Wayne County, NC - Biographies - Mattie Edwards Jones' Memories Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Marie Edwards Bull - RMEBULL@aol.com "AUNT MATTIE’S MEMORIES" By Lucille Edwards Brown Martha Elizabeth Lewis was born October 30, 1840 to (Sarah) Sallie Lewis and Green Flowers. Something happened to change their plans to marry. Sallie Lewis, like a lot of girls of her time, was left with a child to support alone so she kept her until she was two years old and early one morning she took her to Green Flower’s home where he lived with his father and a sister Annie and her son Billy. Her mother stood her down in the yard with a little bundle of clothes and went back home leaving her at the mercy of her father’s people. They took her into their hearts and home and she stayed for a few years and was accepted as a member of the family. A few years later Green Flowers married Elsie Ann Denning and Sallie Lewis (her Mother) took her (Martha Lewis) to live with some friends of hers and help look after their children. Her grandfather must have died or something happened. Then her mother married Benajah Williams, a widower with some children. Aunt Minnie Edwards father was one of them and then Benajah and Sallie had three other sons. Grandma (Martha Elizabeth Lewis) had a half sister (Mary Lewis). The three half brothers were Arreetus Williams (I called him Uncle Reet), James Williams and Pinkney Williams. Reet had two girls, Ada and Maggie and two or three boys. One of the boys is Oscar Williams of Goldsboro. He lost one of his hands some years ago. He still lives in Goldsboro. But getting back to my Grandmother (Martha Lewis), the people she was placed with were very cruel to her and beat her and one day threw a cup at her and cut her chin so bad that she had a scar as long a she lived. Green Flowers, her father, heard of it and he went and took her home with him. That was in 1849 and she was nine years old and Elsie Ann accepted her and they reared her as their own. She had to work hard but she had a home where she was respected and loved and she said her father was very strict with her, but allowed her to go to parties but he would go sometime during the party and she would see him sitting around in the corner. Green Flowers was one of the charter members of Mill Creek Church. He lived just a few yards from Ebenezer Church, which was not built at that time. At that time the children went to church at Mill Creek Church which was five miles from his home. Grandma said it would take a hour to go and a hour to come back. A little later he was able to buy a two seat buggy with a top and fringe around it. It was called a Rockaway. Latter they were called Surry. It was pulled by two horses and the rode like that until Grandma was old enough to go with boys. Then a young man from Raleigh came to the community and built a buggy shop. Her father liked him. He bought Grandma a side saddle and let her ride horseback to the church. He had a horse too and they had blocks at the church called stepping blocks. When they got to church he would get off his horse and go help her get off and tie up the horses. After church he would help her get on the horse’s back and ride home. Once she went to a party at Dick Atkinson’s place. They quilted quilts all day and danced at night til three in the morning. Those were the happy days. Dick Atkinson was a big slave owner. He lived about eight miles from Goldsboro between there and Princeton. I have been to the house and it had 15 big rooms and a large cellar under the house and back of the house was a row of little log cabins where the slaves lived at that time. The man that owned the buggy shop, Edward Minga, married my Grandmother and they had two little girls, Emmeline and Mary Edward. They lived happily until he had to go to the Army. While he was gone she lived at the Cole House which belonged to Aunt Polly and her husband. I don’t remember his name. Her Aunt had a daughter whose name was Mary Green who was Grandma’s cousin and close friend. She (Mary Green Cole) married Sam Raynor. When the Battle of Bentonville was fought the Confederate soldiers threw up breast works between the big house and kitchen. It was two different houses and she stayed until the soldiers asked her to leave and she took one child in her arms and led the other by the hand and started for her Daddy’s (Green Flowers) home and she said the bullets were whistling around her head before she got out of the field. She went about three miles to her father’s house. After the battle the soldiers set fire to the house and burned it to keep the enemies using it for sniping. A few days later Edward Minga returned home. He was shot through the hand and took gangrene and they took off his hand and then his arm. They couldn’t kill the infection and he died in April. Grandmother and her two girls stayed on with her Daddy and half brothers and sisters. In May her five year old had sleeping sickness and died and in August of the same year Mary Edward the baby died and Grandmother was very sick with apoplexy. When she got well her hair was perfectly white. She was thirty years old. She went some place and got a job helping some people in their house. She met Grandpa (James Newcomb) who was a young widower at that time and they were married in February of 1868. In July of 1869 our Mother (Lou Elen Newcomb) was born and I know they were very happy with their child. Papa (Charles Manly Edwards) saw her when she was about seven years old. He was a grown boy. He said he picked her for his own and when she was 15 years old he married her. She had eight children, six boys and two girls. Two boys and a girl died. Sometime when she had one or two children grandpa and grandma James and Martha Newcomb moved in with papa and mama (Charles and Lou Elon Edwards). I don’t know how long they stayed together (the Newcombs living with Edwards) but not long. In 1914 Grandma broke her hip. Martha Lewis Minga’s encounter with Sherman. When the Yankees came through taking the food from people they went to Grandma’s house and got every thing she had to eat and took her feather beds to the field and ripped the ticks from one corner to another wasting the feathers. She picked up what she could and saved them. She stayed there with not one mouthful of food for three days and nights. Her little children were begging for food and there was none. She got out and walked to General Sherman’s headquarters and told him his soldiers had taken all the food and she and her children were starving and he gave her some corn meal and a quarter of beef. She took it home and they did cook and eat. These are memories of Aunt Mattie Jones in her own words. I added a few periods, commas and inserted proper names to make it easier to follow. The memories were written in the 1970s. Aunt Mattie lived and died in the southern part of Wayne County. ----------- Photo accompanying this biography is of Aunt Mattie Edwards Jones and her husband John Ulie Jones.