Lindy Patton

Lindy Patton was born in 1841 near Knoxville in Greene County, Alabama, enslaved by Bill Patton. When she was interviewed she was living in the Greene County Poor House, where she had been for 46 years. She hoped to make it to fifty, which, she said, would be some kind of record. She worked in the fields all day and wore the white children's hand-me-downs. She was never taught to read or write and could hardly count. There was no church for the enslaved; they went along with the family and sat in the back.

She remembered a man on the plantation who kept running away no matter how often he was beaten. The enslaver finally decided to take him to Mobile and trade him. When the train stopped there, the man bolted, and the enslaver ran after him for a mile or more before giving up. Two days later, she said, the enslaver died from the chase. Lindy never married and said she never would.