Harriet Ann Daves
From:
North Carolina
N. C. District: No. 2 [320186]
Worker: T. Pat Matthews
No. Words: 725
Subject: HARRIET ANN DAVES
Story Teller: Harriet Ann Daves
Editor: Daisy Bailey Waitt
[TR: No Date Stamp]
HARRIET ANN DAVES
601 E. Cabarrus Street
My full name is Harriet Ann Daves, I like to be called Harriet Ann. If
my mother called me when she was living, I didn't want to answer her
unless she called me Harriet Ann. I was born June 6, 1856. Milton
Waddell, my mother's marster was my father, and he never denied me to
anybody.
My mother was a slave but she was white. I do not know who my mother's
father was. My mother was Mary Collins. She said that her father was an
Indian. My mother's mother was Mary Jane Collins, and she was
white--maybe part Indian. My grandfather was old man William D. Waddell,
a white man. I was born in Virginia near Orange Courthouse. The Waddells
moved to Lexington, Missouri, after I was born. I guess some of the
family would not like it if they knew I was telling this. We had good
food and a nice place to live. I was nothing but a child, but I know,
and remember that I was treated kindly. I remember the surrender very
well. When the surrender came my grandfather came to mother and told
her: 'Well, you are as free as I am.' That was William D. Waddell. He
was one of the big shots among the white folks.
My white grandmother wanted mother to give me to her entirely. She said
she had more right to me than my Indian grandmother that she had plenty
to educate and care for me. My mother would not give me to her, and she
cried. My mother gave me to my Indian grandmother. I later went back to
my mother.
While we were in Missouri some of my father's people, a white girl,
sent for me to come up to the great house. I had long curls and was
considered pretty. The girl remarked, 'Such a pretty child' and kissed
me. She afterwards made a remark to which my father who was there, my
white father, took exception telling her I was his child and that I was
as good as she was. I remember this incident very distinctly.
My mother had two children by the same white man, my father. The other
was a girl. She died in California. My father never married. He loved my
mother, and he said if he could not marry Mary he did not want to marry.
Father said he did not want any other woman. My father was good to me.
He would give me anything I asked him for. Mother would make me ask him
for things for her. She said it was no harm for me to ask him for things
for her which she could not get unless I asked him for them. When the
surrender came my mother told my father she was tired of living that
kind of a life, that if she could not be his legal wife she wouldn't be
anything to him, so she left and went to Levenworth, Kansas. She died
there in 1935. I do not know where my father is, living or dead, or what
became of him.
I can read and write well. They did not teach us to read and write in
slavery days. I went to a school opened by the Yankees after the
surrender.
I went with my mother to Levenworth, Kansas. She sent me to school in
Flat, Nebraska. I met my husband there. My first husband was Elisha
Williams; I ran away from school in Flat, and married him. He brought me
to Raleigh. He was born and raised in Wake County. We lived together
about a year when he died July 1st, 1872. There was one child born to us
which died in infancy.
I married the second time Rufus H. Daves in 1875. He was practically a
white man. He wouldn't even pass for a mulatto. He used to belong to the
Haywoods. He died in 1931 in Raleigh.
I think Abraham Lincoln was a fine, conscientious man; my mother
worshipped him, but he turned us out without anything to eat or live on.
I don't think Mr. Roosevelt is either hot or cold--just a normal man.
AC
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Jerry Davis
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John Daniels
