Steve Connally

Steve Connally was born in Murray County, Georgia, enslaved by Tom Connally, a member of the Georgia Legislature, nicknamed "Cushi" because the family had so many men named Tom Connally. Steve's mother, Mandy, the family cook, weighed two hundred pounds and was famous for her jellies and cakes. She took a fever after his birth and could not care for him, so the mistress, Mary Connally, kept him in a little cot by her bed. After that he followed her everywhere, holding onto her skirt in the garden and riding along on trips to a doctor eighty miles away.

The plantation was so large that its big house, weaving house, tannery, sugar mill and quarters made up a small town. He remembered the balls and dinners, the hoop skirts and lace, and the springhouses built over cold springs to keep milk and butter cool. During the war he rode with the enslaver in a buggy to Tennessee to bring home his wounded and dead sons: Ned was dead, Charles died of a hip wound after being brought home, and Dick survived.

He stayed with Mary Connally in Georgia until she died, then came to Texas around age nineteen with the surviving family. He worked for her son Jones Connally near Bryan and later around Eddy, where the family gave him a house and lot. He told how he saved Jones Connally's young daughter, Ola, from falling off a two-story roof and from tumbling into a well he was digging. He said he hoped to visit the old Georgia home place with Senator Tom Connally of Texas, Jones Connally's son.