N.C. District: No. 2
Worker: T. Pat Matthews
No. Words: 398
Subject: HILLIARD YELLERDAY (A SLAVE STORY)
Reference: Hilliard Yellerday
Editor: George L. Andrews
HILLIARD YELLERDAY
1112 Oakwood Avenue, Raleigh North Carolina.
"My mother and father told me many interesting stories of slavery and
of its joys and sorrows. From what they told me there was two sides to
the picture. One was extremely bad and the other was good.
"These features of slavery were also dependent on the phases of human
attitude and temperment which also was good or bad. If the master was
broadminded, with a love in his heart for his fellowman, his slaves
were at no disadvantage because of their low social standing and their
lack of a voice in the civil affairs of the community, state, and
nation. On the other hand if the master was narrowminded, overbearing
and cruel the case was reversed and the situation the slaves were
placed in caused a condition to exist concerning their general welfare
that was bad and the slave was as low socially as the swine or other
animals on the plantation.
"Some owners gave their slaves the same kind of food served on their
own tables and allowed the slaves the same privileges enjoyed by their
own children. Other masters fed their slave children from troughs made
very much like those from which the hogs of the plantation were fed.
There were many instances where they were given water in which the
crumbs and refuse from the masters table had been placed. They gathered
around this food with gourds and muscle shells from the fresh-water
creeks and ate from this trough. Such a condition was very bad indeed."
[HW: begin]
"My mother was named Maggie Yellerday, and my father was named Sam
Yellerday. They belonged to Dr. Jonathan Yellerday, who owned a large
plantation and over a hundred slaves. His plantation looked like a
small town. He had blacksmith shops, shoe shops, looms for weaving
cloth, a corn mill, and a liquor distillery. There was a tanyard
covering more than a quarter of an acre where he tanned the hides of
animals to use in making shoes. There was a large bell they used to
wake the slaves, in the morning, and to call them to their meals during
the day. He had carriages and horses, stable men and carriage men. The
carriage master and his family rode in was called a coach by the slaves
on the plantation. His house had eighteen rooms, a large hall, and four
large porches. The house set in a large grove about one mile square and
the slave quarters were arranged in rows at the back of master's great
house. The nearest cabins were about one hundred yards from it.
"Dr. Jonathan Yellerday looked after slaves' health and the food was
fair, but the slaves were worked by overseers who made it hard for
them, as he allowed them to whip a slave at will. He had so many
slaves he did not know all their names. His fortune was his slaves. He
did not sell slaves and he did not buy many, the last ten years
preceding the war. He resorted to raising his own slaves.
"When a girl became a woman she was required to go to a man and become
a mother. There was generally a form of marriage. The master read a
paper to them telling them they were man and wife. Some were married by
the master laying down a broom and the two slaves, man and woman would
jump over it. The master would then tell them they were man and wife
and they could go to bed together. Master would sometimes go and get a
large hale hearty Negro man from some other plantation to go to his
Negro woman. He would ask the other master to let this man come over to
his place to go to his slave girls. A slave girl was expected to have
children as soon as she became a woman. Some of them had children at
the age of twelve and thirteen years old. Negro men six feet tall went
to some of these children.
"Mother said there were cases where these young girls loved someone
else and would have to receive the attentions of men of the master's
choice. This was a general custom. This state of affairs tended to
loosen the morals of the Negro race and they have never fully recovered
from its effect. Some slave women would have dozens of men during their
life. Negro women who had had a half dozen mock husbands in slavery
time were plentiful. The holy bonds of matrimony did not mean much to a
slave. The masters called themselves Christians, went to church worship
regularly and yet allowed this condition to exist. Mother, father,
sister and I were sent as refugees from Mississippi to N.C. They were
afraid the Yankees would get us in Mississippi. I was only four years
old when the war ended as I was born April 6, 1861 so I do not remember
the trip. We were sent to Warren County to the Brownloe's plantation
where we stayed until the war ended.
"There was a question as to just what Mississippi would do and then
mother said the Doctor feared we would be taken by the Yankees there so
he sent us to N.C. to the above named County. Mother was sent to stay
with Mrs. Green Parrish and she took me with her. Mr. Green Parrish was
gone to the war. In the last of the war, he was wounded and sent home.
While he was recovering I fanned the flies off him. That's the first
thing I remember about the war. When he got well he went back and then
the war soon ended. After the war ended father and the family moved to
Halifax County and worked on a farm belonging to Mr. Sterling Johnston.
I was in Warren County when I first began to remember anything and I do
not have any specific remembrance of the Yankees. We stayed in Halifax
County eighteen years, going from one plantation to another, but we
made no money. The landlords got all we made except what we ate and
wore. They would always tell us we ate ours up. Sometimes we would be
almost naked, barefooted and hungry when the crop was housed and then
the landlord would make us leave. We would go to another with about the
same results.
"There was a story going that each slave would get forty acres of land
and a mule at the end of the war. The Yankees started this story but
the mule and land was never given and slaves were turned out without
anything and with nowhere to go.
"We moved to Wake County and I farmed until 1903. I had not gotten one
hundred dollars ahead in all this time so I got a job with the
railroad, S.A.L. Shops in Raleigh, N.C. and that is the only place I
ever made any money.
"Father died in 1900 and mother in 1923. I worked from 1903 until 1920
with the S.A.L. Railroad as flunkey. I worked as box packer and
machinist's helper. Mother and father died without ever owning a house
but I saved my money while working for the Railroad Company and bought
this lot 157 X 52-1/2 and had this house built on it. The house has
five rooms and cost about one thousand dollars. I've been so of late
years I could not pay my taxes. I am partially blind and unable to work
anymore."