Nancy Watkins
From:
North Carolina
By Miss Nancy Watkins, volunteer
Madison, North Carolina
Story of Ex-Slave, Porter Scales
[TR: Date stamp: JUN 1 1937]
Monday, December 19, 1933, the faithful colored friends of Uncle Porter
Scales transported his body from St. Stephen's African Methodist
Episcopal Church located on the Madison-Mayodan highway to a plantation
grave yard several miles east of town, along roads slippery with sleet.
He was buried by the side of his first wife on the 130 acre farm which
Uncle Porter said he bought from Mr. Ellick Llewellyn to raise his
family on and which he later swapped to Mr. Bob Cardwell for a town
house in Pocomo (Kemoca, a suburb from first syllables of promoters'
names, Kemp--Moore--Cardwell--Kemoca). In this town house, Uncle Porter
passed away aged he thought ninety-seven. For a number of years, he had
drawn a pension of $100.00 per year for his services to the Confederate
government in hauling foodstuff from Charlotte, North Carolina to
Danville, Virginia.
As a slave of Nat Pitcher Scales residing in the brick mansion on
Academy Street across from the Methodist church, Porter came to Madison
when ten years of age, and his memory held the development of Madison
from the erection of the churches around 1845 to details like seeing
little Bettie Carter (Mrs. B. Watkin's Mebane) cry from stage fright
and pass up her "piece" at school "exhibition" (commencement). He saw
Madison grow from a tiny trading village with aristocratic slave
holding citizens with "quarters" on their town lots to a town of 1500
with automobiles clipping by to Mayodan, a mill town of 2000, and a
thickly populated though unincorporated country side.
In 1930, Uncle Porter was struck by an automobile, and since he [HW
addition: has] poked his way about town cautiously with his cane, no
longer working as handy man to Thomas R. Pratt's family on the corner
of Academy and Market streets. His slavery home was in a two roomed
(with loft) cabin next door to the house Mr. Pratt built in 1890 when
he moved to Madison from Leaksville. This cabin Col. Gallaway in the
1890's had enlarged to house the Episcopal rector, Mr. Stickney. Uncle
Porter's slave home stands in 1937, occupied by Mr. Pratt's daughter,
Mrs. Pearl Van Noppen and sons.
Uncle Porter was ever very polite and humble, for all his contacts he
thought had always been with the highest of Dan river aristocracy. His
medium, lean body, with a head like Julius Caesar's was covered with
skin of "ginger cake color".
On the Deep Springs Dan River plantation lived Mrs. Timberlake whose
daughter married Mr. Le Seur from an adjoining plantation just across
the Dan river from Gov. Alexander Martin's Danbury plantation. She in
time married Mr. Scales, and as property of this lady, Porter was born
of legally married parents. Porter's brother, Nathan Scales, was given
by his mistress to her daughter, when she married another Le Seur, and
thus he became Nathan Le Seur. Both brothers have descendants in
Madison of a high type of citizenship. Porter, himself was given the
choice by his ole Miss of belonging to either of her two sons, John
Durham Scales or Nathaniel Pitcher Scales. Porter chose Nat Scales as
his young marse and come to Madison to live with him about 1845.
By obeying orders from his marse Nat Pitcher Scales, Porter operated a
train of fifteen wagons loaded with corn for the Confederate cavalry
from Charlotte, North Carolina to Danville, Virginia. Thus a
Confederate soldier, he in his old age received a pension.
Porter said he got lots of practice in managing feed wagons by
"Waggoning in Georgia" for his marster between the two cities, Augusta
and Wadesboro. His master, he said, traded his services to "Dan River
Jim Scales" who "bossed" the teams between Augusta and Wadesboro which
were owned by John Durham Scales and Dan River Jim Scales. These wagons
also carried corn. Nat Pitcher, Porter's master by choice, operated a
store at Wadesboro, Georgia. Uncle Porter's "waggoning in Georgia"
shows Madison's connection with the far south not only through the
Scales family but through other families.
