Lauana Creel deposited five texts of her interview with Robert J. Cheatham in the the WPA files. Robert came to Indiana with his parents after they were freed. His mother had died around forty years before the interview, though his father lived to be quite old. At the time of the interview, Robert was living with his second wife in a small apartment at 415 South Linwood Avenue in Evansville. Although an invalid, he believed that he and his wife would not be left to suffer from either hunger or cold weather. His ill health, though, had brought them poverty. At one time he and his wife had owned a house on Linwood Avenue, but they lost it and had to move to the small apartment in the black Children’s Day Nursery.
Robert was born in Henderson County, Kentucky, on the farm of Dr. Henry H. Farmer, and was known as Bobby Farmer in his childhood. After the war ended, his name was changed to Robert J. Cheatham, which also was the name of his father and his father’s master. Slaveholder Cheatham had brought his slaves with him from Virginia when he settled in Kentucky. Robert’s father, “a full-blooded Negro,” was only four years old then, but he often told tales of the journey from Virginia. His father became overseer of slaves on the Cheatham place and married Mary Farmer, who was held by Dr. Farmer. He was allowed to spend some time with his wife on Farmer’s farm, but he was not allowed to live with his family until after the close of the Civil War.
Robert said that his father was a tenderhearted overseer. In fact, he said, “My father was a bum overseer” and gave the following paraphrased account as illustration: Slaveholder Cheatham was a wealthy man who had accumulated his fortune through the sale of slaves. Each year he returned to Virginia and bought slaves to bring back to Henderson County, Kentucky. On one particular trip, he took a large wagon train along the rough wilderness road between Virginia and Kentucky. Six covered wagons carried provisions and furnished shelter for Cheatham and his party of slave dealers. On the return trip, they were accompanied by nearly a hundred black slaves, overseen by Robert’s father. This was the first trip Robert’s father had made along this route since his childhood, when he was brought with his parents to Kentucky in the same kind of wagon train. Now overseer of Robert Cheatham’s slaves, he nearly was overcome by his feeling of importance, according to Robert.
Often long stretches of the rough road had to be improved by the slaves before the wagon train could continue, and the party of slaves and slave dealers camped many nights on the long trip. Every night when the train stopped to make camp, one slave, Kezziah, appeared restless. He dreaded what was in store for him in Kentucky. The last night they camped in Virginia, he seemed especially restless. The following night they camped in Kentucky near a white settler’s cabin nestled on the side of a hill, and the white settler visited slaveholder Cheatham and his party. Since provisions had become scarce, the party stayed another day and night hunting and preparing food. Before leaving, Robert’s father and some of the slaves were sent to divide meat with the white settler and purchase meal with which to make bread.
Several days after reaching Cheatham’s farm, Robert’s father, as overseer, was busy telling the new slaves what was expected of them and finding a place for them to live when he noticed that Kezziah, the man who had seemed reluctant to leave Virginia, was missing. After several days, an older slave told Robert’s father that Kezziah, half-starved, was hiding in a big haystack in a nearby field. “Take him food and water,” said Robert’s father, which the old slave did for several days. Then Robert’s father told the old slave to tell Kezziah that the owner intended to set fire to the haystack that night, and the old slave believed him. Late that night, after Robert’s father had gone to bed in his room in the big house, there was a loud rap on the door. Opening the door, Robert’s father found Kezziah standing beside the old slave. To spare Robert’s father of any blame, Kezziah told the owner that on his way back to Virginia he had stopped to visit the white settler they had met on the trip to Kentucky, and there the old slave had caught up with him and brought him back. That night Kezziah and slaveholder Cheatham became better acquainted. “What did he care for the loss of a haystack? There was plenty hay in the barns,” explained Robert.
Robert said that Dr. Farmer, his master, was good to his slaves. He claimed that “Not a stroke was given in anger by my master to any slave.” Still, although Farmer was kind to him and his relatives, and although his childhood days were “passed amid laughter and singing of songs,” he said he was glad that young blacks no longer had to look forward to a life of slavery. Some slaves, though, did not leave Farmer’s farm after the war. For example, Robert said, “My grandmother was set free by Dr. Farmer when she was sixty years old, but she never would leave her old home, preferring to stay there and do housework rather than leave her friends.”
