Milly Henry

Milly Henry was 82 and living at 713 South East Street in Raleigh, North Carolina, when Mary A. Hicks interviewed her. She was born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, enslaved by Buck Boylan, who owned three plantations there. The only family she knew was her grandmother. In the last spring of the war, Boylan gathered everyone and announced that since the Yankees meant to take his slaves, they were all leaving for North Carolina the day after tomorrow, "and I ain't gwine hear no jaw about it." He picked out about five hundred people. Milly was chosen, but her grandmother was left behind as too old and feeble. They traveled weeks in covered wagons and on foot, sleeping on the ground. Later an uncle came from Mississippi with word that her grandmother had died.

In Raleigh, Boylan hired Milly out. When one employer, Sue Blake, whipped her at the Company Shops above Durham, she ran away barefoot and bareheaded, climbed on a train with no ticket, told the conductor she was going home, and was carried back to Raleigh. At another placement, a drunken man held the back of a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her.

She was drawing water at the well at the end of Fayetteville Street when Union cavalry rode in. She watched a Confederate rider fire on them and flee, and saw him caught when his horse stumbled at the Hillsboro bridge. Brought before General Kilpatrick in the Capitol square, he laughed and said he hated the Yankees, and the general ordered him hanged. He was hanged from an oak in the Lovejoy grove, where the Governor's Mansion later stood, and buried beneath it.