Carrie Pollard

Carrie Pollard was born in 1859 and lived her whole life in the house where she was born in Gainesville, Alabama. Although she was born during slavery, she was never enslaved. Her grandmother was a free woman who came to Tuscaloosa in the 1820s as a servant, defeated a man's claim that he owned her, and later bought her enslaved husband's freedom.

The story Carrie heard most often as a child was about her Aunt Cynthia, who was born free in North Carolina. Cynthia lived with Tom, who was enslaved by a man named Dobbs across the road, and they had nine children together, though Dobbs would not sell Tom and Cynthia's guardians would not let them marry. While Cynthia was away working as a midwife in Sumterville, she dreamed her children were in trouble. A fortune teller told her they were gone. She rushed back to find that Dobbs had taken Tom and all nine children toward Mississippi. Her guardian, a Mr. Steele, rode after them with other men and caught Dobbs at his campsite, insisting that Cynthia's freeborn children could not be held. Steele bought Tom, brought the whole family home, and after the war gave them a house across the branch.

Carrie remembered being sent to the mill with wheat for flour and buckwheat cakes, and an aunt and her mother being sent to school in Mobile by riverboat.