Slaveholder Farmer neither bought new slaves nor sold his slaves, because he did not want to separate families. He was proud that all of his slaves were descendants of his father’s slaves and that all were pure black. Since Farmer was a practicing physician as well as a landowner, he provided his slaves with good medical care. He also educated them. According to Robert, Farmer said, “You colored boys and girls must learn to read and write no matter what powers object. Your parents and your grandparents were taught to read and write when they belonged to my forefathers, and you young children have to learn as much.” Robert said, “We read the Bible until the pages became dog-eared and the leaves fell from their binding.”
About religion and freedom, Robert said, “My relatives were religious and were never refused the privilege of serving God. The Negro preachers preached freedom into our ears, and our old men and women prophesied about it. We prayed, and our forefathers offered prayers for 275 years in American bondage that we might be given freedom. The white man and the Negro man need to be friends. Abraham Lincoln was the agent of the true and living God, and there have been many other agents given to a trusting people in their hours of need.”
According to Robert, “Dr. Farmer wasn’t treated exactly fair. After being so careful that all his slaves were taught to read and write, he was cheated out of their services on many occasions through their knowledge. The slaves were required to carry passes when outside of their owner’s sight. These passes were signed by their masters.” Many of Farmer’s educated slaves, however, forged their passes and escaped to northern states. Robert said they got away with it because “so few slaves were good penmen.” He claimed that is why so many slaves were denied an education: “They wanted freedom at any cost. Many of them lived to regret escaping, as they knew little about taking care of themselves or transacting business. They necessarily became the prey of swindlers and cheats.”
Robert told the following story as an example of an educated slave who escaped: He said that everything was astir on Dr. Farmer’s plantation one autumn morning in 1850, for Jim, a strong plowman and general laborer on the plantation, was missing. Jim was smart, too, for no other young slave in that part of the country could read the Bible, storybooks, and letters as well as Jim could, and his writing was as good as slaveholder Farmer’s. What’s more, Jim was always a leader at the dances and other affairs held in the slave quarters.
Jim’s parents grieved because they knew that Jim, who could copy his master’s writing, had written his own pass and was on his way to Canada. They also feared because they knew the harsh punishment given to fugitive slaves if they were caught. For days and nights a posse of armed men, both whites and blacks, scoured the country searching for Jim, but they never found him. Only after the slaves were freed did they learn of his whereabouts. Robert explained that “After the Civil War, Jim came back to Kentucky and married one of his cousins. They spent some time at Evansville, but several years ago decided to go back to Canada, where Jim had entered land. His friends often gathered at his cottage while he was a resident of Evansville and enjoyed hearing him relate how he wrote his own pass into a land of freedom. Dr. Farmer lost many valuable Negroes through their ability to read and write, but was never sorry when he learned that they were doing well for themselves in a free state. His will made by himself and signed by his wife gave the promise of freedom to all slaves they possessed at the death of the master and mistress, but some of the Negroes just couldn’t wait and passed themselves from one state into another by counterfeited passes.”
Robert recalled an occasion when he escaped some swindlers around the close of the Civil War: “Several of my uncles and cousins had enlisted as Union soldiers and hadn’t returned from the war. One day another slave boy whispered to me to ‘Come down by the old cotton barn tonight.’ Along with several of the young Negroes, I went to the place that night. A fine-looking white man was talking to the slaves when I got down there. He was telling them that a rich man in a northern state had put up a large amount of money to spend on educational material for the Negro youths. ‘All you have to do is sign these papers, and the books will be sent to you.’ While we went up to sign the papers, the stranger stood by his saddle. I said to my cousin, ‘Hold the torch close, Johnnie; I want to read this paper.’ Johnnie held the torch, and I read not an order for books, but a paper of indenture calculated to bind each of us to the services of some rascal. When we refused to sign the papers, the man galloped his horse away, and we never heard from him again. That partially explains our longing for books.”
