|
|
An aged negress answered the door when I knocked and asked if this was Isabelle, she invited me into her parlor, a tiny room with a rather good-looking brussels rug upon the floor, and panel lace curtains hung at the windows. The walls were hung with enlarged crayon pictures of Isabelle's husband and their sons and daughters; no other pictures adorn the walls. The center is has the old family Bible occupying the place of honor; all the births, deaths, and marriages of the family have been carefully recorded in this book. An album holds next place and contains many old fashioned pictures of her "white folks" and friends of her younger days.
The outside of this little four room house is quite attractive, it was formerly painted white, but not much paint clings to it now, old fashioned green shutters still hang at the windows, a tiny little portice shelters the front door, There is room at one end for a small porch swing to be hung. At the other end an old weather-beaten chair affords a resting place for the caller.
The yard is entirely enclosed by a fancy wire fence, and a concrete wak leads to the porch.
This old woman lives entirely alone in this little cottage which was provided for her many years ago by the will of her old master.
She says she is 87 years old, but circumstances seem to indicate that she is at least 90, she said she was married and had a child about a year old when the war closed in 1865.
Her work as a slave was almost all in the house; she was taught to saw, and had to help make the clothes for the other slaves. She also was a nursemaid for her mistress little children and at one time was hired out to the methodist preacher's family to take care of the children when his wife was ill.
She remembered joining the "white folks" methodist church in old Cambridge and going to church on Sundays and sitting in the Gallery, which was the place reserved for the colored people in that particular place.
On Sunday morning Aunt Cindy got "happy" at the services and began to throw herself about and shout, the white folks on the seats below hurried to get out from under the edge of the balcony for fear Aunt Cindy would lose her balance and fall over the railing to the floor below.
Isabelle is a Firm Believer in "Hants".
When she was a girl the adjoining plantation was owned by her master's brother-in-law, and on this plantation was the big old tobacco factory where the tobacco raised on several neighboring plantations was priced and hung. The negroes on her masters place said this factory was "hanted". None of them would go near this factory after nightfall for when the nights were still and the moon was full, you could hear the ting, ting, ting, of the lever all night long and voices of the slaves crying out and complaining, and you knew there wasn't anybody there at all, jest Hants.
Isabelle was a mid-wife by profession after the war and tells this as one of her experiences.
She was caring for a lady that had just had her second child; they lived in a cottage with a full basement under it.
The father was to take full care of the other child, a little boy, at night, and they were to sleep in the basement. The father and little son tried to sleep in the basement for two or three nights, but the father could not sleep. Something bothered him as if restless spirits were abroad. One morning Isabelle said she was standing by the door when she heard a voice, low and vibrant, saying, "No sleep here. Can't sleep here." No one was there but her and the mother and the two little children, so, of course, she knew it was "hants". This was proved to her satisfaction a few months later. The skeleton of a man was found under the basement floor.
