Rev. Peter Carney (col.), Presbyterian minister, and remarkable character. Aleck Carney, a useful citizen, and church worker. Betsy Neblett, his late sister, the “Good Samaritan” of her neighborhood. Closing remarks. CHAPTER I. “THEY HAVE GONE FROM OUR MORTAL VISION, BUT IN MEMORIES SWEET, THEY ABIDE WITH US.” The people whom you will meet in this little book did not live in fancy. They were humble instruments through whom God sent a message clear, and strong, that will go on, and on, through the coming years. Realizing the rapidity with which the good old colored types were passing away, I went one September afternoon, 1901, to see Aunt Kitty Carr, for the purpose of obtaining some interesting facts concerning herself, and her remarkable family. Her husband, Uncle Horace Carr, had been dead twenty-four years, and she was then living with her son Horace, at his farm on Red River, a mile or two from Port Royal, Tennessee. I found her on the back porch peeling peaches to dry, and when I made known to her the intent of my visit, she was amused, and said, “Lor Miss Harriet, what am _I_ say, that will be worth reading in a book?” [Illustration: Aunt Kitty Carr.] On assuring her of the esteem in which she and her family were held, and the importance of such lives being left on tangible record, she seemed willing to tell me, in her quaint way, what I wished to know. Aunt Kitty was a small yellow woman, of refined features, and dignified bearing. She spoke as follows: “Of course you have heard that I was free born?” “Yes,” I replied, “you were the first free born person of your race, that I ever saw.” “I was born near Spotsylvania, Virginia, in 1815. That’s been a _long_ time ago. I’ll soon be eighty-six years old. My children, and grand-children are kind to me, and don’t want me to work, but I am not satisfied to sit idle. “My father was a Frenchman of some importance, by the name of Truell; my only recollection of him was his long curly hair that came down to his shoulders. My mother was free born, and gave me away. “One bright spring day she was sweeping her front yard, and I, a little girl of six years, was taking up the trash, that she swept together, when a pretty white girl sixteen, or seventeen, rode past the gate, and called for a drink of water. As she handed the drinking gourd back, she said, ‘That’s a handy little girl you have there, I wish you’d give her to me.’ ‘All right,’ mother replied, and the lady passed on, and nothing more was thought of it, till nearly a year afterward, a nice covered wagon drove up to our gate, and the same lady called for me. “A few days before, she had married a Mr. Edmond Winston, and they were going to housekeeping. “My mother gathered together my little budget of clothes, and handed little Kitty, and the clothes over to the colored driver, saying, ‘Here take her.’ “And they took me; I have never thought mother acted right.