I CANNOT REMEMBER WHEN I did not know our devoted friend, Miss Lowe. Long before I was born, she lived in her little house next door to my mother’s and lived beside us until her death.
She was one of the pillars of my childhood. She was a twinkling-eyed, even-featured woman who bore her seventy-odd years and her stroke of “Paralsy” as she called it with a smile.
MISS HANNA’S MOTHER was called Aunt Elsie by practically all of the folks in Brooklyn. Calling her Aunt didn’t mean that she was related to them. It was just a friendly way of addressing some older people that lots of people practiced. Aunt Elsie was a most unusual and interesting person. She was quite the opposite in many ways from Miss Hannah. Miss Hannah was thrifty like her grandmother, but Aunt Elsie was not and gave little thought to saving for tomorrow. Even as a child, she was said to have had no desire to bother herself with books.
MY AIM IN WRITING A SHORT SKETCH of Mr. Houser is to try to present a word picture of him as a worthy citizen, and at the same time, call attention to the length of time that colored people had been landowners in the Brooklyn section of Charlotte.
The deed to our old homestead lot on East Boundary Street which was bought for our grandmother is dated 1884. The yellowed old document shows that this plot of land was bought over eighty years ago from William Houser and his wife. The lot was a portion of a large tract of land that this couple owned in Brooklyn.
MISS AMAY, as she was affectionately called by her children and friends, lived on Boundary Street about two blocks from our home in Brooklyn. She was a short, stout woman with a very friendly serene face and a rare ability to make friends. For years, she and my mother had been friends and neighbors. I felt a closeness to her also. She had known me as a child and when I was a teacher at Fairview School where I first began my teaching career in Charlotte.
I REMEMBER MISS HANNAH as my mother’s dearest friend. They differed in appearance and actions, but there existed a bond of love between them that was never broken. When my mother was a corpse at the undertakers, Miss Hannah went there and spent a while with her. Though my mother was stilled in death, I feel that she must have known her friend was by her side.