Mary Reynolds (ex-slave)
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Mary Reynolds (1827-1930) was born into slavery under the Kilpatrick family, in Black River, Louisiana. Her father, Tom Vaughn a freeborn man, was born in the North. In traveling to the South to find work in pianos, Vaughn came across Mary's mother on the Kilpatrick plantation. He tried to buy her from Mr. Kilpatrick, however all of Vaughn’s’ savings were not enough. So Vaughn went to work with Mary’s mother in the fields. Soon after, they were married and had six girls: Martha, Pamela, Josephine, Ellen, Katherine, and Mary.
Mary was born very close to the same time as the Kilpatrick's daughter Sara. Mrs. Kilpatrick died soon after the birth of Sara, so Mary's mother nursed Sara along side Mary. The girls grew up very close. They often played together which was very unusual for a white child to play with a African American slave child.
When Mary was about old enough to start sweeping with a broom, Mr. Kilpatrick sold her. It was said that he didn't want his child to associate with a slave child. Mary was sold cheap to a widower in Trinity, who had no children. The man bought Mary a doll house and left her in the house all day to play.
Soon after Mary was sold, Sara fell ill. Mr. Kilpatrick brought various doctors to see her, but all she said was she wanted Mary. The doctors thought that it could only do good to follow her request. So Mr. Kilpatrick bought Mary back from the man, paying excessively more than she was previously sold for. After Mary returned to the Kilpatrick’s home, Sara grew stronger and stronger until she was well.
Mr. Kilpatrick was a wealthy man. He owned a big house and was a medicine doctor. He raised cotton, sugar cane, potatoes, and peanuts. Mary worked in the fields with her mother and father. They called the overseer Old man Solomon. He would whip the field workers constantly if they did not pick fast enough. There was a small fire in the fields in the winter time that they would use to warm their sore and cracked hands that would bleed from the freezing cold. Sara would secretly steal a potato or two and slip it under the ashes of the fire. Roasted potatoes were her favorite. Reynolds said, "It was work hard, git beatin's and half fed."
"Slavery was the worst days was ever seed in the world. They was things past tellin,' but I got the scars in my body to show to this day." Reynolds saw slave drivers put men and women in stocks with their hands screwed down through holes in the board and their feet tied together. Solomon would beat them with a big whip and Mr. Kilpatrick would supervise the beatings. Watching these beatings made Mary afraid of Solomon and his whip. He didn't like the slaves going to church or singing in their free time. If Solomon heard any "frolicking' he would bang on the door threatening to "tear the hide off your backs."
One day Reynolds’ mother and father took Reynolds and her sister Katherine to a church to see praying and singing. They prayed for the end of tribulation and the end of the beatings. On their way back to the plantation, the slave dogs caught their trail. Reynolds’ mother and father stood Reynolds and her sister up against the rails of a fence and told them to be silent. Then they ran to the woods so the hounds would follow them and no find the children. Soon the dogs were on their trail, but they circled around the woods and get into the cabin with Reynolds and Katherine safe.
Mr. Kilpatrick would hire out slaves for wage hands. One day he hired Mary and another slave boy named Turner. They went to go work for a family named Kidd. One day Turner went off and didn't come back. Old man Kidd said that Mary knew something about it. He tied her wrists together and stripped her naked. He then hung her by her wrists from a limb of a tree and tied were legs to the tree trunk. Then he beat her. He beat her until she was covered in blood and passed out. Word of this got back to Sara who came to get Mary from the Kidds. Mr. Kilpatrick doctored her and determined that she would get well. However she wouldn't be able to have children.
After some time Reynolds got the notion to marry. Mr. Kilpatrick married her and a fellow slave. Mr. Kilpatrick stood inside the house with a broom held crosswise of the door and Reynolds and her fiancé stood on the outside. Reynolds wore a wreath on her head and they stepped over the broom into the house. That was the wedding. After the war ended Reynolds was again married and had an official wedding.
One day Mr. Kilpatrick called all his slaves to go down to the river to see a Yankee boat. The boat carried soldiers. The Yankee soldiers arrived in town and offered a boat ride to freedom for slaves. Many slaves ran to the boat with the soldiers-but not Reynolds. She couldn't bear to leave her mother. When Reynolds got back to the cabin Sara was running out with a letter for Reynolds’ mother. Mr. Kilpatrick grabbed it and tried to tear it up, but Sara managed to get it to Reynolds’ mother. It was a letter from Louis Carter, Reynolds’ uncle. He was working in Galveston and wanted his sister to join him there. After some time Mr. Kilpatrick took many of his slaves to Texas and Reynolds’ mother got to go to Galveston to see her brother. Soon after arriving there she died. Reynolds followed Mr. Kilpatrick to the Tennessee Colony and then to the Navasota. Sara married Mr. T. Coleman and moved with him to El Paso.
After the war was over Reynolds and her husband moved to Texas and farmed for many seasons. In Dallas Reynolds Mary went to work for a white family cooking and cleaning. Reynolds’ husband died years after. In 1924 Reynolds became blind and very feeble. She is now over one hundreds years old, she sits on her porch and recalls her many memories, she told an interviewer, "I sets and members the times in the world. I members now clear as yesterday things I forgot for a long time. I members bout the days of slavery and I don't b'lieve they ever gwine have slaves no more on this earth. I think Gawd done took that burdin offen his black chillun and I'm aimin' to praise him for it to his face in the days of Glory that ain't so far off."
For other slave narritives: Slave Narrative,
