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Mary Todd
I have long since learned not to believe idle stories. Heaven knows I grew up on them. For years as a child I was terrorized by family stories of great Uncle John being killed at Blue Licks by Indians. Or how Uncle John escaped from Indians after running a gauntlet and his brother Sam was captured and Uncle John ransomed him for a barrel of whiskey.
I walked past the kitchen to see Mammy Sally on her hands and knees cleaning up the soup.
Grandma Parker was old. She was all of fifty-two. She had five children, fifteen grandchildren, and seven slaves. But she was never too busy to see me and welcome me in her two-story brick house up the hill from us.
Liz was a hopeless case. I had to school her in everything. Most likely she'd associated too much with that grandmother of hers in the aristocratic lace cap.
I was nearly thirteen years old and my desire for a hoopskirt hadn't dimmed. Every time I went with Mammy Sally to Cheapside, the marketplace that served Fayette County, and saw the ladies in their hoopskirts, I felt a stab of envy.
It was in my last year at Ward's that I awoke one night in November to hear thump thump thumping coming from downstairs, likely the back door in the kitchen. As I lay warm and snuggly under my quilts, I then heard Mammy Sally shuffling around. Then the thumping stopped.
We had a crisis in our house before my sister Elizabeth's wedding.
The day of Elizabeth's wedding was sky-blue clear, as fine a day as mid-February could offer. Just about spring in Lexington, Kentucky.
Elizabeth and Ninian left. It was an eight- or nine-day trip to Springfield, depending on the weather. Ninian was to be a member of the Illinois legislature. His father was the richest man in Springfield, and he and Elizabeth were to occupy the largest house. Oh how I envied Frances, going to live with them in a couple of months.
Late that night when everybody was in bed, I heard Mammy moving about in the kitchen, so I got up and went downstairs.
Levi was to go to Transylvania in the fall. At first he refused, angering Pa, and they had high words, but then Mammy Sally got ahold of him and they "talked." I think she threatened to tell Pa about his drinking down by the creek. And so he agreed to go and to behave himself. Already, as summer came upon us, he was registered and had his books. He was to attend day classes and come home each night.
Just about every summer my family traveled fifty miles south to Crab Orchard Springs where we could take the waters, play, and socialize with other prominent families in the area.
By the end of summer the cholera was past and we who were boarding at Mentelle's were allowed to move our things into our rooms. Pa sent Nelson to accompany me with my baggage and Mama's gold and white ladies' desk in the wagon. Nelson was to carry everything upstairs.
That summer, as well as the cholera and the confusion of moving, we had the seventeen-year locusts visiting, singing their monotonous song in the background, no matter what was going on.
She stepped down from her carriage with a flourish, stood there for a moment looking up at the house as if it were an old friend, then, with the help of her footman, came up the steps and into the foyer.
I knew what had to be done next before Mammy Sally mentioned it to me. And, as the August light turned mellow at the end of the day, I walked around thinking about it. But I never said anything.
The afternoon settled into a fearful stillness. I cleaned up my mess and went to the backyard to seek out Nelson for something to take the paint off my hands.
Frances was leaving. The whole house was in an uproar. She was leaving to live with Elizabeth and Ninian in Springfield, Illinois.
So Pa was on the panel, which met every day for two weeks at the courthouse.
When I left for school the next morning, I left my father's house for good, though I'd be back on the weekends. It was, for me, a final leave-taking. All partings after this would be footnotes in my life. When Nelson lifted my trunks into the carriage, I felt the ropes binding me to home tearing. There was a finality about it that would render any other partings as trivial. These feelings hung heavy on me, and I did not know why.
I stayed four years at Madame Charlotte's. I never went home weekends and every day I could see, from my classroom window, Nelson draw the carriage up front to fetch Liz home from school.
What Happened after Mary Todd Met Abraham Lincoln
Lizzy
Lizzy—Child of Aggy—Feb. 1818. Recipe for Muster Day gingerbread. As follows:
If I were to be sold at age four, the price I would bring, after being weighed on the scale, would be about $ 300. A little shady girl like myself isn't worth much. And then only if I sold along with my mother, whose price would be about $1,100 because she is such a good nurse and seamstress.
I believe that Moses and Solomon in the Bible were negro, that lightning never strikes a sycamore tree because Jesus blessed them, and that springs of water in the ground come from the steps of angels. All these things my mama taught me. And I'll always believe them, because not to believe certain things is to die.
Later on that day word went around the place, the way it goes through the quarters like a dry hot wind, that Massa had given Big Red what for because of the loss of Basil. It was Big Red's fault that Basil had run off again, Massa said. Never mind why or how. It just was. Most everybody on the place knew to stay clear of Big Red and his curled-up whip that day. But my friend Jane couldn't help it. She was right there, in front of his face in the fields.
After Amos was sold off, the rest of us chilluns knew we'd never be safe again.
Grandma Sarry told me once that she thought our massa had abolitionist leanings. Then she had to explain to me what an abolitionist was. When I heard, I nearly went daft.
Here are the names of Massa's other children, who are my half brothers and half sisters.
The Burwells were to live in a two-story brick house right next to the Common Hall. Behind the house were the quarters, where we nigra servants lived, just like back home only smaller. Mama and I again shared one log cabin.
I forgot to tell how, when we left the plantation, Massa did two things that turned out bad for us.
Robert and some of his friends had gone possum hunting. Robert missed the hunting he used to do at home and so Massa let him go. Grandma Sarry said if he fetched in five or six she'd cook them up just as Robert liked them, sprinkled with butter and pepper and baked down till the gravy was thick and brown. Robert liked to gnaw the bones.
Later on that night, sleeping on my straw pallet on the floor, I overheard Massa and Mistress arguing.
Daddy George's massa came to fetch him at the end of the week, and there were some blue devil minutes there when we had to tell him good-bye.
Robert married his Anna soon after. Her real name was Margaret Anna Robertson from Petersburg. I was not in the wedding. I did not expect to be, did not want to be. But a month before, Robert came to me.
Anna was not stupid. She could recite Paradise Lost by heart. But she did not know how to find Robert again after she lost him in the coal town of Ellerslie.
It all began proper-like. Mr. Bingham acted like a parson himself at first. His wife was a quiet, mousy woman who couldn't come up with an opinion if Moses himself asked her to. She treated her husband like her master. When I got to know him, I understood why. She had long since given up trying to be a person in her own right. If I had any smarts, I'd have taken lessons from her.
Robert and Anna had always needed money, but now, with a fourth child coming, they needed it like a coon dog needed to hunt. To that end they started their school. An advertisement in the paper listed the cost: English studies, $17.50, French, $15.00, Music, $25.00, Drawing and Painting, $10.00, and Sewing as for a Fine Lady, $25.00.
I don't know what brought the devilment about. I never sashayed in front of that man. I never made eyes at him, and all the while I spent at Ayr Mount I dressed proper-like. No low necklines. And I always wore a neckerchief.
Elizabeth Keckley: From a Virginia Slave to the White House
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