“I almost ran the business in the ground after I had been carrying the slaves across for nearly four years.  It was in 1863, and one night I carried across about twelve on the same night.  Somebody must have seen us, because they set out after me as soon as I stepped out of the boat back on the Kentucky side; from that time on they were after me.  Sometimes they would almost catch me; I had to run away from Mr. Tabb’s plantation and live in the fields and in the woods.  I didn’t know what a bed was from one week to another.  I would sleep in a cornfield tonight, up in the branches of a tree tomorrow night, and buried in a haypile the next night; the River, where I had carried so many across myself, was no good to me; it was watched too close.

“Finally, I saw that I could never do any more good in Mason County, so I decided to take my freedom, too.  I had a wife by this time, and one night we quietly slipped across and headed for Mr. Rankin’s bell and light.  It looked like we had to go almost to China to get across that river:  I could hear the bell and see the light on Mr. Rankin’s place, but the harder I rowed, the farther away it got, and I knew if I didn’t make it I’d get killed.  But finally, I pulled up by the lighthouse, and went on to my freedom—­just a few months before all of the slaves got their’s.  I didn’t stay in Ripley, though; I wasn’t taking no chances.  I went on to Detroit and still live there with most of 10 children and 31 grandchildren.

“The bigger ones don’t care so much about hearin’ it now, but the little ones never get tired of hearin’ how their grandpa brought Emancipation to loads of slaves he could touch and feel, but never could see.”

REFERENCES

1.  Interview with subject, Arnold Gragston, present address, Robert Hungerford College Campus, Eatonville (P.O.  Maitland) Florida

(Subject is relative of President of Hungerford College and stays several months in Eatonville at frequent intervals.  His home is Detroit, Michigan).

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

Pearl Randolph, Field Worker
Jacksonville, Florida
December 18, 1936

HARRIETT GRESHAM

Born on December 6, 1838, Harriett Gresham can recall quite clearly the major events of her life as a slave, also the Civil War as it affected the slaves of Charleston and Barnwell, South Carolina.

She was one of a, group of mulattoes belonging to Edmond Bellinger, a wealthy plantation owner of Barnwell.  With her mother, the plantation seamstress and her father, a driver, she lived in the “big house” quarters, and was known as a “house nigger.”  She played with the children of her mistress and seldom mixed with the other slaves on the plantation.

To quote some of her quaint expressions:  “Honey I aint know I was any diffrunt fum de chillen o’ me mistress twel atter de war.  We played and et and fit togetter lak chillen is bound ter do all over der world.  Somethin allus happened though to remind me dat I was jist a piece of property.”