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Slaves on the Folsom plantation were always married properly and quite often had a "sizeable" wedding, the master and mistress often came and made merry with their slaves. Acie knew about the war because he was one of the slaves commandeered by the Confederate army for hauling food and ammunition to different points between Tallahassee and a city in Virginia that he is unable to remember.
She comes and visits me and we talk and walk over there where we uster and set on the porch. She low she gwine steal ole Acie some of dese days in the near future, and I'll be mighty glad to go ever yonder where all I got is at." Personal interview with Acie Thomas, Moncrief Road Jacksonville, Florida Martin Richardson, Field Worker South Jacksonville, Florida December 8, 1936
His parents, Thomas and Mary, and their parents as far as they could remember, were all a part of the Folsom estate. The Folsoms never sold a slave except he merited this dire punishment in some way. Acie heard vague rumors of the cruelties of some slave owners, but it was unknown among the Folsoms.
Their first year was the hardest, because of the many adjustments that had to be made. Then things became better. By means of hard work and the co-operation of friendly whites the slaves in the section soon learned to shift for themselves. Northerners came South "in swarms" and opened schools for the ex-slaves, but Acie was not fortunate enough to get very far in his "blue back Webster."
It was a common occurrence for the soldiers to visit the plantation owners and command a certain number of horses and slaves for services such as Acie did. He thinks that he might have been about 15 years old when he was freed. A soldier in blue came to the plantation and brought a "document" that Tom, their master read to all the slaves who had been summoned to the "big house" for that purpose.
Rex in sua acie Scotos et Muranenses retinuit, nonnullos etiam de militibus Anglis et Francis ad sui corporis custodiam deputavit." Aelred, De Bello Standardii, Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. cxcv, col. 702-712.
Acie met and married Keziah Wright, who was the daughter of a woman his mother had known in slavery. Strangely enough they had never met as children. With his wife he remained in Jefferson County, where nine of their thirteen children were born. With his family he moved to Jacksonville and had been living here "a right good while" when the fire occurred in 1903.
Oppossums were a "sham faced" tribe who "sometimes wandered onto the wrong side of the day and got caught." They never overcame this shame as long as they were in captivity. All bull rushes and tree stumps were to be carefully searched. One might find his baby brother there at any time. When Acie "got up some size" he was required to do small tasks, but the master was not very exacting.
It was, he further stated like "damning a nigger's soul, if Marse Tom or Marse Bryant threatened to sell him to some po' white trash. And it allus brung good results better than tearing the hide off'n him woulda done." As a child Acie spent much of his time roaming over the broad acres of the Folsom plantation with other slave children.
Acie worked hard and accumulated land in the Moncrief section and lives within a few feet of the spot where his house burned many years ago. He was very sad as he pointed out this spot to his visitor. A few scraggly hedges and an apple tree, a charred bit of fence, a chimney foundation are the only markers of the home he built after years of a hard struggle to have a home.
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