Martha Freeman

Now, when I  was here Miss Martha's mother was living and the real master of the home was old Aunt Martha, she was a colored woman that lived up there with 'em from way back. And she really ruled the roost. I think she's the one that set the place on fire [referring to a grass fire at the Berry home]. I'm not sure. Either she or Miss Martha's mother. I don't know which.

Interviewed August 8, 1988, interview number BOHI 19880808-01

She [Martha Freeman], she was just genuinely, genuinely a lover of people. And she never failed to be gracious and I had been taught to respect all people regardless of their color or anything else. My family was very tolerant and we just got along fine at all times and the, when I went down on her 100th birthday I walked up to her and said, “Aunt Martha, how are you?” and she called me by name. That was, that was just wonderful. I loved the old lady very much.

Interviewed April 19, 1997, interview Number: BOHI 19970419; talent release

And one time when I was over staying over at Oak Hill, Rosa Fletcher was helping Aunt Martha cook, cause Aunt Martha always had to sit down to do everything, and Miss Berry wanted was having guests, and she wanted, uh, whole wheat biscuits for lunch, and the lady said “I can’t make whole wheat biscuits.”  And I wasn’t supposed to go in the kitchen doing things, but she told us, said “Go get Aunt Martha for me Geneva.” She said “Go get Geneva. She can.” I didn’t know how either, but I wouldn’t let Aunt Martha know it. And I went on and made the biscuits the way I thought they should be, and they turned out real good and they just bragged on Rosa’s biscuits and they never did know I made ‘em. 

Aunt Martha, uh, sometimes she could be kind of crabby, but most times she was real sweet. She was always sweet to me. She called me “Legs.” She said, “I never did see you sit.” ‘Cause I was always busy doing something.

You know, Aunt Martha came, said she came to live with the Berrys when Miss Berry was two years old and Aunt Martha was sixteen. And after Miss Berry died, I used to go back by to see Aunt Martha. And I could just knock on the door and say “Aunt Martha”, and she’d say “who’s that? Is that you, Geneva?” She’d know my voice several years afterwards.

Interviewed July 28, 1988, interview Number BOHI 19970523; talent release

And I met Miss, Aunt Martha. Aunt Martha was a tiny little lady, black. She had been with the Berrys for many years. Her family, I think were slaves owners for the Berry, and she was blind when I saw her. And she always called us the Parrish children. And she could, if she once saw you and heard your voice, she could tell who you were coming down the sidewalk. And she would say, 'Is that you, Leonard? Is that you? Come on, Leonard.' And we'd go to the door, and she would sit and talk to us. And, was very active with the students that worked at Oak Hill. And then they took care of her in her later years. She had a little cabin there.

Also a school social worker in the Dalton, Georgia, public schools. Interviewed April 22, 1997 (interview number BOHI 19970422):

Another very important person that I knew was Aunt Martha. One of my jobs as driver of the service car was to take a food basked to Aunt Martha each day. I'd pick up this food basket at Emily Cottage, where the cooks there had prepared it, and deliver it to her place at Oak Hill. She lived in the servant quarters at Oak Hill. And when I would knock on the door she would come and she was so excited to talk with someone. And she was hard of hearing, but she always had her radio there. You'll see that radio there in the museum. She sat close to that radio and knew what was happening in Rome and the word. I didn't. We didn't keep up with the news. And she would ask me about something I didn't know, and she thought that was odd. But she would say, "Speak up child. You talk like you have a mouth full of mush." Aunt Martha was quite a character even at that time, and this was in 1949, forty-eight or forty-nine. I'm not sure when she died, sometime soon after ... I would take the food and she wanted to talk about current events. I thought that was interesting. She didn't spend a lot of time talking about the past. She wanted to know about what was happening today in the world.

