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Daugherty, Ethel
The experiences this family had while in slavery were very pitiful. Mrs. Daugherty told me the following incidents as she had heard them from her ancestors.
Her Great Grandmother was a slave in Kentucky and was kept in the house to help with the cooking. The food she received was very good, but to those who were forced to work in the fields the treatment was terrible. They were lined up to wooden troughs, which were filled by pouring all the food in at once in the manner of slopping pigs.
This poor woman had four children sold, leaving her only one son, her youngest. All traces were lost permanently, due partly she thought because as soon as a child was bought, it took the name of the owner, and after a few sales, there was no way of identifying those lost. Many were shipped to different sections of the country and were not told who their parents were.
One incident was told of a mother and son (name not known) who were separated for years. The boy grew up and began keeping company with his mother. This man had a small scar almost invisible, but happened to mention it when his mother realized who he was, and told him the particulars.
Mrs. Daugherty said there was a great many marriages in her race of kin before the Civil War closed. She said many of the well-built girls were taken by the master into his house and kept similar to Mormonism. She blamed this sin of mixed races to slavery but also thought there was still too much of racial inter-marriages to-day, which she could only attribute to lack of self-control or the "devil turned loose."
At a slave sale, the wenches were forced to stand half-dressed for hours while a crowd of rough, drinking men bargained for them examining their teeth, heads, hands etc. at frequent intervals to determine their endurance. At other times the owners of nearby plantations might purchase a bunch of children privately, if he happened to desire them. If the slaves attempted to return to their parents, they were usually severely beaten and a closer watch kept over them the next time.
Mrs. Daugherty's first husband was a Grady. When people would remark that the name sounded Irish, they would be informed that the name had been in the family for generations in fact since slave days.
This lady was very sensible and realized the great wrong that had been done to her race. She herself is very sensitive over the fact that her eyes are blue. Her philosophy, however, is sound that through no fault of hers she is not a full-blood. I have heard her advise her children to, "Stick to their color always." Her maiden name was Taylor, she said there is many Taylors found yet in Kentucky all as she said, "descendants of the white family who bestowed their name on the colored children years ago."
Her stepfather was a mixture of the white, negro and Indian race, his mother being an Indian squaw. When angry he thought he was all Indian.
A fact was given to which they were very sensitive. Mr. Grady's grandmother was forced to live with her master, as a result of this union his mother had very long hair. This was the first time Mrs. Daugherty said she had ever told anyone this. As the older Mrs. Grady always felt very badly about her origin.
At the close of the War, her ancestors were simply turned out to shif for themselves with no help from their old master. Many of them came to Indiana but Mrs. Daugherty is the only one to locate in Jefferson County.
Daugherty, John Jefferson County, Indiana (Grace Monroe)
