Caretaker, Cornwallis Headquarters
Corner Third and Market Streets
Wilmington, N.C.
"La, Miss Fannie, what you mean askin' me what I knows about slavery!
Why I was bawn yeah's after freedom!" With a sweeping, upward wave of a
slender, shriveled brown arm to indicate the wide lapse of time between
her advent and the passing of those long ago days. The frail, little
body might have been any age between sixty and a hundred; but feminine
vanity rose in excited protest against the implication of age suggested
by the question.
Tillie is one of the landmarks of Wilmington. She was one of the
servants in the house of which she is now caretaker, at the time of the
owner's death, and the heirs have kept her on allowing her to live in
the old slave quarters in the back garden. She sits in the sun on the
coping of the brick wall, or across the street on the low wall of the
grounds around St. James Church. Children and their nurses gather there
on the lawn, and Tillie holds forth at length on any topic from
religion and politics to the cutting or losing of teeth. She makes the
bold statement that she can tell you something about everybody in
Wilmington. That is "eve'body _we_ knows." There is a general
uneasiness that perhaps she can. Little escapes the large, keen, brown
eyes, and the ears are perpetually cocked.
After several conversations in passing, memory was coaxed to the time
when as a _very_ young child she remembered incidents of slave times
which she had heard from her mother.
"My mother belonged to the Bellamys, an' lived on their plantation
across the river in Brunswick. It was the bigges' place anywhere
hereabouts. I was raised on it too. Of co'se it was in the country, but
it was so big we was a town all to ourselves.
"Did any of the colored people leave after freedom? Of co'se they
did'n'. Were'nt no place to go to. None of us was 'customed to anybody
but rich folks, an' of co'se their money was gone. I've heard Mis'
Bellamy tell how her child'en made enough out of potatoes to buy their
clo'es right on that plantation. So we all stayed right there. My
mother brought us all up right there on the plot she'd been livin' on
all the time. When I come along we had plenty to eat. She had a whole
pa'cel of us, and we always had plenty of collards, an' po'k an' corn
bread. Plenty of fish.
"O, yes, stuff was sold. I can remember timber bein' cut, an' our folks
got some wages to buy clo'es. We did'n have no school, but we had a
church. Soon as I was big enough I came to Wilmin'ton to work. I never
has lived with none but [TR: duplicate "but" crossed out] the bes'. My
mother always said 'Tillie, always tie to the bes' white folks. Them
that has inflooence, 'cause if you gits into trouble they can git you
out'. I've stuck to that. I've never had any traffic wid any but the
blue bloods, an' now look at me. I'm not able to work, but I got a home
an' plenty to eat. An' I ain't on no _relief_, an' Tillie can sho' hold
her head up."
N.C. District: No. 2
Worker: T. Pat Matthews
No. Words: 740
Subject: ELLEN TRELL
Person Interviewed: Ellen Trell
Editor: G.L. Andrews
[TR: Date stamp: SEP 10 1937]
ELLEN TRELL
Age 73