Folklore
Summit County, District #9

SARAH MANN


Mrs. Mann places her birth sometime in 1861 during the first year of the
Civil War, on a plantation owned by Dick Belcher, about thirty miles
southwest of Richmond, Virginia.

Her father, Frederick Green, was owned by Belcher and her mother, Mandy
Booker, by Race Booker on an adjoining plantation. Her grandparents were
slaves of Race Booker.

After the slaves were freed she went with her parents to Clover Hill, a
small hamlet, where she worked out as a servant until she married
Beverly Mann. Rev. Mike Vason, a white minister, performed the ceremony
with, only her parents and a few friends present. At the close of the
ceremony, the preacher asked if they would "live together as Isaac and
Rebecca did." Upon receiving a satisfactory reply, he pronounced them
man and wife.

Mr. and Mrs. Mann were of a party of more than 100 ex-slaves who left
Richmond in 1880 for Silver Creek where Mr. Mann worked in the coal
mines. Two years later they moved to Wadsworth where their first child
was born.

In 1883 they came to Akron. Mr. Mann, working as laborer, was able to
purchase two houses on Furnace Street, the oldest and now one of the
poorer negro sections of the city. It is situated on a high bluff