African Americans -- Fiction; Southern States -- Fiction
My Dear Sir: Eneas, your old negro, whose name I had forgotten until I
read your letter in a local paper, was on my plantation near here in
'65. He came here very blue and utterly discouraged from Thomasville,
Ga. Said he was looking for a little Thomasville owned by Major George
E. Tommey. He brought a letter from a friend of mine. There are no
Tommeys in this county, and no Thomasville, and not knowing what to do
with him, I passed him along to Colonel Chairs, a friend in Washington
County, which is on the gulf coast. Chairs wrote me that he had had a
great deal of fun out of Eneas. The gulf astonished him. He declared
solemnly that he knew he was in the wrong Washington, because there were
no oranges, or scrub palmettoes, or big green spiders (crabs) in his,
and the water had no salt in it. Eneas talked a good deal of Macon and
Louisville, and there being a county and town so named, besides another
Thomasville, to the north in Alabama, Chairs started him up that way. I
am truly sorry the old man came to grief. He was a harmless old fellow,
though a picturesque liar, as are many old negroes when they talk of
their white folks.
It is possible that Eneas had a trunk, but I have no recollection of
seeing one in his possession.
Yours very truly,
Randolph Thomas.
* * * * *
Louisville, Ala., Oct. 28, 1872.
Major Tommey, Louisville, Ga.
Sir: A ole nigger name of enus come by hyar in the firs yer atter the
war with er old mare an er colt he claim was by the lightnin. He was
lokin for a tomusville, an I tried to show him the way back to
tomusville, in Georgia, but he got mad and wanted to fight me, an ef he
hadnt ben er ole man I would have busted him open. Mr. tommy, you wont
never see yo nigger no more less he mends his way of acktin when you are
tryin to help him.
Respectfull, sir, yours,
Pompey Wiley (Colored).
He lef hyar for Macon County.
* * * * *
Barton, Washington County, Ala.
Major G. E. Tommey, Louisville, Ga.
Dear Sir: Your negro, Eneas, came to my place in this county in 1865, I
think, from a little village named Thomasville to the northeast. He was
very poor and his pathetic story appealed to my sympathies. I let him
have some rations and a piece of land and he planted a cotton crop. He
married a young mulatto woman on my place that year, and when he left
here about Christmas, 1866, carried with him a young baby besides the
old mare and her colt. The colt, by the way, was a beauty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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