I recently visited my old home in Prince Edward County, Virginia, after an absence of forty-four years, and was greatly surprised at the changes which had taken place during that period. I had much trouble to find farms which I had knowledge of, because I remembered them only by the names they were called by in 1849. The owners of them had died or moved away and others had acquired the lands, changing the names of them, while other farms had been deserted and allowed to grow up in forests, so that with a few exceptions the country for miles in every direction was an unbroken forest of young trees.

Among the many notable changes which have taken place in this part of the State since 1849, are two or three to which my attention was particularly directed. The first is the entire change in the method of travel and transportation of freight and produce between Richmond, the western portion of the State and the Southern States.

The entire absence of the large number of six-horse teams, in charge of a colored driver and a water boy, that used to pass up and down the public road, which ran in front of our old home, and which extended from Richmond to the Blue Ridge Mountains, was quite noticeable, because that was the principal method by which freight and produce were carried.

That system of travel and transportation has been superseded by railroads, and goods are now delivered by the Richmond & Danville inside of three days after purchase, to any place on that railroad within two or three hundred miles. This railroad now runs parallel with the old public road from Richmond to the Blue Ridge Mountains and the South, and has entirely usurped the trade formerly monopolized by the old six-horse team system.

Very vividly do I recall the many six-horse teams which used to pass daily up and down that old road with their great loads of corn, wheat and tobacco, and return loaded with drygoods and groceries for the country merchants. I have seen as many as twenty of these teams pass our old home in one day. The teamsters, though slaves, were absolutely reliable and therefore, were intrusted with taking orders and produce from country storekeepers to the wholesale merchants in Richmond and on their return they would bring back the drygoods and groceries that had been ordered by the country dealers living along the road. Usually these wagoners went in squads of four or five and camped at the same camping grounds. The owners of these teams would come along about once a month paying and collecting bills.

These great wagons, covered with white canvas to protect the freight they bore, sometimes carrying from seven to ten thousand pounds and each drawn by six fine blooded horses, made to me at least, a grand and impressive picture, as the procession moved along the old road in front of our place. This picture was heightened by the picturesqueness of the colored driver in charge and his peculiar and characteristic dress. As he rode along on the saddle horse of the team he seemed conscious of the great responsibility resting upon his shoulders, and to the simple-minded colored people along the road he was simply an uncrowned king. When the wagons stopped at the camping grounds, located at regular intervals along the road, the colored people of the neighborhood flocked around to get a glimpse of this great man.

Although the freight was very valuable sometimes and often carried great distances, robbing or molesting these trains was something unheard of. They were perfectly secure while on the move or in camp, even in the most sparsely settled districts, because there were no robbers or gangs of thieves organized in those days to plunder passing teams. It is quite doubtful whether the same would be true nowadays if a return to the old method of transportation was resorted to.

The country merchants in those days were contented and happy, I suppose, to be able to get their orders filled and goods delivered inside of from thirty to ninety days.

This great public highway, which was kept in such splendid condition in 1849 and prior thereto, and which had so many beautiful camping grounds where wood and water were convenient and not far apart, with little villages every ten or fifteen miles, where there were inns for travellers to rest and feed their horses has become a thing of the past along with that old system of travel and transportation. I have seen many men, called travelers in those days, pass over that old road going to, or from the South or West on horseback, with large saddlebags strapped behind them armed with a horse pistol, which was about twenty inches long and as large as an old flint musket. Usually they carried a pair of these pistols hanging down in front of them, one on each side of the horse’s neck.

That was the usual way of travel in those days when persons wished to go a long distance, particularly to the West or South. Signs of this old road can yet be seen in places, but the road has been almost deserted, and has grown up in forest.

In front of our old place, and in fact from Miller’s Store, a little village with a post-office, to Scofields, a similar place, a distance of ten miles, that old road was nearly on a straight line, was broad and almost level, and was the pride of that community; but when I saw it in July, 1893, and attempted with a horse and buggy to pass over it for a distance of a few miles I found it impassable. From John Queensbury’s Public Inn and Camping ground to our old home, a distance of three miles the old road has been entirely obliterated.

This road was kept in such a fine condition up to 1849 that many tobacco raisers used to put rollers around one or two hogs heads of tobacco, weighing about a thousand pounds each, then attach a pair of shafts and with a single horse draw them to Richmond, a distance of sixty miles.

I readily recall many different kinds of travel and trade which once thrived on this public highway. Richmond at that date being a great pork market and the most convenient one for the pork raisers of West Virginia and the Eastern portion of Kentucky, and this old public highway being the most direct route for travel from the West to Richmond, these hog raisers, in order to reach a market for their hogs, were compelled to drive them on foot over the road a distance of over two hundred miles. I have seen as many as three hundred hogs in one drove pass our old home in one day going towards Richmond. Usually these hog drivers brought along several wagon loads of corn to feed their hogs while en route. They could and did travel from ten to twelve miles a day, and from early fall to spring each year many thousand hogs were driven into Richmond over this public highway.

Besides supplying Richmond with pork, which in turn, furnished other places, especially in the South, these hog raisers sold hogs to planters on the road, who had failed to raise enough pork for home consumption. Pork was the principal meat diet at that time for both white and black, there being few sheep or beef cattle killed for table use, and then always for the table of the master classes.

To advise a farmer now living in West Virginia or Eastern Kentucky, who owns a hundred head of marketable hogs, to drive them two hundred miles to market, as his father had done, would be considered by him very foolish advice. But such was the only way of transportation of that kind of product prior to the year 1849, of which the writer has personal recollections.

