When interviewed, "Mammy Dink" was at Mrs. Davis' home, "jes piddlin 'round", as she still takes a pride in "waiting on her white fokes."
Naturally, for one of her age, the shadows are lengthening. "Mammy Dink" has never had a child; all her kin are dead; she is 96 and has no money and no property, but she has her memories and, "thank Gawd", Mrs. Davis—her guardian-angel, friend and benefactress.
Whitley,
4-29-37
Ex-Slave #119
MAMMY DINK IS DEAD
[HW: (From Columbus News—Record of Dec-8-1936)]
Mammy Dink, who cooked and served and gained pure joy through faithful service, has gone to the Big House in the skies. She lacked but a few years of a hundred and most of it was spent in loving service. She was loyal to the families she worked for and was, to all practical intents, a member of the family circle. She was 94 or 95 when she passed away—Mammy was about to lose track of mere age, she was so busy with other things—and she was happily at work to within a week of her death. She was an institution in Columbus, and one of the best known of the many faithful and loyal colored servants in this city.
Mammy Dink—her full name, by the way, was Dink Young—started out as a cook in a Talbot county family and wound up her career as cook for the granddaughter of her original employer. She was first in service in the home of Dr. M.W. Peters, in Talbot county, and later was the cook in the family of Dr. T.R. Ashford, at Ellerslie, in Harris county. Then, coming to Columbus, she was cook in the home of the late Captain T.J. Hunt for some 20 years.
For the last 27 years she had been cook for Mrs. John T. Davis, just as she had been cook in the home of her father, Dr. Ashford, and her grandfather, Dr. Peters.
Mammy, in leisure hours, used to sit on the coping at the Sixteenth street school, and watch the world go by. But her greatest joy was in the kitchen.
The Davis family was devoted to the faithful old servant. A week ago she developed a severe cold and was sent to the hospital. She passed away Saturday night—the old body had given out. The funeral service was conducted yesterday afternoon from St. Philips colored church in Girard. She was buried in a churchyard cemetery, two or three miles out, on the Opelika road. The white people who were present wept at the departure of one who was both servant and friend.