Personal Recollections of Emancipation Day
Personal recollections of Emancipation Day
During the Great Depression, writers from the Federal Writers’ Project documented the stories of people who had been enslaved in the state. Often, the interviewees recounted the moment that they learned of their freedom. In these excerpts, Mary Ann Murray, Margrett Nickerson, and John Proctor reveal how they experienced their first Emancipation Day.
1. Mary Ann Murray
St Augustine Record 10/21/1934
“Former Slave Tells Her Story; One of Oldest Negro Residents”
Sold in the slave market here over eighty years ago for one dollar - that is the story of Mary Ann Murray, better known as Mary Gomez, one of St. Augustine's oldest colored residents.
Mary, who lives on North Oneida Street, was born a slave about eighty-five years ago (she isn't sure of her exact age), belonging to the DeMedicis family here. When she was one year old, she and her mother were sold in the slave market to Phillip Gomez, Mary bringing a price of only one dollar because she was so sickly and small that everyone was sure she would die within a year. Her mother brought a good price, Mary said.
The Gomez homestead, according to Mary, occupied what is now the site of the court house, and here she was brought up as a family servant, always kindly treated. She can remember when a child playing about the old dirt streets of the city, and in Treasury Street, which was in front of her home. Ships used to drop anchor in Matanzas Bay, or just outside the harbor, and send in their crews to get water from the spring in the slave market. Mary tells of the time her master, Mr. Gomez, and other slave-holders in the city, sent their men to Anastasia Island to quarry coquina for sea-wall and jetty work.
At this time, all of the western part of the city was a marsh, part of the San Sebastian River, and Mary remembers when her mother would go to the west end of the garden of the old Spanish government House, now the Post Office, facing what is now Hotel Ponce de Leon, and sit on the bank of the creek to fish. Mary said that they used to catch trout more than a foot long there.
When Mary Gomez was a young girl, word of the emancipation proclamation reached here, and, she said, all the slaveholders were ordered to release their slaves and allow them to gather in a large vacant lot west of St. Joseph's Academy, where they were officially freed. When her bonds were struck off Mary took the name of her parents instead of that of her master, as many did, and called herself Mary Ann Murray. All the freed men were quartered near where the Pablo Cafeteria is now, according to the old woman, and would go every week to the Arsenal commissary to receive rations. Later the colony broke up and many of the negroes moved to what is now West Augustine and Lincolnville. Others, however, loath to break away from their masters, wished to live near their old homes, and settled a small colony along Charlotte Street.
(https://sites.rootsweb.com/~flsags/maryannmurray.htm)
2. Margrett Nickerson
Born enslaved in Leon County, Margrett Nickerson of Jacksonville recounted her memories of emancipation for the Federal Writers’ Project when she was in her nineties. In this excerpt from Nickerson’s December 1936 interview, she refers to emancipation as the firing of “the big gun.”
“When de big gun fiahed I was a young missy totin’ cotton to de scales at de ginhouse; ef de ginhouse wuz close by, you had to tote de cotton to it, but ef it quz fur ‘way wagins ud come to de fields and weigh it up and take it to de ginhouse. I was still livin’ near Lake Jackson and we went to Abram Bailey’s place near Tallahassee. Carr turned us out without nuthin and Bailey gi’d us his hammoc’ and we went dere for a home. Fust we cut down saplin’s fur we didn’ had no house, and took de tops uv pines and put on de top; den we put dirt on top uv dese saplin’s and step’ under dem. When de rain would come, it would wash all de dirt right down in our face and we’d hafter buil’ us a house all over ag’in. We didn’ had no body to buil’ a house fur us, cose pa was gone and ma jes had us gals and we cut de saplin’s fer de man who would buil’ de house fer us. We live on Bailey’s place a long time and fin’lly buil’ us a log cabin and den we went frum dis cabin to Gadsden County to a place name Concord and dere I stay tel I come here ‘fore de fiah.”
(https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&context=formerly_enslaved_narratives)
3. John Proctor
John Proctor was born free in Leon County in 1844. His father was a renowned free Black carpenter, George Proctor, and his grandfather, Antonio Proctor, was an interpreter and guide for the Spanish and Americans during the colonial period. John Proctor, along with his mother and siblings were re-enslaved by the Rutgers family after his father George encountered financial troubles. After Henry Rutgers’s death in 1861, Matthew Lively enslaved John, who worked as a clerk in Lively’s drug store.
After Emancipation, John Proctor earned an education by attending night classes. He worked in Leon County as a teacher and served in both the Florida House of Representatives and Florida Senate. Below is an excerpt from Proctor’s Federal Writers’ Project interview, conducted in the late 1930s when he was over 90 years old.
“ ‘When were you set free,’ we asked?
John’s chuckle was slow and deep. “Not ‘til the end. When Mr. Lincoln set all n…s free.”
“What did you think of the Civil War?”
“Why I didn’t think about it. I don’t have much truck with wars. No, I didn’t hear the guns of the Battle of Natural Bridge. Mr. Lively send all his folks to Georgia so the yankees (sic) would not get us.”
(https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh000373/.)
John Proctor, ca. 1939
Courtesy of the State Archives of Florida
Do you have items or information related to historic Emancipation Day celebrations in Florida? Contact the Museum of Florida History’s Research and Collection staff at [email protected] to share your Emancipation Day stories.
