The gradual rise from slavery to prominence, the many trials encountered along the road has ripened the always sympathetic nature of Dr. Buckner into a responsive suffer among a suffering people.  He has hope that proper influences and sympathetic advice will mould the plastic character of the Afro-American youths of the United States into proper citizens and that their immortal souls inherit the promised reward of the redeemed through grace.

“Receivers of emancipation from slavery and enjoyers of emancipation from sin through the sacrifice of Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ; Why should not the negroes be exalted and happy?” are the words of Dr. Buckner.

Note:  G.W.  Buckner was born December 1st, 1852.  The negroes in Kentucky expressed it, “In fox huntin’ time” one brother was born in “Simmon time”, one in “Sweet tater time,” and another in “Plantin’ time.”

—­Negro lore.

Ex-Slave Stories
District #5
Vanderburgh County
Lauana Creel

The life story of George Taylor Burns
[HW:  Personal Interview]

Ox-carts and flat boats, and pioneer surroundings; crowds of men and women crowding to the rails of river steamboats; gay ladies in holiday attire and gentleman in tall hats, low cut vests and silk mufflers; for the excursion boats carried the gentry of every area.

A little negro boy clung to the ragged skirts of a slave mother, both were engrossed in watching the great wheels that ploughed the Mississippi river into foaming billows.  Many boats stopped at Gregery’s Landing, Missouri to stow away wood, for many engines were fired with wood in the early days.

The Burns brothers operated a wood yard at the Landing and the work of cutting, hewing and piling wood for the commerce was performed by slaves of the Burns plantation.

George Taylor Burns was five years of age and helped his mother all day as she toiled in the wood yards.  “The colder the weather, the more hard work we had to do,” declares Uncle George.

George Taylor Burns, the child of Missouri slave parents, recalls the scenes enacted at the Burns’ wood yards so long ago.  He is a resident of Evansville, Indiana and his snow white hair and beard bear testimony that his days have been already long upon the earth.

Uncle George remembers the time when his infant hands reached in vain for his mother, the kind and gentle Lucy Burns:  Remembers a long cold winter of snow and ice when boats were tied up to their moorings.  Old master died that winter and many slaves were sold by the heirs, among them was Lucy Burns.  Little George clung to his mother but strong hands tore away his clasp.  Then he watched her cross a distant hill, chained to a long line of departing slaves.  George never saw his parents again and although the memory of his mother is vivid he scarcely remembers his father’s face.  He said, “Father was black but my mother was a bright mulatto.”