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p.79
W1

CELESTINE WARE-WBAI
3-5-1971

3
MINNIE EVANS 

M.E. Un huh, and she said they came to a place called Charles' Town.

C.W. Yes, yes.

M.E. But this town was Charleston, South Carolina and they were bought on from there to Wilmington. So a man bought them, bought her and her little baby from Wilmington from New Hanover County from up in Samson County and that's where they grew up at. 

C.W. Now did your mother see slavery times?

M.E. Not my mother, my grandmother.

C.W. Saw slavery?

M.E. Yes, she saw slavery. She was five years old in freedom and then there was some other older children and her mistress and master gave her, take her two oldest children from her and gave them to his daughter for a wedding present. And they stayed up in Samson County and then she stayed down in Long Creek, down with the other man and his family. So after freedom grandmother then saw this freedom. My great grandmother she and two or three other women went where their children had been taken from them. Went up into this county and they were gone for three weeks or more walking through that country to where they got to where the children was and brought her two children back. All together, she had about 12 or 13 head of children from these three different husbands.

C.W. But your mother was the only child of her mother?

M.E. No, now my mother was the only child her mother had, that was my grandmother.

C.W. Right, right and so then you dropped out of school in the 6th grade?

M.E. That's right. 

C.W. Why did you drop out of school?

M.E. Well my mother moved from Wilmington on Wrightsville down on the Sound. Then after she got married, some-