William M Quinn
From:
Indiana
Federal Writers' Project
of the W.P.A.
District #6
Marion County
Harry Jackson
WILLIAM M. QUINN (EX-SLAVE)
431 Bright Street, Indianapolis, Ind.
William M. Quinn, 431 Bright street, was a slave up to ten years of
age--"when the soldiers come back home, and the war was over, and we
wasn't slaves anymore". Mr. Quinn was born in Hardin County, Kentucky,
on a farm belonging to Steve Stone. He and a brother and his mother were
slaves of "Old Master Stone", but his father was owned by another man,
Mr. Quinn, who had an adjoining farm. When they were all freed, they
took the surname of Quinn.
Mr. Quinn said that they were what was called "gift slaves". They were
never to be sold from the Stone farm and were given to Stone's daughter
as a gift with that understanding. He said that his "Old master paid him
and his brother ten cents a day for cutting down corn and shucking it."
It was very unusual for a slave to receive any money whatsoever for
working. He said that his master had a son about his age, and the son
and he and his brother worked around the farm together, and "Master
Stone" gave all three of them ten cents a day when they worked.
Sometimes they wouldn't, they would play instead. And whenever "Master
Stone" would catch them playing when they ought to have been at work, he
would whip them--"and that meant his own boy would get a licking too."
"Old Master Stone was a good man to all us colored folks, we loved him.
He wasn't one of those mean devils that was always beating up his slaves
like some of the rest of them." He had a colored overseer and one day
this overseer ran off and hid for two days "cause he whipped one of old
Mas' Stone's slaves and he heard that Mas' Stone was mad and he didn't
like it."
"We didn't know that we were slaves, hardly. Well, my brother and I
didn't know anyhow 'cause we were too young to know, but we knew that we
had been when we got older."
"After emancipation we stayed at the Stone family for some time, 'cause
they were good to us and we had no place to go." Mr. Quinn meant by
emancipation that his master freed his slaves, and, as he said,
"emancipated them a year before Lincoln did."
Mr. Quinn said that his father was not freed when his mother and he and
his brother were freed, because his father's master "didn't think the
North would win the war." Stone's slaves fared well and ate good food
and "his own children didn't treat us like we were slaves." He said some
of the slaves on surrounding plantations and farms had it "awful hard
and bad." Some times slaves would run away during the night, and he said
that "we would give them something to eat." He said his mother did the
cooking for the Stone family and that she was good to runaway slaves.
Submitted September 9, 1937
Indianapolis, Indiana
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