Aunt Hannah and Uncle Peter, enslaved by Archibald Graham McIlwaine

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: Petersburg, Virginia, United States

• Servants of Archibald Graham McIlwaine (1801 - 1878) as described by his son, Richard McIlwaine (1834 - 1913) in his book, Memories of Three Score Years and Ten
• Chapter II, Household Servants, Pages 20 - 21 ^[1]

• Remembering Aunt Hannah and Uncle Peter

My recollections of Aunt Hannah and her husband, Uncle Peter, are of a very different kind, more grotesque and amusing, while tender and affectionate. The former was one of the older household servants, efficient in her way, kind and respectful, somewhat tempestuous at times, a member of high standing in the colored Baptist Church, but a. little slick, and inordinately fond of whiskey.

Uncle Peter was not connected with the household, but was by trade a whitewasher, plasterer, and bricklayer. He had not been purchased by my father because he needed him, but to keep him from being separated from his wife, for whom my parents entertained most kindly feelings and with whose weaknesses they were very forebearing. He was not an avowed Christian, - no saint every by profession, but an honest-hearted, industrious man with some bad habits, such as now and then uttering an ugly word and at Christmas times taking too much grog.

He and Aunt Hannah were really attached to each other and generally lived in harmony, with frequent demonstrations of true affection, but now and then with ebullitions of anger on the part of the wife, which sent the old man away from the premises, not to return until her wrath was cooled by the shades of night. The next morning they would appear together as loving as cooing doves. His pet name for her was "Plunky".

I remember that when I had grown up to manhood, on my return home at the close of my first session at the Theological Seminary, I was told that Aunt Hannah had become more and more addicted to drink and was getting to be intolerable. On hearing this I felt it to be my duty to talk to the old lady, with the hope that I might induce her to give up the bad habit. So in a private and affectionate interview I reasoned with her how inconsistent her life was with her profession as a Christian, and exhorting her to desist. She listened to what I had to say, with kind and deferential attention, and I hoped I was making a wholesome impression, but when I ceased she gave her answer kindly in a sympathetic tome of voice, "Go way, chile! I has been under de water fo' you was born".

My recollection is that she did mend her ways to some extent, lived till after Emancipation (1865), Uncle Peter having died some years earlier, and spent the latter portion of her life in St. Louis, Missouri, where she had a sister and other relatives.

Sources

1. ↑ Memories of Three Score Years and Ten; Richard McIlwaine; Neale publishing Company, 1908. Digital download