The Item, a New Orleans newspaper, featured the following sketch of Isaiah T. Montgomery by Stanley Cisby Arthur in its Sunday magazine section on September 25, 1921: One of the most interesting figures at the meeting of the secretaries of the Federal Farm Loan Association, was an aged negro, Uncle Isaiah T. Montgomery, of Mound Bayou City, Bolivar County, Mississippi. Uncle Isaiah is not only one of the wealthiest farmers in his district, but he founded the town of Mound Bayou, which is composed exclusively of colored people, who run the stores, the banks, the postoffice, the schools and the peace offices, but Uncle Isaiah was a former slave and a body servant of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. [Pg 88] Black of face, with white hair and a white chin beard Uncle Isaiah looks exactly the part of the regulation stage Uncle of the old regime. He looks every bit of his 74 years but his mind is exceedingly bright and he recounted the happenings of over half a century with the utmost clarity of speech and showed many evidences of his education, which he says he gave himself. When he took recourse to a piece of paper and a pen to estimate the ginnage of his community, he set down words and figures with Spencerian exactness. His handwriting was truly a revelation to the interviewer. I was born on Hurricane plantation, in Warren county, Mississippi, in 1847, and my father and I were owned by Joseph E. Davis, brother of Jefferson Davis. The plantation owned by the late president of the Confederacy adjoined the Hurricane, and was called Brierfield plantation, said the aged colored man and former slave who is now a prosperous banker in the town he founded. I was about nine years old when I first remember Jefferson Davis real well. I was working in my masters office when his brother came back from Congress and I was told to meet the steamboat Natchez in a row boat and get Mr. Jeff. When the Natchez blew her whistle as she came around a bend of the river I rowed out and Mr. Jeff got in my boat with his grips and things and I took him to shore and toted all his things into the White Room where Mr. Jeff staid for a considerable spell. While there I was his personal attendant, I blacked his shoes, kept his room in order, held his horse for him and other little things that a servant like I was was supposed to do. On one of his trips down the river on the Natchez (Mr. Jeff and Captain Tom P. Leathers, the historic commander of that boat, were close friends), he brought his wife and daughter, who was afterwards Mrs. Hayes, and they all were very kind to me because I was Mr. Jeffs personal servant all the time they were at the Hurricane. When the war between the states came I staid on the Joseph Davis plantation all during the fighting. In 62 or 63, anyway, after the battle of Corinth, the Yankees commenced overrunning the South and Mr. Joe, took all his stock and colored people to Jackson, and later on to Alabama. He had me return to the plantation with my mother and act as sort of caretakers and we were there when Admiral Porters Mississippi squadron made its way up the river. It seems sometime before a gunboat, the Indianola, had been[Pg 89] sunk in the river, just off the Hurricane plantation and folks in the neighborhood had dismantled her. When Admiral Porter came up the river he stopped at the plantation so as to look at the wreck and see if her guns could be found. But they had been thrown overboard and had gone down in the quicksand. The Admiral asked me if I wanted to go with him as cabin boy. I said yes, and ran to get my mammys consent which was given. This was in April of 63 and a few months later I was with the Admiral in the siege of Vicksburg and later the battle at Grand Gulf. Soon afterwards I got a sickness from drinking Red River water and when I was sent back to Hurricane I found my parents had gone to Cincinnati and when I got word of this to Admiral Porter he secured transportation there for me. When the war was over Mr. Joe Davis got in touch with my father and had him come back to Hurricane plantation and after we got there he made a proposition that we could buy the two plantations, Hurricane, that Mr. Joe owned, and Brierfield, of 4,000 acres, that Mr. Jeff Davis owned. While he could not sell to colored people under the existing laws, through a court action by which my father, Benjamin T. Montgomery, and my brother William T. and myself, agreed to pay $300,000 for the combined properties, they were turned over to us and we were to pay six per cent a year on the whole until it was paid off. Our first year working the plantation resulted in almost disaster as we suffered from an overflow and when the first payment came around we were only able to pay $6,000. When we sent this to Mr. Joe Davis with our excuses he sent us back a canceled