N.C. District: No. 2 Worker: Mary A. Hicks No. Words: 1519 Subject: SAM T. STEWART, EX-SLAVE Person Interviewed: Sam T. Stewart Editor: Daisy Bailey Waitt [TR: Date stamp: JUN 1 1937] [Illustration: Sam T. Stewart] SAM T. STEWART [HW: 84 years.] "My name is Sam T. Stewart. I was born in Wake County, North Carolina Dec. 11, 1853. My father was a slave, A.H. Stewart, belonging to James Arch Stewart, a slave owner, whose plantation was in Wake County near what is now the Harnett County line of Southern Wake. Tiresa was my mother's name. James Arch Stewart, a preacher, raised my father, but my mother was raised by Lorenzo Franks, a Quaker in Wake County. When I was two years old James Arch Stewart sold my father to speculators, and he was shipped to Mississippi. I was too young to know my father. "The names of the speculators were--Carter Harrison, and--, and a man named Roulhac. I never saw my father again, but I heard from him the second year of the surrender, through his brother and my aunt. My father died in Mississippi. "The speculators bought up Negroes as a drover would buy up mules. They would get them together by 'Negro drivers', as the white men employed by the speculators were called. Their names were,----Jim Harris of Raleigh, and----yes, Dred Thomas, who lived near Holly Springs in Wake County. Wagon trains carried the rations on the trip to Mississippi. The drivers would not start until they had a large drove. Then the slaves were fastened together with chains. The chain was run between them, when they had been lined up like soldiers in double file. A small chain was attached to a Negro on the left and one to the Negro on the right and fastened to the main chain in the center. Billy Askew was another speculator. He lived on the corner of Salisbury and Carbarrus Street in Raleigh. Sometimes as many as thirty slaves were carried in a drove. They walked to Mississippi. "My brothers and sisters are dead. Down on the plantations our houses were built of poles daubed with mud, with a rived board (split board). I had good beds, good clothes, and plenty to eat. We made it and we ate it. When a slave owner treated his slaves unusually good some other slave owner would tell him that he was raising slaves who would rise against him. Lorenzo Franks, who owned me and my mother, was a Quaker. He treated his slaves unusually well. He would not sell any of them. His brother was an Iron Side Baptist preacher, and he would tell his brother he was raising slaves who would rise against him. Franks owned seventeen slaves, I don't know how many Stewart owned." [HW: m p. 6] [TR: Editor indicated three paragraphs on page 6 (page 322 of the volume) should have been moved here.]