To compress what would happen over the next decade, the girl Kizzy stayed on the plantation in Spotsylvania County directly exposed to her father who had come directly from Africa, and to his stories, until she had a considerable repertoire of knowledge about him from his own mouth. When Kizzy was sixteen years of age, she was sold away to a new master whose name was Tom Lea and he had a much smaller plantation in North Carolina. It was on this plantation that after a while Kizzy gave birth to her first child, a boy who was given the name George. The father was the new master Tom Lea. As George got to be four or five or so, it was his mother Kizzy who began to tell him the stories that she heard from her father. The boy began to discover the rather common phenomenon that slave children rarely knew who their fathers were, let alone a grandfather. He had something which made him rather singular. So it was with considerable pride the boy began to tell his peers the story of his grandfather; this African who said his name was Kin-tay, who called a river Kamby Bolongo, and called a guitar ko and other sounds for other things, and who said that he had been chopping wood when he was set upon and captured and brought into slavery.

When the boy George got to be about twelve, he was apprenticed to an old slave to learn the handling of the master’s fighting gamecocks. This boy had an innate, green thumb ability for fighting gamecocks. By the time he was in his mid-teens he had been given (for his local and regional renown as an expert slave handler and pitter of fighting gamecocks) the nickname he would take to his grave decades later – Chicken George.

When Chicken George was about eighteen he met and mated with a slave girl. Her name was Matilda, and in time Matilda gave birth to seven children. Now for the first time that story which had come down from this African began to fan out within the breadth of a family. The stories as they would be told on the front porch in Henning by grandma and the others were those of the winter evenings after the harvest when families would entertain themselves by sitting together and the Elders would talk and the young would listen. Now Chicken George would sit with his seven children around the hearth. The story was that they would roast sweet potatoes in the hot ashes, and night after night after night across the winters, Chicken George would tell his seven children a story unusual among slaves, and that was direct knowledge of a great-grandfather; this same African who said his name was Kin-tay, who called the river Kamby Bolongo, and a guitar ko, and who said that he was chopping wood when he was captured.

Those children grew up, took mates and had children. One of them was named Tom. Tom became an apprenticed blacksmith. He was sold in his mid-teens to a man named Murray who had a tobacco plantation in Alamance County, North Carolina. It was on this plantation that Tom, who became that plantation’s blacksmith, met and mated with a slave girl whose name was Irene and who was the plantation weaver. Irene also in time bore seven children. Now it was yet another generation, another section of the state of North Carolina and another set of seven children who would sit in yet another cabin, around the hearth in the winter evenings with the sweet potatoes in the hot ashes. Now the father was Tom telling his children about something virtually unique in the knowledge of slaves, direct knowledge of a great-great-grandfather, this same African, who said his name was Kin-tay, who called the river Kamby Bolongo, who said he was chopping wood when he was captured, and the other parts of the story that had come down in that way.