When interviewed about her father, Lizzie Johnson was living at 703 North Senate Avenue, Apartment 1, in Indianapolis. Deliberate in her delivery and sure of the facts of her early life, Lizzie was a very interesting old woman and remembered very well the things her parents had told her. She deplored the “loose living,” as she called it, of the then current generation.
Her father, Arthur Locklear, was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1822. He lived in the South and endured many hardships until 1852. He was fortunate in having a white man befriend him, for the white man taught him to read and write. Many nights after a hard day’s work, he would lie on the floor in front of the fireplace, trying to study by the light of the blazing wood fire to improve his reading and writing.
Lizzie’s father married very young, and as his family increased, he became ambitious for them, knowing that their future would be very dark if they remained in the South. He then started a movement to come north. Twenty-six or twenty-eight men and women who had the same thoughts about their children’s future banded together, and in 1853 they headed somewhere north. The people selected had to be loyal to the cause of their children’s future lives and morally clean, truthful, and hardworking. Some had oxen; some had carts. They pooled all of their scant belongings and started on their long, hard journey.
The women and children rode in the ox-carts; the men walked. They would travel a few days and then stop along the roadside to rest. The women would wash their few clothes and cook enough food to last a few days more, and then they would start out again. The trip took six weeks. Some settled in Madison, Indiana. Two brothers and their families went to Ohio, and the rest came to Indianapolis.
John Scott, a strong and thrifty member of the group, was a hod carrier, who earned $2.50 a day. He knew that his money would not accumulate very fast, so after working hard all day, he spent his evenings putting new bottoms in chairs and knitting gloves for anyone who wanted them. In the summer he planted a garden and sold vegetables. Working day and night, he was able to save some money. He could not read or write, but he taught his children the value of truthfulness, cleanliness of mind and body, loyalty, and thrift. He and his sons all worked together, bought some ground, and built a little house, in which the family lived many years. Before Mr. Scott died, he had saved enough money to give each son $200. His bank was tin cans hidden in various places inside his house. Will Scott, the artist, was a grandson of John Scott.
The thing these early settlers wanted most was for their children to learn to read and write. As slaves, many of them had been caught trying to learn to write and had had their thumbs smashed so that they would not be able to hold a pencil.