A Slave Story: Martha Adeline Hinton

Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol.11, North Carolina, Part 1, Adams-Hunter

A Slave Story: Martha Adeline Hinton, Raleigh, North Carolina 

Martha Adeline Hinton was born 3rd May 1861 at Willis Thompson's plantation in North Carolina. Her mother and father Minerva and Jack Emery were both slaves owned by Willis and Muriel Thompson who owned a plantation in Wake County 15 miles from Raleigh. Her master Willis Thompson had three children Margaret, Caroline and Nancy. Minerva Emery was a slave in the house whilst Jack worked on the plantation with other slaves. In Martha's account of her mothers life in slavery Willis treated his slaves fairly whilst his wife was very rough to them. She had a reasonable place to sleep and enough to eat but was very young during the time of her mothers slavery. 

Martha recalls how slaves wore homemade wooden shoes in the winter and how her dad had made her first shoes which she was so pleased with. In the summer the slave children would run around barefooted wearing homemade shoes. 

Martha also recalls how she remembers the Yankees came and stole things whilst searching for money and how they said to her mother that they were free. During slavery Jack Emery, Martha's father was tried to be sold as he was cutting wood when the Yankees arrived. They tried to get him to the corn crib and tie him down but when he got there he just kept working. The reason why they wanted to sell him was to "buy a oman so dey could have a lot of slave chilluns cause de oman could multiply". In the end they hired men out by the year to contractors to cut cord wood so that they could build a railway. 

https://www.loc.gov/resource/mesn.111/?sp=439