When interviewed, George Fortman was blind and feeble. Though a former slave, he said that no black blood ran “through his veins.” His mother was part Native American, and his white master, Ford George, was his mother’s father as well as his father. According to the interviewer, “The face of George Fortman registered sorrow and pain; it had been hard for him to retell the story of the dark road to strange ears.” Although the George family never sold slaves or separated black families, George remembered slave auctions where blacks were stripped of their clothing to exhibit their bodies. He recalled seeing many boats loaded with slaves on the way to slave markets, and some of the George slaves were employed as pilots on the boats. George himself held a number of positions on boats, including roustabout, cabin boy, cook, and pilot.
Too young to fight in the Civil War, George stayed home and worked during the war. He said there was plenty of wild game on the plantation, and the hunting season was always open. He recalled seeing many wolves, wild turkeys, catamounts, and deer near the Grand River. He said, “Pet deer loafed around the milking pens and ate the feed from the mangers.”
At the time of the interview, George, a devout Christian, had lived in Evansville for thirty-five years, but he had had business connections there for sixty-two years. For eleven years he worked as a janitor at Lockyear Business College. He lived in a room at Bellemeade Avenue and Garvin Street and from there often walked to Lincoln High School, where he enjoyed watching and listening to students playing about the school. “They are free,” he said. “They can build their own destinies; they did not arrive in this life by births of unsatisfactory circumstances. They have the world before them, and my grandsons and granddaughters are among them.” Here is George’s story, though apparently not verbatim:
The story of my life I’ll tell to you with sincerest respect to all and love to many, although reviewing my childhood and early youth causes me great pain. My story necessarily begins by relating events which occurred in 1838, when hundreds of Indians were rounded up like cattle and driven away from the Wabash Valley It is a well-known fact recorded in the histories of Indiana that the long journey from the beautiful Wabash Valley was a horrible experience for the Indians, but I know the tradition as it relates to my own family From this forced departure came the tragedy of my birth.
My two ancestors, John Hawk, a Blackhawk brave, and Rachael, a Choctaw, had made themselves a home. He was a hunter and a fighter but professed faith in Christ through the influence of missionaries. My great-grand-mother, Rachael, passed the facts on to her children, and they have been handed down for four generations. I, in turn, have given the traditions to my children and grandchildren. The Indians and the white settlers in the valley transacted business with each other and were friendly towards each other, as I have been told by my mother, Eliza, and my grandmother, Courtney Hawk.
The missionaries often called the Indian families together for the purpose of teaching them, and the Indians had been invited, prior to being driven from the valley, to a sort of festival in the woods. They had prepared much food for the occasion. The men had gone on a long hunt to provide meat, and the women had prepared much corn and other grain to be used at the feast. All the tribes had been invited to a council, and the poor people were happy, not knowing they were being deceived.
The decoy worked, for while the Indians were worshiping God, the meeting was rudely interrupted by orders of the governor of the state. The governor, whose duty it was to protect the poor souls, caused them to be taken captives and driven away at the point of swords and guns. My grandmother said the Indians prayed in vain to be allowed to return to their homes. Instead of giving the Indians their liberty, some several hundred horses and ponies were captured to be used in transporting the Indians from the valley. The homes of the Indians were reduced to ashes. Many of the older Indians and many children died on the long journey, and traditional stories speak of that journey as the “trail of death.”
After long weeks on the trail, my great-grandfather and his wife became acquainted with a party of Indians going to the canebrakes of Alabama. They were not well-fed or well-clothed, and they were glad to travel south, believing the climate would be more favorable to their health. After a long and dreary journey, the Indians reached Alabama. Rachael had her youngest child strapped on her back, while John had cared for the older child, Lucy. Sometimes she walked beside her father, but often she became weary or sleepy, and he carried her, besides blankets and food, many miles of the journey. An older daughter, Courtney, also accompanied her parents.
When they approached the cane lands they heard the songs of Negro slaves working in the cane. Soon they were in sight of the slave quarters of Patent George’s plantation. The Negroes made the Indians welcome, and the slave owner allowed them to occupy the cane house. Thus, the Indians became slaves of Patent George.
Worn out from the long journey, John Hawk became too ill to work in the sugar cane. Kindly Negroes helped care for him, but he lived only a few months. Rachael and her two children remained on the plantation, working with the slaves. She had nowhere to go, no home to call her own. She had become a slave, and her children had become chattel.
A year passed, and unhappiness came to Rachael, for her daughter, Courtney, became the mother of a daughter fathered by the slave owner’s son, Ford George. The parents called the little girl “Eliza” and were very fond of her. Rachael became the mother of Patent George’s son, Patent George, Jr.
Family tradition states that in spite of these unfortunate circumstances the people on the Georges’ southern plantation were prosperous, happy, and lived in peace with each other. Patent George grew weary of the southern climate, though, and took his slaves to the iron ore region of western Kentucky, where their hard work amassed a fortune for the slave owner. Rachael Hawk and her daughters—Courtney, Lucy, and Rachael—came with the George family’s wagon trains to Kentucky, but Rachael Hawk died on the journey from Alabama. The other full-blooded Indians entered Kentucky as slaves.
