Last updated: February 13, 2023
Person
Elvira Shoals - Enslaved To Free
Quick Facts
Significance:
Interview with woman enslaved by Native American
Place of Birth:
Tuscumbia, Alabama
Date of Birth:
1817
Place of Death:
Oklahoma
Date of Death:
unknown
Place of Burial:
unknown
Cemetery Name:
unknown
What about African Americans enslaved by eastern Native American Indian tribes? What happened during the 1830s Indian removal, the Trail of Tears?
Elvira Shoals was born into slavery and states she was the property of George Colbert. Colbert ran a ferry along the Old Trace, and was a prominent Chickasaw leader. Colberts Ferry is located in Alabama along the Tennessee River at milepost 327.3 on the Natchez Trace Parkway.
Below is the transcription of the article written by Captain W. S. Ray and published January 13, 1917, in the McCurtain Gazette.
All people will admit that Oklahoma is a great state, and we have no fear of raising a controversy when we say that for the curious, the strange, and extreme old age, that she is far ahead of all competitors. Len Colbert, whose history appeared in the Gazette more than a year ago, will now in a few months have reached the unprecedented age of 122 years. This fact has been substantiated by good authority, but it is of another person that I commenced to write. Elvira Shoals, a colored woman now living near Shawneetown who claims to be one hundred years old or over, and who has the proof to substantiate her claim. Some months ago I met Elvira on the street in Idabel, where she had been brought to testify in a law suit then pending in court. Her age attracted my attention and I asked her who she was and where she lived. She gave me her name and told me where she lived, and as it was getting late in the evening she told me to come to her house some day when she had time and she would tell me all about it.
One morning I found her sitting on her porch shelling corn, after telling her I was the same man, she talked and asked me if I would like to see her picture. Telling her I would, she led the way into her two-room house. The furniture and all the furnishings were of a cheap grade, but I have yet to see a nicer, cleaner or tidier kept house than hers. I remarked to her that she was a nice housekeeper. She replied, "Law, yes, man, my old missus learned me that in Tennessee when I was a gal." Her picture had been enlarged from a tintype and showed her to be much younger than now. I asked how long since the tintype was taken, she replied, "it has been done so long I done forgot when it was done, but it's a long time ago".
After seating ourselves on the porch I told her I had come to get the history of her life and her picture to have it put in the Gazette, and this is what she told me:
"I was born a slave, the property of old George Colbert, and was raised below Tuscumbia, Alabama, in Tennessee, and was moved to this county with the Indians when they came here. I was about grown then. I lived with Colbert at Colbert's ferry on Red River till he died. His daughter, Susan, then married a man named Jones and we went to live at Skulleyville, that was no place then, just name, from there we moved to Rose Hill, above Doaksville. I belonged to Jones when I was freed. Jones died two or three years after the war. I then moved to one mile below Shawneetown, where I have lived ever since. I am the mother of six children, but they are all dead. I have six grandchildren, one a single man, 22 years old, who lives with me. I have twenty acres of land, my grandson tends that and takes care of me".
I asked her how old she was and she said she didn't know, but she was grown when she left Tennessee. The Indians were brought to this country in 1832 and after a little calculating I said, "you are about a hundred years old, are you not?" "Yes, about a hundred, maybe a little more." I asked her how it was that she and Len both belonged to Colbert and Len lived on the Mississippi river and she on the Tennessee? She said Len was getting old and forgetful, that it was the Tennessee he lived on, and maybe she is right, for the Colbert Shoals are just below Tuscumbia where the Tennessee river enters Tennessee.
History gives George Colbert credit for being one of the most wealthy and influential Indians of his tribe before and after their removal and it is possible that Len and Elvira lived at one time on different plantations; about this I did not ask her. Elvira is hale and hearty, is in possession of all her mental faculties and from her movements she would not be judged to be her three score years and ten.
Since the foregoing data was collected, Elvira had the misfortune to lose her house and all its contents by fire during her absence at a neighboring house one day.