Slave retribution-"...When de Massas 'ud whup one a' us...We jes pizened a baby..."

Boonslick

Sergeant
Joined
Mar 25, 2014
Location
The Boonslick area of Central Missouri
Lewis Grave Yard.jpg

While reading an interesting book entitled, Hobby Horse Rider-From the Writings of Lilburn Adkin Kingsbury-1884-1983, edited by Warren Taylor Kingsbury, I happened upon an interesting and horrifying notation on "slave retribution". The following story, quoted verbatim, comes from this book pgs. 88-89. For clarification, I have added the parenthesis.

"In making records of tombstones in Howard County (Boonslick Country, Missouri), I wondered about the infant mortality which occurred in some families during the 19th century.

In the endowed, well-gro0med Lewis family cemetery two miles east of Glasgow (Mo), there are two small rows of tombstones, ten in one and eight in the other. They mark the graves of children fathered by two brothers. Seven of the family of ten died before they were one year old. One lived until its second year, one until its third, and the other one attained the age of four years. The stones which mark their graves are exactly alike and appear modern, as if they might have replaced old-fashioned ones erected a century ago.

Six of the babies in the other family lived but one, five, nine, eleven, and fifteen days and one less than a month. A seventh child survived six months; the eighth, eleven months.

The deaths of the ten children extended over a period of twenty-four years from 1839-1863. Those of the eight occurred within twelve years, 1854-1866. The graves of the latter are marked by small obelisks alike except one is larger than the others. It marks the grave of the last child to die. Each has a little lamb as an emblem just above the name and the dates.

I was so deeply impressed by and curious about these cases of infant-mortality, I went to see an elderly man in Glasgow. I thought he might remember having heard something about it.

He had seen the two rows of tombstones many times and he too had wondered about them until he talked with old Mose, an aged black man who had been a young slave owned by one of the brothers.

Mose was feeble of body but had a clear mind. With emancipation so far behind him he spoke casually of the deaths of the children. He said, "Cose I remembers. Ever time one of the Massas whupped one of us, we just pizened (poisoned) a baby."

Such stories of slaves squaring scores, "getting even", still persist."

Besides slave revolt stories or those of just plain "spitting in the grits", has anyone else ever come across slave retribution/ getting even with massa incidents?
 
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