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W1  p.78

CELESTINE WARE-WBAI
3-5-1971

2
MINNIE EVANS

C.W. What subjects did they teach you in the 6th grade?

M.E. The only subjects that studied me was history and I use to love to study about the Greeks (C.W. Yes) and all of those kind of things and the Trojans (C.W. Yes, right) and all going through all of that. That's all I studied all I loved. (C.W. You loved history?) The kind of history I would really study it.

C.W. When did your family originally come to America?

M.E. Oh, my family.

C.W. Yes, way, way back.

M.E. Yes, way back. My that was from my great grandmother was a little girl. My grandmother sat down and told me the story that her grandmother had told where they came from Trinidad. 

C.W. Can you tell me one of those stories about coming from Trinidad? How did they?

M.E. Well mother said that her great grandmother Margaret. Her name was not listed as Margaret until after she came to Wilmington but her name was Marney. And they were sold, her husband, theirself and five children. They were drove somewhere through the forest, through the woods and her husband taken some kind of a fever and he died. She don't think he really just died. He couldn't go and she believe they killed him.

C.W. Was this in Trinidad or North Carolina?

M.E. Yes, this was in Trinidad. This was before they got to North Carolina a long time. And then two or three of her children taken sick with smallpox or cholerea in the woods and they died but she and her youngest child they survived. They didn't get sick at all. So they came on. They didn't like that master that had them. He give them over to another man as far as she could understand and they taken a boat and came on to North Carolina.

C.W. I see and your family has been in North Carolina every since?