Interviewed June 15, 1999, interview number 19990615-11

And Miss Berry knew more about shrubbery than any architect I have ever seen. You know we have these people who are agricultural architects and all sorts of architects in which they make and do things with shrubbery. I think she learned a lot of it from Aunt Martha Freeman who was her nurse as a child, and to whom she had a very high respect. I've shuddered sometimes to think what would happen if she had not done something that she had told Miss Berry that Miss Berry ought to do. She gave free advice to Miss Berry, Aunt Martha Freeman. And nobody knows how old she was when she died ... [speaking of working to get Alto Park Elementary approved] Now Miss Berry would have a name for that, and Aunt Martha Freeman would have a name for that. Aunt Martha would say, 'Lord child, you just didn't have enough faith. You oughta know that that was gonna happen. Lord's gonna take care of you.' She had a lot of faith. Miss Berry said a lot of times she had cried because in the early days she didn't have money to pay teachers, and Aunt Martha would come up and say 'Shut up. That's the Lord's business.' And Aunt Martha just swore that through the years that Miss Berry never had a real problem raising money. Of course Miss Berry didn't tell Aunt Freeman everything. Anyhow she was a very strong character herself. There used to be a little joke about what sort of management the school had and the things that surrounded the school, and Aunt Martha Freeman would say 'Well, anybody that can see and can hear ought to know.' Then she would give an illustration of some person who was maybe in charge of the grounds. He is afraid of Mr. Skinner who is in charge of all of the agricultural work and grounds and things like this. Mr. Skinner is afraid of Miss Berry. Miss Berry is afraid of Aunt Martha. That was just his little tale you know. And it may have some little bit of truth in there. Aunt Martha Freeman, a very aged black woman, who was unusual. When the Lord made her I guess he just threw the paddle away. He didn't try to make anybody else like her. Her body is buried over at the chapel now.

Principal and founder of Alto Park Elementary School in Floyd County. Interviewed October 6, 1988, interview number BOHI 19881006-01

Then again later on I was out on the back doing something and she came by and she says, “Harold, I’ve got a problem.” Says, “I need to go back north.” Says, “There’s too many students on the waiting list.” Says, “My doctor won’t advise it.” And says, “My family never did care whether I made a go of it or not.” And says, “I’m going out in the garden and pray about it awhile. I’m coming back and talk to Aunt Martha.” Says, “She’s the last resource of advice on the Hill.” Which I already knew. In a little bit I heard some loud talk from Aunt Martha, and I went out. And when Aunt Martha got a little stirred up she’d have that apron up in one hand and she’d be laying it off with the other one (points finger in front of him). She was standing in the back door. She says, “Martha Berry, go on!” Says, “You ain’t go no sense no way. You done killed your fool self for them schools. Go on woman. One more trip ain’t gonna hurt you.” And Miss Berry came by where I was which I’d snooped around to see her. She says, “I guess you got the decision.” Says, “I’ll go.”

August 4, 1988, Interview Number: BOHI 19880804-02

I went over there [Martha Berry's home] and worked with ... With old Aunt Martha, the old colored mammy. She taught me a lot of things, too ... Yeah, the sponge cake was Aunt Martha's recipe, and the boiled custard was too. But I used it down through the years and I, we made a cookbook. It’s published. And that recipe is in the cookbook, and the sponge cake’s in the cookbook too ...  It was 1915 when I came to Berry.  She [Martha Berry] took up a lot of time with the students, and you see I was sent to Oak Hill to work, and I met Miss Berry and old Aunt Martha that day when we were gonna (breaks off) Miss Berry served some of her meals for guests over at Oak Hill. That was, and Aunt Martha would, and they’d send girls from over here. So I was sent over to help Aunt Martha. Now old Aunt Martha looked at me because I was a scrawny-looking little kid. So she said, “Ain’t they got more people over there at that school bigger than you?”  I said, “Well, I don’t know, Aunt Martha, but they’ve sent me over here and I’m here to help you.” So that day, we, I helped get the chickens ready, and we had turnip greens and Miss Berry farmed turnip greens and everything that, that went with a meal of that type. And so I helped her serve that meal and of course I met her right off from the beginning after I came to school, and I worked as a student right close to Miss Berry all the way through ... [responding to a question about Oak Hill] It was there before the war, I mean before the war. It wasn’t destroyed during the war. And Aunt Martha was there during the war, and she used to tell us things about how Sherman and all of them went through, the soldiers, and how they had to hide everything."

Interviewed June 1964; interview number BOHI 19640601-01

Caroline Bostick Hoge came to Berry in 1912 to open the home economics department and later married E.H. Hoge, who would become Berry's business manager.

Aunt Martha used to always be very proud of the meals she cooked for her. And the princess [Martha Berry's sister Jennie/Eugenia Berry Ruspoli] used to say, "Well, when I can’t see Aunt Martha I just grease her palm with a ten dollar bill at the door and she never worries about having to cook so heavy for me." And I went over there once to get Miss Berry and bring her over to the school for something and she didn’t have her galoshes and it was raining. And Aunt Martha walked over to the door and said, "Now, Martha Berry, get yourself right straight in that building here get on those galoshes. When you get sick, who do you suppose is going to mind you but me? And I’m not going to mind you tonight because you are going to put your galoshes on." And Miss Berry said, "Always have to take orders from Aunt Martha." So we go. But Aunt Martha and Grandmother Berry were two souls that saw things alike. Her skin may have been black but her soul was in the work of that home. She loved those children like her own. They were her own children to her and after Mr. Tom Berry, who was the baby, died, Mrs. Tom Berry used to go over there and sit by the hour with Aunt Martha and talk about Tom when he was little. She said that was a consolation she had in her life after Tom had left her.

