Anderson Edwards Tells Us What Slavery Was Like
Created | Updated Jun 17, 2018
Let's celebrate 19 June as 'Juneteenth', and call it Freedom Day. We all need freedom – from ignorance, intolerance, fear, and need. Let freedom ring! Here's a voice from the past to help get us started.
Anderson Edwards Tells Us What Slavery Was Like
The following story was told by the Reverend Anderson Edwards to Fred Dibble and Rheba Beehler in Marshall, Texas, somewhen between 1936 and 1938. Fred and Rheba got paid to do this: it was the Depression, and this was how the desperate educated made some money. They were both white, and Rheba was in her early 30s. I know this because I found her on the census record in Beaumont, Texas, for 1940. By that time, she was widowed, had a son and daughter aged 6 and 8, and was living with her mother Minnie Hollensworth.
Rheba and Fred joined a small army of black and white WPA1 emissaries who sought out African Americans in former 'slave states' to get their stories. The narratives belong to the Library of Congress, and thus the world. You can find these voices from the past online at Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938.
You don't have to read modern writers' opinions about the past: you can read the opinions of people who were there. Their opinions weigh more in the scheme of things.
Reverend Edwards was kind enough to share his story about slavery. Warning: It's hair-raising in parts. But human beings need to know these things about each other, so they don't happen again. So read. I've transcribed it so you don't have to mess with OCR.
Anderson Edwards' Story
Interviewers' Notes: Anderson and Minerva Edwards, a Negro Baptist preacher and his wife, were slaves on adjoining plantations in Rusk Country, Texas. Anderson was born March 12, 1844, a slave of Major Matt Gaud, and Minerva was born February 2, 1850, a slave of Major Flannigan. As a boy Andrew would get a pass to visit his father, who belonged to Major Flannigan, and there he met Minerva. They worked for their masters until three years after the war, then moved to Harrison County, married and reared sixteen children. Andrew and Minerva live in a small but comfortable farmhouse two miles north of Marshall. Minerva's memory is poor2, and she added little to Anderson's story.
Anderson Edwards:
My father was Sandy Flannigan and he had run off from his first master in Maryland, on the east' shore, and come to Texas, and here a slave buyer picked him up and sold chances3 on him. If they could find his Maryland master he'd have to go back to him and if they couldn't the chances was good.
Wash Edwards in Panola County bought the chance on him, but he ran off from him, too, and come to Major Flannigan's in Rusk County. Fin'ly Major Flannigan had to pay a good lot to get clear title to him.
My mammy was named Minerva and her master was Major Gaud, and I was born there on his plantation in 18664. You can ask that tax man at Marshall 'bout my age, 'cause he 's fix my 'xemption papers5 since I'm sixty. I had seven brothers and two sisters. There was Frank, Joe, Sandy and Gene, Preston and William and Sarah and Delilah, and they all lived to be old folks and the younges' jus' died last year. Folks was more healthy when I growed up and I'm 93 now and ain't dead; fact is, I feels right pert6 mos' the time.
My missy named Mary and she and Massa Matt lived in a hewed log house what am still standin' out there near Henderson. Our quarters was across the road and set all in a row. Massa own three families of slaves and lots of hosses and sheep and cows and my father herded for him till he was freed. The government run a big tan yard there on Major Gaud's place and one my uncles was shoemaker. Just 'bout time of war, I was piddlin' 'round the tannery and a government man say to me, 'Boy, I'll give you $1000 for a drink of water,' and he did, but it was 'federate money that got kilt, so it done me no good.
Mammy was a weaver and made all the clothes and massa give us plenty to eat; fact, he treated us kind-a like he own boys. Course he whipped us when we had to have it, but not like I seed darkies whipped on other place. The other n**s called us Major Gaud's free n**s and we could hear 'em moanin' and cryin' round 'bout, when they was puttin' it on 'em.
I worked in the field from one year end to t'other and when we come in at dusk we had to eat and be in bed by nine. Massa give us mos' anything he had to eat, 'cept biscuits. That ash cake wasn't sich bad eatin' and it was cooked by puttin' cornmeal batter in shucks and bakin' in the ashes.
We didn't work in the field Sunday but they have so much stock to tend it kep' us busy. Missy was 'ligious and allus took us to church when she could. When we prayed by ourse'ves we daren't let the white folks know it and we turned a wash pot down to the ground to cotch7 the voice 8. We prayed a lot to be free and the Lord done heered us. We didn't have no song books and
the Lord done give us our songs end when we sing them at night it jus' whispering t[s]o nobody hear us.
One went like this:
My knee bones am aching,
My body's rackin' with pain,
I 'lieve I'm a chile of God,
And this ain't my home,
Cause Heaven's my aim.
Massa Gaud give big corn shuckin's and cotton pickin's and the women cook up big dinners and massa give us some whiskey, and lots of times we shucked all night.
On Saturday nights we'd sing and dance and we made our own instruments, which was gourd fiddles and quill flutes. Gen'rally Christmas was like any other day, but I got Santa Claus twict9 in slavery, 'cause massa give me a sack of molasses candy once and some biscuits10 once and that a whole lot to me then.
The Vinsons and Frys what lived next to massa sold slaves and I seed 'em sold and chained together and druv11 off in herds by a white man on a hoss.
