"Pocahontas": Died 1910

POCAHONTAS

Posted By: Volunteer: Sherri
Date: 10/7/2016 at 05:18:37

**Handwritten: St. Line Dem. Thurs. 18 Aug. 1910

DEATH OF CENTENARIAN
Aged Negress With a Strange History - Taken from Woods

Pocahontas, a singular character, indeed a freak, passed away Saturday at 4 p.m. at the county home. Pocahontas was a colored woman, and had been in the county home for 40 years. No one knew her age, or where she came from or anything of her history. All that is known of her is that she was found in the woods three miles east of here, near what is known as the Gillis farm, late in the fall of 1870. When first seen by Sam Taylor, Pocahontas was sitting under a large oak tree three-quarters of a mile from any house or highway, and a cold rain was falling. She was thinly clad and would soon have chilled to death.

She was taken to a house and made comfortable, but refused to answer questions or give any account whatever of herself or where she came from or how she got there. When she was offered food she said they were going to "pizen" her, but she was so nearly famished that she ate. She was taken to the county home where she has all the intervening years refused to talk, or even give her name, although she was quite a good worker. Hence the name Pocahontas was given her and it was the only name known for her and the name of her plain headstone will bear.

Pocahontas was of great age, - how great no one of course knows. Mr. Jas. Fickey of this place, who was one of the original party who took Pocahontas from the woods to a house, says she must have been 75 years old at that time. He believes the woman was 115 years old. mr. Morris, the county home steward, and the county home physicians believe her to have been at least 100 years old. She was not sick at all, but simply died from wearing out.

About that time, or a little later, a negro girl, 12 to 15 years of age, was found wandering aimlessly about near Keosauqua, who, like Pocahontas, could not give her name and could give no account of where she came from. She was brought to town, where there were a considerable number of colored people, and subsisted as best she could, going bare, foot in summer and for years going bare headed both winter and summer. The name she went by was Wild Tom. However she afterwards married here and made a fairly good woman.

As stated, where these black people came from was never know but it was suspected that their former owners to the south of us, and likely to become a permanent charge upon themselves or the public, quietly brought them up here and lost them. It was an inhuman thing to do, but many of the former owners of the blacks scarcely regarded them as human beings in those days; and besides they were feeling ugly towards their northern neighbors because they could no longer hold such people as property.

Source: Van Buren Co. Genealogical Society Obituary Book G, Page 230, Keosauqua Public Library, Keosauqua, IA