I recently visited my old home in Prince Edward County, Virginia, after
an absence of forty-four years, and was greatly surprised at the changes
which had taken place during that period. I had much trouble to find
farms which I had knowledge of, because I remembered them only by the
names they were called by in 1849. The owners of them had died or moved
away and others had acquired the lands, changing the names of them,
while other farms had been deserted and allowed to grow up in forests,
so that with a few exceptions the country for miles in every direction
was an unbroken forest of young trees.
Among the many notable changes which have taken place in this part of
the State since 1849, are two or three to which my attention was
particularly directed. The first is the entire change in the method of
travel and transportation of freight and produce between Richmond, the
western portion of the State and the Southern States.
The entire absence of the large number of six-horse teams, in charge of
a colored driver and a water boy, that used to pass up and down the
public road, which ran in front of our old home, and which extended from
Richmond to the Blue Ridge Mountains, was quite noticeable, because that
was the principal method by which freight and produce were carried.
That system of travel and transportation has been superseded by
railroads, and goods are now delivered by the Richmond & Danville
inside of three days after purchase, to any place on that railroad
within two or three hundred miles. This railroad now runs parallel with
the old public road from Richmond to the Blue Ridge Mountains and the
South, and has entirely usurped the trade formerly monopolized by the
old six-horse team system.
Very vividly do I recall the many six-horse teams which used to pass
daily up and down that old road with their great loads of corn, wheat
and tobacco, and return loaded with drygoods and groceries for the
country merchants. I have seen as many as twenty of these teams pass our
old home in one day. The teamsters, though slaves, were absolutely
reliable and therefore, were intrusted with taking orders and produce
from country storekeepers to the wholesale merchants in Richmond and on
their return they would bring back the drygoods and groceries that had
been ordered by the country dealers living along the road. Usually these
wagoners went in squads of four or five and camped at the same camping
grounds. The owners of these teams would come along about once a month
paying and collecting bills.
These great wagons, covered with white canvas to protect the freight
they bore, sometimes carrying from seven to ten thousand pounds and each
drawn by six fine blooded horses, made to me at least, a grand and
impressive picture, as the procession moved along the old road in front
of our place. This picture was heightened by the picturesqueness of the
colored driver in charge and his peculiar and characteristic dress. As
he rode along on the saddle horse of the team he seemed conscious of the
great responsibility resting upon his shoulders, and to the
simple-minded colored people along the road he was simply an uncrowned
king. When the wagons stopped at the camping grounds, located at regular
intervals along the road, the colored people of the neighborhood flocked
around to get a glimpse of this great man.
Although the freight was very valuable sometimes and often carried great
distances, robbing or molesting these trains was something unheard of.
They were perfectly secure while on the move or in camp, even in the
most sparsely settled districts, because there were no robbers or gangs
of thieves organized in those days to plunder passing teams. It is quite
doubtful whether the same would be true nowadays if a return to the old
method of transportation was resorted to.
The country merchants in those days were contented and happy, I suppose,
to be able to get their orders filled and goods delivered inside of from
thirty to ninety days.
This great public highway, which was kept in such splendid condition in
1849 and prior thereto, and which had so many beautiful camping grounds
where wood and water were convenient and not far apart, with little
villages every ten or fifteen miles, where there were inns for
travellers to rest and feed their horses has become a thing of the past
along with that old system of travel and transportation. I have seen
many men, called travelers in those days, pass over that old road going
to, or from the South or West on horseback, with large saddlebags
strapped behind them armed with a horse pistol, which was about twenty
inches long and as large as an old flint musket. Usually they carried a
pair of these pistols hanging down in front of them, one on each side
of the horse’s neck.
That was the usual way of travel in those days when persons wished to go
a long distance, particularly to the West or South. Signs of this old
road can yet be seen in places, but the road has been almost deserted,
and has grown up in forest.
