The Life of WILLIAM SINGLETON
Colonel William Henry Singleton lived to be 103 years old (1835-1938). He was a Civil War veteran and is buried at Evergreen cemetery. After the last issue of this newsletter was published and mailed, Ms. Fitch came forward to tell us the story of her relative.
A copy of his publication entitled "Recollections of My Slavery Days" is captured in electronic format as part of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill digitizing project, "Documenting the American South." The entire publication is available at http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/singleton/singleton.html. We will give some highlights of that publication in this issue. Singleton states, "I have lived through the greatest epoch in history, having been born August 10, 1935, at Newbern, North Carolina. That was not so many years, you see, after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence and the winning of the Revolutionary War. But in the country of the Declaration of Independence I was born a slave, for I was a black man. And because I was black it was believed I had no soul. I had no rights that anybody was bound to respect. For in the eyes of the law I was but a thing. I was bought and sold. I was whipped. Once I was whipped simply because it was thought I had opened a book. But I lived to see the institution of slavery, into which I was born and of which I was for many years a victim, pass away. I wore the uniform of those men in Blue, who through four years of suffering wiped away with their blood the stain of slavery and purged the Republic of its sin.... I have seen the books of the world opened to my race. And with the help and sympathy of God's good people I have seen them make a beginning in education....
Comparing my position now, living in a good home, with my wife, with friends, respected in my community, with the same rights that every other man has, those days of my boyhood seem like a dream..." We hope that you will go to the website and read the whole story and perhaps place a flower on his grave.
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