_The Item_, a New Orleans newspaper, featured the following sketch of Isaiah T. Montgomery by Stanley Cisby Arthur in its Sunday magazine section on September 25, 1921: One of the most interesting figures at the meeting of the secretaries of the Federal Farm Loan Association, was an aged negro, "Uncle" Isaiah T. Montgomery, of Mound Bayou City, Bolivar County, Mississippi. "Uncle" Isaiah is not only one of the wealthiest farmers in his district, but he founded the town of Mound Bayou, which is composed exclusively of colored people, who run the stores, the banks, the postoffice, the schools and the peace offices, but "Uncle" Isaiah was a former slave and a body servant of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. Black of face, with white hair and a white chin beard "Uncle" Isaiah looks exactly the part of the regulation stage "Uncle" of the old regime. He looks every bit of his 74 years but his mind is exceedingly bright and he recounted the happenings of over half a century with the utmost clarity of speech and showed many evidences of his education, which he says he gave himself. When he took recourse to a piece of paper and a pen to estimate the ginnage of his community, he set down words and figures with Spencerian exactness. His handwriting was truly a revelation to the interviewer. "I was born on Hurricane plantation, in Warren county, Mississippi, in 1847, and my father and I were owned by Joseph E. Davis, brother of Jefferson Davis. The plantation owned by the late president of the Confederacy adjoined the Hurricane, and was called Brierfield plantation," said the aged colored man and former slave who is now a prosperous banker in the town he founded. "I was about nine years old when I first remember Jefferson Davis real well. I was working in my master's office when his brother came back from Congress and I was told to meet the steamboat Natchez in a row boat and get Mr. Jeff. "When the Natchez blew her whistle as she came around a bend of the river I rowed out and Mr. Jeff got in my boat with his grips and things and I took him to shore and toted all his things into the 'White Room' where Mr. Jeff staid for a considerable spell. While there I was his personal attendant, I blacked his shoes, kept his room in order, held his horse for him and other little things that a servant like I was was supposed to do. On one of his trips down the river on the Natchez (Mr. Jeff and Captain Tom P. Leathers, the historic commander of that boat, were close friends), he brought his wife and daughter, who was afterwards Mrs. Hayes, and they all were very kind to me because I was Mr. Jeff's personal servant all the time they were at the Hurricane.