In front of our old place, and in fact from Miller’s Store, a little
village with a post-office, to Scofields, a similar place, a distance of
ten miles, that old road was nearly on a straight line, was broad and
almost level, and was the pride of that community; but when I saw it in
July, 1893, and attempted with a horse and buggy to pass over it for a
distance of a few miles I found it impassable. From John Queensbury’s
Public Inn and Camping ground to our old home, a distance of three miles
the old road has been entirely obliterated.
This road was kept in such a fine condition up to 1849 that many tobacco
raisers used to put rollers around one or two hogs heads of tobacco,
weighing about a thousand pounds each, then attach a pair of shafts and
with a single horse draw them to Richmond, a distance of sixty miles.
I readily recall many different kinds of travel and trade which once
thrived on this public highway. Richmond at that date being a great pork
market and the most convenient one for the pork raisers of West Virginia
and the Eastern portion of Kentucky, and this old public highway being
the most direct route for travel from the West to Richmond, these hog
raisers, in order to reach a market for their hogs, were compelled to
drive them on foot over the road a distance of over two hundred miles. I
have seen as many as three hundred hogs in one drove pass our old home
in one day going towards Richmond. Usually these hog drivers brought
along several wagon loads of corn to feed their hogs while en route.
They could and did travel from ten to twelve miles a day, and from early
fall to spring each year many thousand hogs were driven into Richmond
over this public highway.
Besides supplying Richmond with pork, which in turn, furnished other
places, especially in the South, these hog raisers sold hogs to planters
on the road, who had failed to raise enough pork for home consumption.
Pork was the principal meat diet at that time for both white and black,
there being few sheep or beef cattle killed for table use, and then
always for the table of the master classes.
To advise a farmer now living in West Virginia or Eastern Kentucky, who
owns a hundred head of marketable hogs, to drive them two hundred miles
to market, as his father had done, would be considered by him very
foolish advice. But such was the only way of transportation of that kind
of product prior to the year 1849, of which the writer has personal
recollections.
These cases mentioned show clearly what railroads have done, not only
for Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, but the whole country and
especially the Southern portion of it.
Richmond was also the principal slave market and this public highway the
most direct route to the Southern cotton fields, especially those of
Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee, and Negro
traders passed over it many times each year with gangs of slaves bought
at the public auction block in Richmond. I have seen many gangs of
slaves driven over this old road. Usually, the slave men were
handcuffed together with long chains between them extending the whole
length of the gang, which contained as many as forty, sometimes, or
twenty on each side of the chain marching in line. The women and small
boys were allowed to walk unchained in the line while the children and
the lame and those who were sick rode in wagons. The entire caravan
would be under the charge of the owner and a guard of four or five poor
white men armed each with a rawhide whip, with which to urge the gang
along and to keep them in line or at least in the road.
It was not the custom, neither was it to the owner’s interest, to treat
these slaves brutally, for, like mules brought up to be carried to a
better market, or where larger prices prevailed, it was absolutely
necessary that they should not show any signs of ill-treatment; and I
cannot recall ever having seen the punishment of one of them. Of course
these Negro traders could not allow grown men to march in line
unchained, particularly those who did not want to go, because they might
become unmanageable, run away, and escape capture, thus causing the loss
of the price paid for them, or at least give considerable trouble. As a
general rule, many of these slave men were sold in the first place on
account of insubordination--had resisted their masters, or had beaten
their overseers, and such slaves were considered by their owners
dangerous fellows on the farm with others, especially young men who
might follow such examples. Then again many slaves were sold because
they had committed murder or some other crime not deserving the death
penalty, and there were no penitentiaries for slaves.
