of
farming, and no matter what price was paid for tobacco, he would not
let a plant grow on his place. He had a very good little farm joining
the Royster place, and raised more potatoes than anybody in that whole
country.
“I have heard him tell often of letting Elder Reuben Ross, the great
Baptist preacher that came to this country from North Carolina over a
hundred years ago, live in a cabin in his yard till he could arrange
to get a better home. Elder Ross had a large family, and Mr. McGowan
took some of them in his own house. He was kind to strangers, and never
turned the needy from his door.
“I must tell you of a whipping I got while I belonged to Mr. Milton
Bourne, that I did not deserve, and if I had the time to go over again,
I would whip the negro who caused me to get it. There was a still house
on Red River, not far from Mr. Sugg Fort’s mill, it was long before
Mr. Fort owned the mill; Mr. Joe Wimberly owned and operated the still
house. In that day and time, the best people of the land made whiskey;
it was pure, honest whiskey, and did not make those who drank it do
mean things, like the whiskey of today. Mr. Bourne had hired me to Mr.
Wimberly to work in the still house, with a lot of other boys, about my
age--along about nineteen and twenty years old. We were a lively set of
youngsters, and laid a plan to steal a widow woman’s chickens one night
and have a chicken fry. We took a solemn pledge just before we started,
that we would never tell on each other, if the old lady suspicioned
us. Well we stole them, and one of the boys, Bob Herndon, who had been
raised to help his mammy about the kitchen, was a pretty good cook, and
he fried them. I think it was the best fried chicken I ever put in my
mouth. A day or two went by, the still house shut down, and they put
me to work in the field. Corn was knee high, I was chopping out bushes
in a field near the river, when I saw Mr. Wimberly’s overseer come
stepping down the turn row like he was mad as a hornet. I knew him so
well, I could tell when he was mad, as far as I could see him. My heart
began to beat pretty fast, as he asked about the chickens. I told him I
did not know a thing about them, but when he began to tell things that
really took place, I knew some one had given us away. He got out his
rope and tied me to a hickory sapling, and said: ‘Now John, I’m going
to give you a little dressing off for this, Bob Herndon has let the cat
out of the wallet; of course he is the biggest rascal of the gang.’
Every now and then he’d stop, and ask me if I was ready to own up, but
he soon found I was not, and turned me loose to chopping bushes out of
the corn again. About twenty years after that, I met that same overseer
at the mill one rainy day; he was older, and I reckon his heart had
softened, and we laughed and talked over that chicken fry, and what it
cost me. It was the first and last dishonorable scrape I ever got into.”
[Illustration: Uncle John McGowan, the great Broom Maker.]
Uncle John was twice married, and the father of several highly
respected sons, and daughters, several of whom still survive him. His
second son by his first marriage, Rev. Burnett McGowan, is a Baptist
minister of some prominence, and owns a nice little home near Adams,
Tennessee. Uncle John was an expert broom maker, and during the last
twenty years of his life he made a circuit of certain sections of
Robertson and Montgomery counties about three times a year, delivering
his brooms to his old customers, who would use no other make but “The
John McGowan brand.” They were honest brooms, and lasted twice as long
as the factory made ones. He had a business way of distributing broom
corn seed among his customers at planting time, and after the corn was
harvested, he would follow the crops, and make up the brooms on the
shares.
He was so polite and pleasant that his friends, both white and colored,
made him welcome in their homes free of charge, a week or ten days
at a time during the broom making season. He was a fine judge of
human nature, and often discussed in a very original manner the
characteristics of the families with whom he stayed. After a short
illness from the infirmities of old age, he died at the home of his
son, Rev. Burnett McGowan, August, 1910. He was laid to rest at the old
E. L. Fort homestead, with impressive ceremonies by Benevolent Treasure
Lodge No. 7, of which he had long been an honored member.