Moved to Georgia, then to Clinton, LA.


Year Surname Given Name (s) County State Page Township or Other
1837 MCCOY ELIJAH Kemper County MS 000 No Township Listed
1837 MCCOY ELIJAH Kemper County MS No Township Listed
1870 MCCOY ELIJAH Kemper County MS 272 De Kalb P.O.
1860 MCCOY ELIJAH Kemper County MS 118 No Twp Listed
1850 MCCOY ELIJAH Kemper County MS 023 No Township Listed
1860 MCCOY ELIJAH SR. Kemper County MS 745 Blackwater


Info Record Type Database ID#
MS 1837 State Census Index MS1542778
MS 1837 State Census Index MS1563441
Federal Population Schedule MS 1870 Federal Census Index MS30918179
Slave Schedule MS 1860 Slave Schedule MS31817385
Slave Schedule MS 1850 Slave Schedule MS46514906
Federal Population Schedule MS 1860 Federal Census Index MS54052159


HEADS OF FAMILIES AT THE FIRST CENSUS OF THE UNITED STATES TAKEN IN THE YEAR
1790 SOUTH CAROLINA
BEAUFORT DISTRICT.
CAMDEN DISTRICT, CLARENDON COUNTY.
Name of head of family: McCoy, Elijah
Free white males of 16 years and upward, including heads of families: 1
Free white females, including heads of families: 3

-------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------
Works Project Administration. Federal Writers Project.Slave Narratives.
[database online] Provo, UT: Ancestry.com, 2000. Original data from: Works
Project Administration. Federal Writers Project. Slave Narratives: A Folk
History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves.
Washington, D.C.: n.p.

Start at record 4972 80836

SUBJECT---Ex-slave

NAME AND ADDRESS OF INFORMANT---Lewis Brown, 2100 Pulaski Street, Little
Rock.

1. Ancestry---father, Lewis Bronson; mother, Willie Bronson.

2. Place and date of birth---Born April 14, 1855 in Kemper County,
Mississippi.

3. Family---Five children.

4. Places lived in, with dates--- Lived in Mississippi until the eighties,
then moved to Helena, Arkansas. Moved from Helena to Little Rock,

5. Education, with dates---

6. Occupations and accomplishments, with dates---Farming.

7. Special skills and interests---

8. Community and religious activities---Belongs to Baptist Church.

9. Description of informant---

10. Other points gained in interview---Facts concerning child life, status
of colored girls, patrollers, marriage and sex relationships, churches and
amusements.

STATE---Arkansas

NAME OF WORKER---Samuel S. Taylor

ADDRESS---Little Rock, Arkansas

DATE---December, 1938

SUBJECT---Ex-slave

NAME AND ADDRESS OF INFORMANT---Lewis Brown, 2100 Pulaski Street, Little
Rock.

"I was born in 1855, April 14, in Kemper County, Mississippi, close to
Meridian. I drove gin wagons in the time of the war in a horse-power gin. I
carried matches and candles down to weigh cotton with in slavery times.

"They had to pick cotton till dark. They had to tote their weight hundred
pounds, two pounds, whatever it was down to the weighing place and they had
to weigh it. Whatever you lacked of having your weight, you would get a lick
for. On down till they called us out for the war, that was the way it was.
They were goin' to give my brother fifty lashes but they come and took him
to the army, and they didn't git to whip him.

"My father was Lewis Bronson. He come from South Carolina. My mother was
stole. The speculators stole her and they brought her to Kemper County,
Mississippi, and sold her. My mother's name was Millie. My father's owner
was Elijah McCoy. Old Elijah McCoy was the owner, but they didn't take his
name. They went back to the old standard mark after the surrender. They went
back to the people where they come from, and they changed their names ---
they changed off of them old names. McCoys was my masters, but my father
went back to the name of the people way back over in there in South
Carolina, where he come from. I don't know nothin' bout them. He was the
father of nine children. He had two wives. One of them he had nine by, and
the other one he had none by. So he went back to the one he had the nine
children by.

"I was ten years old when war was ended. I had to carry matches and candles
to the cotton pickers. It would be too dark for them to weigh up. They
couldn't see. They had tasks and they would be picking till late to git
their tasks done. Matches and candles come from the big house, and I had to
bring it down to them. That was two years before the war.

"I wasn't big enough to do nothing else, only drive to the gin. I drove
horse-power to the gin.---drove mules to the gin. I would drive the cows out
to the pasture too. The milk women would milk them. Lawd, I could not do no
milking. I was too small. The milk women would milk then and I would drive
the cows one way and the calves another so that they couldn't mix. And at
night I would go git them and they would milk them again. The milk women
milked them. What would I know bout milkin.

"I never did any playin', 'cept plain marbles and goin' in swimmin'.

"The white girls and boys learned us our A-B-C's after the war. They had a
free school in Kemper County there. My children I learnt them myself or had
it done. You couldn't hardly ever find one in Kemper Country that could
spell and go on. They didn't have no time for that. Some few of them learned
their A-B-C's before the war. But that is all. They learned what they
learned after the war in the free government schools mostly. They would not
do nothin' to you if they caught you learnin' in slave time. Sometimes the
white children would teach you your A-B-C's.

"They had mighty mean ways in that country. They would catch young colored
girls and whip them and make them do what they wanted. There wasn't but one
mean one on our place. He was ordered to go to war and he didn't; so they
pressed him. He was the one that promised my brother a whipping. He left
like this morning and come back a week from today dead. The rest of them was
pretty good. The mean one was Elijah.

"Old man McCoy had four sons: Elijah, that was the mean one, Hedder, Nelson,
Clay.