They'd sell babies away from the mammy and the Lord never did 'tend12 sich as that.
I 'lieve in that hant13 business yet, I seed14 one when I was a boy, right after mammy die. I woke up and seed it come in the door, and it had a body and legs and tail and a face like a man and it walked to the fireplace and lifted the lid off a skillet of 'taters what sot there and came to my bed and raised up the cover and crawled in and I hollers so loud it wakes everybody. I tell 'em I seed a ghost and they say I crazy, but I guess I knows a hant when I sees one15. Minerva there can tell you 'bout that haunted house we lived in near Marshall jus' after we's married. (Minerva says, 'Deed, I can,' and here is her story16: )
"The nex' year after Anderson and me marries we moves to a place that had 'longed to white folks and the man was real mean and choked his wife to death and he lef' the country and we moved in. We heered peculiar noises by night and the n**s round there done told us it was haunted but I didn't 'lieve 'em, but I do now. One night we seed the woman what died come all 'round with a light in the hand and the neighbors said that candle light the house all over and it look like it on fire. She come ev'ry night and we left our crop and moved away from there and
ain't gone back yit to gather that crop. 'Fore we moved in that place been empty since the woman die, 'cause nobody live there. One night Charlie Williams, what lives in Marshall, and runs a store out by the T & P Hospital git drunk and goes out there to sleep and while he sleepin' that same woman come in and nigh choked him to death. Ain't nobody ever live in that house since we is there."
Anderson then resumed his story:
I 'member when war starts and massa's boy, George it was, saddles up ole Bob, his pony, and lef'. He stays six months and when he rid up massa say, 'How's the war, George?' and massa George say, 'It's Hell. Me and Bob has been runnin' Yankees ever since us lef'.'
'Fore war massa didn't never say much 'bout slavery but when he heered us free he cusses and say, 'Gawd never did 'tend to free n**s,' and he cussed till he died. But he didn't tell us we's free till a whole year after we was, but one day a bunch of Yankee soldiers come ridin' up and massa and missy hid out. The soldiers walked into the kitchen and mammy was churnin' and one of them kicks the churn over and say, 'Git out, you's jus' as free as I is.' Then they ramsacked the place and breaks out all the window lights and when they leaves it look like a
storm done hit that house. Massa come back from hidin' and that when he starts on a cussin' spree what lasts as long as he lives.
'bout four year after that war pappy took me to Harrison County and I've lived here ever since and Minerva's pappy moves from the Flannigan place to a jinin' farm 'bout that time and sev'ral years later we was married. It was at her house and she had a blue serge suit and I wore a cutaway Prince Albert suit and they was 'bout 200 folks at our weddin'. The nex' day they give us an infair17 and a big dinner. We raises sixteen chillen18 to be growed and six of the boys is still livin' and workin' in Marshall19.
I been preachin' the Gospel and farmin' since slavery time. I jin'd the church mos' 83 year ago when I was Major Gaud's slave and they baptises me in the spring branch clost to where I finds the Lord. When I starts preachin' I couldn't read or write and had to preach what massa told me and he say tell them n**rs iffen they obeys the massa they goes to Heaven but I knowed there's something better for them, but daren't tell them 'cept on the sly. That I done lots. I tells 'em iffen they kepps prayin' the Lord will set 'em free. But since them days I's done studied some and I preached all over Panola and Harrison County and I started the Edward's Chapel over there in Marshall and pastored it till a few year ago. It's named for me.
I don't preach much now, 'cause I can't hold out to walk far and I got no other way to go. We has $14.00 pension and lives on that and what we can raise on the farm.
Editor's Note: Wow. What a life they had. After transcribing this, I feel as if I'd been sitting there in the Edwards' farmhouse. I can almost taste the well water. I can feel the heat – somehow, it's summer, and we're glad to be in the shade of the house, and even gladder for the occasional breeze to dry the sweat that's running down your back in rivulets. But the story's so riveting you forget about the heat and the horsehair lumps in the old sofa and the clucking of the chickens in the yard and just concentrate on the voice of the old preacher as he peels back the years and brings out the memories, good and bad. Mrs Edwards rocks in her rocker, nodding occasionally, and you hardly dare to move out of respect for the history they've lived. This, folks, is why we have archives. And libraries. Thank your lucky stars. You've just been privileged to witness someone's personal truth.
'Fannie Nicholson described a variation of the theme: "When de slaves got together an' had prayer and sang, we put large tubs of water outside of de huts to catch de sounds so we wouldn't bother our master or missus."'
Mark Michael Smith, Listening to Nineteenth-Century America, p. 81.9=twice.10Biscuits=quick bread. The deal with biscuits is that they are tasty, but require wheat flour to make. Since wheat is not grown in that region, it was expensive and a bit of a luxury item.11=driven.12=intend.13Also called 'haint', at least where the Editor comes from. Meaning 'haunt' or 'bogle', or as my mountain grandfather said, 'Boogerman'.14=saw.15As do we all, amen, I say.16I detect skepticism on the part of the interviewers. To which we say, 'There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your small-town philosophy.'17I can't find this. I'm guessing it's some kind of party.18=children.19This was a massive accomplishment in the 19th Century.
