Category Archives: Biography

A Transcribed Interview with Stella Brown McCall – Part 1

African-American Genealogy & Slave Ancestry Research, Allen, Biography, memories, Montgomery Alabama, One Place Study,
Margaret McCall Thomas Ward

This is partial transcription of a very long interview that my cousin Margaret McCall made with her Aunt Stella Brown McCall in 1986. Margaret was Mary McCall’s granddaughter. Mary McCall was Eliza Williams Allen and Milton Saffold’s daughter. Stella Brown McCall was married to Margaret’s father’s brother. Margaret’s father was James McCall and his brother was Roscoe McCall. Louise was Stella and Roscoe’s daughter. Joe was Margaret and Stella’s cousin.

Part 1

Margaret: I’m doing family history now and I’m on the McCall side. And I want to learn as much as I can because there are some gaps in things that I have been able to find.
Stella: Well, I don’t know too much about the…
Louise: She doesn’t know about the McCall side because she’s given me all the memories of her side. I have all those you know…
Margaret: On the Brown side?
Stella: Yes.
Louise: Oh yes.
Margaret: But it’s the McCall side I’m interested in.
Louise: Mother you can tell her one thing I remember you told me about the McCall side, you told me that Daddy, that Daddy’s father was a jailor
Stella: He worked at the jail, the Montgomery jail down in Montgomery.
Louise: and they used to have him…he was the whipper and, you know, he was supposed to whip the prisoners, you know the black prisoners. And he would pretend that he was whipping them and you know, make them yell and he would make the whip sound. Isn’t that interesting? I can just picture that.
Stella: Well he had to pose to keep from whipping the prisoners.
Louise: Oh and mother you can also tell her about how Daddy was getting that man out of Montgomery for looking at the white girl. And then they were going to hang him and Daddy had to take him out on that lonely road and get him out of town. And …
Stella: they got stopped on the road.
Louise: The police, the posse, don’t they call it a posse? Or whatever.
Stella: Yes.
Louise: came after him and then when they shined the light on Daddy. They were in a field and they saw that it was Mr., your grandfather McCall’s son and they said “Oh Rossie…”
Stella: Because his father, not cutting you off, Ross’s own, father had worked at the jail and had charge of the colored prisoners. They would have him punish the colored prisoners and he never punished not one. Because he could do it like he wanted to do it. He just posed… Had a whipping place and made the noise like he was whipping them but he didn’t touch a one of them.
Margaret: So this incident of Uncle Ross in the field, what happened?
Stella: They stopped him, right at that field.
Louise: No mother, start with how they were standing outside the drugstore… he and that other one, that Watkins boy and the white girl came by and she told her boyfriend that they had, that this Watkins fellow had winked at her and that started a riot in the city.
Stella: Winked at her.
Margaret: Is that right?
Stella: A riot.
Margaret: Well, how did Uncle Ross get him out of the city?
Stella: Out of the city?
Margaret: You said that they were in the field and the police came and said…
Stella: Now all before this started, Ross had a friend out in the country. This man was a good friend of his and they would go hunting out there. And that’s why he knew the man… his name… I can’t think of his name… what was his name…anyway, well he had a home down in the country and he would go down there every summer you know, just take a week off and hunt and…
Louise: A good place to hide out.
Stella: To hide out. Yes.
Margaret: That’s all?
Stella: And there was a railroad train coming out of Montgomery going on to Atlanta and Ross got this man out of Montgomery and had this porter on this train to stop at this little station down there in the country and nobody would ever think a train would stop there and he stopped just like he got him to do and he put this man on this train in the back and had a place for him to stay and stay shut up and he did that until he got to Atlanta and he was safe.
Margaret: And did he stay in Atlanta or did he leave Atlanta?
Stella: Oh he left Atlanta. We didn’t hear any more of him. But Ross saved his life! They were going to lynch him uh huh, oh yes. Ross had some narrow escapes in that time.
Margaret: He did?
Stella:Yes, because you see this one was taking him for that and that one was taking him for this and it was terrible.

