Mr. Northington was a large slave owner, and not needing William and Jack on his farm, he kept them hired out.
After they were freed, they said, “We will go back to the old home, and help take care of Mars Henry the remainder of his days,” and they did. Mr. Northington died June, 1877, but they still stayed on the old plantation, working as long as they lived for Miss Ellen Yates, Mr. Northington’s adopted niece.
Two summers later, August, 1883, I heard him preach the funeral of Aunt Lucy Parks Northington. For several years before her death, Aunt Lucy had cooked for Mrs. Lawson Fort. She had been a faithful servant in the Dancy, Parks, and Fort families all her life, originally belonging to William E. Dancy, of Florence, Ala.
She was beloved by her white people, who tenderly cared for her during the last two years of her life, in which she was unable to work. And when the last sad rites were to be paid her remains, her casket was placed on the front gallery of the pretty Fort home; white friends sat in the parlor and sitting room; the colored congregation occupied seats leading from the steps to the front gate. As Rev. Altheus Carr stood at the head of the casket, and ’neath the shadows of the imposing columns of that old colonial home, it was a scene to touch the tenderest chord of a Southern heart. On the casket was a wreath of spider lillies, that grew in a valley near the cabin home of the deceased, when she lived at the old Parks homestead near Port Royal. Every summer, for years, she had admired that lily bed at blooming time, and the writer remembered it.
He took for his text, “Well done good and faithful servant,” etc., and started out by saying: “The nearness of this casket to the mansion door, and the pure white lillies that shed their fragrance over the heart that is forever still, attest the truth of my text. Yes my hearers, this means something. It speaks appreciation of a life, whose ending deserves more than a passing notice.
“Sister Lucy Parks Northington was sixty-one years of age, and forty-one years of this long span of life were spent in the Master’s vineyard.
“She was a quiet worker, caring not for the praise of the world, but striving always to perform duties pleasing to the eye of Him who seeth in secret places.
“Too well I know, that my feeble words can do but scant justice to the life of such a departed sister, but I feel like we should hold high the light of such lives, that others may follow their brightness.
“My mother was often with Sister Lucy during her last days; they sang and prayed together, and she left every evidence that she was ready for the kingdom.
“Her last night on earth, she said to the friends keeping watch, ‘Sing to me, sing the good old songs of Zion.’ No doubt, but she, like the saints of old, wanted music to charm her last on earth, and greet her first in heaven.