Essex Henry

Essex Henry was 83 and living at 713 South East Street in Raleigh, North Carolina, when he was interviewed. He was born five miles north of Raleigh on the Wendell Road to Nancy and Louis, with a sister, Mary, and a brother, Louis. They were enslaved by Jake Mordecai on his six-hundred-acre plantation near Millbrook. Essex said he had seen his small mother dig ditches with the strongest and split 350 fence rails a day; the men had to split 500. He was too little for field work and minded the chickens, and his mistress often gave him buttered toast from the breakfast table.

His memories of the Mordecai place were harsh. When the overseer and then the enslaver could not whip his grandmother, the enslaver kicked her in the stomach. She was carried to her cabin and died three days later, alone and untreated. Hundreds of enslaved people followed her coffin to the graveyard singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." Religion was forbidden; an old woman was whipped again and again for singing hymns, and prayer meetings were held with a pot turned down at the door to muffle the sound. A spirited uncle who would not be whipped was sold. Essex described the enslaver's brother visiting to drink brandy and make a sport of whipping three men staked face-down in the sun.

When Union troops reached Raleigh, people who had fled told them how Mordecai treated those he enslaved, and the soldiers came saying they meant to hang him from the big oak in the yard, but the family had already fled. After the war Essex and his family stayed on several years as servants of Dr. Miller.