in a frown as she composed the arguments she would present to him. She
acknowledged her brothers’ arrival home with no more than a nod of her head and listened to nothing of what they said during the meal. When she rose to clear
away the plates, a smile finally crossed her face. There was one argument for which Mourning would have no response: “What do you have to lose?”
Olivia had heard all the stories about Mourning Free’s parents. Willis and
Rosie Jackson had been runaway slaves who stumbled into all-white Five Rocks
late one night, more than half frozen and starved. One of the local abolitionists
found them and wrapped them in blankets. He left them stoking a fire in the stove of the Great Friends Meeting House while he ran from street to street, knocking on the doors of his co-religionists. Within an hour they had convened a
meeting, eager to offer shelter to the Jacksons. They were, however, worried by
the fact that Five Rocks had no “Bottoms” or “Nigger Town” for them to blend
into; it had no Negro residents at all. Even so, Mr. and Mrs. Brewster, founders of the local seven-member Anti-Slavery Society, offered the fugitives the use of
the shed behind their house, the same structure that would later become Five Rocks’ modest Reading Room.
No one had a better suggestion. The men spent the next few hours clearing
out the shed and moving in the furnishings that other Quakers donated. By
morning the dazed Jacksons had a home, of sorts. Mrs. Brewster brought their meals on trays, always with a pudding or special treat for Rosie, who was most
obviously in the family way. Each time Mrs. Brewster left she paused in the doorway and warned them to stay out of sight. “There might be some a them
slave-hunters chasing after you and you two stick out around here like a couple a
purple elephants.”
The first thing the Jacksons did was change their family name to Free. The
anti-slavery people tried to talk them into choosing something else, saying it was
far too obvious, but Willis and Rosie were set on being called Free. Sadly, they
enjoyed only a few months of liberty before Willis succumbed to the influenza.
Then a few weeks later Rosie died giving birth to Mourning.
The orphaned black baby was taken in by Alice and Goody Carter, who lived
a two-hour walk away, in “The Bottoms” of the town of South Valley. They
already had four children but hadn’t the heart to turn away the fondling in Mrs.
Brewster’s arms.
Goody spent most days in Five Rocks, doing odd jobs for whoever needed
him. When Mourning was six he began working alongside his foster father. The
boy had a natural aptitude for fixing things and did whatever was asked of him
without complaint. He was soon well-known to all of Five Rocks’ merchants,
who often quarreled over who was most in need of Mourning’s services that
week.
Not long after Mourning’s ninth birthday Goody made up his mind to go west
and try farming. Mourning refused to go with them, insisting that he could stay
in Five Rocks and take care of himself. He would go right on doing what he had
been for years, working at Killion’s General and the other businesses in town.
He could sleep in the loft of Ferguson’s Livery or the storeroom of the Feed &
Grain. He often did that anyway, to save the long walk home and back.
But Goody was having none of it. “You gonna have folks saying we ain’t
treated you right.”
