Acie met and married Keziah Wright, who was the daughter of a woman his mother had known in slavery.  Strangely enough they had never met as children.  With his wife he remained in Jefferson County, where nine of their thirteen children were born.

With his family he moved to Jacksonville and had been living here “a right good while” when the fire occurred in 1903.  He was employed as a city laborer and helped to build street car lines and pave streets.  He also helped with the installation of electric wiring in many parts of the city.  He was injured while working for the City of Jacksonville, but claims that he was never in any manner remunerated for this injury.

Acie worked hard and accumulated land in the Moncrief section and lives within a few feet of the spot where his house burned many years ago.  He was very sad as he pointed out this spot to his visitor.  A few scraggly hedges and an apple tree, a charred bit of fence, a chimney foundation are the only markers of the home he built after years of a hard struggle to have a home.  His land is all gone except the scant five acres upon which he lives, and this is only an expanse of broom straw.  He is no longer able to cultivate the land, not even having a kitchen garden.

Kaziah, the wife, died several years ago; likewise all the children, except two.  One of these, a girl, is “somewhere up Nawth”.  The son has visited him twice in five years and seems never to have anything to give the old man, who expresses himself as desiring much to “quit die unfriendly world” since he has nothing to live for except a lot of dead memories.

“All done left me now.  Everything I got done gone—­all ’cept Keziah.  She comes and visits me and we talk and walk over there where we uster and set on the porch.  She low she gwine steal ole Acie some of dese days in the near future, and I’ll be mighty glad to go ever yonder where all I got is at.”

REFERENCE

1.  Personal interview with Acie Thomas, Moncrief Road Jacksonville, Florida

FEDERAL WRITERS’ PROJECT American Guide, (Negro Writers’ Unit)

Martin Richardson, Field Worker
South Jacksonville, Florida
December 8, 1936

SHACK THOMAS, Centenarian

Beady-eyed, grey-whiskered, black little Shack Thomas sits in the sun in front of his hut on the Old Saint Augustine Road about three miles south of Jacksonville, 102 years old and full of humorous reminiscences about most of those years.  To his frequent visitors he relates tales of his past, disjointedly sometimes but with a remarkable clearness and conviction.

The old ex-slave does not remember the exact time of his birth, except that it was in the year 1834, “the day after the end of the Indian War.”  He does not recall which of the Indian wars, but says that it was while there were still many Indians in West Florida who were very hard for him to understand when he got big enough to talk, to them.