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(Mobile, AL, by Mary A. Poole)
Living in a cottage at 461 N Hamilton St, Mobile, is an old negro woman named Julia Baker, who was born in Richmond, Virginia while her parents were slaves on the plantation of Mr. John Dabney.
Mr. Dabney decided to leave Virginia and move to Alabama, selling some of his slaves and retaining others. Julia says her mother always told her she was just three years old when they left Virginia.
She explained that Mandy Moore was her mother's name and her father's name was Hemming Jordan, that the man who bought slaves from Mr. Dabney refused to sell "Mandy." He did, however, sell her father, Hemming Jordan, so Julia never knew her father or what became of him.
Her mother, Mandy Moore, two brothers and two sisters and she, the baby, came on down to Alabama with Mr. John Dabney, his family, and other slaves. Julia says she never worked in the fields. Her sister and one brother worked on the plantation, the younger brother in and around the gin house. Her job was to look after the small children belonging to the negro family while their parents worked. Her mother always sewed in the big house for the white folks. When the war came and all the slaves were freed, several of them boarded a flatboat and poled it down the river to Mobile. While on this trip they met a gunboat crowded with soldiers who hailed and wanted to know their destination, scaring the Negroes badly, but when it was explained that they were on their way to Mobile, they were permitted to pass.
Julia said Mr. Dabney was a good master and treated his slaves right. She could not give her age, but must have been about eight or ten years old at the time of the surrender. She is still active and takes in washing for a living, has no family, only two grandchildren, who are both married and away from Mobile.
Having been told that she could sing, the writer asked for a song. She replied, "Lor' chile, since ah loses all my teeth ah don't eben try to open mah mouth."
This perhaps accounts for the fact the writer could glean but little information as to her life, religion, or her people.
However, she did say this: "Ef mah brudder war'nt dead he'd give de straight of it all. He knowed all about it."