Dr. Farmer had an old Bible in which he kept the birth records of every member of his family and every black child born on his farm. The old Bible proved useful when Robert applied for an old-age pension. Robert was unable to prove the date of his birth, so his wife made a trip to Kentucky, where she found two of Dr. Farmer’s daughters, Sarah Farmer and Honor Farmer Davies, still residing at the old Farmer home place. They still had the Bible and found the record of Robert’s birth. The Bible, which for more than two hundred years had been in the Farmer family, was taken to the Vanderburgh County courthouse in Evansville to establish Robert’s birth date. The copy made to accompany the application for pension was accidentally destroyed, though, and again Robert’s wife had to go back to Kentucky to get proof of his birth. This time she brought back a notarized certificate signed and sworn to by Honor Davies; however, evidence from the Bible was required, so his wife had to make another trip to Kentucky to get the Bible.
Robert claimed that he was not superstitions and did not believe in spells or supernatural powers, but he had stories of such things told by other blacks. Though he discounted the tales, he claimed he wanted to keep the folklore alive as long as possible. Robert especially kept alive family legends and recalled a number of stories told by his parents. For example, his father, overseer on the Cheatham plantation, told him the following story:
Father said he had made the rounds of the fields and had come back to the big house to tell Marse Bob that everything was in order: the children had been put to bed, the farm implements stored away for the night, the horses all fed, and not a slave was missing. Then he stood near the steps of the back veranda and talked to Marse Bob and the missus for a few minutes. A number of Union soldiers were camped about three miles from the Cheatham farm on the old fairgrounds.
It was father’s duty to report to Marse Bob if any of the slaves were missing. There was some danger that they would run away to war or to freedom by the Underground Railroad. Father had a room to himself at the big house, where he was very comfortable when his work was finished. That night he asked for permission to visit Marse Cheatham’s daughter, who had married and kept house with her husband several miles from the old Cheatham home. Marse Cheatham allowed him to make the visit, so he mounted his horse and started on his way.
The road he had to travel led him by the fairgrounds, and as he passed, he was hailed by one of Marse Cheatham’s slaves that he had seen only a few hours earlier in the evening. “What are you doing here, Bert!” said Father. “We have joined the Union Army,” Bert said, and then, “Bobby, I want you to steal Lucy for me tonight. She is my lawful wedded wife, and I can’t go away and leave her in bondage.” Father was afraid to steal Lucy. He knew Marse Cheatham would have no mercy if he ever found out the truth, but Bert begged and cried until Father said he would get her if possible. He turned his horse back toward Marse Bob’s home and tethered him below the slave cabins.
Lucy was a pretty mulatto girl about twenty years old. She sewed for the Cheatham family and was allowed to visit her mother every evening at the slave quarters. Father went down to her mother’s cabin. A candle was burning on the table inside, and he could see the old woman and Lucy at work on a patchwork quilt. He waited a long time before Lucy got up and started home. When she got out of sight of her mother’s cabin, he grabbed her and ran to his horse. “Keep quiet, Lucy; I’m stealing you for Bert,” he said. He took her down by the lane and told her to wait for him there. Soon he came back with one of Marse Cheatham’s fastest mares saddled for the flight. Before long, Lucy was given over to her husband at the Union camp, and Bert was a happy man.
When Father started back home, he heard the thunder of galloping hoofs on the boardwalk that was built from the landing place on the Ohio River up Alvis’s Hill and out to the fairgrounds at Henderson, Kentucky. Father knew then that Lucy had been missed, so he loosed her saddle and let it fall by the side of the road; and giving Lucy’s horse a hard lick with the quirt, he turned his own horse toward young missus’s home and galloped away. Young missus was always glad to see any of the slaves from home, so she and young marse set supper on the table and talked while he ate.
Father said he was sleepy and tired, so he was given a pallet in the bedroom with the master and mistress. He slept but little; he was so worried about stealing Lucy. A good slave who had been taught to sew and do housework was well worth a thousand dollars, and he knew who was guilty.
Early in the morning he went back to the Cheatham home. All the slaves, women and children, had gathered together in the yard. “They goin’ hang you, Bobby,” said one of the girls. “Why are they going to hang me?” asked Father. “For stealing Lucy!” several voices declared. “Is Lucy gone?” asked Father. He put the whip to his horse and hurried away. He soon overtook the searchers. “Where have you taken Lucy?” yelled the master, and my father saw he had a long rope slung across the pommel of his saddle.
