Abe Livingston

Abe Livingston was born into slavery on Luke Hadnot's place in Jasper County, Texas, where about seventy people were enslaved. He grew up alongside the enslaver's sons. When his father beat him, he would go up to the big house to stay with the boys, and they ate what was left in the kitchen after the white family had finished.

He remembered children's songs and games, and nights when the Black boys camped in the woods, watching their fires for witches and ghosts. One tall white figure, he said, appeared by a water hole nearly every night, but he was too scared to get close.

When the war began he was just big enough to handle a mule. His father was taken as a laborer with the Confederate army and helped dig the earthworks around Mansfield, Louisiana, before the battle there. Word of freedom came on a Tuesday morning, and the following week about thirty Union soldiers arrived to announce it. He remembered how much they laughed, and how much they ate: hogs, cattle, forty turkeys, and the best horses. After freedom he moved to Jefferson County and worked on the railroad. In the late 1930s he lived in Beaumont.