Ellen Polk

Ellen Polk was born in Gonzales County, Texas, enslaved by Jim and Hannah Nations, who held nearly a hundred people on a plantation along the Guadalupe River. Her mother and other enslaved people had walked all the way from Mississippi to the Nations place. Ellen said the enslaver was good to the people he held but his foremen were not.

She described cabins made from logs split in half and chinked with mud, beds of poles laid in forked sticks with hay or corn-shuck mattresses, and cloth dyed brown with tree bark, purslane and copperas, so everyone wore the same color. Her job was carrying the big pan of food Hannah Nations had prepared to feed the children in the quarters while their mothers worked the fields. When meat ran short, the men hunted wild hogs and turkeys along the river.

After the war she stayed on the plantation a long time, married there, lived in San Marcos for a while, and moved to San Antonio about 1913. When interviewed at 83 she lived at 724 Virginia Boulevard.