Eugene Wesley Smith
From:
Georgia
EUGENE WESLEY SMITH, 1105 Robert Street, Augusta, Ga., Born 1852
Eugene is 84 years old. He has thin features, trembling lips and a
sparse beard. His skin is a deep brown, lined and veined. His legs
showing over white socks are scaly. His hands are palsied, but his mind
is intelligent. He shows evidences of association with white people in
his manner of speech, which at times is in the manner of white persons,
again reverting to dialect.
Eugene stated that his father was a slave who belonged to Steadman Clark
of Augusta, and acted as porter in Mr. Clark's jewelry store on Broad
Street. His grandmother came from Pennsylvania with her white owners. In
accordance with the laws of the state they had left, she was freed when
she came of age, and married a man named Smith. Her name was Louisa.
Eugene's "Arnt" married a slave. As his mother was free, her children
were free, but Eugene added:
"She had put a Guardian over us, and Captain Crump was our guardian.
Guardians protected the Negro children who belonged to them."
To illustrate that children were considered the property of the mothers'
owners, he added that his uncle went to Columbia County and married a
slave, and that all of her children belonged to her master.
Mr. Clark, who owned Eugene's father, paid him 50c a week, and was angry
when Louisa refused to allow her children to work for him.
"He was good in a way," admitted Eugene, "Some masters were cruel to the
colored people, but a heap of white people won't believe it.
"I was too little to do any work before freedom. I just stayed with my
mother, and ran around. She did washing for white folks. We lived in a
rented house. My father's master, Mr. Clark, let him come to see us
sometimes at night. Free colored folks had to pay taxes. Mother had to
pay taxes. Then when they came of age, they had to pay taxes again. Even
in Augusta you had to have a pass to go from house to house. They had
frolics. Sometimes the white people came and looked at 'em having a good
time. You couldn't go out at night in Augusta after 9 o'clock. They had
a bell at the old market down yonder, and it would strike every hour and
every half hour. There was an uptown market, too, at Broad and McKinne."
Asked about school, Eugene said:
"Going to school wasn't allowed, but still some people would slip their
children to school. There was an old Methodist preacher, a Negro named
Ned Purdee, he had a school for boys and girls going on in his back
yard. They caught him and put him in jail. He was to be put in stocks
and get so many lashes every day for a month. I heard him tell many
times how the man said: 'Ned, I won't whip you. I'll whip on the stock,
and you holler.' So Ned would holler out loud, as if they were whipping
him. They put his feet and hands in the holes, and he was supposed to be
whipped across his back."
"I read in the paper where a lady said slaves were never sold here in
Augusta at the old market, but I saw them selling slaves myself. They
put them up on something like a table, bid 'em off just like you would
horses or cows. Dey was two men. I kin rekellect. I know one was called
Mr. Tom Heckle. He used to buy slaves, speculating. The other was named
Wilson. They would sell your mother from the children. That was the
reason so many colored people married their sisters and brothers, not
knowing until they got to talking about it. One would say, 'I remember
my grandmother,' and another would say, "that's my grandmother," then
they'd find out they were sister and brother.
"Speculators used to steal children," said Eugene. "I saw the wagons.
They were just like the wagons that came from North Carolina with apples
in. Dey had big covers on them. The speculators had plantations where
they kept the children until they were big enough to sell, and they had
an old woman there to tend to those children."
"I was a butler." (A dreamy look came into Eugene's old eyes.) "So I
were young. I saw a girl and fell in love with her, and asked her to
marry me. 'Yes,' she said, 'when I get grown!' I said, 'I am not quite
grown myself.' I was sixteen years old. When I was twenty-one years old
I married her in my father's house. My mother and father were dead then.
I had two sisters left, but my brothers were dead too."
"I quit butling when I got married. They was enlarging the canal here.
It was just wide enough for the big flats to go up with cotton. They
widened it, and I went to work on dat, for $1.25 a day. They got in some
Chinese when it was near finished, but they wasn't any good. The
Irishmen wouldn't work with niggers, because they said they could make
the job last eight years--the niggers worked too fast. They accomplished
it in about four years.
"After working on the canal, I left there and helped dig the foundations
of Sibley Mill. The raceway, the water that run from canal to river, I
helped dig that. Then after that, I went to Mr. Berckmans and worked for
him for fifty years. All my children were raised on his place. That's
how come my boy do garden work now. I worked for 50c a day, but he give
me a house on the place. He 'lowed me to have chickens, a little fence,
and a garden. He was very good to us. That was Mr. P.J. Berckmans. I
potted plants all day long. I used to work at night. I wouldn't draw no
money, just let them keep it for me. After they found out I could read
and write and was an honest fellow, they let me take my work home, and
my children helped me make the apple grass and plum grass, and mulberry
grass. A man come and told me he would give me $60 a month if I would go
with him, but I didn't I couldn't see hardly at all then--I was wearing
glasses. Now, in my 84th year, I can read the newspaper, Bible and
everything without glasses. My wife died two years ago." (Tears came
into Eugene's eyes, and his face broke up) "We lived together 62 years!"
Asked if his wife had been a slave, Eugene answered that she was but a
painful effort of memory did not reveal her owner's name.
"I do remember she told me she had a hard time," he went on slowly. "Her
master and misses called themselves 'religious people' but they were not
good to her. They took her about in the barouche when they were
visiting. She had to mind the children. They had a little seat on the
back, and they'd tie her up there to keep her from falling off. Once
when they got to a big gate, they told her to get down and open it for
the driver to go through, not knowing the hinges was broken. That big
gate fell on her back and she was down for I don't know how long. Before
she died, she complained of a pain in her back, and the doctor said it
must have been from a lick when she was a child.
"During the war there were some Southern soldiers went through. I and
two friends of mine were together. Those soldiers caught us and made us
put our hands down at our knees, and tied 'em, and run the stick through
underneath.
"It was wintertime. They had a big fire. They pushed us nearer and nearer
the fire, until we hollered. It was just devilment. They was having fun
with us, kept us tied up about a half hour. There was a mulatto boy with
us, but they thought he was white, and didn't bother him. One time they
caught us and throwed us up in blankets, way up, too--I was about 11
years old then."
Asked about church, Eugene said:
"We went to bush meetings up on the Sand Hill out in the woods. They
didn't have a church then."
Eugene's recollections were vivid as to the ending of the war:
"The Northern soldiers come to town playing Yankee Doodle. When freedom
come, they called all the white people to the courthouse first, and told
them the darkies was free. Then on a certain day they called all the
colored people down to the parade ground. They had built a big stand,
and the Yankees and some of our leading colored men got up and spoke,
and told the Negroes:
"You are free now. Don't steal. Now work and make a living. Do honest
work, make an honest living to support yourself and children. No more
masters. You are free."
Eugene said when the colored troops come in, they sang:
"Don't you see the lightning?
Don't you hear the thunder?
It isn't the lightning,
It isn't the thunder,
But its the button on
The Negro uniforms!
"The slaves that was freed, and the country Negroes that had been run
off, or had run away from the plantations, was staying in Augusta in
Guv'ment houses, great big ole barns. They would all get free provisions
from the Freedmen's Bureau, but people like us, Augusta citizens, didn't
get free provisions, we had to work. It spoiled some of them. When the
small pox come, they died like hogs, all over Broad Street and
everywhere."
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