Ransom Simmons
From:
South Carolina
=S-260-264-N=
=Project #935=
=Hattie Mobley=
=Richland County=
=South Carolina=
=Uncle Ransom Simmons=
=Richland County, South Carolina.=
Uncle Ransom is one of the few remaining slaves who still lives and
whose mind is still clear and active. He has just passed his one-hundred
and fourth birthday, was born in Mississippi, and brought to South
Carolina by his master Wade Hampton, the father of the illustrious
General Wade Hampton, before the Civil War.
When the war broke out and General Wade Hampton went to war Uncle Ransom
cried to be allowed to follow his young master. He went and served as a
body guard. Uncle Ransom learned to read the Bible while attending a
night school held for slaves before freedom, and it was only in recent
years that he was taught to write his name.
This old man lives alone in a shack at Taylor, a little village on the
outskirts of Columbia. He is furnished with all the milk and ice cream
he can eat by the Columbia Dairy. He purchases a little food with the
state pension of twenty-five dollars a year paid to Negroes who served
the Confederacy in some military capacity.
Uncle Ransom says his master was the kindest man in the world, and that
as far as he is concerned, he has never had a worry in his life, and as
he said this, his face radiated with a broad and satisfied smile.
Reference:
Personal interview with Ransom Simmons age 104.
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Alfred Sligh
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Morgan Scurry
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