These and many other recollections of my early life crowded upon me as I
looked upon the old familiar scenes. The absence of familiar faces was
no less remarkable than the changes in lands and improvements, for I
found only one man I had seen before. There were two others whom I knew
in that vicinity and who had never left it, but I failed to find them at
their homes. I visited the home of Mrs. Sarah Perkinson, widow of Lemuel
Perkinson, mentioned in a previous chapter, but did not see her, as she
had left a few days prior on a visit to relatives in North Carolina. I
was really sorry I did not see her, for I could have obtained much
valuable information from her, as she had remained in that community
ever since the year 1849, and could have given me an interesting history
of past events. She still owns the old Perkinson farm consisting of
about two thousand acres. The old frame mansion which was built before
1841 was still there and in a fair state of preservation, and without
any apparent change since I last saw it forty-four years ago. I found
old man, Major Perkinson, one of Mrs. Perkinson’s former slaves,
occupying the Great House and tilling the land. There were about fifty
acres under cultivation; the balance had grown wild. The old Major who
is now ninety years of age and quite active, remembered me very well and
proceeded to treat me like a southern gentleman of the old school would
have done. I next visited our old home which was one mile away. Here I
found the great house, also a frame building, built in the summer of
1842, in a good state of preservation, and as I went through every room
I am sure that there had been but little change in its structure. I also
visited the spot where my mother’s cabin stood, and then how forcibly
those lines of the poet touched my mind, “Childhood days now pass before
me, forms and scenes of long ago,” etc. The quarters for the colored
people had disappeared here as well as those at Mrs. Perkinson’s place.
This place is now owned by a Yankee lady in New York, and of the six
hundred acres under fence when we left it in 1849, only four acres are
now in use, the balance having grown up in forest.
I visited several places of interest, and among them was Green Bay,
about two miles north of our old home. Here I met Mr. Thomas Rowlett,
the station agent, and one, Mr. Scott, and a merchant named Richardson,
whose father I remembered. All three of these men are direct descendants
of the “Blue Bloods,” and I found them still defending the right. I was
greatly impressed by a remark made by Mr. Richardson; he said, “We are
now, and will be for the next twenty years, suffering from the curse of
slavery; it cursed the slave, it cursed his master, it cursed the land.”
He then called attention to the thousands of acres gone wild, too poor
to produce anything, and the owners were unable to bring them to a
rentable condition, and the colored people could not make a living on
them and of course, left the country in search of work. He said one
could buy land anywhere in that community for three dollars per acre. Of
course it will cost at least ten dollars more to bring it up to a fair
state of cultivation. When I saw these fine lands in 1849, tilled by
slave labor, and kept in the very highest state of cultivation, and on
which splendid crops of tobacco, corn and wheat were raised, I could not
have realized that in the space of forty-four years these same lands
would be a wilderness, the owners scattered, and even the former slaves
gone. But so it is, and the names of the people who owned them
forgotten. The only men I found who had remained and retained not only
the old master’s name, but the farm as well, were the Scotts, consisting
of the father, two sons, Charles and Thomas, and a daughter, Mrs.
Lefere. They had acquired the old homesteads of their old masters in
each case and occupied the great house built of brick over sixty years
ago, and still in good condition. These farms were adjoining each other
and located on the Pike Road leading to Farmville, and near Sandy River
Church. I remembered these farms and the Scotts very well, and also the
church where my master used to go to worship quite often, and allowed
his slaves to go occasionally on Saturday afternoon. Why I recall this
so vividly is, because Sandy River was a clear deep stream with an
abundance of fish, and while the older ones attended divine service I
went fishing.
The Scotts, Col. Scott, Charles and Thomas A. Scott, brothers, were
considered the most aristocratic people in that community, and owned
quite a large number of slaves and treated them humanely, a fact which
the father of the Scotts now owning the lands will testify to. Old
masters are dead, and their children, having sold the old farms and
scattered, their former slaves now own these estates and are industrious
and thrifty farmers. They had the best crops I saw in that country, with
good stock in splendid condition. I found the wife of Thomas Scott and
Mrs. Lefere splendid housekeepers and entertained as none but Virginia
ladies can. Each had one or more grown daughters, well educated,
refined, and very pretty girls. I confess my surprise at finding such
intelligent and fashionably dressed girls in that community.