Uncle Doug Ambrose, a former slave, at Lewis turpentine still and plantation in Brooksville, Florida. From a post card postmarked in 1938.

Ambrose Hilliard Douglass (1845-1940) was the son of Albert and Betsy Douglass. He claimed to have been born a free man in Detroit. His parents, were originally born in North Carolina, they returned there to visit their enslaved relatives, and were enslaved themselves along with little Ambrose.

At age 16 he received a severe beating from his new North Carolina master, for refusing the mate given to him-with the instruction to produce a healthy boy-child by her and a long argument on the value of having good, strong, healthy children.

He remained in slavery for 21 years, most of that time was in Harnett County, North Carolina. Ambrose was not one to be held against his will if he could help it.

“I was a young man , and didn’t see why I should be anybody’s slave. I’d run every chance I got...Sometimes they near killed me, mostly they just sold me...I was pretty husky at that.”

“They never did get their money’s worth out of me, though I worked as long as they stood over me, then I ran around with the gals or sneaked off in the woods. Sometimes they used the dogs to get me back.”

“When they finally sold me to a man up in Suwannee County-his name was Harris-I thought it would be the end of the world. We had heard about him all the way up in Virginia. They said he beat you, starved you and tied you up when you didn’t work, and killed you if you ran away.”

“But I never had a better master. He never beat me, and always fed all of us. Course, we didn’t get too much to eat, Corn meal, a little piece of fat meat now and then, cabbages, greens, potatoes, and plenty of molasses. When I worked up at the house I et just what the master et; sometimes he would give it to me hisself. When he didn’t, I et it anyway.”

“He was so good, and I was so scared of him, till I didn’t ever run away from his place”, Ambrose reminisces, “I had somebody that I liked, anyway. When he finally went to the war, he sold me back to a man in North Carolina, In Harnett County. But the war was near over then; I soon was free.”

“I guess we musta celebrated “mancipation” about 12 times in Harnett County. Every time a bunch of Northern Soldiers came through they would tell us we was free and we’d begin celebratin. Before we would get through somebody else would tell us to go back to the field, and we would go. Some of us wanted to jine with the army, but we didn’t know who was goin to win and didn’t take no chances.”

At age 21, he was once again a free man, and intended to stay that way. He moved to Madison County, Florida. He married, had a child and said that if he had known they would be 37 more to come, he would have “stopped right there.” ( at the first child).

He was a handyman, building and fixing houses and doing whatever yardwork he could find. After learning of the concrete industry in Hernando county, he moved to Brooksville, with his large family.

After his first wife died, he married a girl 13 years of age, and had a child that same year, he being 74. Together, they had 13 children, his last child born one year before this picture was taken of him, in 1937. He was, at the age of 92, the father of 38 children, some of whom died young.

He worked until he was 91 in the phosphate mines, when they began paying pensions. He was a very hard-working man, and even as he was forced to retire from the mines, he tried to work for the WPA; however they told him he was too old. He was highly insulted. Mr. Douglas died just a year and a half after this photograph was taken.

(Slave narrative of Ambrose Douglass from the Federal Writers' Project (1936-1938)

Source link: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12297/12297-h/12297-h.htm...