“How do you know you got religion?”

“Because I know my sins are forgive”.

“How do you know your sins are forgiven?”

“Because I love Jesus and I love everybody”.

“Do you want to be baptized?”

“Yes sir.”

“Why do you want to be baptized?”

“Cause it will make me like Jesus wants me to be”.

When several persons were ‘ready’, there would be a baptism in a nearby creek or river.  After this, slaves would be permitted to hold occasional servives of their own in the log house that was sometimes used as a school.

Mrs. Scott remembers vividly the joy that she felt and other slaves expressed when first news of their emancipation was brought to them.  Both she and her mistress were fearful, she says; her mistress because she did not know what she would do without her slaves, and Anna because she thought the Union soldiers would harm Mrs. Dove.  When the chief officer of the soldiers came to the home of her mistress, she says, he demanded entrance in a gruff voice.  Then he saw a ring upon Mrs. Dove’s finger and asked:  “Where did you get this?” When told that the ring belonged to her husband, who was dead, the officer turned to his soldiers and told them that they should “get back; she’s alright!”

Provisions intended for the Confederate armies were broken open by the Union soldiers and their followers, and Anna’s mother, to protect her master, organized groups of slaves to ’tote the meat from the box cars and hide it in dugouts under the mistress’ house’.  This meat was later divided between Negroes and whites.

A Provost Judge followed the advance of the army, and he obtained a list of all of the slaves held by each master.  Mrs. Dove gave her list to the official, who called each slave by name and asked what that slave had done on the plantation.  He asked, also, whether any payment had been made to them since the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed, and when answered in the negative told them that ’You are free now and must be paid for all of the work you have done since the Proclamation was signed and that you will do in the future.  Don’t you work for anybody without pay’.

The Provost Judge also told the slaves that they might leave if they liked, and Anna was among those who left.  She went to visit the husband of her mother in Charleston.  With her mother and five other children, Anna crossed rivers on log rafts and rode on trains to Charleston.

Elias Mumford was Anna’s step-father in Charleston, and after spending a year there with him the entire family joined a colonizing expedition to West Africa.  There were 650 in the expedition, and it left in 1867.  Transportation was free.

The trip took several weeks, but finally the small ship landed at Grand Bassa.  Mumford did not like the place, however, and continued on to Monrovia, Liberia.  He did not like Monrovia, either, and tried several other ports before being told that he would have to get off, anyway.  This was at Harper Cape, W. Africa.