Otis Meriwether Shares Heritage and Pride

I am a black man. My father, Colie Wilson Meriwether, was born on John Ferguson’s farm, who was married in the Meriwether family. His farm was about fifteen hundred acres of good land that produced good crops. He was a lawyer, but never practiced law.

A lot of what I am reciting about the white Meriwethers, I learned from my father. He told me about how the Meriwethers and Barkers came into Todd County, KY, and Montgomery County, TN.

There was a Dr. Robert Ferguson, MD, who was a brother to John Ferguson. He had two children, a son named Robert, Jr., and a very beautiful daughter named Jennie Lester. Strangely, my father never said anything about the history of the Ferguson family.

If you have any letters or “connections” about the history of the Ferguson family, please send it to me. I think the land that the Fergusons had once belonged to the Meriwethers. My father sharecropped for Dr. Ferguson. He said he was always fair in his dealing with his workers.

My father said the black Meriwethers took the Meriwether name from the white Meriwethers after they were freed from slavery. My father was proud of the name Meriwether – and so are most of the black Meriwethers, as many as there are. Just about all of them are hardworking family people. They are a credit to any community in which they live.

The black Meriwethers outnumber the white Meriwethers four or five to one. I asked my father, “Why was it like that?” He said, “The white Meriwethers had all the land and the black Meriwethers has all the kids, mostly male, as there had to be somebody to work the land.”

My father said he never saw or knew a white Meriwether who had to work for a living. He said they were all big landowners, doctors, lawyers, judges, business men and educators. I have been in Evansville, IN for 45 years and worked in three large factories and I have never seen a white Meriwether, man or woman, working in one. There are 14 or 15 Meriwethers listed in the phone book here and all of them are black, so far.

When I was a boy (I am 71 years old now), he told me about Elizabeth Meriwether (Dorothy Dix) and Caroline Meriwether Goodlett. He also told me about Hunter Meriwether, who was a civil engineer. Over a hundred years ago, he bought more than a thousand acres of swampy, marshy land that was close to the Red River that flowed around Clarksville, TN. Every spring it would be flooded so it was no use to anyone. He only paid about a dollar an acre for it. For years, he let the city of Clarksville dump he made money selling the hogs to the packing house. He let any excavation of dirt from the building of roads and cellars of buildings and houses be dumped there.

Gradually, the land was built up until it was above flood stage. Then he performed an astonishing feat that staggered the imagination of the people of that day. He changed the course of the Red River and made it flow around his land and brought it into the city limits of Clarksville. The land he bought years ago for about a dollar and acre was now worth a dollar a foot or more.

He became a millionaire. I never knew him, but his wife, Mrs. Hunter Meriwether, and his granddaughter, Maree, I got to know personally. They were close friends of the Adolph Hach family. The Hach family was very wealthy and prominent white people in Clarksville, TN. They owned a 16 room mansion that sat on about fifteen acres of ground. They also had the largest and finest swimming pool in the city. My father and I worked there. Many times I waited on them when they came to dinner. Maree used to come over a lot and swim in the pool. She would always call me “Cous.”

The Meriwether name, more than any other name in  this country, means “close knit” and draws people together, white or black.

Last summer, I wrote a short history of the black Meriwether family around Todd County and Guthrie, KY, and a community called “Preachers Mill.” Although most of the land in the area belonged to the Meriwethers, Fergusons and Barkers and “Big Jim” Johnson, a man named Peter Preachers had a large tract of land near West Fork. He had a grist mill by the creek that was water powered. It ground corn into meal. He also had a large general store that sold everything from groceries, clothes, bolts of cloth, hardware, to farm tools. He became very wealthy. That whole community was named “Preachers Mill.”

The white Meriwethers can trace their history back to the sixteenth century, but as far back as we can go is to our great-grandfather, Henry Meriwether. My father said he was born about 1840. He never saw him, but he was said to be a tall, handsome brown-skinned man. He was gentle and good-natured. He was the coachman for his master, Robert Meriwether. When he was a young man, he drove his master to some parts of southern Illinois for an extended stay. While there, Henry met a young woman named Mary. She was very fair-skinned and pretty, with long straight brown hair. They fell in love. Henry told his master how much he loved that pretty girl and wished he had her for his wife. His master told him he was a slave and she was a free woman (she was born free) and that a slave could not marry a free woman, but “If she will go back with us to Tennessee on my word of honor, I will get papers and sign them and set you free. You will have been a good and faithful slave and deserve to be free.”

Mary bid her family goodbye, packed up, and trusting in the word of Henry’s master, left for Tenn. I have a true picture of her. She looks like a white woman. She rode in the coach with “Marse Robert” and he passed her off as his daughter until they got home. “Marse Robert” got the papers and set Henry free. And they were legally married by a minister.

The first child born to Mary and Henry Meriwether was Thomas Meriwether, my grandfather, “Poppa Tom.” He was born in 1860. He was the first free black child born in that whole area.

He was very smart and quick to learn. His mother taught him how to read and write and decipher. Because she was born in a free state, she went to school with the white children. There were no schools for black children in the area until about 1878. When he was a boy, he and John Ferguson became good friends. Mr. Ferguson was very surprised when he found out my grandfather could read and write.

He said to his mother, “Mamma, Thomas Meriwether can read and write!” His mother said, “Oh no he can’t.” Then she asked him if he really could. He said, “Yes mam, and decipherin’ too.” He answered proudly. She said, “A reading and writing Negro is a rare one. I don’t think I have seen over two or three in my whole life.”

As these two boys grew to manhood, they remained fast friends. When Mr. Ferguson went to college and law school he would bring his books back and let my grandfather read and study them. He became the best self-educated person in Montgomery County at that time. He was an eloquent speaker and a tireless talker. He became a preacher and was the first pastor of the colored Concord Baptist Church in the community.

