Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [174]
I’s gwine tu buy a lot, an’ build me a hut on it; an’ den, Jack, you is wanted down yere, tu see you’ ole brudder. Fur de last time he seed you, he wuz standin’ on de auction block, an’ Mass’r Bill was a turnin’ he round, like a ’possum on de spit, so’s de driber’d see me fa’r an’ squar’. Neber min’, Jack. I’s tryin’ tu let by-gones go, an’ jes’ look out fur number one; an’ I’s powerful glad I’s a free man now, for shore. Come a Christmas, ef ye kin, Jack.23
If the initial efforts proved unsuccessful, the search for family members might span several decades. Until well into the 1870s and 1880s, the newly established black newspapers, both in the South and in the North, abounded with advertisements in which relatives requested any information that might assist them. If physical descriptions were given at all, they tended to be sparse and badly outdated; more often, family members had to content themselves with listing whatever leads they had accumulated over the years about the location of loved ones.
Information Wanted, of Caroline Dodson, who was sold from Nashville, Nov. 1st, 1862, by James Lumsden to Warwick, (a trader then in human beings), who carried her to Atlanta, Georgia, and she was last heard of in the sale pen of Robert Clarke, (human trader in that place), from which she was sold. Any information of her whereabouts will be thankfully received and rewarded by her mother. Lucinda Lowery, Nashville.
$200 Reward. During the year 1849, Thomas Sample carried away from this city, as his slaves, our daughter, Polly, and son, Geo. Washington, to the State of Mississippi, and subsequently, to Texas, and when last heard from they were in Lagrange, Texas. We will give $100 each for them to any person who will assist them, or either of them, to get to Nashville, or get word to us of their whereabouts, if they are alive. Ben. & Flora East.
Saml. Dove wishes to know of the whereabouts of his mother, Areno, his sisters Maria, Neziah, and Peggy, and his brother Edmond, who were owned by Geo. Dove, of Rockingham county, Shenandoah Valley, Va. Sold in Richmond, after which Saml. and Edmond were taken to Nashville, Tenn., by Joe Mick; Areno was left at the Eagle Tavern, Richmond. Respectfully yours, Saml. Dove, Utica, New York.24
Not only had physical features changed in the intervening years but new loyalties and emotional commitments had often replaced the old. Husbands and wives who had given up any hope of seeing each other again were apt to have remarried, and children sold away from their parents had been raised by other black women or by the white mistresses, creating innumerable post-emancipation complications. Even if the search for family members succeeded, then, the reunions might be less than joyous occasions, and some couples who had remarried thought it best to avoid seeing each other again. Few revealed the emotional torment raised by such problems more graphically than the husband of Laura Spicer. Several years after their forced separation, he had remarried in the belief that his wife had died. When he learned after the war that she was still alive, the news stung him, prompting both joy and remorse. “I read your letters over and over again,” he wrote her. “I keep them always in my pocket. If you are married I don’t ever want to see you again.” But in other letters, he revised that hasty warning and urged her to remarry. “I would much rather you would get married to some good man, for every time I gits a letter from you it tears me all to pieces. The reason why I have not written you before, in a long time, is because your letters disturbed me so very much.” Even as he urged her to find another man, however, he professed his undying love for her.
I would come and see you but I know you could not bear it. I want to see you and I don’t want to see you. I love you just as well as I did the last day I saw you, and it will not do for you and I