These cases mentioned show clearly what railroads have done, not only for Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, but the whole country and especially the Southern portion of it.

Richmond was also the principal slave market and this public highway the most direct route to the Southern cotton fields, especially those of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee, and Negro traders passed over it many times each year with gangs of slaves bought at the public auction block in Richmond. I have seen many gangs of slaves driven over this old road. Usually, the slave men were handcuffed together with long chains between them extending the whole length of the gang, which contained as many as forty, sometimes, or twenty on each side of the chain marching in line. The women and small boys were allowed to walk unchained in the line while the children and the lame and those who were sick rode in wagons. The entire caravan would be under the charge of the owner and a guard of four or five poor white men armed each with a rawhide whip, with which to urge the gang along and to keep them in line or at least in the road.

It was not the custom, neither was it to the owner’s interest, to treat these slaves brutally, for, like mules brought up to be carried to a better market, or where larger prices prevailed, it was absolutely necessary that they should not show any signs of ill-treatment; and I cannot recall ever having seen the punishment of one of them. Of course these Negro traders could not allow grown men to march in line unchained, particularly those who did not want to go, because they might become unmanageable, run away, and escape capture, thus causing the loss of the price paid for them, or at least give considerable trouble. As a general rule, many of these slave men were sold in the first place on account of insubordination—had resisted their masters, or had beaten their overseers, and such slaves were considered by their owners dangerous fellows on the farm with others, especially young men who might follow such examples. Then again many slaves were sold because they had committed murder or some other crime not deserving the death penalty, and there were no penitentiaries for slaves.

These and many other recollections of my early life crowded upon me as I looked upon the old familiar scenes. The absence of familiar faces was no less remarkable than the changes in lands and improvements, for I found only one man I had seen before. There were two others whom I knew in that vicinity and who had never left it, but I failed to find them at their homes. I visited the home of Mrs. Sarah Perkinson, widow of Lemuel Perkinson, mentioned in a previous chapter, but did not see her, as she had left a few days prior on a visit to relatives in North Carolina. I was really sorry I did not see her, for I could have obtained much valuable information from her, as she had remained in that community ever since the year 1849, and could have given me an interesting history of past events. She still owns the old Perkinson farm consisting of about two thousand acres. The old frame mansion which was built before 1841 was still there and in a fair state of preservation, and without any apparent change since I last saw it forty-four years ago. I found old man, Major Perkinson, one of Mrs. Perkinson’s former slaves, occupying the Great House and tilling the land. There were about fifty acres under cultivation; the balance had grown wild. The old Major who is now ninety years of age and quite active, remembered me very well and proceeded to treat me like a southern gentleman of the old school would have done. I next visited our old home which was one mile away. Here I found the great house, also a frame building, built in the summer of 1842, in a good state of preservation, and as I went through every room I am sure that there had been but little change in its structure. I also visited the spot where my mother’s cabin stood, and then how forcibly those lines of the poet touched my mind, “Childhood days now pass before me, forms and scenes of long ago,” etc. The quarters for the colored people had disappeared here as well as those at Mrs. Perkinson’s place. This place is now owned by a Yankee lady in New York, and of the six hundred acres under fence when we left it in 1849, only four acres are now in use, the balance having grown up in forest.

I visited several places of interest, and among them was Green Bay, about two miles north of our old home. Here I met Mr. Thomas Rowlett, the station agent, and one, Mr. Scott, and a merchant named Richardson, whose father I remembered. All three of these men are direct descendants of the “Blue Bloods,” and I found them still defending the right. I was greatly impressed by a remark made by Mr. Richardson; he said, “We are now, and will be for the next twenty years, suffering from the curse of slavery; it cursed the slave, it cursed his master, it cursed the land.” He then called attention to the thousands of acres gone wild, too poor to produce anything, and the owners were unable to bring them to a rentable condition, and the colored people could not make a living on them and of course, left the country in search of work. He said one could buy land anywhere in that community for three dollars per acre. Of course it will cost at least ten dollars more to bring it up to a fair state of cultivation. When I saw these fine lands in 1849, tilled by slave labor, and kept in the very highest state of cultivation, and on which splendid crops of tobacco, corn and wheat were raised, I could not have realized that in the space of forty-four years these same lands would be a wilderness, the owners scattered, and even the former slaves gone. But so it is, and the names of the people who owned them forgotten. The only men I found who had remained and retained not only the old master’s name, but the farm as well, were the Scotts, consisting of the father, two sons, Charles and Thomas, and a daughter, Mrs. Lefere. They had acquired the old homesteads of their old masters in each case and occupied the great house built of brick over sixty years ago, and still in good condition. These farms were adjoining each other and located on the Pike Road leading to Farmville, and near Sandy River Church. I remembered these farms and the Scotts very well, and also the church where my master used to go to worship quite often, and allowed his slaves to go occasionally on Saturday afternoon. Why I recall this so vividly is, because Sandy River was a clear deep stream with an abundance of fish, and while the older ones attended divine service I went fishing.

The Scotts, Col. Scott, Charles and Thomas A. Scott, brothers, were considered the most aristocratic people in that community, and owned quite a large number of slaves and treated them humanely, a fact which the father of the Scotts now owning the lands will testify to. Old masters are dead, and their children, having sold the old farms and scattered, their former slaves now own these estates and are industrious and thrifty farmers. They had the best crops I saw in that country, with good stock in splendid condition. I found the wife of Thomas Scott and Mrs. Lefere splendid housekeepers and entertained as none but Virginia ladies can. Each had one or more grown daughters, well educated, refined, and very pretty girls. I confess my surprise at finding such intelligent and fashionably dressed girls in that community.