Sam T. Stewart

Sam T. Stewart was born December 11, 1863, in southern Wake County, North Carolina, near the Harnett County line. His father, A. K. Stewart, was enslaved by James Arch Stewart, a preacher; his mother, Tiresa, belonged to Lorenzo Franks, a Quaker. When Sam was two, his father was sold to speculators and sent to Mississippi. Sam never saw him again, though the family heard from him once through relatives in the second year after the war, and he died there.

Sam explained how speculators operated in Raleigh: Black "drivers" employed by white traders gathered people until they had a large drove, then lined them up in double file and chained each person by a small chain to a long center chain, and they walked all the way to Mississippi behind wagons carrying rations, sometimes thirty at a time. He named several of the traders. Franks, the Quaker, held seventeen people, would not sell any of them, and treated them unusually well, which his brother, a Baptist preacher, warned would raise slaves who would rise against him. Enslaved people trapped birds and game, which Franks sold in town for them. Sam also described how some large planters acquired a poorer neighbor's land by having enslaved people sell him stolen goods, then threatening him with prosecution unless he sold out.

When interviewed he was too worn out to work and said he lived by moving around among his relatives, with no home of his own.