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Wednesday, December 17, 2003
I've Been Thinking, Historical Account of the Montgomery Area
by Narcissa Martin Boulware
A Spellbinding Event
I've been thinking about a house I once owned and the history that belonged to it and a small part of that history that came to me with the house. The last owner and occupant of that house was an old lady, alone and deeply unmovable set in her thoughts, mind and habits. She was childless and had married in middle age to a man who worked as a salesman in oil field equipment among other things, but who was called at that time a traveling salesman and so was away from home much of the time, just outside Willis. He wrote her frequently and showed much care and concern for her when he was away. I don't know how long their life together was but when he died she began her different, almost anti-social ways. Neighbors and friend who offered help were viewed with suspicion and refused. She went and she walked, carrying eggs to trade on, looking neither right nor left at coming or going traffic. One neighbor, having been a life long neighbor of her family, refused to be dismissed when he stopped and offered her a ride. It took awhile, but he finally got her to accept a ride, but she would only let him carry her all the way home on the return trip if she had to buy a big sack of dog feed for the dog that she kept chained to the same tree all year round. I have no idea to show that this kind, persistently helpful neighbor became the object of her affections after awhile and there is no reason to believe that this good neighbor ever knew how she felt.
My knowledge of the life at this last descendant of a fine, well-to-do family who contributed so much to the towns of Willis and Montgomery comes from hundreds of letters stored in one of the four rooms of the once beautiful old house she fell heir to. At sometime in her life she had made friends with a black lady living close by, and I found many letters from the black friend who moved away, even before her husband died. There is little doubt that grief, loneliness and her body and mind moving into old-old age turned her mind back to what and who she knew in a better, still-longed for time. She began a frequent, even once a week correspondence with this black friend who had moved to La Porte, TX. Though I only found a handful of notes that were not mailed, but written by this lady, I read many of the replies she received from her friend in La Porte. These replies would patiently advise the old lady on how to handle the problems she had written about. It was evident that my lady had fallen in love again, and though I never found out his name, it was evident that my lady saw him often, as her black friend would advise her what his words or action meant. It was also evident that the black lady was self-styled fortune teller and conjure woman/man that man or woman who were suppose to have inherited the power to cast voodoo spells and that their skills and/or source and right to that power were never questioned. This belief that the unknown control of their lives and well being and that the control of that power was in the hands of a living person that person being the "Conjurer". This unquestioning belief in the unknown was brought from Africa pass and passed down to their descendants. (The American Indians had a "Medicine Man").
Many slaves believed that Conjurers could cause disease, accidents, blindness, boils, and bad luck. These Conjure men and women were both feared and respected and were believed to hold the ancient "hoodoo". Rites from their African ancestors. They could cast or take away spells and their identity was kept secret from the whites. Many of the slaves wore a red flannel bag containing perhaps small animal bones, powered snakeskin, horse hairs, ashes, blood and dirt from a graveyard.
If one believed in the conjurer's spell, that person also believed there was some magic that could break the spell. One way was to eat "May Butter", butter made on the first day of May and mixed with egg yolk and saltpeter, was powerful, because in all probability the cow had eaten the top and bottom of every herb that grew in the spring as they came up. And so the butter contained the best strength of every plant, and no conjuror could make stronger medicine than that! |
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