This is another in a series
of historical articles on
Anderson County and her people.

Clinton Courier News
August 20, 1981.

BY KATHERINE B. HOSKINS
County Historian

Efforts to document slave life
History of black people told best by themselves

Part I I

Even during the days of slavery the experience of slaves had been recorded in a few instances.

Since that time there have been numerous pen pictures and narratives of old slaves, or their descendants, documented.

One such record coming to the writer's attention seems especially interesting, perhaps because it contains narratives in the actual words of slaves who were still living in 1937-38-39 and who had been slaves in various places within the southeastern part of the United States. Other portions of the volume consist of narratives by descendants of slaves which had been told to them by their parents or grandparents.

The volume is entitled Lay My Burden Down. It is a fold history of slavery, edited by B. A. Botkin and published in 1945. It is a selection of recorded interviews which constituted a portion of the Federal Writers Project. Botkin was chief editor of the writer's unit of the Library of Congress at that time.

The book contains personal narratives of ex-slaves, or their descendants, in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indian Territory, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. In the state of Tennessee, the towns or counties where interviews were held included Caneville, Chattanooga, Davidson County, Decatur, Jackson, Knoxville, Memphis, Sparta, and Wildersville, Murfreesboro and Nashville.

One interview in Knoxville was with a slave who, when he was 8 years old, had been sold to Ben Cowan. Another was with Andrew Moss of Knoxville, an ex-slave who had been born in 1852 and was 85 years old when interviewed in 1937. The Tennessee colony on the Cumberland Plateau was mentioned by one ex-slave who went there after freedom.

The volume is well worth reading, but interesting as it is, it does not contain anything about Anderson County during the days of slavery. And, really, very little has been found in published works about slave life in East Tennessee. So, Anderson County's history of its black citizens becomes subordinate local history to general studies of social history of life in the South during that period.

However, a great many interesting facts about the black population of Anderson County have been gleaned from official court records, deeds, wills, newspapers, personal interviews and other sources. These facts concern persons and accomplishments of which the county may be proud.

To be a slave in Anderson or any other East Tennessee county was vastly different from slave life on a large plantation where a hundred or more slaves lived in the slave quarters. On the small farm, or in the case of black house servants, the relationship of master and slave must have been on an easier footing than where routine and rules had to be established for large numbers of slaves belonging to the same owner.

John H. Garner, who died before 1858, had several slaves. His farm was 400 acres. The settlement of his estate in 1858 showed the names and prices at which some if his slaves were sold. They all brought high prices. Rinda sold for $1,204, Vinny $558 and Mitty and her child brought $1,191. Others sold at from $500 to $1,100.

An interesting sidelight mentioned in the court settlement was that Trigg and Temple, attorneys of Knoxville, were awarded a gee of $350 by court decree. They declined to take more than $250 until the case was completely closed, saying them they would decide if they thought their labor would entitle them to all of the $350.

The following is a portion of an interview with the late Mrs. Louranie McAdoo Weaver a few years before her death. She remembered that Charlie Moore, a former slave, had a cobbler shop for a long time on Hendrickson St. in Clinton about where the W. K. Ghormleys now live.

She remembered when the apartment house located on Moore St. in Clinton, almost straight across the railroad tracks from the Southern depot, was known as the Whitson House, famous for its meals, and that passenger trains going through Clinton would stop at meal time for passengers to go across and eat at the Whitson House.

She said that the first black school in Clinton was in the old Baptist cemetery on Edgewood Drive, in the old, old church building. Early black teachers in the county were John Shelton, a Mr. Hatcher and Spencer Roberts. There was a black school in the community where Mrs. Weaver lived (on Lewallen Rd. near Clinch River just above Moore's Ferry, or Clinchmoore Bridge, but it was discontinued many years ago. Blanche Goode taught there, as well as Blanche Jarnigan before she married a Mr. Hadyn.

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