When was the source produced?

As you read

Knowing when the source was produced can help you start to put it into historical perspective. A discussion of women’s rights in America, for example, would obviously be very different in the 1820s (one hundred years before women ould vote), the 1920s (when women first got the vote), the 1970s (when the feminist movement was thriving and the Equal Rights Amendment was debated), and 2004. If you don’t know when a source was written, you can’t start to put it into its historical context and understand how it connects to historical events.

If you’re using a first-hand account that was written some time after the events that it describes, you might also take the passage of time into account in your later analysis. For example, you might view the diary of a settler moving west in the 1870s that was written during her travels in a different way than you would view the memoirs of that same settler written fifty years later for her grandchildren.

Reading the hints

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Abner Jordan, interviewed by Daisy Whaley at his home in Durham County, North Carolina, WPA Slave Narrative Project, North Carolina Narratives, Volume 11 Part 2, Federal Writers’ Project, United States Work Projects Administration (USWPA); Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Accessed via Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1938, American Memory, Library of Congress.

Abner Jordan
Ex-slave, 95 years.

“I wus bawn about 1832 an’ I wus bawn at Staggsville, Marse paul Cameron’s place. I belonged to Marse Paul. My pappy’s name wus Obed an’ my mammy wus Ella Jordan an’ dey wus thirteen chillun on our family.

I wus de same age of Young Marse Benehan, I played wid him an’ wus his body guard. Yes, suh, Where ever young Marse Benehan went I went too. I waited on him. Young Mrse Benny run away an’ ‘listed in de war, but Marse Paul done went an’ brung him back kaze he wus too young to go and fight de Yankees.

Marse Paul had heap if niggahs; he had five thousan’. When he meet dem in de road he wouldn’ know dem an’ when he ased dem who dey wus an’ who dey belonged to, dey’ tell him dey belonged to Marse Paul Cameron an’ den he would say dat wus all right for dem to go right on.

My pappy wus de blacksmith an’ foreman for Marse Paul, an’ he blew de horn for de other niggahs to come in from de fiel’ at night. Dey couldn’ leave de plantation without Marse say dey could.

When de war come de Yankees come to de house an’ axed my mammy whare de folks done hid de silver an’ gol’, an’ dey say dey gwine to kill mammy if she didn’ tell dem. But mammy say she didn’ know whare dey put it, an’ dey would jus’ have to kill her for she didn’ know an’ wouldn’ lie to keep dem from hurting her.

De sojers stole seven or eight of de ho’ses an’ foun’ de meat an’ stole dat, but dey didn’ burn none off de buildin’s nor hurt any of us slaves.

My pappy an’ his family stayed wid Marse Paul five years after de surrender den we moved to Hillsboro an’ I’s always lived ‘roun’ dese parts. I ain’ never been out of North Carolina eighteen months in my life. North Carolina is good enough for me.”

Comments

1936–1938

We know from the bibliographical information that this interview was recorded sometime between 1936 and 1938, during the Great Depression. This is a slave narrative, though, so the events discussed must have taken place prior to 1865, when the Civil War (and slavery) ended. So there was a gap of more than seventy years between the events Mr. Jordan discusses in the interview and the interview itself.

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