Caldwell County MO Archives History .....DOCTOR LEWIS BUTTS, EX-SLAVE 
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/mo/mofiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 4, 2008, 6:07 pm

DOCTOR LEWIS BUTTS, EX-SLAVE
	Narrator:  James McGill, Hamilton

     Lewis Butts was a slave, the possession of Thomas Butts of Kingston 
township.  As such, he had no education except what he gained through memory 
or observation.  During the war, he lived partly in Kingston township, partly 
in Hamilton.  After he received his freedom, he stayed on in Hamilton.  Here 
he died 1897.  No one knew exactly how old he was, but he was considered one 
of the oldest negroes in the county.  Some said he was 100, at any rate, he 
always looked very old, as one thinks back on his white wooly head, wrinkled 
face and bowed back.
     Some called him Uncle Lewis, some called him Doc Butts because he 
actually did compound simple remedies.  He and his wife Aunt Cynthy lived in a 
low white washed house with boards running up and down in the  east end of 
town, near the Eldredge home.  He knew old old Hamilton when it was just one 
solitary house on the prairie (A.G. Davis house), and he saw it grow to about 
1700.  He talked much about things before the war.
     He was much older than Jim McGill, the narrator also a colored man, ex-
slave.  Jim McGill spoke of him with a great deal of respect.
     In the 70s and 80s, he supported himself and wife by a variety of ways.  
He owned his own place and raised garden truck to sell from door to door, he 
peddled horseradish, and gathered wild nuts to sell or wild herbs for his 
medicines.  His wife was a fine washerwoman and he delivered the clothes by 
carrying the basket on his head with one hand up, a thing you rarely see now, 
even among the colored folks.
     Then on certain days of each week, he was employed at the printing office 
of the Hamiltonian in inking and turning the hand press, and when not on duty, 
he loafed around telling stories or giving his philosophy of life.  (The 
printers often printed this as fillers.)
     He was one of the remnants of old slave days, and in his words, manners 
and ideas never forgot to be very polite to the white folks.  His wife Aunt 
Lizy, died in Chillicothe about 1907, and about all the colored population of 
Hamilton bought train tickets that day to go to the funeral.  They had three 
boys, Jim, (well known character in the 80s), Wilbur and Henry.  Julius Butts, 
favorite house cleaner two decades ago was a grandson.
     Interview  1934.

Interviewer's note:  Eva Glasener whose mother came here about 1865, declared 
that Uncle Lewis Butts was one of their best neighbors when they moved here 
and lived near him, and this too, despite the fact that he was black.


File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/mo/caldwell/history/other/doctorle304gms.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/mofiles/

File size: 3.1 Kb