. C. District: No. 2 [320156]
Worker: T. Pat Matthews
No. Words: 1369
Subject: REV. SQUIRE DOWD
Story Teller: Rev. Squire Dowd
Editor: Daisy Bailey Waitt

[HW: Minister--Interesting]

[TR: Date Stamp "JUN 1 1937"]

[HW: language not negro, very senternous & interesting.]
[TR: The above comment is crossed out.]

REVEREND SQUIRE DOWD
202 Battle Street
Raleigh, N. C.

My name is Squire Dowd, and I was born April 3, 1855. My mother's name
was Jennie Dowd. My father's name was Elias Kennedy. My mother died in
Georgia at the age of 70, and my father died in Moore County at the age
of 82. I attended his funeral. My sister and her husband had carried my
mother to Georgia, when my sister's husband went there to work in
turpentine. My mother's husband was dead. She had married a man named
Stewart. You could hardly keep up with your father during slavery time.
It was a hard thing to do. There were few legal marriages. When a young
man from one plantation courted a young girl on the plantation, the
master married them, sometimes hardly knowing what he was saying.

My master was General W. D. Dowd. He lived three miles from Carthage, in
Moore County, North Carolina. He owned fifty slaves. The conditions were
good. I had only ten years' experience, but it was a good experience. No
man is fool enough to buy slaves to kill. I have never known a real
slave owner to abuse his slaves. The abuse was done by patterollers and
overseers.

I have a conservative view of slavery. I taught school for four years
and I have been in the ministry fifty years. I was ordained a Christian
minister in 1885. I lived in Moore County until 1889, then I moved to
Raleigh. I have feeling. I don't like for people to have a feeling that
slaves are no more than dogs; I don't like that. It causes people to
have the wrong idea of slavery. Here is John Bectom, a well, healthy
friend of mine, 75 years of age. If we had been treated as some folks
say, these big, healthy niggers would not be walking about in the South
now. The great Negro leaders we have now would never have come out of
it.

The places we lived in were called cabins. The Negroes who were thrifty
had nice well-kept homes; and it is thus now. The thrifty of the colored
race live well; the others who are indolent live in hovels which smell
foul and are filthy.

Prayer meetings were held at night in the cabins of the slaves. On
Sunday we we