Gus Askew

Gus Askew was born in 1853 in Henry County, Alabama, enslaved by the Edwards family, and was brought to Eufaula shortly before the war ended. He remembered when Union General Grierson's troops marched through town with the band playing and flags flying, and how the enslaved children were too frightened to enjoy the music, even though the soldiers had come to set them free.

After the surrender he left the cotton fields for good and went to work for Joe Sturgis, the first blacksmith in Eufaula. Gus became the second. For seventy years he rose with the sun and went to the blacksmith shop, until automobiles nearly ruined the business and he turned the work over to his son. He saved enough to buy his home and some property that supported him and his wife in old age. When interviewed on the steps of his house in Eufaula, he had been married 54 years.