“Yes, I knew he was a bell ringer, and I knew that he carried these, oh that’s coming back to me now. I remember Daddy talking about these buckets of coal that he carried to fire, whatever he had to fire. He was very good at ringing the bells without a time piece. I remember Daddy saying that. And I remember him saying he was always there, you know like he wasn’t, he was on time and he wasn’t absent, that sort of thing. And I know my Grandmother Patsy Martin, great‑grandmother, was a very religious person. The two of them seemed to have been religious people from what I recall. And my Grandmother Patsy would not allow anybody to come in her house with a hat on. My father told me about a man who came to her door, I don’t know whether it was insurance or what he was, but she invited him to take his hat off and the way she invited him was like, this was the impression I got, no nonsense kind of thing.”

In 1831 I married Mary McCoy.  Her grandmother was a slave, and lived with her master, Stephen Hughes, near Charlottesville, as his wife.  She was manumitted by him, which made their children free born.  Mary McCoy’s mother was his daughter.  I was about 23 and she 22 years of age when we married.  We lived and labored together in Virginia till 1836, when we voluntarily left and came to Ohio.  We settled in Pebble township, Pike county.  We lived there four or five years….

When we came from Virginia we brought one daughter (Sarah) with us, leaving the dust of a son in the soil near Monticello.  We have had born to us in this State nine children.  Two are dead.  The names of the living, besides Sarah, are Harriet, Mary Ann, Catharine, Jane, William Beverly, James Madison and Ellen Wales.  Thomas Eston died in the Andersonville prison pen, and Julia died at home.  William, James and Ellen are unmarried and live at home, in Huntington township, Ross county.  All the others are married and raising families.  My post-office address is Pee Pee, Pike county, Ohio. (Madison Hemings recollections, Pike County Republican, 15 Mar. 1873)

Advantages are opening for educational purposes among us, but we must prepare our minds to avail ourselves of these advantages; and if we cannot adorn our children’s bodies with costly attire, let us provide to adorn their minds with that jewel that will elevate, ennoble, and rescue the bodies of our long injured race from the shackles of bondage, and their minds from the trammels of ignorance and vice.  (Lewis Woodson, 1856, in History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 404)