| Narrators: Howard Bell and Elaine Bell |
| Interviewer: Mildred Pratt |
| Date: March 7, 1986 |
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| Side A |
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| MP |
I am interviewing Mr. and Mrs. Howard Bell, who reside at [address omitted] in Bloomington.
All right, you can start, Mr. Bell, with giving your name and..
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| HB |
My name is Howard Bell, I was born in Bloomington, Illinois November 9, 1922 and have lived here all my life since then.
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| MP |
And you were saying Dr. Covington delivered you? |
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| HB |
Yes, Dr. Covington delivered me. |
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| MP |
What was his full name now, do you remember? |
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| HB |
Let's see, I think I'll get my birth certificate. I was delivered in the world by Dr. E. G. Covington.
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| MP |
Were any of your other, your brother and sisters delivered by Dr. Covington, or did you have any brothers and sisters?
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| HB |
Yes, all of them were. |
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| MP |
Oh, is that right? How many brothers and sisters you have? |
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| HB |
I had, let me see, one brother and four sisters. |
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| MP |
I see, and they were all delivered by Dr. Covington. That's interesting.
All right, would you tell something about, as much as you can remember,
about your ancestors, your grandparents, great-grandparents, and.?
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| HB |
Well, my grandfather, William Bell, came here right after the Civil War, around 1866, to Bloomington.
He was really on his way to Chicago. He was a construction worker, but work was good here in Bloomington
so he stopped here. And my family had been here ever since then.
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| MP |
Is that right? Where did he come from here, your grandfather? |
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| HB |
Baltimore, Maryland. |
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| MP |
He was living in Baltimore, Maryland? Now you said he came here about a year after slavery ended,
right? And was he himself in slavery? Was he a slave, or he was a free man?
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| HB |
He was a slave, but they freed him to join the army in the Civil War. |
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| MP |
Oh, I see, in the Civil War, isn't that interesting? Yes.
How did that happened that a Black man was in the Civil War?
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| HB |
I don't know, I guess they was so hard up for men or something that they just took
some of the slaves and just freed them to, you know, let them be part of the army.
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| MP |
To fight in the army. I think that's interesting. Yes, any other things that you remember
about your grandparents, or father's or grandmother's- great grandfathers?
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| HB |
No, that's about all I can remember. I had one aunt that was married here in Bloomington
at the Methodist Church in 1883, and she still has a daughter living out in New York now.
And that leads down to my father which he was born here in Bloomington December 29, 1884, and...
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