But the freedmen disappointed them. Under all discouragements, they
persisted in behaving well. When they found that they could not get a
living on the old plantations where they wanted to stay, they went to
work on railroads, and wherever they could find employment. They laid up
as much as they could of their wages, and bought bits of land, on which
they built comfortable cabins for themselves, and laid out little
gardens. Their wives and children raised poultry and tended a cow, and
carried vegetables and butter and eggs to market, in baskets poised on
their heads. With the money thus earned they bought more land and added
to their little stock of furniture. Though the men received only from
eighteen to twenty-four cents a day, out of which they boarded
themselves, they were so industrious and saving that in four years the
freedmen in Jamaica alone had bought and paid for one hundred thousand
acres of land, and put up dwellings thereon. Mr. Phillippo states, that
during that time as many as two hundred new villages of freedmen were
formed. These villages generally received the names of benefactors, such
as Clarkson, Wilberforce, Thompson, &c. To their own little homes they
also gave names indicative of their gratitude and contentment. They
called them "Save Rent," "A Little of My Own," "Heart's Love," "Liberty
and Content," "Happy Retreat," "Jane's Delight," "Thank God to see It,"
&c.
Mr. Phillippo says:--
"These free villages are regularly laid out. The houses are small, many
of them built of stone or wood, with shingled roofs, green blinds, and
verandahs, to shield them from the sun. Most of them are neatly
thatched, and generally plastered and whitewashed both outside and in.
They now have looking-glasses, chairs, and side-boards decorated with
pretty articles of glass and crockery. Each dwelling has its little plot
of vegetables, generally neatly kept; and many of them have
flower-gardens in front, glowing with all the bright hues of the
tropics. The groups often presented are worthy of the painter's pencil
or the poet's song. Amid the stillness of a Sabbath evening, many
families, after their return from the house of God, may be seen gathered
together in the shadow of the trees, which overhang their cottages,
singing hymns, or listening to the reading of the Scriptures, with none
to molest or make them afraid."
Mr. Charles Tappan of Boston, who visited Jamaica several years after
emancipation, writes:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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