The male slaves soon became skilled workers in the Hillman Rolling Mills. A man named Trigg was owner of the vast iron works called the “Chimneys” in the region, but they were listed separately as the Hillman, Dixon, Boyer, Kelley, and Lyons Furnaces. For more than a half century these chimneys were the most valuable development in western Kentucky. Opened in 1810, these furnaces refined iron ore to supply the United States Navy with cannonballs and grapeshot, and the iron smelting industry continued here until after the close of the Civil War.
No slaves were beaten on the Georges’ plantation, and old Missus Hester didn’t allow any slave to be sold. She was a devoted friend to all.
As Eliza George, daughter of Ford George and Courtney Hawk, grew into young womanhood, Ford George went oftener and oftener to social functions. He was admired for his skill with firearms and for his horsemanship. While Courtney and his child remained at the plantation, Ford enjoyed the companionship of the beautiful women of the vicinity. At last, he brought home Loraine, his young bride. Courtney was stoical, showed no hurt, and helped Missus Hester and Missus Loraine with the housework.
Missus Loraine became mother of two sons and a daughter, and the big, white, two-story house facing the Cumberland River at Smiths Landing, Kentucky, became a place of laughter and happy occasions, so my mother told me many times. Suddenly sorrow settled over the home and the laughter turned into wailing, for Ford George’s body was found pierced through the heart. Eliza was nowhere to be found. Ford’s body lay in state many days. Friends and neighbors came bringing flowers. His mother, bowed with grief, looked on the still face of her son and understood—understood why death had come and why Eliza had gone away.
The beautiful home on the Cumberland River with its more than 600 acres of productive land was put into the hands of an administrator of estates to be readjusted in the interest of the George heirs. It was only then Missus Hester went to Aunt Lucy and demanded of her to tell where Eliza could be found. Aunt Lucy told her, “She has gone to Alabama. Eliza was scared to stay here.” A party of searchers was sent to look for Eliza and found her hiding in a canebrake in the lowlands of Alabama nursing a baby boy at her breast. They took Eliza and the baby back to Kentucky. I am that baby that child of unfortunate birth. My white uncles told Missus Hester that if Eliza brought me back they were going to build a fire and put me in it since my birth was so improper to all of them, but Missus Hester always did what she believed was right, and I was brought up by my own mother. We lived in a cabin at the slave quarters, and Mother worked in the broom cane. Missus Hester named me Ford George, in contempt, but remained my friend. She was never angry with my mother. She knew a slave had to submit to her master, and, besides, at the time Eliza didn’t know she was Ford George’s daughter. Missus Hester believed I would be feeble either in mind or body because of my unfortunate birth, but I developed as other children did and was well treated by Missus Hester, Missus Lorainne, and her children. When Patent George died, Missus Hester married a man named Lam, and the slaves kept working at the rolling mills and making a fortune for the George families.
Five years before the outbreak of the Civil War, Missus Hester called all the slaves together and gave us our freedom. Courtney, my grandmother, kept house for Missus Lorainne and wanted to stay on, so I, too, was kept at the George home. There was a sincere friendship as great as the tie of blood between the white family and the slaves. My mother married one of Ford George’s Negro ex-slaves and bore children for him. Her health failed, and when Missus Puss, the only daughter of Missus Lorainne, learned she was ill, she persuaded Eliza’s husband to sell his property and bring Eliza back to live with her.
When the Freedmen started teaching school in Kentucky the census taker called to enlist me as a pupil. “What do you call this child?” he asked Missus Lorainne. “We call him the Little Captain because he carried himself like a soldier,” said Missus Lorainne. “He is the son of my husband and a slave woman, but we are rearing him.” Missus Lorainne told the stranger that I had been named Ford George, and he suggested she list me in the census as George Fordman, which she did, but she never allowed me to attend the Freedmen’s School, desiring to keep me with her own children and let me be taught at home. My mother’s half brother, Patent George, allowed his name to be reversed to George Patent when he enlisted in the Union Army at the outbreak of the Civil War.
It was customary to conduct a funeral differently than it is conducted now. I remember I was only six years old when old Missus Hester Lam passed on to her eternal rest. She was kept out of her grave several days in order to allow time for relatives, friends, and ex-slaves to be notified of her death. The house and yard were full of grieving friends. Finally the lengthy procession started to the graveyard. Within the Georges’ parlors there had been Bible passages read, prayers offered up, and hymns sung. Now, the casket was placed in a wagon drawn by two horses. The casket was covered with flowers, while the family and friends rode in ox-carts, horse-drawn wagons, or on horseback. With still many on foot, they made their way towards the river. When we reached the river there were many canoes busy putting the people across. Besides, the ferry boat was in use to ferry vehicles over the stream. The ex-slaves were crying and praying and telling how good Granny had been to all of them and explaining how they knew she had gone straight to Heaven because she was so kind and a Christian. There weren’t nearly enough boats to take the crowd across if they crossed back and forth all day, so my mother, Eliza, improvised a boat or “gunnel,” as the craft was called, by placing a wooden soap box on top of a long pole; then she pulled off her shoes, and, taking two of us small children in her arms, she paddled with her feet and put us safely across the stream. We crossed directly above Iuka, Livingston County, three miles below Grand River.
