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(Mobile, AL. Francois Ludgere Diard, Federal Writers' Project, Dist. 2. January 1937)
In 1830 Colonel Louis De Lage and his wife of Mobile, AL, purchased a negro woman named Letitia Custis, from a man named Ford, who had purchased her from relatives of General George Washington. The purchase was made by Colonel De Lage without seeing the negro woman, as she was still at the Ford home near Mount Vernon in Virginia. Ford came south to Mobile by sailing vessel and sold Letitia by proxy on one of the slave blocks located at that time on the curb of the sidewalk at northeast Dauphin and Royal streets, by placing another negro woman nearly her type and build. When Letitia was shipped south by sailing vessel, Colonel De Lage found he had purchased a woman bordering on forty years, much older than the man Ford had represented her, with part of her left hand burned to a nub in a fall into an open fireplace in childhood. However, Letitia was installed in the slave quarters of the De Lage estate on Spring Hill Road.
Letitia Ford, as the woman was called, claimed she had talked in person in childhood with General George Washington, her mother's master and owner. From 1830 to 1865 Letitia worked faithfully for Colonel and Madam De Lage as a slave during their lifetime, and following the emancipation and close of the Civil War, she still continued to work for his daughter and granddaughter, respectively. Letitia was a remarkable negro woman, and remembered everything and everybody in Mobile and its vicinity from 1830 up to her death in the latter 1890's, as she claimed 108 years of life, having been born in 1790 at Mount Vernon, the home of Washington. Such a wonderful memory had Letitia Ford, that she was called into the courts on many occasions as an authority in both civil and criminal cases. She had witnessed the hanging of Charles Boyington, the boy poet-printer, on February 20, 1833, for the killing of Nathaniel Frost, the visit of Sam Houston to Mobile in the 1830's, and other noted people to Mobile, as well as the happenings during the Civil War around Mobile, and had drank, like other slaves, coffee made from roasted acorns, pea nut shells and the coffee weed, withal. Letitia in her 108 years of life had come in contact with lots more than the average servants.
One day Letitia was called into a civil case presided over by one of the local judges as an authority, because of her wonderful memory. The facts Letitia was consulted on was the location in Mobile of certain people in the 1830's, whose descendants claimed ownership of certain property.
The Judge was so tickled over Aunt Letitia Ford's wonderful memory, that he asked her in a joking way: "Aunt Letitia, you have such a wonderful memory you ought to remember before you were born!"
The jury and spectators in the court room roared with laughter.
"Yes, sur, Jedge, I 'members General George Washing when I was a little gal, he shook mah han', and he say, "Tishe, yo' sartainly can polish de silver", answered Aunt Letitia.
The court room again roared with laughter.
"Well, tell me", said the judge, "do you remember the fall of the Roman Empire?"
"Yes, sur, Jedge, I 'members something drop jus' 'bout dat time," answered Aunt Letitia with all earnestness.
Again laughter ran through the courtroom, and for years after up to her death Aunt Letitia Ford was looked on as something phenomenal.
[Reference: Personal conversation with Letitia as a child, conversations with my mother.]