"Sometimes the pateroles would do the devil with you if they caught you out
without a pass. You could go anywhere you pleased if you had a pass. But if
you didn't have a pass, they'd give you the devil.

"You could have one wife over here and another one over there if you wanted
to. My daddy had two women. And he quit the one that didn't have no
children. People weren't no more 'n dogs them days,---weren't as much as
dogs.

"In slavery time, my father worked at the field. Plowed and hoed and made
cotton and corn --- what else was he goin' to do. My mother was a cook.

"My master fed us and clothed us and give us something to eat. Some of them
was hall a mile. Some of them was all kinds of ways. Our people was good.
One of them was mean.

"My father's brother belonged to Elijah. I had an auntie over in there too.
I don't know what become of them all. They were all in Kemper county.
Mississippi.

"The white people had churches in slavery times just like they have now. The
white people would have service one a month. But like these street cars.
White people would be at the front and colored would fill up back. They'll
quit that after a while. Sometimes they would have church in the noming for
the white folks and church in the evening for the colored. They would
baptise you just like they would anybody else.

"I'll tall you what was done in slave time. They'd sing and pray. The white
folks would take you to the creek and baptize you like anybody else.

"Sometimes the slaves would be off and have prayer meetings of their
own---nothing but colored people there. They soon got out uh that.

"Sometimes they would turn a tub or pot down. That would be when they were
making a lot of fuss and didn't want to bother nobody. The white people
wouldn't be against the meeting. But they wouldn't want to be disturbed. If
you wanted to sing at night and didn't want nobody to hear it, you could
just take an old wash pot and turn it down---leave a little space for the
air, and nobody could hear it.

"The grown folks didn't have much amusement in slavery times. They had
banjo, fiddle, melodian, and things like that. There wasn't no baseball in
those days. I never seed none. They could dance all they wanted to their
way. They darcned the dotillions and the waltzes and breakdown steps, all
such as that. Pick banjo! U-umph! They would give corn huskins; they would
go and shuck corn and shuck so much. Get through shucking, they would give
you dinner. Sometimes big rich white people would give dances out in the
yard and look at their way of dancing, and doing. Violin players would be
colored.

"Have cotton picking too sometimes at night, moonshiney nights. That's when
they'd give the cotton pickings. Say you didn't have many hands. Then they'd
go and send you one hand from this place and one from that place. And so on.
Your friends would do all that for you. Between 'em they'd git up a big
bunch of hands. Then they'd give the cotton picking, and git your field
clared up. They'd give you something to eat and whiskey to drink.

"Notice was given to my father that he was free. White people in that
country give it to him. I don't know what they said to my father. Then the
last gun was fired. I don't know where peace was declared. Notice come how
that everybody was free. Told my daddy, 'You're just as free as I am.' Some
went back to their daddy's name. Some went back to their master's name. My
daddy went back to his old master's name.

"First year after the war, they planted a crop. Didn't raise no cotton
during the war, from the time the war started till it ended, they didn't
raise no cotton.

"After the war, they give the colored people corn and cotton, one-third and
one-fourth. They would haul a load of it up during the war I mean, during
the time before the war, and give it to the colored people.

"They had two crops. No cotton in the time of the war, nothing but corn and
pass and potatoes and so on. All that went to the white people. But they
divided it. They give all so much round. Had a bin for the white and a bin
for the colored. The next year they commenced with the third and fourth
business---third of the cotton and fourth of the corn. You could have all
the peanuts you wanted. You could sell your corn but they would only give
you fifty cents for it --- fifty cents a bushel.

"My father farmed and sharecropped for a while after the war. He changed
from his master's place the second year and went on another place. He farmed
all his life. He raised all his children and got wore out and pore. He died
in Kemper County, Mississippi. All his children and everything was raised
there.

"I came to Arkansas in the eighties. Come to Helena. I did carpenter and
farm work in Helena. I made three crops, one for Phil Maddox, two with Miss
Hobbs. I come from Helena here.

"I married in Mississippi in Roland Forks, sixty miles this side of
Vicksburg. I had two boys and three girls. Two girls died in Helena. One
died in Roland Forks before I come to Helena. Nary one of the boys didn't
die.

"I don't do no work now. This rheumatism 's got me down. I call that age. If
I could work, I couldn't git nothing worth while. These niggers here won't
pay you nothing they promise you. My boy's got me to feed as long as I live
now. I did a batch of work for the colored people round here in the spring
of the year and I ain't got no money for it yit.

"I belong to the Mount Zion Baptist Church; I reckon I do. I got down sick
so I couldn't go and I don't know whether they turned me OUT OR NO. I tell
you, people don't care nothin about you when you get old or stricken down.
They pretend they do, but they don't. My mind is good and I got just as much
ambition as I ever had. But I don't have the strength.

"I haven't got but a few more days to lag round in this world. When you get
old and stricken, nobody cares, children nor nobody also.

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1. John Reeves McCoy b: 1839 in Amite, MS
2. Margaret Ann McCoy b: 1841 in Amite, MS
3. Mary Jane McCoy b: 20 AUG 1846 in Amite, MS
4. James Brown McCoy b: 1848 in Amite, MS
5. Warren McCoy b: 1850 in Amite, MS
6. Frank McCoy b: BEF 1852 in Amite, MS
7. Marshall Milton McCoy b: 23 DEC 1854 in Clinton, LA
8. Napoleon McCoy b: BEF 1856 in Amite, MS
9. Poindexter McCoy b: BEF 1858 in Amite, MS
10. Osborn McCoy b: BEF 1860 in Amite, MS
11. Joseph McCoy b: BEF 1862 in Amite, MS

1. Title: LDS
   Note: The CHurhc of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Geneology Library
   Repository:
   Media: Book