Auntie Fletcher

From her arrival in the late1860s to her death in December, 1912, Auntie Fletcher was one of the best known Black women in Des Moines. For years she worked as a laundress for white pioneer and settler families. Towards the end of her life, Auntie Fletcher lived at the foot of a public dump the  present day Court Avenue district where supported herself by raising chickens and selling rags. Though she died quite poor, she died free and proud in the home she built out of lumber, logs and sticks salvaged from the Des Moines River. To honor her story, the Iowa Black History Research Collective has decided to tell Auntie Fletcher’s story in her own words, as quoted in the Des Moines Register in April of 1912.

“I was born in Virginia and came with my master’s family to Missouri when I was 5 years old…They put me on the block and they called out ‘ going for $300 who will bid more?’ Then somebody would bid a little more and Mr. (Elijah) Patterson bid $600. The man doing the calling hit me on the head until I thought he had cracked it and said I was sold to Mr. Patterson.”

 “Mr. Patterson kept me with the rest of the darkies until after the war. I had to work mighty hard in the fields all the time. The food was just the coarsest they could give us but I reckon it was healthy because none of us got sickly on it. When Mr. Lincoln set us darkies free, I did not know of it for a long time. Mr. Patterson didn’t tell us. When we heard it we started for the north. I tried to but he shut me up in a cabin and locked me in, but just as soon as I could get away I escaped with my children.”

“I tied rags to the feet of my children but I was barefooted and we walked all the way to Canton. When we got there, I was told we could go to a negro women’s home but she said she had seven in her family and couldn’t take us in. I just asked her if I could leave the children there and she had no place to put them, but I told her I would find a place. I got a

box, just a common ordinary box and put some clean straw in. I put the children in the box and they slept by the stove that way for many nights. I never had any money but I had to have some mighty quick or my children would starve. I heard a man ask another man to cut some wood. The man said it was too cold to chop wood. I asked if I could do it and he let me. He gave me fifty cents and I bought some meal and bacon. The next day I stacked the wood that I had cut and he gave me another fifty cents and I bought some bread and some butter. It was the first wheat bread I had tasted in a long time and it was mighty good.”

“How come I to Des Moines? Well, my mother came out here and I decided to visit her. I had three children then. Then I married Mr. Fletcher here and just staid. That’s all.”