CHAPTER I.

MY MOTHER OFTEN TOLD ME that I was born, March 3rd, of the year that Martin Van Buren was elected President of the United States, and I have therefore always regarded March 3rd, 1836, as the date of my birth. Those who are familiar with the customs that obtained at the South in the days of slavery, will readily understand why so few of the ex-slaves can give the correct date of their birth, for, being uneducated, they were unable to keep records themselves, and their masters, having no special interest in the matter, saw no necessity for such records. So that the slave parents, in order to approximate the birth of a child, usually associated it with the occurrence of some important event, such, for instance, as “the year the stars fell,” (1833), the death of some prominent man, the marriage of one of the master’s children, or some notable historical event. Thus by recalling any one of these occurrences, the age of their own children was determined. Not being able to read and write, they were compelled to resort to the next best thing within reach, memory, the only diary in which the records of their marriages, births and deaths were registered, and which was also the means by which their mathematical problems were solved, their accounts kept, when they had any to keep.

Of course there were thousands of such cases as E. M. Dillard’s, the one which I shall mention, but as his case will represent theirs, I will speak of his only. He was an intimate acquaintance of mine, a man born a slave, freed by the emancipation proclamation when over thirty years old, without even a knowledge of the alphabet, but he had a practical knowledge of men and business matters, which enabled him to acquire a comfortable living, a nice home, to educate his children and conduct a small business of his own. But the greatest wonder about this man was the exactness and correct business way in which he conducted it in buying and selling, and especially in casting up accounts, seemingly with care, accuracy, and rapidity as any educated man could have done. But it was the result of a good memory and a full share of brain.

The memories of slaves were simply wonderful. They were not unmindful, nor indifferent as to occurrences of interest transpiring around them, but as the principal medium