Father said that he knew nothing about the affair and led the posse to the home of his young mistress. She, of course, testified that he had spent the night at her home, and he was allowed to join the searching party looking for Lucy. The horse had gone home without a saddle, and Father discovered the saddle and called the attention of the other searchers that Lucy’s horse had surely come unsaddled. Father’s horse was showing signs of fatigue, and that night Marse Bob Cheatham gave a fine horse to Father for his very own. Lucy made her way into the northern states after being concealed by the Union soldiers for several months, and after the Civil War ended, she and her husband returned to Henderson. They often visit friends at Evansville, but Father never divulged his part in the stealing of Lucy.
Family ties are held sacred to the Negro as to the white man. Husbands are loyal to their wives and children. Although for hundreds of years it had been the privilege of the masters to separate families, it was a cruel practice and caused much heartache among the slaves.
Another family story, actually a story within a story, involves the night that Robert was born. Robert swore that the story is true. He said that Dr. Farmer, the slaveholder, told him part of the story, and Vinson, the captive, told him the rest of it after the Civil War:
My parents said I was born on a very stormy night while rain and hail was falling, and thunder and lightning made everybody afraid to stick their heads outside the door. The Fisher boys and the Vinson boys had been given their freedom. They had worked in Indiana and several other states and had accumulated money enough to lease a farm near Anthoston in Henderson County, Kentucky. Their farm and cabin home was only three-fourths of a mile from Dr. Farmer’s home, where I was born. When the old midwife and the nurse left our house, they told Dr. Farmer they heard running horses and believed some devilment was afoot. Early in the morning, Dr. Farmer sent some of the slaves over to the Vinson place, and they came back and reported that the door was standing open and everybody was gone. Also they said that the bolt had been broken.
Dr. Farmer was a leader among men, and he soon gathered up a searching party and started out in search of the slaves. They were traced to Tennessee, but there their trail was lost, and they were never heard of again until after the close of the Civil War. After the close of the war, Vinson came back and told the story of his kidnaping. It is, as I remember, like this:
My brother and I were reading and talking to Joe Fisher when somebody knocked at our door. When we opened the door the storm was so bad we could only see a few feet outside the cabin. We told the stranger to come in out of the storm. He walked in, and we saw he was a white man. Soon there was another knock. We was scared to open the door again, and in a few minutes the door was battered against by a big piece of log, and the wooden bolt gave way. There was three of us, all without guns or any other weapons, while the four white men were armed, so all we could do was to go with them. They took us to the traders’ yard in Tennessee, where we were put up in a sort of barracks or slaves’ pen to be sold also. “Who will buy this young man? He’s as strong as an ox, healthy and smart. He’s a left-handed fiddler!” Soon a purchaser came and bought me, then bought one of my brothers, but sold him within a few hours. I never met either my brother nor my friend again.
My new master started out with a wagon train toward the South. We had only struck camp one night when my new master met a number of Union soldiers. The captain of the Union encampment ordered his men into action. My new master was scared almost to death and ran away as fast as his horse could run, leaving wagons, provisions, and slaves to the Union soldiers. We slaves joined the Union forces, and I fought until I received my honorable discharge and was a free man again.
Vinson, the left-handed fiddler, fiddled in Tennessee and Kentucky for public dances, barbecues, and public gatherings for many years. His only sorrow was being separated from his companions. His lease had run out on his land in Henderson County, but the wide world has much to offer to the free man, and he lived to enjoy many years of freedom. Only by chance did he meet the Union soldiers; otherwise, he would have been taken to the South to become a bonded slave. His kidnapers profited by the adventure. They got the $900 that the captives brought at auction and went on their way unmolested. No amount of pleading, no proof of freedom, would have touched the hearts of the slave traders; only the accidental skirmish between the wagon train and the Union soldiers gave him back his manhood and his freedom. He always hoped that some similar occurrence had saved his companions, but he never learned about it if such was the case.