Nancy Bell's Life

Nancy Bell was interviewed in 1923 in Newport Ky. by S E Spicer. This narrative was published in 1977 in the book, Slave Testimonies: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches and Interviews, pages 555-559. Edited by John W Blassingame

"I was bawn and riz right among de white 'ristocrats of Ole Kaintuck, and when I looked out my winder in Liberia, I see nothin' but blacks; blacks everywhere, so me and my ole man jez got up and came back to Ole Kaintuck."

This was the summing up of Aunt Nancy Bell, eighty five year old colored woman of 120 West Southgate Street in Newport Ky. of her experience in Liberia West Africa. Aunt Nancy Bell and her husband, Carey Bell, had a two year 3 experience in Liberia under the best of circumstances and that at a time in Liberia was in its height of favor with the gradual emancipators and abolitionists of this country. Aunt Nancy Bell and her husband, Carey Bell, had a two year experience in Liberia under the best of circumstances and that at a time when Liberia was in its height of favor with the gradual emancipators of slavery and abolitionists of this country. ¹

Aunt Nancy, seated in her own house given to her by some of her white friends in Newport, was a life picture of a time that is fast fading form memory.  She looked out from her old eyes with a kindly, affectionate expression upon all about her and her were words were full of homely wisdom gathered along the checkered path of a slave girl out into the freer way of the emancipated.  A path that led from the little town of Danville Ky. where she was born in 1835 to Liberia and back.

Always associated with "de fust famblies" Aunt Nancy has the manners of the aristocrat, and her discerning eye can detect "de po' white trash' no matter howmuch they are covered with fine clothes and a display of money.

Aunt Nancy belonged to Charles Henderson, a wealthy farmer, who lived at Danville Ky.  Her mother was bought by Mr. Henderson for his sister. A "nigger trader" as Aunt Nancy called him, came through Danville from Culpepper County, Virginia, with a number of negroes chained two and two together, and one of the little negro girls, Aunt Nancy's mother, was crying bitterly.  Mr. Henderson's sister seeing the child cry, sent word to her brother to buy that child at once for her.  When the trader was asked how much he wanted for the child, he said $700, and "my ole marster jes went down into his pockets and shell it out for him." said Aunt Nancy.

It was a great day, not only for Aunt Nancy and her husband, Carey, but for all the negroes in Danville Ky. when Mr. Henderson, who was an abolitionist, decided to free and send fifty-three of his slaves to Liberia.  These fifty three negroes were heroes in the eyes of the other less fortunate, who gathered at the station to see them off for Lexington, whence there were to go to Louisville.  Traveling in those days was slow.  They were four weeks on the way to Baltimore, where they were to embark upon their great voyage. ²

Columbus never felt half the pride as he walked the gang plank of his flagship on its western voyage as did Aunt Nancy when she stepped about the "Sophy Walker".  This was the name of their ship. Before going aboard, however, then "Ole Marster Henderson" spent $4500 on them and bought them everything they needed from a pin up. The Sophia Walker was a three masted ship which put out to sea with such a cargo as it never carried before, a cargo of dreams of wealth and vast importance. At Norfolk 200 more freed negroes and 200 others brought from Red River district were put on board.  Visions of liberty and happiness filled the minds of these children of nature. ³

Aunt Nancy gave her impression of sea sickness.  She saw sixty of her companions thrown overboard after dying.  "The ship was stopped in the sea and after the funeral services, the bodies were laid on a board and tilted into the sea.  The bodies were weighted with sand so they would sink.  But I saw the sharks nab the bodies no more than they struck the water.  The sharks do certainly know when there is a dead body on the ship. The Good Lord left nothing undo in Africa, for he knows how afraid the Negro is of work.  So God just made everything right to his hand so he could get it without the least bit of trouble.  The fruits, animals and trees are not like we have here.  The sheep have long hair and not wool.  The rice and coffee are the best I have ever tasted.  We brought 40 pounds of coffee home with us and sold it for a dollar a pound."

"Rum was the principal drink in Liberia.  We could get a certain kind of bark from a tree that made the finest dye in the world. There was an iron tree, a bread tree and many more things I cant remember at this time. The animals were a sight.  We brought a tiger cat, a cockatoo and a monkey home with us. We sold the tiger cat to the zoo for $50. In society in Liberia there are same classes as there are here.  The lawyer's family does not associate with the washer woman's any more than they do here.  Of course, the natives are not much to speak about.  They wear fewer clothes than our society women do here and are in the same class as the Indians are with us.  your are classed in Liberia, as in heaven, according to your deeds."