Stella McCall and Roscoe Jr.

Margaret: Now tell me, you and Uncle Roscoe married in Montgomery?
Stella: Montgomery, yes I married in Montgomery,
Margaret: Where did Uncle Roscoe go to school?
Stella: At State Normal School in Montgomery. And he went to the senior class and some girl got him in trouble and he had to jump out and go and that’s why he didn’t get his papers, you know.
Margaret: How did she get him in trouble?
Stella: Well she was… I guess something was wrong with her…. pregnant. That’s why he had to leave Montgomery. He left Montgomery.
Margaret: And where did he go?
Stella: Where did he go? New York.
Louise: Who are you talking about Daddy?
Stella: And then later he came on down.
Louise: Married you.
Stella: yes came back. Stayed away a long time though. I didn’t hardly…I was his little sister’s dearest friend and I didn’t know anything about him. Nothing. I’d heard of him because he was my brother, he was the age of my oldest brother Scott.
Joe: Was Jeanette your friend?
Louise: Um hum. Jeanette was your friend.
Stella: Jeanette was my best friend all the way from the first grade. And I didn’t know anything about him. I didn’t know there was a brother because he was away. Finished the senior class and everything and gone. Got in trouble and gone.
Margaret: Where did you go to school?
Stella: Same place he did – State.
Margaret: You went to State?
Stella: Yes, same thing. Same school but many years later, you know.
Margaret: Afterwards.
Stella: Now I was Jeanette, his sister’s age, his baby sister. And I didn’t know anything about him (laughs) he came on the scene later. And we were swept away (laughs again. He’d come to the house everyday..
Margaret: Uncle Ross would come to the house everyday, uh?
Stella: Everyday. Every evening. I can see him coming now.(laughs) Well, and that went on so far and we decided to marry.
Margaret: How did you happen to leave Montgomery?
Stella: Oh people were leaving Montgomery like mad at that time.
Margaret: Why?
Stella: There was kind of a thing going then, getting out of the South. That’s when all this uproar started down there. Started changing schools and everything and getting the different things in order for the blacks to go to one school and the whites to another school and they had to fight that and different things and it made an uproar in the city. And then many many of the… all the important families in the city just packed up and said they were going to leave the city and that’s what was happening.

Roscoe McCall holding Roscoe Jr & Louise. Detroit 1921.

Margaret: When you were going to school, where did you go before Normal?
Stella: One school for me. One school for him. Same school.
Margaret: What was that?
Stella: State.
Margaret: No, but before State Normal for your early education where did you go?
Stella: The only education they had from the cradle to the top floor.
Margaret: Oh, State went all the way.
Stella: Yes, they had buildings on the big grounds and the grammar school buildings were around on the circle ad then the juniors and then the seniors.
Margaret: Now was it integrated then or was it all black or…
Stella: All Black
Margaret:All Black
Stella: All black.
Margaret: Okay, what about the teachers. Who were the teachers?
Stella: White. They started off with all white. Now I remember when I was down in the grades there was one teacher that they had kept, teacher name of Mrs. Foster and she was an excellent first grade teacher. And they kept her. But then later on they started putting the white people in and they’d keep them in, then they’d kick about it and then had to give them recognition you know and finally they got the school like they wanted it and then they… it was a black school. Had it turned black, see, but in the beginning it had all white teachers. Yes because when Ross was there now he graduated, well I’d say, a good eight or ten years before I was in there and he had a teacher that I remember a Mrs. Stuart. She had been teaching there from the beginning and she was there until the end. She was from up North. They brought those teachers down from the north. That’s the way they did. The whole school was white but then finally turned right back because they were fighting it so. They wanted colored teachers in there.
Margaret: Who are they who were fighting?
Stella: The people.
Margaret: The black people?
Stella: Yes, that’s who fought. They had… I can remember the teachers, they were crazy about Ross. He was always such a good friend to them. (laugh) Getting in with everybody. He always was on the good side. Yes, Ross was a sight.
Joe: You remember…one day…he was the first one I ever did see ride a motorcycle.
Louise: That’s right. You know everything.
Stella: Nobody had a motorcycle in the city but Ross.
Louise: You remember that?
Joe: First time I ever remember seeing him.
Margaret: Where was this, Montgomery. He had a motorcycle?

