Aunt Josephine is still a "nurse maid." She rocks her great-great-great-grandchildren.
[Lucindy Lawrence Jurdon]
Interview with Lucindy Lawrence Jurdon
—Preston Klein, Lee County, Alabama
IT AIN'T DE SAME
Lucindy Lawrence Jurdon bustled feverishly about her tiny Lee County cabin when she learned her picture was "goin' to be tuk." She got out her old spinning wheel; sat down before it and beamed. Her daughter coming in from the field, exclaimed: "Ma, I done tol' you dis lady was comin' to see you; an' you wouldn't believe me."
After she had posed, she seated herself to tell about slavery days. Her oldest grandson was sick in the next room with pneumonia; the cabin was stuffy and bare.
Lucindy said:
"Honey, I was borned in Macon, Georgy, on de twenty-eighth day of some month or other; I can't 'member which. But de year was 1858.
"My pappy an' mammy, Emanuel and Patsy Lawrence, come from Jasper County, Georgy. I had a sister named Jennie an' a brother named Phillip, but I was de oldest.
"Ol' Marster had 'bout three or four hundred acres on his plantation. His name was Marster LeRoy Lawrence, and he shorely was good to all us niggers. His daddy was Mr. Billy Lawrence; an' de marster had four chilluns.