"The President of Liberia, where I was there was a man from Lexington Ky. named Joseph J Roberts.  He was a very agreeable man and handles the law about like it is handled here.  They have their House of Representatives and Senate same as we do.  Monrovia is the capital.  It was named for the President of the United States." (James Monroe)

Nancy and Carey returned from Liberia to Newport the day the first gun fired on Ft. Sumter. 4 What she know of the progress made in Newport would fill a book by itself.  When Aunt Nancy first began to pick up the threads of her life which were broken when she left Marse Henderson and go to Liberia and did housework for the "fust families" of Newport, there was just one street light, a little tallow candle in a glass case at the corner of York and Fourth streets, and two feet from its weak rays, you could not see your hand before you.  Aunt Nancy has seen the mud roads grow into cement paying and asphalt streets.

And then the Underground Railroad, that mysterious road which began in fear and trembling and ended where the dream of the bondsman became true. Aunt Nancy knew it minutely and the names of the men who have been the makers of history who were connected with its phantom like workings.

Aunt Nancy has always been employed in families of lawyers principally and knows politics and law from "a" to "izzard". In fact, her husband, Carey Bell, bears the distinction of being the only negro every elected to city council in Kentucky.  Carey came home fresh with laurels won in the Civil War. He was a cook in the Fifteenth Infantry for three years and as a mark of respect, he was nominated for council.  Election day proved how popular the erstwhile Fifteenth Infantry cook was among his constituents in Newport, for he was elected with an overwhelming majority.  The joke was then on the voters. In their dilemma Attorney Hallam was consulted and it was discovered that Carey had become a citizen of Liberia, and therefore, under the Constitution, was ineligible to hold office in the United States, according to the story told by Colonel Thomas Carrothers, attorney.

"Getting out of Liberia is not as easy as getting in.  You juz cant get up in the night and slip away like the poetry writer of the Arab.  You have got to advertise for a month before you are going that you are going and you cant get a passport from Liberia until every debt is paid by you to everyone there.  that is the reason for the month's notice, so all their debtors can set up their claims to be paid."

"No ma'am, I do not want to go back there to be buried by the side of my old mother in the St Paul River settlement of Kentuckians where she is buried.  Angel Gabriel will find us all wherever we all are and bring us all together in the last day."

Aunt Nancy is a Presbyterian because her old Mistress was.  Her old mistress was one of the aristocratic Buckners from Culpepper Co. Virginia, from where Aunt Nancy got a good start in a homely religion. "Every tub stands on its own bottom and the spirit never tell you wrongly.  There are two places, heaven and hell, and you can have whichever you want most."

And these are the truths she has tried to instill in the hearts of her ten children.  She does not believe in slavery, saying it was a bad thing for both whites and blacks.  She is very proud of her daughters, who were find singers, and belonged to the first group of jubilee singers who came out of Fisk University in Nashville Tenn.  These jubilee singers carried the marvelous melody of "Sing Low Sweet Chariot" as sung by the negroes into every part of the country.  They appeared at Woodward High School in Cincinnati.

This is the first picture of the Jubilee Singers in 1871, and if what Nancy Bell says is correct, then this would include her daughters, Mary and Bettie Bell. Picture comes from the Fisk University website for the Jubilee Singers.
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The old negro woman is keen on the news of the day, especially all that concerns her race.  She knew as much about the Marcus Garvey movement as the reporter did.  She is one of the small remnant of the southern negro "mammy" who nourished and care for the white children of Ol Marse and Ole Mis, and for whose love, faithfulness and tenderness these same children, now grown to age, now hold a reverent memory.

Ramsey Washington, one of Newport's distinguished citizens, remembers well the days when he was tied to the apron strings of Aunt Nancy, who was then his nurse.  Aunt Nancy said this was the only sure way she had of knowing where to put her hand on Master Ramsey in his early days, otherwise she would have been led a merry chase many times by her youthful charge.
(Cincinnati Tribune, June 17, 1923)
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1. She was born about 1835 and should have been 88 in 1923.
2. Charles Henderson liberated twenty-two slaves in May 1853. J Winston Coleman, Slavery Times in Kentucky, Chapel Hill, 1940; page 288
3. In 1854 the Sophia Walker, under the command of Captain Horatio N Gray, took on passengers at Baltimore on May 6, at Norfolk May 18 and at Savannah on May 27, bound for Bassa and Monrovia, Liberia.  The total number of emigrants was 252, including 22 slaves emancipated for Charles Henderson of Danville Kentucky.  Listed among the emancipated Henderson slaves were twenty-one year old Carey Bell and his nineteen year old wife, Nancy.  African Repository, XXX July 1854, pages 214-19

4. Carey and Nancy with daughter Mary are listed in the 1860 census for Newport Kentucky. Apparently she did not remember the correct date.

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