At the burying ground a great crowd had assembled from the neighborhood across the river, and there were more songs and prayers and much weeping. The casket was let down into the grave without the lid being put on, and everybody walked up and looked into the grave at the face of the dead woman. They called it the “last look,” and everybody dropped flowers on Missus Hester as they passed by. A man then went down and nailed on the lid, and the earth was thrown in with shovels. The ex-slaves filled in the grave, taking turns with the shovel. Some of the men had worked at the smelting furnaces so long that their hands were twisted and hardened from contact with the heat. Their shoulders were warped and their bodies twisted, but they were strong as iron men from their years of hard work. When the funeral was over Mother put us across the river on the “gunnel,” and we went home, all missing Missus Hester.
My cousin worked at Princeton, Kentucky, making shoes. He had never been notified that he was free by the emancipation Mrs. Hester had given to her slaves, and he came loaded with money to give to his white folks. Missus Lorainne told him it was his own money to keep or to use, as he had been a free man several months.
As our people, white and black and Indians, sat talking they related how they had been warned of approaching trouble. Jack said the dogs had been howling around the place for many nights, and that always presaged a death in the family. Jack had been compelled to take off his shoes and turn them soles-up near the hearth to prevent the howling of the dogs. Uncle Robert told how he believed some of Missus Hester’s enemies had planted a shrub near her door, and planted it with a curse so that when the shrub bloomed the old woman passed away. Then another man told how a friend had been seen carrying a spade into his cousins cabin, and the cousin had said, “Daniel, what for you brung that weapon into my cabin? That very spade will dig my grave,” and, sure enough, the cousin died and the same spade was used in digging his grave.
I’ve never believed in witchcraft or spells, but I remember my Indian grandmother predicted a long, cold winter when she noticed the pelts of the coons and other furred creatures were exceedingly heavy. When the breastbones of the fowls were strong and hard to cut with a knife it was a sign of a hard, cold, and snowy winter. Another superstition was “A green winter, a new graveyard; a white winter, a green graveyard.”
More than any other superstition entertained by the slave Negroes, the most harmful was the belief in conjurers. One old Negro woman boiled a bunch of leaves in an iron pot, boiled it with a curse, and scattered the tea made from the leaves, and she firmly believed she was bringing destruction to her enemies. The old woman said, “Wherever that tea is poured there will be toil and troubles.”
Things changed at the George homestead, as they change everywhere. When the Civil War broke out many slaves enlisted in hopes of receiving freedom. The George slaves were already free, but many thought it their duty to enlist and fight for the emancipation of their fellow slaves. My mother took her family and moved away from the plantation and worked in the broom cane. Soon she discovered she couldn’t make enough to rear her children, and we were turned over to the court to be bound out.
I was bound out to David Varnell in Livingston County by order of Judge Busch, and I stayed there until I was fifteen years old. My sister learned that I was unhappy there and wanted to see my mother, so she influenced James Wilson to take me into his home. Soon good-hearted Jimmy Wilson took me to see Mother, and I went often to see her.
In 1883 I left the Wilson home and began working and trying to save some money. River trade was prosperous, and I became a roustabout. The life of the roustabout varied some with the habits of the roustabout and the disposition of the mate. We played cards, shot dice, and talked to the girls who always met the boats. The “Whistling Coon” was a popular song with the boatmen and a version of “Dixie Land.” One song we often sang when nearing a port was worded “Hear the trumpet sound”:
Hear the trumpet sound,
Stand up and don’t sit down,
Keep steppin’ ’round and ’round,
Come join this elegant band.
If you don’t step up and join the bout,
Old Missus sure will find it out,
She’ll chop you in the head with a golden ax,
You never will have to pay the tax,
Come join the roustabout band.
I have always kept in touch with my white folks, the George family Four years ago Missus Puss died, and I was sent for, hut was not well enough to make the trip home.
I lived at Smiths Landing and remember the battle at Fort Donelson. It was twelve miles away, and a long cinder walk reached from the fort for nearly thirty miles. The cinders were brought from the iron ore mills, and my mother and I have walked the length of it many times. Boatloads of soldiers passed Smiths Landing by day and night, and the reports of cannon could be heard when battles were fought. We children collected cannonballs near the fort for a long time after the war.
I’ve always been befriended by three races of people, the Caucasian, the African, and the Negro [Indian?]. I’ve worked as a farmer, a river man, and been employed by the Illinois Central Railroad Company, and in every position I’ve held I’ve made loyal friends of my fellow workmen.