When we were ill on our plantation, Dr. Wallace, a relative of Master McNeal, took care of us.  We were always taught to fear the Yankees.  One day I was playing in the yard of our master, with the master’s little boy.  Some Yankee Soldiers came up and we hid, of course, because we had been taught to fear the soldiers.  One Yankee soldier discovered me, however, and took me on his knee and told me that they were our friends end not our enemies; they were here to help us.  After that I loved them instead of fearing them.  When we received our freedom, our master was very sorry, because we had always done all their work, and hard labor.

Geo. H. Conn, Writer
Wilbur C. Ammon, Editor
C.R.  McLean, District Supervisor
June 11, 1937

Folklore
Summit County, District #5

ANNA SMITH

In a little old rocking chair, sits an old colored “mammy” known to her friends as “Grandma” Smith, spending the remaining days with her grandchildren.  Small of stature, tipping the scales at about 100 lbs. but alert to the wishes and cares of her children, this old lady keeps posted on current events from those around her.  With no stoop or bent back and with a firm step she helps with the housework and preparing of meals, waiting, when permitted, on others.  In odd moments, she like to work at her favorite task of “hooking” rag rugs.  Never having worn glasses, her eyesight is the envy of the younger generation.  She spends most of the time at home, preferring her rocker and pipe (she has been smoking for more than eighty year) to a back seat in an automobile.

When referring to Civil War days, her eyes flash and words flow from her with a fluency equal to that of any youngster.  Much of her speech is hard to understand as she reverts to the early idiom and pronunciation of her race.  Her head, tongue, arms and hands all move at the same time as she talks.

A note of hesitancy about speaking of her past shows at times when she realizes she is talking to one not of her own race, but after eight years in the north, where she has been treated courteously by her white neighbors, that old feeling of inferiority under which she lived during slave days and later on a plantation in Kentucky has about disappeared.

Her home is comfortably furnished two story house with a front porch where, in the comfort of an old rocking chair, she smokes her pipe and dreams as the days slip away.  Her children and their children are devoted to her.  With but a few wants or requests her days a re quiet and peaceful.

Kentucky with its past history still retains its hold.  She refers to it as “God’s Chosen Land” and would prefer to end her days where about eighty years of her life was spent.

On her 101st birthday (1935) she posed for a picture, seated in her favorite chair with her closest friend, her pipe.

Abraham Lincoln is as big a man with her today as when he freed her people.