Old Missoula

Letter to Booker T. Washington from Missoula District Court Judge Asa L. Duncan

From Asa Leland Duncan*

Missoula [Mont.] July 23, 1913

Dear Sir: I have for a number of years thought of writing to you. I doubt if you remember me though I am sure that I remember you when you and I were each small children. I have watched your course through life with no little interest and read your book Up from Slavery. I lived on a plantation a part of which joined the one on which you were born. You lived on what we called the Old Burroughs place. I lived when I saw you with my Grand father, Asa Holland, down the Turnpike below where you and your people lived. You may perhaps remember my grand father, Asa Holland. He was the post-master at the Hale’s Ford post office during the civil war and for a long time afterwards. The place just opposite, or nearly opposite where you were born was the place known as the Ferguson place. He was generally called Old Cy Ferguson. I recall him as a man of rather low stature, florid face, and was said to be a very hard master. I remember that he owned two slaves, one a very dark man called Jordan, and another mulatto, I think named Dennis. The reason I remember Jordan so well was that on one occasion in the winter, Jordan had run away and some one found him in the barn of my grand father. It was a cold snowy morning, and there was great excitement when they found him. Mr. Ferguson came and he was taken in to the post office and a colored boy named Giles, who belonged to my Grand father went out there to see him. Giles was much older than I and when I went out there they had this poor fellow with a rope around his waist. I was a very small child five or six years old, and I remember that when I looked in to the room and saw the rope, I was so agitated, and frightened, that I wept and told Giles to take me away. I never knew what became of Jordan after the emancipation. I think I recall seeing you several times and I will mention the incidents and would like to know if I am correct and if you memory corroborates my recollection. Miss Eliza Burroughs about the close of the War taught school at my great Uncle’s, Thomas Holland. She used to ride Horse-back there to teach. I think she went on Monday Morning and returned home on Friday afternoons, evenings as we call it there. And if I am not mistaken you used to go with her and take the horse back home and go for her. Some small colored boy did and I think it must have been you. Then again, I think they sent you at times to the post office in the yard of my Grand father on what we called “mail days” during the war.

If I am not mistaken once you were going to mill, the old grist mill, that was then known as Forges’ Mill down near Staunton River, on a small creek, however, and your sack of corn fell off. Of course it was impossible for you to again get it on the horse and you came back to the post office to get some one to put it back on the horse. My grand father sent his nephew, Alexander Holland to put it up for you.

I suppose that you are entirely too old now or were then too young to recall these little incidents and I should perhaps not remember them but for the fact that for years I have heard and read of you with much interest. For I can realize in some small way what you have done, the great good you have done for your race and the people of this country by your educational work.

My own life has been a very hard one especially my boyhood days and my efforts to get an education.

I was in Virginia about a year ago and My Aunt, Anne Leitch Duncan, who was Anne Leitch Holland, a daughter of Asa Holland whom I have mentioned above, told me of your visit there and of the little speech that you [gave] when you went back there several years ago. It made a strong impression on her I know for the reason that she gave me the very ideas and seemed to have remembered nearly every thing that you said.

I saw one of my old playmates, a colored man, named James Holland. He lives near where you lived when you were living there. He lives out on Gills Creek on some land which I helped to buy a number of years ago. The land belonged at one time to the Dillons. You may recall the name.

For years I have thought I would write you and learn if you remembered any of these incidents. As we both came from the same neighborhood, and probably had some acquaintances in common, I wished to learn if you recalled any of the things, people or incidents mentioned in this letter. It has been so long ago that it is all like a dream to me.

If you feel like doing so I would be glad to have a reply to this. Yours sincerely,

Asa L. Duncan

TLS Con. 934 BTW Papers DLC. Written on stationery of the Montana district court, fourth judicial district, of which Asa L. Duncan was judge.

1. Asa Leland Duncan (b. 1857) lived for a time with his grandfather, Asa Holland, in Hale’s Ford, Va., where he knew BTW. A graduate of Washington Lee University, he moved to Missoula, Mont., where he became a lawyer and in 1912 a state district judge.

The above letter is taken from ‘The Booker T. Washington papers, Volume 12’ by Booker T. Washington.

Asa Duncan was an early Missoula County Attorney and a member of the 1^st Montana Infantry during the Spanish American War. He was also a district court judge in Missoula from 1913 to 1937, serving the second longest term as a jurist in Montana history, according to National Register of Historic Places.

http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv27021