FOUR SLAVES INTERVIEWED by MAUDE BARRAGAN, EDITH BELL LOVE, RUBY LORRAINE RADFORD
ELLEN CAMPBELL, 1030 Brayton Street, Augusta, Ga., Born 1846.
Ellen Campbell lives in a little house in a garden behind a picket fence. Ellen is a sprightly, erect, black woman ninety years old. Beady little eyes sparkled behind her glasses as she talked to us. Her manner is alert, her mind is very keen and her memory of the old days very clear. Though the temperature was in the high nineties she wore two waists, and her clothes were clean and neatly patched. There was no headcloth covering the fuzzy grey wool that was braided into innumerable plaits.
She invited us into her tiny cabin. The little porch had recently been repaired, while the many flowers about the yard and porch gave evidence of constant and loving care to this place which had been bought for her long ago by a grandson who drove a "hack." When she took us into the crowded, but clean room, she showed us proudly the portrait of this big grandson, now dead. All the walls were thickly covered with framed pictures of different members of her family, most of whom are now dead. In their midst was a large picture of Abraham Lincoln.
"Dere's all my chillun. I had fo' daughter and three 'grands', but all gone now but one niece. I deeded de place to her. She live out north now, but she send back de money fer de taxes and insurance and to pay de firemens."
Then she proudly pointed out a framed picture of herself when she was young.
"Why Auntie, you were certainly nice looking then."
Her chest expanded and her manner became more sprightly as she said, "I wus de pebble on de beach den!"
"And I suppose you remember about slavery days?"
"Yes ma'm, I'm ninety years old--I wus a grown 'oman when freedom come. I 'longed to Mr. William Eve. De plantachun was right back here--all dis land was fields den, slap down to Bolzes'."
"So you remember a lot about those times?"
She laughed delightedly. "Yas'm. I 'longed to Miss Eva Eve. My missus married Colonel Jones. He got a boy by her and de boy died."
"You mean Colonel Jones, the one who wrote books?"
"Yas'm. He a lawyer, too, down to de Cote House. My missus was Mrs. Carpenter's mother, but she didn't brought her here."