But the great honor of a tobacco country slave was that of being sold
"down south to the cotton country."
So after the war, Porter Scales came back to the Dan river in
Rockingham county, and bought his 130 acres farm from Mr. Alex
Llewellyn. He liked to recount his matrimonial matters except those of
his second wife who married him for a rich nigger widower, and spent
his hard won dollars freely for lace curtains and such to adorn the
town house in "Pocomo" and finally forced him out of the "town" house
into the woodhouse in the yard where he lived some years, dying there.
His church friends took charge of his body and kept it until put away
by the side of his first wife.
She, Martha Foy, he said in 1932 to me, was bought by Dr. Ben Foy of
Madison from Wheeler Hancock of Wentroth. Six of their children are
living near Madison and in West Virginia, Stephen and Lindsay Scales at
the old place down at Deep Springs. He told of "going tuh see" the
attractive Betsy Ann, house girl slave of Mrs. Nancy Watkins Webster
but was "cut out" by Noah Black. Aunt Betsy Ann Black is remembered as
being the superlative obstetrical nurse in homes of the rich about
Madison, and was designated by them as being a "lady" if ever there was
a negro lady. She was never dressed except in "cotton checks". "Being
cut out" thus, Porter cited as evidence of his aristocratic
association: for one of Aunt Betsy's son became a Methodist preacher,
and two of her grandaughters teachers in the public schools of North
Carolina.
Porter told of the white school teacher, Professor Seeker who taught in
the Doll academy, Madison's old "female academy" which still stands
(remodeled since 1900 into a dwelling) on Murphy Street at the 60 foot
deep well in the street, by the old Dr. Robert Gallway house (standing
still in 1937) just south of John H. Moore's five acre homeplace.
Professor Seeker, he said left Madison and went up on Baughn's Mountain
to teach among the Baughns, Lewises and Higgies and Bibsons, pioneer
families of that area. On that May 2, 1932 in his Kemoca yard, Uncle
Porter recited the poem which little Bettie Carter forgot in stage
fright at Professor Seeker's "exhibition" before Professor Jacob Doll
ever started his "female school". All these pupils were pay "scholars".
The free school for Madison, the "old field schoolhouse" was way down
the hill from the old Dr. Smith house near Beaver Island Creek. Only
white folks intimate with itch, head lice and long standing poverty
then sent their children to the "free ole feel schoolhouse".
Porter said as a laborer he helped build a big tobacco factory at Dr.
Smith's old place. By 1880, this factory had been purchased by Madison
negroes as community and fraternal "Hall" for assemblies. It served
thus to 1925 when it was abandoned, and in 1936, it was torn down, the
last of the several large plug tobacco factories operated in Madison
1845-1875 by the Scales, Daltons and Hays.
Porter could name and designate vocationally Madison's early white
residents, and others, too, whom his Marse Nat Scales visited. His
story of some Civil War refugees led to how their slave girl, Rose,
acquired a small farm two miles east of town held to this day (1937) by
her descendants, the Ned Collins family of Madison. Rose acquired the
farm by Kindness to its owners, who willed it to her.
Forced to live in cellars in Petersburg, Virginia, (Mrs. A.R. Holderby,
William Holderby, Miss Fannie Holderby, Mrs. Aiken) because of
bombording Federal shells 1864 came to Madison afflicted with
tuberculosis. Their slave girl was Rose. The whites died except a son,
who became a Presbyterian minister. The whites were buried on a hill
just north of the pioneer Joel Cardwell home (1937 Siegfired Smiths').
Rose was married to Uncle Henry Collins, and they lived on the place of
Mrs. Louise Whitworth and Scylla Bailey. These white women willed their
tiny farm to Rose Collins because of her kindness to them in their old
age.
Next:
William Scott
Previous:
Catherine Scales
