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SADIE AND BESSIE

Our Mama's People

Miss Logan, who would one day be our Mama, was born in Virginia in a community called Yak, seven miles outside Danville. Today, they call it Mountain Hill. Guess they think that sounds better than Yak.

Miss Nanny Logan was a feisty thing, a trait which she could have gotten from either of her parents. Her father, James Miliam, was 100 percent white, and the meanest-looking man in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. Because he was white, he could not legally marry his ladylove, Nanny's mother, an issue-free Negro named Martha Logan.

This is what we were told by our Mama: A fellow named John Logan, who was white, was an army officer called away to fight during the War of 1812. While he was gone, his wife took up with a Negro slave on their plantation. She was already the mother of seven daughters by her husband, and her romance with the slave produced two more daughters. When the husband returned, he forgave his wife —forgave her! — and adopted the two mulatto girls as his own. They even took his last name, Logan. No one remembers what happened to the slave, except he must've left town in a big hurry. This slave and this white woman were our great-great-grandparents.

The two little mulatto girls, Patricia and Eliza, were just part of the family. The only time anyone has heard tell of their older, white half sisters mistreating them was when those white girls were old enough to start courting and they used to hide their little, colored half-sisters! One time, they hid them in a hogshead barrel and after their gentlemen callers left, they couldn't get them out! Patricia was entirely stuck, and they had to use an ax on that old barrel to get her out. Well, they slipped and cut Patricia's leg, and she carried that scar on her knee to the grave.

When Patricia grew up, she had ten children. One thing we remember about her was that one of her babies was born on the side of the road. She would walk to the mill to get her corn ground, carrying this big sack on her head. On the way back one day, she went into labor and could not get home in time. So she had that baby on the side of the road, by herself! And afterward, she just put that baby under her arm, and that sack of cornmeal back on her head, and walked on home.

Patricia's sister, Eliza, meantime, had become involved with a white man named Jordan Motley. They had a child — Martha Louise Logan, our grandma, born in 1842. Eliza had three other daughters: Blanche, LaTisha, and Narcissa, who was the prettiest one of the four girls but never married. Whether those three girls all had the same Pa, we do not know.

They were charmers, all four of those girls, and very popular, but it's said they squabbled quite a bit. Why, our Mama remembered as a little child throwing salt in the fire to put out their fussing. People in those days thought that would stop an argument. Well, Mama said she must've thrown a peck of salt in the fire, trying to put out the fussing between her mother and her mother's three sisters!

One thing's for sure: Those four girls were all only one-quarter Negro, but in the eyes of the world they were colored. It only took one drop of Negro blood for a person to be considered"colored." So Martha Logan and her sisters were in a bind when it came to marrying. If they wanted to marry a colored man, well, most of them were slaves. And they couldn't marry white, because it was illegal for Negroes and whites to marry in Virginia at that time, and for many years after — until 1967! Well, it didn't stop them from having love relationships. Martha Logan took up with a man named James Miliam, who was as white as he could be. We remember our grandparents well because we used to go visit every summer, and we were young women when they died.

One time, James and Grandma had a big fus