ho could speak only broken English. He had a son named Adam, a
brother of my father, living at Lochapoka, Ala. In 1867, after freedom,
this granpa of mine, who was then living in Macon, Georgia, got mad with
his wife, picked up his feather bed and toted it all the way from Macon
to Lochapoka! Said he was done with grandma and was going to live with
Adam. A few weeks later, however, he came back through Columbus, still
toting his feather bed, returning to grandma in Macon. I reckon he
changed his mind. I don't believe he was over five feet high and we
could hardly understand his talk.

"Since freedom, I have lived in Mississippi and other places, but most
of my life has been spent right in and around Columbus. I have had one
husband and no children. I became a widow about 35 years ago, and I have
since remained one because I find that I can serve God better when I am
not bothered with a Negro man."

Mary Gladdy claims to have never attended school or been privately
taught in her life. And she can't write or even form the letters of the
alphabet, but she gave her interviewer a very convincing demonstration
of her ability to read. When asked how she mastered the art of reading,
she replied: "The Lord revealed it to me."

For more than thirty years, the Lord has been revealing his work, and
many other things, to Mary Gladdy. For more than twenty years, she has
been experiencing "visitations of the spirit". These do not occur with
any degree of regularity, but they do always occur in "the dead hours of
the night" after she has retired, and impel her to rise and write in an
unknown hand. These strange writings of her's now cover eight pages of
letter paper and bear a marked resemblance to crude shorthand notes.
Off-hand, she can "cipher" (interpret or translate) about half of these
strange writings; the other half, however, she can make neither heads
nor tails of except when the spirit is upon her. When the spirit eases
off, she again becomes totally ignorant of the significance of that
mysterious half of her spirit-directed writings.

"Aunt" Mary appears to be very well posted on a number of subjects. She
is unusually familiar with the Bible, and quotes scripture freely and
correctly. She also uses beautiful language, totally void of slang and
Negro jargon, "big" words and labored expressions.

She is a seventh Day Adventist; is not a psychic, but is a rather
mysterious personage. She lives alone, and ekes out a living b