John Coggin

John Coggin was 85 and living at Method, North Carolina, when Mary A. Hicks interviewed him. She first found him swinging a scythe cutting hay for a neighboring family "with the vigor of a young man." He was born March 1, 1852, in Orange County. His mother, Phillis Penn, came from Virginia. He never had a father, he said, and never wanted one, and had no brothers or sisters. They were enslaved by Dr. Jim Leathers, and the only whipping he remembered was a light one for fighting with the enslaver's daughter Agnes, who was about his age. He carried water for the six or seven field hands and went barefoot most of the year.

The first he heard of the Union army was the young master running in to say, "Lord, Pa, the Yankees are in Raleigh!" That evening, drawing water, John looked up the road and saw it dark with soldiers, horses and mules, the band playing. Like everyone else, he ran for the woods.

After the surrender the formerly enslaved families moved together to farm near Dix Hill in Raleigh, and his mother married a man named Coggin, which is where John got his name. Long afterward his old enslaver came to visit and they held a big supper in his honor. He died that night, his mind wandering back to slavery days. When interviewed, John lived with a granddaughter and had seven great-grandchildren.