This is the life story of Barney Stone, a highly respected colored gentleman of Noblesville, Hamilton County seat.  Mr. Stone is near nintey-one years old, is in sound physical condition and still has a remarkable memory.  He was a slave in the state of Kentucky for more than sixteen years and a soldier in the Union army for nearly two years.  He educated himself and taught school to colored children four years following the Civil War.  He studied in 1868, and has been a preacher in the Colored Baptist Faith for sixty nine years, having been instrumental in the building of seven churches in that time.  Mr. Stone joined the K. of P. Lodge, the I.O.O.F. and Masonic Lodge and is still a member of the latter.

This fine old colored man has always worked hard for the uplift and advancement of the colored race and has accomplished much in this effort in the States of Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana.  He, together with his preaching of the gospel, and his lecturing, has followed farming.  He now has a field of sweet corn and a fine, large garden, which he plowed, planted and tended himself and not a weed can be found in either.  He is the only ex-slave now living in Hamilton County, the others all deceased, and is one of three living members of Hamilton county G.A.R. the other two members being white.

Mr. Stone has given to the writer “My Life’s Story”, which he desires to call it, and in this story he pictures to the reader, “sixteen years of hell as a slave on a plantation,” a story which will convince the reader that, even though much blood was shed in our Civil War, the war was a Godsend to the American Nation.  This story is told just as given by Mr. Stone.

MY LIFE’S STORY

“My name is Barney Stone, I was born in slavery, May 17, 1847, in Spencer County, Kentucky.  I was a slave on the plantation of Lemuel Stone (all slaves bore the last name of their master) for nearly seventeen years and was considered a leader among the young slaves on our plantation.  My Mammy was mother to ten children, all slaves, and my Pappy, Buck Grant, was a buck slave on the plantation of John Grant, his Mastah; my pappy was used much as a male cow is used on the stock farm and was hired out to other plantation owners for that purpose and was regarded as a valuable slave.  His Mastah permitted him to visit my mother each week-end on our plantation.

My Mastah was a hard man when he was angry, drinking or not feeling well, then at times he was kind to us.  I was compelled to pick cotton and do other work when I was a very small boy.  Mastah would never sell me because I was regarded as the best young slave on the plantation.  Different from many other slaves, I was kept on the plantation from the day I was born until the day I ran away.