Patsy Moses

Patsy Moses was born about 1863 in Fort Bend County, Texas. Her parents, Preston and Lucy Armstrong, had been brought from Tennessee by the Armstrong family. Her mother's grandfather, Uncle Ned Butler, belonged to a Col. Butler of Knoxville. Patsy said her great-grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War, and that her father went to the Civil War as his enslaver's bodyguard, lost some fingers in battle, was taken prisoner by Union troops, escaped and returned. The enslaver sold his Tennessee plantation and came to Texas just before freedom, she said, because nobody thought the enslaved in Texas would have to be freed.

Her grandfather taught her a great deal about conjure, charms and signs, and she shared that knowledge at length: secret voodoo gatherings in the dark of the moon, a root doctor named Jones who treated smallpox, mumps and snakebite, red-flannel charm bags, and the luck of the rabbit's foot. She told of a man who escaped by bathing with soap so the dogs couldn't smell him, saying a hoodoo over a rabbit's foot, and wading the creek. She said she learned it all from her parents and the old folks, and "most of them things works if you tries them." When interviewed at 74, she lived in Mart, Texas.