| N.C. District: | No. II |
| Worker: | Mrs. W.N. Harriss |
| Words: | 550 |
| Edited: | Mrs. W.N. Harriss |
| Subject: | Tillie, Daughter of a Slave |
| Interviewed: |
Tillie, Caretaker, Cornwallis Headquarters, corner Third and Market Sts, Wilmington. |
TILLIE, DAUGHTER OF A SLAVE
Caretaker, Cornwallis Headquarters
Corner Third and Market Streets
Wilmington, N.C.
"La, Miss Fannie, what you mean askin' me what I knows about slavery! Why I was bawn yeah's after freedom!" With a sweeping, upward wave of a slender, shriveled brown arm to indicate the wide lapse of time between her advent and the passing of those long ago days. The frail, little body might have been any age between sixty and a hundred; but feminine vanity rose in excited protest against the implication of age suggested by the question.
Tillie is one of the landmarks of Wilmington. She was one of the servants in the house of which she is now caretaker, at the time of the owner's death, and the heirs have kept her on allowing her to live in the old slave quarters in the back garden. She sits in the sun on the coping of the brick wall, or across the street on the low wall of the grounds around St. James Church. Children and their nurses gather there on the lawn, and Tillie holds forth at length on any topic from religion and politics to the cutting or losing of teeth. She makes the bold statement that she can tell you something about everybody in Wilmington. That is "eve'body we knows." There is a general uneasiness that perhaps she can. Little escapes the large, keen, brown eyes, and the ears are perpetually cocked.
After several conversations in passing, memory was coaxed to the time when as a very young child she remembered incidents of slave times which she had heard from her mother.
"My mother belonged to the Bellamys, an' lived on their plantation across the river in Brunswick. It was the bigges' place anywhere hereabouts. I was raised on it too. Of co'se it was in the country, but it was so big we was a town all to ourselves.
"Did any of the colored people leave after freedom? Of co'se they did'n'. Were'nt no place to go to. None of us was 'customed to anybody but rich folks, an' of co'se their money was gone. I've heard Mis' Bellamy tell how her child'en made enough out of potatoes to buy their clo'es right on that plantation. So we all stayed right there. My mother brought us all up right there on the plot she'd been livin' on all the time. When I come along we had plenty to eat. She had a whole pa'cel of us, and we always had plenty of collards, an' po'k an' corn bread. Plenty of fish.
"O, yes, stuff was sold. I can remember timber bein' cut, an' our folks got some wages to buy clo'es. We did'n have no school, but we had a church. Soon as I was big enough I came to Wilmin'ton to work. I never has lived with none but the bes'. My mother always said 'Tillie, always tie to the bes' white folks. Them that has inflooence, 'cause if you gits into trouble they can git you out'. I've stuck to that. I've never had any traffic wid any but the blue bloods, an' now look at me. I'm not able to work, but I got a home an' plenty to eat. An' I ain't on no relief, an' Tillie can sho' hold her head up."