Stella: He used to ride that motorcycle out to my house everyday and ride it back downtown to the drugstore where he was working. They had opened up a drugstore.
Margaret: Who had opened up a drugstore?
Stella:Mr. Tulane, his uncle and they all were working in it It was a nice big, good business and everybody would be so congenial and everything when you would go in. You remember the drugstore? You used to hang out around the drugstore every Sunday. You could find anybody you wanted at the drugstore (laughs) when you’d court.

Dock Allen’s Story

Allen, Biography,

Dock Allen’s Story
As told to me in a phone conversation with my cousin Jacqui Vincent

Dock Allen was a white man’s son but not the one he ran away from.  His owner was a mean man who kept vicious dogs so that the slaves would be afraid to run.  Dock decided he was going to escape anyway but he did some things to throw the dogs off of his track. He walked through a wet field of wild ramps. He rubbed himself with them, poured the water on himself and practically rolled around in the field so the onion smell would hide his own.

Further along he came to a farm.  By that time he was very tired so he climbed up into the hay loft and covered himself with hay.  The tracking dogs came and he could feel their breath as they walked over him, but they didn’t find him because of the onion odor.  Eventually they left.

This was the same place where Eliza lived.  Later he decided to give himself up and the white people at the house send a message his master.  When he came to get Dock he said that no one had ever out smarted his dogs and that any man who was smart enough to do that deserved to be free and he freed him.  Dock stayed on that place and married Eliza.

Doc Allen in the record.

I found Dock Allen in in the 1867 voter registration database living in Montgomery, AL.  He appears with his family in the 1870, 1880 and 1900 census in Montgomery.  According to the records he was a carpenter born in Georgia.  He owned his own home.  In the 1900 census he and Eliza had been married 40 years which puts the beginning around 1860.

I have three addresses for him, 237 Clay street, 216 Holt street and finally 444 S. Ripley street where he lived for the five years before he died March 29, 1909 of “inflammatory bowels” after being ill for several weeks.  His mother is listed as Matilda Brewster on his death certificate.  No father is listed. He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Montgomery.

I would like to find information about a runaway matching his description in the Dallas/Lowndes county area around 1860.  Probably that will have to wait until I am able to go to Alabama and do some research there.

Eliza and the people in her life – A Chart

Allen, Biography, Eliza, ,

Before I continue with the story of Eliza’s husband, Dock Allen and the rest of her children, I thought that a chart might make the story more understandable.

Eliza is in the largest photo towards the center of the chart.  Her mother is Annie Williams.  Both were enslaved by Edmund and Jane Harrison of Lowndes and Montgomery Alabama.  Later, I hypothesize, Eliza went with the Harrison’s daughter, Martha when she was married to Milton Saffold.  Milton and Martha (she and her children are in the violet boxes) had three sons and then Martha died.  Eliza had a daughter, Mary with Milton.  Later Milton married Georgia Whitting (She and her sons are in the green boxes).  Oral history says that Eliza and Mary were freed soon after this.  Eliza later married Dock Allen, a free man and a carpenter.  They had 8 children that survived to adulthood (blue boxes).  Around 1874 Milton Saffold had a relationship with Clara Bolten (peach boxes) and they had two children together.  Clara had a third daughter with an Irwin.  Milton Saffold went to California and died there in 1879.

Part 4 – Eliza’s Daughters by My Mother Doris Graham Cleage

African-American Genealogy & Slave Ancestry Research, Allen, Biography, memories, Montgomery Alabama, One Place Study, , , ,

My mother wrote this as part of her family history memories for my sister and me in 1980.  I am putting the whole piece here then I will reprint each sister’s section with the new information I found and corrections that needed to be made after I found descendants for most of them.  My mother’s grandmother was Jennie Virginia Allen Graham.  The women she writes about are her grandmother’s sisters, her great aunts.  When “grandmother” is mentioned that is Jennie Virginia.

