AUNT LYDIA DEAD - 1901

FISHER, LAWTHER, WARDER, DIXON

Posted By: Cheryl Locher Moonen (email)
Date: 12/15/2016 at 00:57:39

Dubuque Daily Telegraph – March 4, 1901

AUNT LYDIA DEAD
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VENERABLE COLORED WOMAN
PASSED AWAY TODAY
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OVER HUNDRED YEARS OLD
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For Many Years She Was a Slave
the Story of Her Life
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“Aunt" Lydia Fischer is dead. She passed away peacefully this morning at 10 o’clock from her humble little cottage of Lawther Avenue, near Linwood. She had been sick for several weeks and her death was not unexpected.

In the passing of Mrs. Fisher a long and eventful life was closed. Aunt Lydia was a colored woman and for many years a slave. She was very old – some saw one hundred. She, herself did not know when she was born.

For many years the deceased lived alone in a little cottage near Linwood Cemetery. One day a reporter impelled by a desire to get the story of her life, called on her. The following is what he wrote:

Seen in her little house without kith or kin Aunt Lydia is a pathetic sight. She was attired in a blue calico dress; her hair was tied with a red bandana handkerchief, reminding one forcibly of the picture with advertiser, “Aunt Jemina’s Pancake Flour.” But she is not so plump and motionly looking like “Aunt Jemina.” On the contrary she is old-very old. One eye is blind from age; her teeth two are gone. But Lydia Fisher, centarian as she is, and childless as she is, is happy. She is happy in her memories-memories of long ago when she was a little girl playing on the plantation with white children on moonlight nights.

People say Lydia Fisher is over one hundred years old. “They say it’s a hundred and fifty, but they don’t know. I don’t know myself” is the way Lydia puts it herself.

Asked to tell some of her history Lydia said she would like to but her memory is failing and that the past is growing dim. She remembers, however, that she was born in Prince William, Va., and that she had a cruel master. “He was a regular devil. He’d beat poor black folks most to death and for nutin,” she said somewhat warmly.

Lydia Fisher was married but like thousands of other poor black slaves suffered the inhumanities heaped upon them by hard-hearted masters. Her husband was torn from her and sold to another master and the two never met again “and I never ‘spect to till I see him in heaven” was the simple and pathetic way she put it.

She had one child but it died, and I often think it was a blessin’. It ‘scaped many a beatin’ spoke the aged woman as she brushed aside a tear.
Aunt Lydia, she is called that by the neighbors, said she couldn’t remember much of her childhood days. She recalls how she use to romp with white girls on beautiful moonlight nights. The memories of these pictures seem to have taken a most lasting hold of her lately and she sets on her doorstep these quiet evenings her mind wanders back to her “Old Virginny home,” but as she thinks of her cruel master, the visage of a monster looms up; she sees her mother, sister and brother bleeding from lashes then she shutters and clenches her fists.

Aunt Lydia’s first masters name was Phillip Warder. She was his slave until she was 40 years old when she was sent to New Orleans to be sold. There she was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Sam Dixon and brought to Dubuque. The trip from New Orleans was made on the river. Aunt Lydia says when she came to Dubuque there was built one church here-the old one on Locust Street. Everybody went to this church she said in her simply dialect – Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptist and all. Aunt Lydia was loath to talk about the incidents of her life in Dubuque, saying that she didn’t remember.

For many years the deceased made her home with Wm. Lawther, uncle of the candy manufacturer. She was dear to the family and when Mr. Lawther died he left a provision in his will that she should always have a home to live in together with $100 a year. She was also to have a milk cow. Accordingly she was given a small house constructed of brick near Linwood. The time of her funeral has not been set.