The Use and Need of the Life of Carrie A. Nation | Page 6

for protection, when he left
Kentucky. I am glad that family graveyards have given place to public
cemeteries, for this place has changed hands many times and this
graveyard is not pleasant for the strangers who live there. We who are
interested in these sacred mounds, feel like we intrude, to have the
homes of our dead with strangers.
{illust. caption = MY OLD HOME WHERE I WAS BORN IN
GARRARD COUNTY, KENTUCKY. THE OLD GRAVE YARD
NEAR BY, AND MY GRANDFATHER's GRAVE.}
The memories of this Kentucky home date from the time I was three
years old. This seems remarkable, but my mother said this incident
occurred when I was three years old, and I remember it distinctly. I was
standing in the back yard, near the porch. Mr. Brown, the overseer, was
in the door of my half-brother Richard's room, with my brother's gun in
his hands. At the end of the porch was a small room, called the "saddle
room." A pane of glass was out of the window and a hen flew out,
cackling. Aunt Judy, the colored woman, went in to get the egg, and
walked in front of Mr. Brown, who raised the gun and said: "Judy, I am
going to shoot you," not thinking the gun was loaded. It went off, and
aunt Judy fell. Mr. Brown began to wring his hands and cry in great
agony. I screamed and kept running around a small tree near by. This
was Sunday morning. Runners were sent for the doctor, and for my
parents, who were at church. Aunt Judy got well, but had one eye out;
we could always feel the shot in her forehead. She was one of the best
servants, and a dear good friend to me. She used to bring two of her
children and come up to my room on Sundays and sit with me, saying,
she did not want to be in the cabin when "strange niggers were there."

This misfortune had disfigured her face and she always avoided
meeting people. I can see her now, with one child at the breast, and
another at her knee, with her hand on its head, feeling for "buggars." I
was very much attached to this woman and wanted to take care of her
in her old age. I went to Southern Texas to get her in 1873. I found
some of her children in Sherman, Texas, but aunt Judy had been dead
six months. She always said she wanted to live with me.
My mother always left her small children in the care of the servants. I
was quite a little girl before I was allowed to eat at "white folk's table."
Once my mother had been away several days and came home bringing
a lot of company with her. I ran out when I saw the carriages driving up,
and cried: "Oh, ma, I am so glad to see you. I don't mind sleeping with
aunt Eliza, but I do hate to sleep with uncle Josh," think I was quite
dirty, and some of the colored servants snatched me out of sight. Aunt
Eliza was aunt Judy's half-sister, her father was a white man. She was
given to my father by my grandmother, was very bright and handsome,
and the mother of seventeen children. My grandmother remembered
aunt Eliza in her will, giving her some linen sheets, furniture, and other
things.
One of aunt Eliza's sons was named Newton. My father had a mill and
store up in Lincoln County, near Hustonville. Newton used to do the
hauling for my father with a large wagon and six-mule team. He would
often do the buying for the store and take measurements of grain, and
my father trusted him implicitly. Once a friend of my father said to him,
as Newton was passing along the street with his team: "George, I'll give
you seventeen hundred dollars for that negro." My father said: "If you
would fill that wagon-bed full of gold, you could not get him." A few
weeks after that Newton died. I remember seeing my father in the room
weeping, and remember the chorus of the song the negroes sang on that
occasion: "Let us sit down and chat with the angels."
The husband of aunt Eliza was "uncle Josh," a small Guinea negro, as
black as coal and very peculiar. I always stood in awe of him, as all the
children did. I remember one expression of his was: "Get out of the
way, or I'll knock you into a cocked hat." The reason I had to sleep with
aunt Eliza, Betsy, my nurse, was only ten years older than I was. Betsy
was a girl given by my grandfather Campbell to my mother when my
father and mother were