Submitted by: Kathryn Seiley for Miss Lucille Branham
The First Memory, Civil War Slave, was put on this website on 11/17/21.
CHAPTER 2
Many visitors would come to see the white folks and I would have the privilege of putting up their horses and shining their shoes and they would tip me with nickels and dimes. Soon I accumulated four or five dollars and I asked my mistress to let me go to Tennessee to see my mother. At last the day came for us to go. “Miss Beckie” gave me my money. She put it in a pair of my pants. There were several white people along and also some colored folks who were going to Tennessee. We camped at a little place call Varnell. Mr. Tom Polk Edmondson bought some whiskey and gave me a drink of it. Finally I got to feeling funny and staggered to the wagon tongue and reached in the wagon for my breeches. I found the breeches, but no money was in them. I don’t know, but I suppose some of the work hands had stolen it. That was the first whiskey I had ever tasted.
When we returned to Georgia “Miss Beckie” asked me did I give my money to my mother? I told her that I lost it or someone had stolen it from me. She said she expected they did.
While I was in Tennessee I would have to go to a little town called Jasper, to get the mail for the white folks. This town was about six miles from the farm where they lived.
There was a colored man on the Tennessee farm who was interested in teaching the colored boys how to read and write. He would make figures and letters on a wooden pad to teach us. One day my mother decided to buy me a book, so she gave me a dime and I went to the post office at Jasper where I saw a good many almanacs on a table. I asked Mr. Jim Owens, the postmaster, to give me one of those books – and he gladly handed me one. I walked away very proud with my book in my hand and a dime in my pocket, thinking about what I would buy. So I bought candy with the dime. When I reached home I told my mother that I gave the dime for the almanac.
I stayed in Tennessee for about six months. While in Tennessee I became very fond of a white fellow by the name of Mr. Bill Bramlett. He would often let me ride his mule to the field. We were both very dear friends. After the surrender I would often visit him while we both lived in Murray County. We continued to be good friends until he died which was about eight or ten years ago.
Mr. Edmondson transferred me back to Murray County to my old home in 1861.
CHAPTER 3
The Chief Vann House Where I Spent My Childhood
The Chief Vann house now has a memorial tablet, which marks the residence of Joseph Vann and reads like this:
“This Tablet marks the residence of Joseph Vann, a chief of the Cherokee Indians, built late in the Eighteenth Century.
“John Howard Payne, illustrious author of ‘Home Sweet Home,’ suspicioned of sedition, was brought to this house, examined and exonerated by the Georgia authorities. Near here stood the first Moravian Mission of the Cherokees.
“This historic spot is marked by the Governor John Milledge Chapter, D.A.R., Dalton, GA., 1915.”
The old Indian or Chief Vann house has a large spacious yard with many beautiful shade trees, and in this yard is said to be a pot of money buried there by the Indians, but no one has been able to locate it. I have played around this yard many a day with my white playmates, Mr. Edmondson’s children and others. The house is now occupied by Mr. John Cox, and owned by Dr. J.E. Bradford. The latter has had the front porch remodeled, both upstairs and down, and the upstairs porch is raised about six or seven inches higher than the former one built by the Indians. The front of the house, which faces the south, has four white columns imitating white marble posts. The door to the entrance of the house has a large arch, hand carved and pegged, which was made by the Indians. The roomy hall is seventeen and a half feet wide with a beautiful hanging stairway, the banisters of which are hand shaped and carved in many beautiful designs, and on which not a nail was used; they are pegged together where needed.
The walls on the outside are sixteen inches wide in which the Indians had secret money drawers that were unnoticeable to any one else. The inside walls are twelve inches of solid brick. All of the brick and material of which the house is made are said to have been sent from England to Savannah and then hauled from Savannah in an oxcart to Spring Place where the house now stands. The fire places are five feet wide and have a hand carved mantel that reaches up to the ceiling or plastering.
The windows are also hand carved and slope in, being thirty-two inches wide, which is a beautiful sight to any natural eye.
The door hinges: The door hinges break in the center and have an extra large brass lift hook.
The basement: The basement has two nice rooms and the one on the west facing the Cleveland road is where John Howard Payne was kept as a prisoner until examined by the Georgia authorities.
The garret: Oh! Up in the beautiful garret, where I was often put in prison, are two beautiful little windows and it is floored with almost one and a half foot plank, plastered with smooth white plastering, and the corners instead of being square are rounding. Each room has a small vacant place, or room, on each side, which is said to have been the Indians’ spying places.
The baseboards: The baseboards in the rooms are made of plank that measure thirty-five inches wide.
A part of the house has been taken away and built back by the white people.
The house: In the dining room was a long table at which about fifteen or twenty could be served.
In those days people used fly brushes, so Mrs. Rebecka had a large one over the table with a great long string that reached to the other end of the dining room and I had to pull the string. Oh! How I would pull and watch the white folks eat. They would eat and sit there and talk until I would get so hungry looking at the food my mouth would water. I always got plenty to eat, but just to stand there and look at the good food would make me hungry.
CHAPTER 4
Mrs. Rebecka’s Sheep
Mr. Edmondson has a cur dog by the name of Watch, which we children did not like; he was a very good dog, too. One day Mr. Westfield gave “Miss Rebecka” a drove of sheep, about fifty, I suppose, so to do injury to the dog. Mr. Edmondson’s children and I took some sheep wool and packed it between the dog’s teeth. Then carried the dog to “Miss Rebecka” Edmondson and told her that the dog had been killing her sheep. She ordered the dog to be killed, believing that he was killing sheep, but the poor dog was innocent. I have thought over and over how bad it was that we told what was not true on the poor dog, and I am compelled to say that I hate to think how bad it was for us to do a trick like that. But you know how boys are.
CHAPTER 5
In 1861
In 1861 I saw a troop of soldiers drilling west of Spring Place, Georgia, near the place where I am now living. That was the first group of soldiers I ever saw.
When I was a boy, and old colored man wanted a white boy and me to get some whiskey for him, as the colored people could not get any whiskey in those days. So Bill Ellis the white boy that went with me, he was about my age, bought the whiskey and had it put in a jug. We started on back, and on our way we had to pass through a place called “the haunted holler.” There we stopped and began to draw us some of the whiskey. We had a bottle but could not see how to pour the whiskey, so we drew it out in our mouths and emptied it into the bottle until we had the bottle full. We then took up our load and began to travel. When I got home and sat down by the fire it made me sick, and “Miss Rebecka” asked me what was the matter, so I told her that I had been to town and some one had shocked me on the shocking machine. She said, “all right, I will see about it,” and Mrs. Scythe Luffman came along and told her that she had seen Bill and me with some whiskey, so she asked me again and I had to tell her the truth. She then asked Bill about it and made it so plain that he had to tell her just how it was. I tell you Mrs. Rebecka was hard to fool, but we sure did fool her about Watch (the dog) killing her sheep.
Published U.S. Legacies June 2004
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