The Life of Susan Merritt: A Freedwoman's Story (ca. 1848–1938)

Susan “Susie” Merritt, freedwoman, domestic worker, and WPA Slave Narrative interviewee, was born in Rusk County, Texas. Her father, Hob Rollins, was from North Carolina and was enslaved to Dave Blakely. Her mother, Nancy Rollins, came from Mississippi and, including Susan, bore eleven children—four of whom died before reaching maturity. Susan’s siblings, Albert, Hob Jr., John, Emma, Mariah Anna, and Lula, all lived to adulthood. Susan was born enslaved to Andrew Watt of Rusk County. Her interview was one of more than 300 chronicled in the late 1930s by the Texas Writers’ Project as part of the larger Federal Writers’ Project under the Work Projects Administration (WPA). In it she shared memories of living conditions, family, division of labor, daily life, religion, violence, intimidation, and emancipation.

Susan Merritt remembered Watt living in a big log house while her family and other slaves lived in small log huts gathered together in his fields. They had handmade beds fastened to the wall with mattresses made of baling sacks and were called out to work each morning by the ringing of a bell. They were required to work the land from dawn to dusk, and after dusk they attended to the toting of water, washing of clothes, cooking, and eating. Merritt remembered the children having corn pone and milk while the adults would have “fat pork and greens and beans” most nights. On Sundays Watt would give them flour, butter, and a chicken.

Watt did not have an overseer, but he did have a driver who, as Merritt recalled, was “[just] as bad.” He carried a whip around his neck, and, if he determined that a slave was out of line or being lazy, he would tie them to a tree and “cowhide” them until they were bloody. Merritt explained that “slothful” women were disciplined by being forced to dig a shallow hole and lie face down in it as the driver beat them “nearly to death.” Sometimes he would make slaves drag long chains throughout the day while they worked in the fields.

Merritt spoke of her owner being nice to her but likened his wife, Jane Watt, to “the devil.” Merritt often worked in the Watt home and was subjected to violence at the hands of Jane Watt. She was targeted, she said, because she was directly owned by Andrew Watt rather than his wife (who owned her own slaves). Merritt recalled that, on many occasions, she was tied to a stump outside and whipped until Jane exhausted herself. Jane would then go rest before returning and resuming the punishment. On one occasion, chickens got into the fire around a cooking pot, and Jane accused Susan of allowing it to happen. Her mistress made her walk over the hot coals several times as punishment. Merritt said that one of Watt’s daughters liked her and tried to teach her to read and write until Mrs. Watt caught them. She hit Susan over the head with the butt of a whip and stated that slaves “don’t need to know anything.”

Merritt remembered being given a pass on various occasions by Watts to go to George Petro’s and Dick Gregg’s farms. She recalled Petro’s slave auctions; there was a tall scaffold on which he made slaves disrobe to the waist to show off their strength for potential buyers. There were two doctors in the area, Drs. Dan and Gill Shaw, who attended very sick slaves. The slaves followed the folk medicine practice of wearing asafetida bags around their necks to ward off illnesses.

Merritt recalled hearing about emancipation in September 1865. She said that a man rode up on a horse and told them they were free, but that Watts continued to make them work for several months. He promised them twenty acres and a mule, which they never received. Merritt recalled that the practice of continuing to hold freedmen in bondage was common in Rusk County and that many were killed seeking their freedom across the Sabine River. She remembered seeing many former slaves, having been shot trying to swim across the river, hanging from trees in the Sabine River bottom. Merritt (as quoted by the WPA) said of their killers, “They sho’ am goin’ be lots of soul cry ‘gainst ’em in Judgement!”

Susan stayed on the farm with her family until she married Abe Lee, with whom she had at least four children. She later married Jackson H. Merritt on February 9, 1885, in Mitchell County. Jackson Merritt had served in the Civil War with the Twenty-ninth Connecticut Colored Infantry Regiment. He died about 1904. The couple had seven known children. Susan Merritt died around the age of ninety on June 4, 1938, while living with her son, William J. “Willie” Merritt of Marshall, Texas. She was buried at Hall’s Hill Cemetery in Marshall.