Interviewed June 9, 1964; interview 19640609-03

Inez Wooten Henry, was born in 1905 in Worth County, Georgia and came to the Berry School for Girls in 1918. After her graduation in 1921 she became Martha Berry's assistant until Berry's death.

But anyway, Martha Berry said “I’m going over to the school to meet some engagements, I’ll be back at lunch time and we’ll get acquainted. You go back to the kitchen. See that open door back there?” I said “Yes ma’am.” She said, “My dear Aunt Martha is in there, she will show you what to do. She’ll take you in hand this morning.” Well I thought Aunt Martha would be the mother’s favorite sister, because the mother was still living at that time. And I went the long hallway back there, and I reached this open door and I stopped, dead still, because the only person I could see was a stooped, colored figure over the sink and washing dishes. I stood there wondering what to do, and Aunt Martha apparently had heard my footsteps  and felt the silence, she glanced up over her shoulder. She took one look at me, she dropped the dish rag, she picked up the corners of this brown and white checked apron with the oblong pockets. I can still see her. She looked old to me then, and live until seven years ago, I believe. I was thirteen and she looked old then. Aunt Martha stood in front of me rather stooped, looking straight into my eyes and said, “For Lawd sakes. I does believe they gets less and less sense at that school every day they lives. I done sent for a girl to help with the work and I sure ain’t sent for nothin’ scared to death to have to raise. I bet you couldn’t even find a broom.” I said “Oh no I couldn’t. Are you Miss Berry’s dear Aunt Martha?” “Sure I is. What does know about Aunt Martha?” “Miss Berry said you would help me, and I need to learn.” “Hmm. Hmm.” She dropped the corners of the apron and her face took on another look. She said, “Sin’ you willin’ to learn some you might be some count after all. Come on here. I ‘gwine show you round. Here are the brooms, standin’ there scared to death thing.” I followed her up far and she looked back at me and mumbled all the way. “Here ‘da dish pan. Now here ‘da dish towels, here ‘da aprons. Still scared to death, don’t know nothing,’ don’t know suet (?), don’t know nothing. Scared to death. Lawd sakes, she need ‘ta learn something.” But, that was my introduction to Aunt Martha. She ruled Oak Hill.

Interviewed June 10, 1964; interview BOHI 19640601-04

Martha Berry’s traveling companion and secretary until her death in 1942. Later supervisor of Oak Hill.

[Prompted by the interviewer to tell an anecdote about Martha Freeman] Well we’d go out to- Miss Berry or I would be going out to Atlanta or Miss Berry would go out to Aunt Martha and tell her good bye and she’d say "Martha Berry where are you going?" and she would say "We going down to Atlanta." And she would say "Yeah you going to keep messing around and y’all going to get killed on these highways." And she’d say, "You ain’t got no business going down there, you better stay here." And she talked to her just like that, you know, Miss Berry wouldn’t say anything. She would just turn around and walk on. And one of the funniest things that ever happened to old Aunt Martha and myself, was Miss Berry decided on Christmas she wanted to give Aunt Martha something for Christmas and she asked me "What can I give Aunt Martha for Christmas present?"  And I said buy her a radio. So she sent me over to Sears and Roebuck to get her a radio, and I bought her a little table model radio and brought it back. And carried it up to Miss Berry and she said, "Just take it on out there and tell her I sent it." So I took it out to the- to her house and I said Aunt Martha, I said I brought you a Christmas present. "What is it?" I said it’s a radio. Miss Berry bought you a radio she wants you to hear- have a radio so you can hear the news and all. And she said "Get that thing out of here!  Martha Berry knew I didn’t want no radio." And I said all right, all right. I’ll just take it back to Sears and Roebuck where I got it. I won’t argue with you. I turned around and started out the door and she said, "You set that thing down on that table." So I put the radio down on the table, and I said well I’ll be back some time if you want it hooked up. "Well I’ll let you know when I want it hooked up." And it was two or three days before she ever let me plug it in so she could. And then after she got use to it, you couldn’t get her away from it. And you better not go and knock on her door when her news was on. She wouldn’t answer it. No sir, she lived by that radio. She enjoyed that. I’d go out on Sunday morning and get a choir for her from Atlanta; she couldn’t see to turn the dials, but I could turn over to a church where they had a choir that she liked and let her listen to the choir singing and hear the preacher preaching then I’d turn her back to Rome radio because that was where it stayed all the time. Cap Hicks was the radio announcer, he still is today.  And her birthday came up and they would give the oldest person in the county a case of Co-cola, the Co-cola company would.  And she got it one day and he brought it out to her ... Oh, she must have been around- that was after Miss Berry died- she must have been- we think she lived to be a hundred and eight years old. She lived ten years longer that Miss Berry did. And the best we can tell- she told me that she was seventeen years old when Sherman came through Rome and from that we could figure that ... She told me all about how they got Granny’s horse, white horse, stole her horse. And Granny went to the head man and got him back. Granny Berry, Miss Berry’s mother [Frances Rhea Berry]. Yes she could talk about that. How they didn’t have anything to eat, and how they swiped all their food from them as they came through.  She could tell you right up to the very last she had a mind. She couldn’t see, but boy she could remember.  All of us loved her.

