Abraham Jones

Abraham "Uncle Abe" Jones told his interviewer at Village Springs, Alabama, that he was 112 years old, born August 1, 1825, in Russell County, Alabama. He was enslaved by Frank Jones, who owned two plantations, one of them near Columbus, Georgia; Timothy Jones was the overseer. Asked what kind of house he was born in, he answered that he wasn't born in a house at all, but in the middle of the big road. He said his grandfather was a full-blooded Indian.

He remembered the night the stars fell in November 1833, when he was about eight: so many frightened adults crowded into the house that their weight broke the foot-thick sill beneath it. He recalled the removal of the Indians from Russell County and the founding of Auburn. Before the war he was taken to Blount County, and during the war he was left to run the grist mill. There he ground oats for a woman whose husband was away fighting and gave her a peck of his own meal to feed her children. Decades later her son overheard him telling the story, and the family promised he would never lack a place to stay or food to eat.

When he was interviewed he was still working to support his family, laying a flagstone walk, milking a cow and chopping wood, with cord bands tied around his wrists "to keep the pain out."