Willie holding grandson Conrad, daughter Naomi looking on.

Now a word about her sisters….Aunt Willie was the oldest….married well…Victor Tulane (Tuskegee trustee and owner of a general store and many houses).  He was not what you’d call a “faithful” husband, but Aunt Willie (the family said)  looked the other way because he always took such good care of his wife and only child, a daughter Naomi, who was sent to Howard, married a doctor and went to live the high life in New York.  Aunt Willie had a beautiful apartment over the store.  Always had a maid and never worked.  She was living like this when Grandmother was a struggling widow. She was the last sister to leave Montgomery.  She died in New York.  Her son-in-law had died, left her daughter wealthy with apartments in NY paid for, insurance, money for the education of the four children in the bank, etc.  I remember shoes hand made in Italy being in the boxes of impossible things she sent mother.  They were always distant “rich relations”.  Don’t remember even seeing any of the children except one young woman who came to Detroit briefly, stayed with Margaret McCall.  Saw Aunt Willie once.  She and Aunt Abbie came to visit us when I was small.  Don’t remember her saying much or ever smiling while Aunt Abbie was as you remember her, friendly.

Abbie Allen Brown

Aunt Abbie married a Mississippi Riverboat gambler, swarthy and handsome and no good, who stayed home on two visits long enough to give her two sons and then sent her trunks of fine clothes to wear or sell to take care of herself and the boys.  Whenever she talked about him she sounded like she hated him.  She resented the lack of money.  Said once the oldest boy Earl (named for his father) screamed for days with toothache and she could not take him to the dentist who didn’t want any fancy clothes or jewelry.  She resented raising the children alone. I got the feeling she hated them and they hated her and she resented him being off having a good time while she stayed home with the problems.  She talked about him In a completely different way than she talked about her Jewish policeman who bought her a house on Ripley St. and spent much time there, for whom she loved to cook and keep house.

She came to live with Mother to take care of Daddy (!) so Mother could come to Springfield and help me when Kris was born.  In later years when they lived on Fairfield, Mother and Daddy used to argue about this and they would call me in to referee.  He’d say he took Aunt Abbie in out of the goodness of his heart like all the rest of her family, and that she was not supposed to stay on them forever but was to go live with Aunt Margaret.  Mother would say Aunt Abbie came to take care of him because (here she would make a mouth at me) he could not take care of himself and work even tho he could cook better than she and do everything else in the house too.  I think we are always angered at the way men can say this is the limit.  I can’t or I won’t do this or that and we seem to have lives where you do what is to be done since you have no one who will hear you if you say you can’t or won’t…hold my hand Charlie Brown!  And that he knew very well she was going to live with them and visit Margaret occasionally.  Mother was right.  He said Aunt Abbie came to have cataracts operated and to be taken care of.  He was wrong.  Her eye operations came years later.  He said to me once that he had always taken care of Mother’s people and she would have nothing to do with his.  I know how Grandmother depended on him to fix things around their house and he was most agreeable and I always thought he loved it.  They made over him when he came with his box of tools.  I was always there as helper, but he got very tired and mistreated about having both Alice and Aunt Abbie to take care of.  He didn’t like either one.  But I never could get him to send them to a nursing or residence home to live.  He always said what would people say if I did that.  When people talk like that I give up because they are obviously making the choice they prefer.

Back to Aunt Abbie.  She loved to cook and do everything else about the house.  Mother would not let her do anything except clean her own room and do her own washing and ironing and Mother hated everything about housekeeping except cooking, but she said her husband expected her to take care of him and his house and (she didn’t say this) she’d be damned if she’d let anyone else do it as long as she could.  I couldn’t talk to her about it.

