"I was born in Fairfield County, South Carolina, near the town of
Ridgeway. Ridgeway was on the Southern Railroad from Charlotte, N.C. to
Columbia, South Carolina. I was born Oct. 10, 1864. I belonged to Nora
Rines whose wife was named Emma. He had four girls Frances, Ann,
Cynthia, and Emma and one son named George. There was about one
thousand acres of land inside the fences with about two hundred acres
cleared. There were about seventy slaves on the place. My mother and
father told me these things. Father belonged to a man by the name of
John Gosey and mother belonged to ole man Rines. My father was named
Lisbon Magwood and my mother was named Margaret Magwood. They were sold
and resold on the slave auction block at Charleston, South Carolina,
but the families to whom they belonged did not change their names until
mother's name was changed when she married father in 1862.
"There were twelve children in the family, three boys and nine girls.
Only two boys of this family are living, Walter and myself.
"Mother and father said at the beginning of the war that the white
folks said it would not last long and that in the first years of the
war they said one southern soldier could whup three Yankee soldiers,
but after awhile they quit their braggin. Most everything to eat and
wear got scarce. Sometimes you couldn't git salt to go in the
vegetables and meat that was cooked. People dug up the salty earth
under their smoke houses, put water with it, drained it off and used it
to salt rations.
"There came stories that the Yankees had taken this place and that they
were marching through Georgia into South Carolina. They burned
Columbia, the Capitol of South Carolina, and had both whites and black
scared, they were so rough. The Yankees stole, burned, and plundered.
Mother said they hated South Carolina cause they started the war there.
They burned a lot of the farm houses. The army, so my father and mother
said, was stretched out over a distance of sixty-two miles. Jest think
of a scope of country sixty two miles wide with most of the buildings
burned, the stock killed, and nothing to eat. The southern army and the
northern army had marched back and forth through the territory until
there was nothing much left. Where Sherman's army stopped and ate and
fed their horses the Negroes went and picked up the grains of corn they
strowed there and parched and ate them. People also parched and ate
acorns in South Carolina.
"Father and mother got together after the war and they moved to a
widow lady's place by the name of Ann Hunter, near Ridgeway. She was
good to us and we stayed there sixteen years. Ann Hunter had three
sons, Abraham, George and Henry. Abraham went to South America on a
rambling trip. He decided to stay there. He was a young man then and he
married a Spaniard. When he came home to see his mother it was the year
of the earthquake in 1886. He was a grown man then and he brought his
wife and children with him. He had three children, all of them spoke
Spanish and could not understand their grandmother's talk to them. His
wife was a beautiful woman, dark with black hair and blue eyes. She
just worshipped her husband. They stayed over a month and then returned
to South America. I have never seen 'em since or had any straight news
of them.
"Mother and father lived on the farm until they died, with first one
ex-slave owner and another. They said they had nothing when the war
ended and that there was nothing to do.
"I stayed with my mother and father near Ridgeway until I was 21 years
of age. I left the farm then and went to work on the railroad. I
thought I was the only man then. I was so strong. I worked on the
railroad one year then I went to the Stone mountain Rock Quarry in
Georgia.
"I got my hand injured with a dynamite cap after I had worked there a
year and I came home again. I went back to working on the farm as a day
hand. I worked this way for one year then I began share croppin'.
"I farmed ever since I came to Wake County 15 years ago. I farmed on
Mr. Simpkins place one year then Mr. Dillon bought the place and I
stayed there nine more years then I became so near blind I could not
farm. I came to Raleigh to this house four years ago. I have been
totally blind since the fifteenth of last December.
"I married Alice Praylor near Ridgeway when I was 23 years of age. We
had nine children.
"My last marriage was to Mamie Williams. I married her in South
Carolina. We had four children. They are all living, grown and married
off. My chief worry over being blind is the fact that it makes me
unable to farm anymore."