Interviewed June 8, 1964.

Letter to Martha Berry's sister Francis Berry Bonnyman, August 18, 1942:

I saw her yesterday and found her as well as usual, and deeply interested in the affairs of the world. She listens to her radio regularly, and keeps an ear to the ground to know what is going on at the school. She is very definite in her opinions about how the nation and the school should be run.

Aunt Martha was a wonderful character, and you know she told me one time, of course that was after Miss Berry died. Mrs. Barnes and I both sort of took her on because Miss Berry was sure that different ones would look out for different needs and she had me as I went over to check her house to check Aunt Martha because she said just look out for Aunt Martha when you go over to the house. And Aunt Martha of course was blind and at one time. Two things were outstanding to me about Aunt Martha if you ever went over there and she was listening to her little radio, you had to sit down and she would say “Sit down and shut your mouth, I’m having my sermon.”  And you sat down and you didn’t say a word until the sermon was over.  And then she could tell you about it. When Roosevelt died she says, “Miss Hart, you should have been there, that was the most beautiful funeral I ever saw.” [chuckles]  So in her eye and her mind she could follow the funeral all the way through and it was beautiful to her. And then one time I went over her and she was sitting on a trunk and she says “I want you to come over here and I got a box in this trunk and I has my money in it. And you must count it and take it over to Mr. Hoge and you don’t tell anybody but Mr. Hoge what your right hand has done.” Says, “Some of these colored trash is going to get my money.” And I took it out and counted it. She had these large, big bills in there and she had over $500, so I took it to Mr. Hoge and told him what she had said and she said “That’s to bury me.” So she had-of course the schools buried her, but she had her money saved up so she wouldn’t have to think about not being cared for. And then another time that was outstanding was when some of the girls had gone in and changed her linen on her bed, we sent her linen to the laundry and they lost her sheets so we just went in and got some of Miss Berry’s sheets and put them on her bed and she called me in there and she says, “Miss Hart, you know I can’t see, but there is not a thing wrong with my feelings.  Where are my sheets?” [laughs] She was just that keen you know ...  She [Martha Berry] would speak to you and she always said, “Now go by and see Aunt Martha.”  Everyone who ever came to see her went to see Aunt Martha. And Aunt Martha felt as important as the whole Berry family, you see she was just a part of them. But she was always included.

Interviewed in June 1964

Author of the 1932 book Martha Berry : the Sunday Lady of Possum Trot and in 1963 wrote For the Glory of Young Manhood and Womanhood: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.