Aunt Anna was the sister who went to Chicago, got a job as teller in a bank, married the bank manager who was a widower with children.  He knew she was black but no one else in his family ever did. I’ve often wondered what they did for birth control.  They were young when they married.  He was well to do.  She used to write Mother and Mother would write back c/o general post office.  Said she loved him but felt very lonely all the time not to be able to see her family and knew the children would have nothing to do with her if they knew.  She was supposed to look like Margaret McCall.  She got sick.  Wrote Mother she was not to live long.  That there might be no more letters.  That she would dearly love to die with her family He had died years before…had left his money to her…had asked her to promise to stay near the children to pass so they would not be embarrassed…and leave the money to them.  She promised and told mother she had made her bed and would lie in it to the end but would surely see them in Heaven.  Mother was the only one she wrote to.  The rest would not answer letters.  That was the last letter.

Mary Allen McCall

Aunt Mary married someone named James McCall whom I never knew.  Also never heard anyone say who he was or what he did.  As I write this it strikes me that the men these sisters married were for the most part very shadowy creatures.  I’ve seen a picture even of only one.  Strange.  Aunt Mary looked rather like Aunt Abbie but was quiet and rather grim, I thought.  Lived with Aunt Margaret and her son Uncle Jim all her life as far as I know.  I think Aunt Mary helped with money although I don’t know where she got it.  Uncle Jim, her son, was blind.  There were two children, Margaret and Victoria, and no help from the state.  He caned chairs and wrote poetry for a living.  I think they were very poor but did better when the state helped blind people  And they got enough money from somewhere to buy the Detroit Tribune and make money.

Beulah Allen Pope and son Robert Pope

Aunt Beulah who looked something like Grandmother, I’ve heard, married someone named Pope and went to Milwaukee.  Don’t know what he did or what she was like.  Never saw her.  Sent one son through dental school  Robert Pope.  Very handsome, his twin sister, a beauty married well, had one child the one who kept pushing me around when they came to visit us.  I must have been about four,  so was he, and he wanted to follow MV everywhere and not let me come.  I went anyway.  I remember him banging my head against the wall beside the stairs.  Strange.  He especially hated me because I could cut up my own meat and his mother wouldn’t even let him try.  Ha ha!!!  Another son of Aunt Beulah was a teacher who married had one daughter who wrote once to Mother and Daddy about family history.  Wonder what she got together.  I keep hoping to find someone who has already done all the hard work.  Back to Aunt Beulah, who was considered the least beautiful of the sisters.  Her son Robert built her a beautiful home and stayed there with her until she died not too long ago.  Ten or twelve years.  They all spoke of her with envy.

From Fannie’s Scrap Books

Biography, Grahams
Small montage on metal with bandage frame by Fannie Turner Graham.

Today I am posting writings from my grandmother Fannie Mae Turner Graham’s scrapbook/journal, along with some of the notes she made about her son’s deaths.  Entries were made from  1927 – 1946.

_______________

My Scrap book – started 1932 after Howard’s death to keep my mind off the tragic death of our Mershell Jr (6 years old), Nov 1 1927 and our Baby Howard (3 years) March 4, 1932 – Fannie Turner Graham – Maybe Dad and our girls will look over this book and see how some of “mothers” spare time was spent…. I get a kick out of this book myself. Fan

From the envelope holding Mershell’s school books:
“In Memorium 11/10/1927 by his mother
Our only little boy – Mershell – was struck by an auto truck on Tuesday, Nov. 1, 1927, just opposite Thomas School to which he was returning from lunch with his sister – at 12:40 P.M. His little skull was fractured, neck broken, shoulders fractured and he was rushed to St. Joseph’s Mercy Hospital by the man (Jno Merlo) who struck him and a foreign woman who picked him up before I could reach the scene. He never regained consciousness, and died at 12:20AM Wednesday, Nov. 2nd, 1927. Funeral services held from house on Friday Nov. 4th 1927. Rev. Laviscount officiating. Mr. Greenlaw sang “When he cometh” and Mrs Spaulding accompained him.

