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EX-SLAVES MARRIED.

Two Old Darkies United After a Separation of Twenty-Five Years.

The Groom Had But Ninety Cents To Pay Magistrate Camp For His Services.

Two ex-slaves who had not seen each other for twenty-five years, were married yesterday by Magistrate B. F. Camp at his office in Court place. The principals were John Thompson, aged eighty-five years, and Kitty Owens, aged seventy. Before the late war both were slaves in the family of Mr. George Girding, who owned a large plantation in Morgan county, Tennessee. At that time Thomp-son was looked upon as an old man, while the woman was called ‘mammy’ by the children in the family.

After the two slaves were made free by the war they went out in different directions to make a livelihood. The man decided to follow the river, and he secured a place in the dining-room of a steamboat. He continued at this until several months ago, when he retired. Thompson had saved enough money to keep him in comfort the rest of his days. He looked up some of his children, now living in Louisville, but found that they did not appear to take any interest in their old father, not seeming to care whether he was alive or dead. It was while visiting his children that the old man met Kitty Owens. They did not know each other at first, and it was only after they had compared notes that the two recognized each other. A marriage was shortly arranged between the two. Yesterday they went to the County Clerk’s office together, where a license was se-cured. The two old people were ac-companied to Magistrate Camp’s office by a curious crowd. Here the ceremony was performed.


Thompson had been married three times, and his companion only one time less. As the old couple was leaving the office Magistrate Camp remembered then that his fee had been overlooked.

“Lor! Yo’ Honah, I hasn’t got any mo’ money,” said the old man. The facial expression of the old darky under-went a complete change as he fumbled in his pockets. Finally, Thompson got a small amount of change out of his many pockets. This was given over to the Magis-trate, who found it amounted to a total of ninety cents. The old man ex-plained that he had divided his savings so they would last until he was one hundred years old. He took only one of these piles weekly, never touching the rest until the next week. The bride-groom said that he hoped to save enough out of the next few weeks’ allotment to pay the balance of $1.10 to the Magis-trate. The old man and his bride were then allowed to depart happily for their home.