This was sent to me by Charlie Cowden. It is one of the most vivid accounts of an individual slave and thus was included here despite it's now politically incorrect, 1933 language.
AUNT NANCY, A FAMILY NEGRO
The following is a description of Aunt Nancy, a negro slave who, came to Tennessee from South Carolina, with Griffith Leonard in 1806. It is written from the viewpoint of John Brandon Cowden, and is excerpted from his book, "Southern Cowdens", published in 1933. John tells how Aunt Nancy raised his mother, Mary Leonard.
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"Aunt Nancy was my mother's old black mammy. She was brought as a slave from Virginia when my grandfather, Dr. Griffith Leonard, emigrated to Tennessee in 1806 with other members of the family and their slaves. She was then married to Uncle Tom, another slave of the family, and was doubtless born about 1780-85. My grandfather was a bachelor when he came to Tennessee, and remained unmarried until he was fifty years of age, when he married Nancy Emmett Porter, a young girl of eighteen, who lived on an adjoining farm. My mother was the first of nine children born of this union; and with an old bachelor for a father and a young girl for a mother, she fell naturally into the hands of Aunt Nancy, the black nurse, who was more experienced. Other children came in quick succession; and, since Uncle Tom and Aunt Nancy had no living children of their own, my mother was taken into their cabin, which stood at the back of the smokehouse about fifty feet, and kept there night and day until she was a large girl. She ever afterwards looked upon this cabin as one of her homes; and they loved her with an affection beyond all understanding today. Uncle Tom was the cotton ginner and wool-carder and spinner, a necessary worker on every plantation in that day. When most all clothing was produced and made at home; and Aunt Nancy was one of the house servants. When the slaves were freed by Lincoln's emancipation proclamation they did not leave the family, but remained until the division of the Leonard estate and financial conditions following the war forced them away. After Uncle Tom's death Aunt Nancy came to live and make her home with my mother. She was given a room in the house at the end of the dining room, which she kept clean and spotless; however, from my earliest recollection of her, she was too old to do any work. On winter nights we children would gather around her large fireplace and listen to her thrilling pioneer slave day stories, among which were the journey from Virginia, the falling of the stars*, The wedding of Marse Griff, the stampede of horses and mules when the Yankee soldiers tried to catch them to take them away, ghost stories, etc. She had all the superstitions of the before-the-war negro, which she scrupulously observed, and many of which she imparted to my mother. I recall, when I was a small boy, often leading my mother to a clear place in the yard, where she could see the new moon clear, for good luck that month, and then she would go back and lead Aunt Nancy to the same place, where she looked through her age-dimmed eyes upon the golden crescent of promise, and thanked the Lord, and I confess to this day, I myself do not enjoy seeing the new moon through brush. Aunt Nancy had a sign and a cure for every evil spirit. She wore brass rings on her fingers to keep off the witches, to which she attributed the rheumatism in her hands. She was too old to do any of the housework or cooking; but there were two items in the culinary department that she always insisted on doing: the cooking of the ashcake and the barbecuing of the game. She made the cornmeal pone, and opening the red hot ashes, she would drop it in and cover it up; and she knew just when to take it out. Better bread has never been baked. I can taste that smoking bread with its pure, pungent ash-lye taste yet. In barbecuing rabbits and other game she hung them on a large iron crane before the fire, over a large pan in which she had a pungent savory basting sauce, the formula for which passed away with her. As she basted the game, and watched over its cooking, she would tell of thus barbecuing wild turkey, deer and bear, which were plentiful in Tennessee when her white folks settled here. When she took the barbecued meat down and placed it on the table, brown as a berry and dripping with gravy, it was a feast for a king, and heaven for a hungry boy like me. When she died I never knew my mother more grieved. As she knelt by the bed in tears and great sorrow, I did not understand her grief then; but now, knowing better the meaning and place of the black mammies of the Old South, I understand. Their unselfish devotion and faithful loyalty call for highest praise and appreciation; and they deserve a higher and more enduring tribute and monument than I can bestow upon them here. When Aunt Nancy was dead, and her things in boxes looked into, there was found a bag containing her burial treasure, consisting of many old cankered coins, which she had kept against that day. She and her like were a part of the glory of the Old South."
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* The 'falling of the star's refers to the great meteor storm of November 13, 1833. There were so many meteors simultaneously in the skies that night that it is said you could read a newspaper by the light. Aunt Nancy told how the slaves were all sure that the end of the world had come.
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Note to Genealogists: Although the above indicates that Dr. Griffith Leonard came from Virginia, in fact he came from South Carolina about 1806. Do not rely on this paper as proof that the Leonards' came from Virginia.