I never saw either Daddy Luke or Mom' Charlotte, but I inherited the care of them when my mother died.
After the close of the war they resolutely refused to be emancipated or leave the place.

The only demand they made upon us was enough money annually to get a new "critter," that is, a mule.

With a certain lack of ingenuity the mule was reported each Christmas as having passed away, or at least as having become so infirm as to necessitate a successor--a solemn fiction which neither deceived nor was intended to deceive, but which furnished a gauge for the size of the Christmas gift.
My maternal grandfather's house was on the line of Sherman's march to the sea, and pretty much everything in it that was portable was taken by the boys in blue, including most of the books in the library.

When I was President the facts about my ancestry were published, and a former soldier in Sherman's army sent me back one of the books with my grandfather's name in it.

It was a little copy of the poems of "Mr.
Gray"-- an eighteenth-century edition printed in Glasgow.
On October 27, 1858, I was born at No.