When freedom came after the Civil War was over, Robert Meriwether, the same master that gave big Henry his freedom, rang the big bell (used to let the slaves know when it was quitting time) at the “big house.” He stood up in the back of a farm wagon under a big oak tree, part of a big oak grove. He had tears in his eyes. “You are all free, free to go anywhere you want to. But you are still my people. I love all of you. If you want to stay you can. I don’t have much money, only the land. You know I killed that damned old peddler and it cost me a fortune to get out of it.” (I asked my father, “What did he mean by that?” He said he didn’t know.) “You can stay in your homes, raise your own food. Any crop you make and I can sell, I will give you part of the money.” That’s how share-cropping started.

There was a great celebration, dancing and singing. There was barbecue and homemade wine. After the celebration was over, a lot of the young people left and went here and there, testing their freedom. The old ones, of course, stayed on.

Most all of them eventually came back. They could not read or write. Most had no skills.

By the end of slavery, the Meriwethers’ and Barkers’ land holdings had spread from Trenton and Guthrie, KY, to Hampton Station, Port Royale and St. Bethlehem, TN. John W. Barker and Garritt Meriwether built a grist mill (grind corn into meal) on Cypress Creek near Port Royale. A small community formed around it called “Barker’s Mill.” Other smaller white farmers like Bob Chester, Garritt Hatcher, Archer and Porter Wade were out there.

There was Dr. Joe Meriwether who had a lot of land. About two thousand acres or so. He was said to be tight-fisted and close with his help. There was Paoli Meriwether who had about three thousand acres or so. He was said to be a good man to crop for. Of course, there was “Big Jim” Johnson, who was part of the Meriwether-Barker family.

He was reported to have four or five thousand acres of good land around Guthrie, KY. He was said to be a hard task master. He worked his hands from sun up to sun down, from “can see to can’t see.” But he paid good wages. A dollar a day when most farmers paid fifty cents.

For over two hundred years, dark fired tobacco was the main cash crop in Todd and Montgomery Counties. It was called “Brown Gold.” Clarksville, Tenn. was the heart of the dark fired tobacco industry in the United States.

Right after World War I, until the early 1920s, the price of dark tobacco was high. “Big Jim” Johnson was noted for raising fine tobacco. Every year in Clarksville, the folks would have what was called “Jim Johnson’s day.” The news would get around, people would go out and stand on the sides of Guthrie Pike to see him bring in his tobacco. As a small boy I remember the big special built wagons with high side boards pulled by the biggest and finest mules money could buy. There were four mules to a wagon. The harness would be well oiled and the brads would shine like gold. A black man would be sitting high on the driver’s seat. With four lines in his hand, a long coiled pleated leather whip in the other hand. “Big Jim” and his wife would be in the lead of the caravan in a long touring car. That’s a four seated car with a cloth top that can be folded back. He had one daughter named Dorothy.

In 1922, the bottom dropped out of the dark fired tobacco market. The price was so low it didn’t pay the farmers to raise it. The big farmers like the Meriwethers, Fergusons, Barkers and “Big Jim” Johnson formed what was called the “Association.” They pooled their tobacco, holding it back until the prices came up again. They built a big new warehouse to store it.

The small farmers could not afford to hold theirs back and attempted to sell it. A group of men formed what was called the “night riders.” They would go around in the dark of night and set fire to the barns of the farmers and burn them up, tobacco and all.

The farmers would camp out in the fields to defend their property. There were a lot of shootings and a few people were killed. The price of tobacco never did rise significantly again. The big and little farmers lost heavily. Sharecropping and farm labor declined sharply. Then, modern machinery had begun to take over. It could produce more crops than a hundred slaves or sharecroppers.

Sharecroppers and farm labor began a slow exodus to the towns and big cities. Most of the little white farmers went broke. The big farmers like the Meriwethers, Barkers and Fergusons held onto theirs, but they became land poor like most southern planters. The Meriwether and Barker fortunes and vast land empires were built on the backs of their slaves’ labor. When the Civil War ended, they lost all their slaves, their fine horses and their genteel way of life. There was an old slave woman called “Granny Maria.” She was over a hundred years and living when my father was a boy. She would tell stories about her years as a slave. She said the Meriwethers were very humane to their slaves and never whipped or sold any of them.

If the white Meriwethers and Barkers never had to work, the black Meriwethers and Barkers did. My father said he never knew one who would not work. And neither have I. They developed a work ethic. They have industrial hands. The black Meriwether men are very masculine. Also very fertile, able to reproduce their own kind, mostly males. That’s the reason there are so many of them. They are big and strong, yet gentle and kind. You won’t find and Meriwether men in prison, or the welfare lines. They are Americans, very patriotic. In World War I and II, they gladly answered their country’s call. Some were casualties. Some fought with valor. One received the Silver Star. Quite a few received the Bronze Star, the Good Conduct Medal and the Purple Heart.

Not only are the black Meriwether men law abiding, they are also law enforcers. Many are policemen, firemen and deputy sheriffs. The black Meriwether men are also very religious. Many are deacons and preachers of the gospel. The black Meriwether women make good wives and mothers. They are gracious, not double-tongued, faithful to their husbands, raise their children according to the golden rule.

As we move into the 21^st Century and beyond, it will be the black Meriwethers who will carry the name. They will carry it proudly and with honor for many have become doctors, lawyers, educators and politicians. The great great great grandchildren of the Meriwether’s and Barkers’ former slaves have become professionals.

 
Otis W. Meriwether
Evansville, Indiana
1987

Note: Otis W. Meriwether was born on December 6, 1915 and died on July 8, 1996 in Evansville, Vanderburgh Co., Indiana.