Grant Peter Lee Gordon
Below is an image discription of Grant Peter Lee Gordon's autobiography:
"I, G.P.L Gordon, was born in Houston, Mississippi, Chickasaw County, APril 9th, 1870. My parents were Charles Gordon and Jane Gordon who had a family of twenty-one children born to them. Sixteen lived to become grown while five died in infancy. Of the sixteen who were raised to be grown there were eight girls and eight boys. The girls: Sallie, Caroline, Eliza, Laura, Elizabeth, May, Texella, and Emma; the boys: Isaac, Frank, Starks, Charlie, Curtis, myself, Ambrose, and James.
My father was born a slave in South Caroline. His father was a Preacher who could neither read nor write who lived to be 99 years of age. My grandfather and my grandmother on my father's side were Peter and Sarah Hughes.
My mother's Parents were Virginians. Their names were Mack and Mary Crawley. My mother was raised largely in her mother's slave owner's kitchen from the age of five until she was married to Charles Hughes. My father's name was changed to Charles Gordon after he had been Purchased by my mother's master. (It was custom in those days for the slave to in the last or surname of the "masters" as the owners were called.)
My grandmother on my mother's side lived to be a hundred and four years old.
My father bought one half section of land, 320 acres, just four years after the Civil War closed. He gave one acre of land for the first church, school and graveyard owned by colored PeoPle in the community. Some of that land is still inhabited by my father's grandchildren and daughters in law.
The name of the school built on the land my father gave was named Ross Hill. Several boys and girls who got their rudiments of education in the Ross Hill became teachers while some became Preachers, doctors and businessmen. I attended the rural school at Ross Hill for several years. Terms were short, from three to five months. I only attended from two to three months in a year. I began work on the farm at a very young age Planting corn, sowing cotton seed, raising cotton and corn.
At 21 I had about comPleted what would now be the seventh or eight grade. Schools were not graded in those days in that section of the South. I then, after I quit attending free school, began attending what was known as summer independent school. Tuition Price was from $1 to $1.50 Per month. Then I decided I wanted to teach. I began taking Private lessons from white and colored teachers. I sometimes during the winter rode as far as seven miles at night after I had begun teaching when I had been dismissed from school in the afternoon.
After that I began to attend summer normals for teachers. Then later on I attended state normals set apart exclusivley for 10 successive years. I taught school in the winter and during the late spring and summer months. I taught Public school for 25 years.
During the year 1898, I met Miss Darthula Barbee of Shannon, Mississippi. We were married April 15, 1903. The next day we moved to Ross Hill, near Houston, Mississippi. For fourteen years of married life, we live in Chickasaw County, in and near Houston, farming and teaching except for two years in which I did Public work teaming and working at different timber factories.
Before marrying, I taught Public school in Chickasaw, Pontotoc and Lee Counties. March 17, 1917 I left Houston, Mississippi: for Beloit, Wisconsin by way of Memphis, Tenn. Fairbanks Morse & Company Paid my transportation. For four years I worked for F.M. & Co. I bought a 10-1/2 acre farm one and a half mile west of Beloit in April, 1920 and began truck farming and doing team work. While I did team work and excavating, my wife and children took care of the truck farming and working the garden Putting the vegetables on the market.
We have had seven children born to us -- James, Altha, Estelle, Charlie Melvin (who died when he was 3-1/2 years old), Louise, Ambrose and Grant.
I served as a deacon in the Baptist Church; became a charter member of the Beloit N.A.A.C.P. branch in 1919, and one of my last adventures was the creation of a coal business in January 1938, which was susPended February 1, 1939.
My later years were used in the service of PeoPle looking for housing. Urging them to buy rather than rent. One of the haPPiest days of my life was when the county judge (Arther Lubdke) had the names of Negrose Placed on the Jurors list."
*Arther Lubdke is written as Arthur Luebke in official records
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