Newspaper Item

WALDON

Posted By: Barbara Hug (email)
Date: 7/18/2008 at 10:52:01

After Many Years.
David and Walker Waldon to be Reunited.

Newton, Iowa, Sept. 1. – David and Walker Waldon are two highly respected colored men of this city. They have lived here for many years, coming here from near Savannah, Mo., where they lived in slavery before the war. They were owned then by a man named Washington Davis, about ten miles north of Savannah. They had a brother named Hurl Waldon, who was owned by one Ben Davis. Davis went into merchandizing in Fillmore, a small town not far away, but failed in business. His slaves had been mortgaged to Uncle Jimmie Graves, a money lender of that community, and when Davis broke up he took some of his slaves and secretly left the country. Hurl Waldon was one of the slaves taken, and that was away back in 1858, two years before Lincoln was first elected. He went to Dallas, Texas.

Some twenty years ago a young man from Savannah, a nephew of the Waldons, was visiting here, and he told that it was thought that Uncle Hurl was living in Kansas City. The information was so uncertain that no investigation was made by relatives here. Not long since this same nephew came here to attend the funeral of a relative and reported that the same uncle was said to be alive and at a place names in Arizona.

Thereupon Walker Waldon of this city wrote to the place named and a day or two ago a letter was received from the long lost brother, now living in Tucson Arizona, and to which point his letter had been forwarded to him. It was almost like receiving word from the tomb. This was the first direct word in forty-five years.

When Hurl was taken away by his master, the wife whom he had married and who belonged to a neighbor named Woodcock, was left behind, and neither husband or wife have ever heard from each other since. In the meantime both had remarried. The husband has for twenty-two years been a widower and is now living with a son. The wife also remarried and is a widow, her home being somewhere in this state. In the letter received here the old husband asks for news of Octavia, his long lost but still remembered wife. – Register and Leader. ~ Newton Herald, Friday, September 4, 1903(5).