Grace Monroe
Dist. 4
Jefferson County

SLAVE STORY
OHIO COUNTY EX-SLAVE, MRS. ELLEN CAVE, RELATES HER EXPERIENCES


Assistant editor of "The Rising Sun Recorder" furnished the following
story which had appeared in the paper, March 19, 1937.

Mrs. Cave was in slavery for twelve years before she was freed by the
Emancipation Proclamation. When she gave her story to Aubrey Robinson
she was living in a temporary garage home back of the Rising Sun
courthouse having lost everything in the 1937 flood.

Mrs. Cave was born on a plantation in Taylor County Kentucky. She was
the property of a man who did not live up to the popular idea of a
Southern gentleman, whose slaves refused to leave them, even after their
freedom was declared.

When she was a year old her mother was sold to someone in Louisana and
she did not see her again until 1867, when they were re-united in
Carrolton, Kentucky. Her father died when she was a baby.

Mrs. Cave told of seeing wagon loads of slaves sold down the river. She,
herself was put on the block several times but never actually sold,
although she would have preferred being sold rather than the
continuation of the ordeal of the block.