note for the rest of the $18,000. The Davis brothers, were gentlemen, sir. Well, we kept the plantation going for thirteen years and in that time we ranked as third in the production of cotton in Warren county. While we were growing cotton I became very well acquainted with Captain John W. Cannon, the commander of the famous steamboat the Robert E. Lee. He and Captain Tom Leathers, the commander of the Natchez, were always having some sort of a fight or another and I saw the famous race between the two when they actually settled the matter for good and all. The death of Mr. Joe Davis and taking over of his properties by his heirs lost us our holdings and I became interested in the Yazoo Delta. I heard that the Y. & M. V. was asking colored people to come in and open up the country and after going over the situation[Pg 90] I decided to select Mound Bayou for the seat of my future operations. This place was selected because between Big and Little Mound bayous there was an old Indian mound. This was in 1887 and it certainly was a wild territory, it had rich land but it was thickly grown over with oak and ash and gum, and acres and acres of cane. Well, I plundered around here and induced other colored folks to settle there. I founded Mound Bayou Settlement—the railroad folks wanted to name it Montgomery, a few years ago but I made the original name stick. Building up our community was slow work. All the colored folks bought their places on 10-year contracts and it was hard work for some of them in the face of a few crop failures, overflows, boll weevil and other set-backs but we succeeded. Mound Bayou Settlement is now a town of a little over 1,000 population and there are about 2,500 in the country nearby. The town is of wholly colored population and we have three big churches, one costing $25,000, another costing $15,000 and another $10,000. There are several other less pretentious places of worship, as well. We have two big mercantile establishments. The largest being the one I founded and known as the Mercantile Co-operative Company which now has a $20,000 stock. We also have the Mound Bayou State Bank, with $10,000 capital, a $3,000 surplus, with resources between $150,000 and $200,000. I am a member of the board of directors and we make a great many loans to our colored people to see they get out their crops, and being in the staple cotton belt, we make most of it on this crop. We have just completed a consolidated school house, 95 feet square, three stories high, with 16 large class rooms. It cost us $100,000 which was raised by a local bond issue. We have a seven to eight months term and employ an agricultural expert, co-operating under the Smith-Lever national fund and a very fine domestic science class. The town has a mayor and a board of aldermen, all office holders being colored folks, and the present mayor, B. H. Green, was the first man born in the settlement. I was mayor for over four years, being the first to hold the office, resigning it to hold the office of receiver of public monies at Jackson, Miss. We have four gins that can handle over 5,000 bales and our people now feel that the upward trend of the cotton price will make for further prosperous times. [Pg 91] Uncle Isaiah Montgomery remembers his services with the Jefferson family, first as slave and afterwards as a trusted servant, with the kindliest feelings. He told of the periods in 1880 and 1883 when Jefferson Davis returned to the old Brierfield and Hurricane plantations, spending several weeks at the old home once or twice a year. He usually had Mrs. Davis with him and the aged negro said that Mrs. Davis was a remarkable woman. She displayed a wonderful interest in the future of the colored race, he said. It was the impression made on me by this lovely woman that helped confirm my belief in the ultimate outcome of my work and efforts toward race betterment, education and uplift of the negro. Mrs. Jefferson Davis had a broader comprehension of the races needs than anyone with whom I have ever come in contact with. With her death the negro lost one of his greatest friends. Mr. Jefferson Davis was a wonderful man, too. My thoughts frequently go back, now that I am approaching the end of my days, to the time I was his personal servant as a barefoot boy. I truly believe, when he got his last sickness, had I been near to nurse and care for him, that he would have lived many more years. I knew, and so did my wife, what he needed in the way of food and we could have done for him as no one else could. It was the influence of Jefferson Davis and his sweet life that has guided all my efforts in bettering the life of my colored brothers and if I have succeeded it was because of them.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 05:53:38 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015