[Prompted by the interviewer to talk about Martha Freeman]  She was very colorful. She was typically the old-fashioned loyal and devoted Southern Negro mammy, and she looked after Miss Berry. She was practically the only one who could order Miss Berry around, which is, as old Southerners will know, when she told Miss Berry she had to do something, Miss Berry’d say, “Well, I guess I have to. Aunt Martha says so.” And one time we went to Atlanta. Miss Berry, Mr. Keown and I and her chauffeur, and Aunt Martha had fixed up a lunch to take with us, which was her usual chick-fried chicken, and a wonderful little biscuit that only she could make. And other fixin’s to eat. So, Mr. Keown, Miss Berry and I and the chauffeur all wandered into a restaurant, downtown in Atlanta, at the busy noon hour, sat down at a table without waiting for a waiter to show us to it. And Miss Berry put the basket on the center of the table, and began unwrapping the food. The waiter came in perfect amazement and said, “What is going on?” And Miss Berry said, “Well, my old colored mammy sent me a lunch to eat down here today,” and without bothering to tell him who she was. And the waiter looked on again in amazement, and then she said, “We wondered if we couldn’t probably get some coffee or milk to drink while we’re eating our lunch.” The waiter said, “Wait a minute, while I call the manager.” He ran, and when he come back with the manager, the, then Miss Berry said, “I’m Martha Berry from up at the Berry Schools, and my old colored mammy, Aunt Martha, sent me this lunch, and we wanted to eat it down here today, and we thought we’d like to sit in your restaurant. And we’d like to have some coffee, and some, one of the gentlemen may like to have milk.” So, we drank coffee and milk off the restaurant, while the manager had stood by and then retired. Miss Berry could defeat anybody and that was a very good example. (Laughs) It was downtown right in the main business district of Marietta, the banking district you might say, Marietta and Peachtree and that section. That was, Aunt Martha of course then was always sending Miss Berry food on her trips up North.  Miss Berry would get very homesick, and she’d get, she would write home and ask her people, tell Aunt Martha to fix her up some good biscuits and oh, send some of her homemade jam and jelly, and then Miss Berry would eat in her hotel or boarding house room.

Well, Aunt Martha thought that a good Southern lady should have a husband and children of her own instead of wasting her time, as Aunt Martha said, “on everybody else’s chil’en.” And she wanted, Aunt Martha wanted some quality folks around her, and Miss Berry didn’t present her with the quality.  [Laughs]  She was always, Aunt Martha was always saying, “Everybody’s running in here and out of here.” And says, “Everything’s coming and going.” Says, “Miss Berry’s runs in and out of here.” And she says, “When you get all through with it,” she says, “nothing happens.” She just saw the school as something across the road, and that didn’t, she didn’t think Miss Berry was fulfilling her life. That was just a point with her, an issue.

Interviewed June 10,1964; interview BOHI 19640610-02

Walter A. Johnson. Came to Berry in 1908 and after serving in the Army during World War I, he returned to Berry to teach English in 1918, later serving in various capacities.

[Prompted by the interviewer to talk about Martha Freeman] Oh, yeah, yeah, Aunt Martha was a great friend of mine. Miss Berry, one day we had a visitor, two ladies, stay in the cabin. And the lady says she wanted a bath. We didn’t have a bathroom. And she says, “Walter, go and tell Aunt Martha to send over,” we had a portable bathroom, “send over the bathtub.” So I went over and Aunt Martha says, “You ain’t gonna get that bathtub.”  I says, “Miss Berry said to send it over.” And she always would talk like that, but you’d know she didn’t mean it. So she let me have the bathtub, and I was walking back, and we heated water on the stove, and gave the, the woman had a good, warm bath in spite of the fact we didn’t have a bathtub in the building. And many times I’d go over and I’d say, “Aunt Martha, you got any, any cookies today?”  She says, “Now you know, Walter, I don’t keep any cookies. Get out of my kitchen!”  But before I’d leave, she’d show me the cookie jar and tell me to help myself. She, I was, in fact she didn’t want, she and Mrs. Berry, Miss Berry’s mother, didn’t like regular nurses to wait on them. My wife was, had been a nurse at the school, but she wasn’t a registered nurse, but she was, and she waited on both of them for a good many years. And they’d always say, “Let, I’d like to have Maybelle come over and wait on me, but I don’t care about somebody else.”

[Responding to the interviewer's question about whether Martha Freeman "really ran Oak Hill"] Oh yeah, Aunt Martha ran Oak Hill. Yes sir, you could go over there, and Miss Berry didn’t, didn’t dare, I went over there, she sent me and Mrs. Henry to Atlanta one day, told us we could go. I said, told Miss Berry that I’d been to other institutions and the Board of Trustees helped out financially as well as giving of their time and effort. And she says, “I hate to call on them, Walter.” I says, “Well, other people, other institutions don’t mind it.” So she says, “Well, you and Inez go down to Atlanta.” So we went down, and we called on some members of the Trustees. First one gave us a check for a thousand dollars, next one fifteen hundred dollars, another one five hundred. We came back about $3500, and she had us, she says “You and Inez come in. We’ll have some supper, Aunt Martha’ll fix us supper.” Aunt Martha says, “Oh, go on, I can’t fix supper this time of night.” It was about eight o’clock, it was about dark, you know. And Aunt Martha says, “Why, they’ve gone off and got lots of money for Berry.”  “Oh, well, in that case I guess I will.” So she made supper for us, and the three of us, Miss Berry and Mrs. Henry and I sat down and ate supper.

. Interviewed June 9, 1964; interview BOHI 19640609-02