Knox Co
From:
Kentucky
KNOX CO.
(Stewart Carey)
Some slaves were owned in Knox Co., most of them being in Barbourville
where they served as house-servants. The negro men worked around the
house and garden, while the women were cooks and maids. The slaves
usually lived in small one-room houses at the rear of their masters
home, and were generally well fed and clothed.
There was some trading of slaves among the Barbourville and Knox County
owners, and few were sold at Public Auction. These public sales were
held on Courthouse Square, and some few slaves were bought and sold by
"Negro Traders" who made a business of the traffic in blacks.
Occasionally a negro man would be sold away from his family and sent
away, never to see his people again.
CLARK CO.
(Mayme Nunnelley)
Most Kentucky superstitions are common to all classes of people because
the negroes originally obtained most of their superstitions from the
white and because the superstitions of most part of Kentucky are in
almost all cases not recent invention but old survivals from a time when
they were generally accepted by all germanic peoples and by all
Indo-Europeans.
The only class of original contributions made by the negroes to our
stock of superstitions is that of the hoodoo or voodoo signs which are
brought from Africa by the ancestors of the present colored people of
America. On the arrival of the negro in America, his child like mind was
readily receptive to the white man's superstitions.
The Black slave and servants in Kentucky and elsewhere in the South have
frequently been the agents through which the minds of white children
have been sown with these supernatural beliefs, some of which have
remained permanently with them. Nearly all classes of superstitions find
acceptance among the negroes. The most widely prevalent are beliefs
concerning haunted houses, weather signs, bad luck and good luck signs,
charm curse and cures and hoodoo signs. Their beliefs that the date of
the planting of vegetables should be determined by the phases of the
moon is unshaken.
CASEY CO.
(R.L. Nesbitt)
While slavery existed in Casey Co., as in other counties of the State,
before the Civil War, there are no negroes living the the county today
who were born into slavery; and very few white people who can remember
customs, incidents, or stories of the old slavery days. It is known that
the first slaves in the county were those brought here from Virginia by
the early white settlers of the county; and that until they were given
their freedom, the slaves were well cared for and kindly treated. They
lived in comfortable cabins on the lands of their owners, well fed and
clothed, given the rudiments of spiritual and educational training,
necessary medical attention in sickness; and it was not unusual for some
slave owners to give a slave his or her freedom as a reward for
faithful or unusual services. If there was any of the so-called
"Underground Railway" method used to get slaves out of the state, as was
the case in many counties, there are no current stories or legends
relative to such to be heard in the county today. It is thought that the
slaves of Casey County were so well cared for and so faithful and loyal
to their masters that very few of them cared to leave and go to
non-slavery states in the North. So there was little, if any, call for
any secret methods to provide for their escape. Even after they were
given their freedom, many slaves refused to leave their masters and
spent the remainder of their lives in the service and as charges of
their former owners. The present generation of course knows nothing of
slavery, and even the older people know only what was told them by the
forebears, and no especially interesting stories or legends are current
in the county today relative to slaves, or the customs of the old
slavery days before the War between the States.
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