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Fox Family
Author Unknown
“George
Washington 'Wash' Fox was born in bondage around 1839 in Virginia. He was
sold to a slave trader and brought to Mississippi during the Civil War. When
the War was over, his Master read the Emancipation Proclamation to the
slaves and Wash Fox was given his 'Freedom Paper' and a pen.
Among the newly freed slaves only one in ten could read and write, and Wash
Fox was one of them. He had a thirst for knowledge. No military record was
found. He married a full-blooded Chickasaw woman, Matilda, in 1859. During
the Reconstruction period 1867-1877 many discouraged planters sold their
acreage and moved to town. After ten years of freedom only about five
percent of all former slaves in the South acquired farms. Grandpa Wash Fox
was one of them. It was under the Homestead Act that Wash Fox Wash Fox
acquired 1,280 acres of land in the Harrisonville community, Lafayette
County. With no funds available for tools, he made plow-lines from the bark
of hickory trees...He died in 1896 and was buried in Clear Creek Cemetery,
Burgess Community."
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