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LI The Colored
Woman at Headquarters 1 WHEN John Brown broke out I was twenty-one years old. So I ain' no young chicken no mo', but I do jus' as much work yet as any of my gran'chil'en. In war-time I worked at the Belle Grove place. Me and my father and four of his chil'en who were small lived right at the yard in a two-story log cabin. Belle Grove belonged to Mr. Cooley, and it was a big farm. Oh, my, yes, sir! Mr. Cooley
owned a
woman and some chil'en, but I was bound. I never was a slave. One week
I'd be
cookin' at the big house, and the next week I'd be a field han'. The
slave
woman and I took turn about, you know. I used to drop the corn when the
men
were planting, and I'd help cuttin' up corn, and when they had the
horse-power
th'ashing I'd take the sacks off and I'd put back the chaff. I would
always
help in harvesting' and such as that, and when they were extry busy at
the big
house I'd put in mo' time there makin' butter, perhaps, and washin' and
doin'
other work that needed doin'. The war
made us
lots of trouble. As I've often said since, I felt as if the world was
comin' to
an end in a short time. We couldn’t understan' what was goin' on. You
could
hear a heap of things, but the poor black people didn’t know — didn’t
know!
Some would say one thing and some another. A great many of the slaves
run off
North, and a great many others were taken up the country by their
masters out
of the way of the army. Often there'd be only a few old ones left to
help on a
place. None of us went away from Belle Grove. We had to stay to keep
everything
together what we could. There was nobody hardly that could be hired to
help
tend the crops, and we jus' raised enough wheat and corn to keep us
goin'.
Sometimes we'd get right smart, and other times the soldiers would get
everything. They would
carry
off considerable outdoor stuff unbeknownst to us, and they would come
into the
house and look around and take what they pleased — victuals, flour,
anything.
We didn’t interfere with 'em. We was skeered and was glad if they took
the
stuff and did us no other harm. Both sides
acted a
good deal alike about stealin' and destroyin', and reely we didn’t know
the
Yankees and the Rebels apart when the war broke out. Toward the end, we
couldn’t hardly tell which from which because the Southerners would
have on old
blue clothes that They'd got off the camp, I suppose. When
Sheridan's
army come to Cedar Crick it looked right frightful, there was so many
men. The
soldiers troubled us a good deal 'fore the head men got here. General
Sheridan
made Belle Grove his headquarters. He was a small man. I used to see
him. There
were tents all over the yard, and some of the scouts slept upstairs in
our cabin.
Oh, my goodness! the soldiers were in and out all the time. I did
washing and
baked bread for 'em, and everything like that, and they paid me. The first
I knowed
on the morning of the battle some soldiers come into our house gettin'
up the
scouts who slept there. Everybody bounced up as soon as they could, and
the
scouts rolled out of the house in a hurry. I run and looked out, and
then I
shut the door. It was already daylight and the fightin' had begun. The
Confederates were drivin' the Union men across the field down below the
house. We kep' as
far back
in our cabin as we could, and we set there not knowin' when we'd be
killed. It
was too late to get to the big house. We was lazy in bed that morning,
and we
had to stay lazy there in the cabin. Some of
the Yankees
got back of a wall side of the Belle Grove house, but Lor! they didn’t
stop
there long. In a little while the guns wasn’t firin' right around us no
mo'. So
I went to the door and looked out. The tents that had been in the yard
were all
gone, and I could see men layin' about over the fields every which way.
The
fields looked jus' like new ground with the stumps on it. After the
armies
got away men began to cl'ar up the wounded. They brought 'em to the big
house
and laid 'em in the yard. I was as crazy as them that was shot, I
reckon. I'd
run to the door and then run back. Soldiers were goin' all the time and
the
ambulances were comin' to get the wounded and take 'em off. Mr.
Cooley's
sister's daughter and I went down the hill right smart with our wooden
buckets
to fetch water. If any of the wounded or the other soldiers asked us
for a
drink as we passed by we gave it to 'em. Some of
the wounded
was still layin' in the yard and out in the lot when the troops come
back that
evening. We'd got news that they were comin', and we had all gone to
the cellar
of the big house. The cellar was where the cookin' was done, and the
rooms down
there were nice and large and had rock walls. I didn’t feel much like
keepin'
quiet when I could hear those wounded men groanin' in the yard, even if
the
battle was goin' on. So I jus' spent my time walkin' from one door to
another
and peepin' out. But the others was settin' down and squattin' in the
corners,
anywheres they thought it was safest. We stayed
in the
cellar till we heard no mo' shootin' or nothin', and then we come out.
There
was Southern infantry in back of the house then makin' for the pike.
The Union
men returned to the yard that night. We went to our cabin to sleep,
but, good
land! we did n 't feel much like sleepin' — we didn’t know what mought
break
up. We sat up long as we could hear any one stirring around. The next morning the wounded was all gone, and we gradually got things straightened out. But we was always mo' or less uneasy and fearful. I was glad when I heard that the war was over. Those was pitiful times — pitiful times! __________________ 1 She lived in a cabin
amid the
farmlands at the end of a rough, crooked lane. There were numerous
children
about the place, and there was much dirt and care-free disorder. A
thin, tall
old woman met me at the door and ushered me into a tiny low-heeled
parlor where
there were draperies at the windows, and a piano and other furniture
more
aspiring than I would have expected. It was in this parlor that I heard
the
woman's story of her war-time trials. |