Our hearts are all but broken and only time can heal the wounds caused from shock and loss but God knows best and we still trust him and asking him to keep us realize “Thy will be done”

Truck owned by Charles Marimanti Bros. On West Grand Blvd.

(Inserted: Our hearts are bleeding still – but we know he’s safe with Jesus. Loyalty of friends and floral offerings never been equaled.)
His mother.

Other side of envelope: Something has gone out of our hearts but I get comfort from the following song which I’ve so often heard my mother sing: as best I remember it
“Go bury thy sorrow
Go hide it with care,
Go bury it deeply,
The world has it’s share.
Go tell it to Jesus,
He **** will hear
His is the best solace
He always is near.”

God be with us, strengthen and comfort us in these, the saddest hours we’ve ever known, and prepare us to meet our darling boy in heaven
Amen

9/27/28 Howard came in place of Mershell, we thought. He was such a beautiful darling. Stayed with us 3 1/2 years, then God took him…

8/25/1929 We went to cemetery for first time today.
Now we go to cemetery weekly.

From an index card stuck in Howard’s baby book:
Dear God:
Give us strength and courage to bear whatever
is in store for us.
In Jesus name
We ask it
Amen

3/1/32 I believe my baby Howard is dying.

From the ‘Little Book’

Feb. 5, 1940
Dear God and Little Book: the mail has just brought us the long looked for letter from Wayne University and the Board of Education that Doris has received the yearly scholarship to Wayne… I shed tears of joy… for more reasons than one or even two and the main reason is she deserves it for being such a sweet little “trick”…even if we do say so ourselves.

February 12 – Doris’s birthday – 17 today. We had a nice dinner, cake, ice cream and gifts for her from all.

March 12, my birthday, among all a purchase certificate from JL Hudson’s from our daughters and dad

April 3 – Mary Virginia is 20 today. We had nice dinner cake and ice cream and gifts from us all – also Aunt Daisy never forgets with money.
Dad celebrates Christmas day.

June 7, 1940 Doris received $100 scholarship from the Deltas today… Isn’t that grand! It served 2 years.

June 10 — Mary Virginia has just gotten (through Jim and May) a good job at the County Bldg — God is so good to us. and today our Mershell Jr would have been 19 if he had lived – but we still say – God knows best.
Remember he was killed by auto – Nov. 1, 1927 and 10 months later Sept 7, 1928 our baby Howard came and on March 4, 1932 we buried him.

11/9/41 MV and Bud married.
9/7/43 Doris Diane born to them
11/17/43 Doris and Toddy married ( divorced!)
8-30-46 Kris arrives
Dear God bless our dear children and their seed forever, for they’ve been good to our teachings and lost house for a good husband and father. Amen

Wednesday March 12, 1941
Dear little Book: – This is my birthday and as I waked up feeling fine for a change and as happy about it as any mortal could be I am now thrilled almost to pieces. The house wished me a “Happy Day” Maus and girls called up at 7:30 AM and Maus says they sang the whole verse “Happy Birthday to You” the sweetest song I’ve heard this year and the girls came down to breakfast with the most beautiful BD card $1 enclosed and I figured that was aplenty – but JL Hudson has just sent a beautiful toaster with a “Happy BD card” from my own Dad and girls” who wouldn’t be proud and cheerful for such a grand family – so bless them.

June 15, 1942
Our wedding anniversary. Having washed all day (it being Monday) it slipped my mind, when Dad came home with a lovely #2 box of Sanders’ chocolates and the most beautiful card to “The sweetest girl in the world, my wife.” I wouldn’t take a million for it.

June 23 – Doris marks just came and we’re so proud. she got 5 A’s and 2 B’s and in the fall will be a senior at Wayne. All marks so good that scholarship was extended another year – graduated with Distinction in June 1944 and was publicly acknowledged as a high honor student at honor convocation at the Horace Rackham building… so proud.
M.V. won high honor in her business Institute for typing and short hand.