By Miss Nancy Watkins, volunteer
Madison, North Carolina
Story of Ex-Slave, Porter Scales
[TR: Date stamp: JUN 1 1937]
Monday, December 19, 1933, the faithful colored friends of Uncle Porter Scales transported his body from St. Stephen's African Methodist Episcopal Church located on the Madison-Mayodan highway to a plantation grave yard several miles east of town, along roads slippery with sleet. He was buried by the side of his first wife on the 130 acre farm which Uncle Porter said he bought from Mr. Ellick Llewellyn to raise his family on and which he later swapped to Mr. Bob Cardwell for a town house in Pocomo (Kemoca, a suburb from first syllables of promoters' names, Kemp—Moore—Cardwell—Kemoca). In this town house, Uncle Porter passed away aged he thought ninety-seven. For a number of years, he had drawn a pension of $100.00 per year for his services to the Confederate government in hauling foodstuff from Charlotte, North Carolina to Danville, Virginia.
As a slave of Nat Pitcher Scales residing in the brick mansion on Academy Street across from the Methodist church, Porter came to Madison when ten years of age, and his memory held the development of Madison from the erection of the churches around 1845 to details like seeing little Bettie Carter (Mrs. B. Watkin's Mebane) cry from stage fright and pass up her "piece" at school "exhibition" (commencement). He saw Madison grow from a tiny trading village with aristocratic slave holding citizens with "quarters" on their town lots to a town of 1500 with automobiles clipping by to Mayodan, a mill town of 2000, and a thickly populated though unincorporated country side.
In 1930, Uncle Porter was struck by an automobile, and since he [HW addition: has] poked his way about town cautiously with his cane, no longer working as handy man to Thomas R. Pratt's family on the corner of Academy and Market streets. His slavery home was in a two roomed (with loft) cabin next door to the house Mr. Pratt built in 1890 when he moved to Madison from Leaksville. This cabin Col. Gallaway in the 1890's had enlarged to house the Episcopal rector, Mr. Stickney. Uncle Porter's slave home stands in 1937, occupied by Mr. Pratt's daughter, Mrs. Pearl Van Noppen and sons.
Uncle Porter was ever very polite and humble, for all his contacts he thought had always been with the highest of Dan river aristocracy. His medium, lean body, with a head like Julius Caesar's was covered with skin of "ginger cake color".
On the Deep Springs Dan River plantation lived Mrs. Timberlake whose daughter married Mr. Le Seur from an adjoining plantation just across the Dan river from Gov. Alexander Martin's Danbury plantation. She in time married Mr. Scales, and as property of this lady, Porter was born of legally married parents. Porter's brother, Nathan Scales, was given by his mistress to her daughter, when she married another Le Seur, and thus he became Nathan Le Seur. Both brothers have descendants in Madison of a high type of citizenship. Porter, himself was given the choice by his ole Miss of belonging to either of her two sons, John Durham Scales or Nathaniel Pitcher Scales. Porter chose Nat Scales as his young marse and come to Madison to live with him about 1845.
By obeying orders from his marse Nat Pitcher Scales, Porter operated a train of fifteen wagons loaded with corn for the Confederate cavalry from Charlotte, North Carolina to Danville, Virginia. Thus a Confederate soldier, he in his old age received a pension.