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	:EL~sLAv:~ STORIES	~	Page One
(Texas)	~ ~ ‚


LUCY THOMAS ‚ 86 ‚ was ‘born in Harr j,s on Co . ‚ Texas ‚ a slave of Dr. William Baldwin. She stayed. with her master until
~	1868. In 1869 she married Anthony Thomas . She now lives with her son at Baldwin Switch, sixteen miles northeast of Marshall, Te~:as, on i~art of the land originally owned by the Baidwins.




	“My name am Luc~r Baldwin Thomas and I~s birthed right here in Harrison County, on the old Baldwin place at Fern Lake. The log cabin where I~s birthed sot in a grove of trees right by the lake. The Baldwin place jined the Haggerty and }~~ajor .4ndrews places.

	“The best statement I can make of my ~ge am I~s ‘bo~xt fourteen the last year of &be ~L Inc oint ~ war ‚ It was tr~te ‚ t cause I start s hoe in~ in the field when I~s nine years old and I‘d been hoeint a long time.

	.	“They called my papa, Ike. The Baidwins bought him out of Alabama, and. mama‘s name was Nancy and she‘s birthed in Virginny, and the Baläwins bought her out the New Orleans slave market for $1,100.00. I‘s heared my gran‘ma, Barbara, tell how some Alabama owners drug they niggers with a mule and laid dem face down in a hole and beatdem till they‘s raw as beefsteak. But ber folks wasn‘t like that and the Baidwins wasn~t neither. They was good. white folks, and Missy was named May Amelia and then there was Old Marse Doctr !illiam. He was a doctor but he worked a hundred acres land and owned ‘bout eighty-five niggers, what lived in log quarters. They had son-of..a.~gun beds peg to the walls, and wore bachelor brogan shoes and

blue and stripe lowel clothes made on the place, and had lots to eat. • My

marna say she had a lots better time in slavery than after.