Washington Sentinel

From Correspondence of Philadelphia Enquirer.

A Slave of General Washington—Extraordinary Case of Longevity.

Marvellous and incredible as it may seem, there is at present living in Fayette county, in this State, an aged negro who was a slave of General Washington, and who cannot now be less than 120 years old. His history is briefly this: He was brought in a slave ship from the coast of Guinea, to the port of Philadelphia, sometime between the years 1760 and '70, and was purchased, together with nine others, for farm hands on the Mount Vernon estate, then owned by Col. George Washington, (already a man of note in the colonies, from his services in the French and Indian wars.) His name in his native country was "Funtemah," but at Mount Vernon they gave him the less barbarous appellation of "Simon," to which he afterwards added the name of "Washington," in honor of his good master. Simon continued to reside at Mount Vernon until the time of the revolution, when, with others, he was sent out to a tract of land in Fayette county, Pennsylvania, owned by General Washington, to assist in the erection of a mill. After laboring here for some years, he was sold to Bazil Brown, from whom the town of Brownsville is named, and he sold him to Colonel Edward Cook, in whose service he remained as long as he was recognized as a slave. These are the main points of his life. In proof of their authenticity, we have the venerable old negro's own story, which he has told in the same way, and without shadow of variation, to his neighbors, time out of mind, and his exceeding simple mindedness, entirely precludes the slightest suspicion of its being an invention. Besides, there are those who remember him when General Washington was yet living, and the fact of having been his slave no wonder at all then—has only grown so by his surviving him so long. Gen. Joseph Markle, whig candidate for governor in 1844 himself now seventy-eight years of age, testifies that "he has known Simon for more than fifty-eight years, and that when he first knew him, he was apparently an aged man." Every one at all acquainted with the characteristics of the negro race, (especially the native African,) knows that they rarely exhibit marks of age until they are beyond three score years. Hon. James Todd, of Greensburg, formerly secretary of this Commonwealth, says, in an affidavit, that "the facts of the case, as above stated, are such as have been credited by all his neighbors for the last sixty years, and he regards them as indisputably true." Andrew Luin, esq., a respectable farmer of Westmoreland county, now nearly ninety years of age, testifies that "in the year 1779 or 1780, he went to Washington's mill, as it was then called, and that there he found a colored man, named Simon, residing—that he was a slave of General Washington's and that he has known him ever since, and can vouch for the truth and accuracy of his statement regarding himself." With all these proofs, it would seem the veriest infidelity to disbelieve that old Simon was in reality the slave of Washington, and that his age cannot be short of six score years—perhaps it exceeds it. Old Simon has of late years been a beneficiary of Colonel Joseph Snider, of Westmoreland county, who has kindly protected him in his age and indigence. Last autumn he took him to the agricultural fair at Pittsburg, where he was visited by thousands. It is understood that he will bring him also to the great fair to be held at Powelton next week he will no doubt be entitled to the premium for the "oldest inhabitant," the individual whose power of memory is so often invoked. In cases of extreme age, such as this, the bare numerical statement of years conveys no clear idea of what it really is. It is only by comparison that we can ever approximately gain a conception of it. The Countess Des. mond, who flourished in the reigns of Elizabeth and the first James, and attained the age of one hundred and forty years, greatly surprised the Count by declaring, one hundred years after Bosworth field, that Richard Third was one of the most elegant gentlemen she had ever danced with. So old Simon, were he only of educated intellect, might create equal amazement by telling us that he was well in his "thirties" when Napoleon and Wellington were born. That he was past forty when the Declaration of Independence was written; that he is older than Mr. Jefferson would be if living, although he went to his grave a ripe octogenarian twenty-eight years ago; that he remembered well when Philadelphia was a slave-mart, and our good old great grand sires bid lustily at street auctions for "Guinea Niggers," and Pennsylvania farmers thought themselves poorly off without their compliment of blacks; that then King George's name was everywhere praised, and it was treason to say ought against his majesty. It is by recalling these and a thousand similar associations, that we can, in some degree, realize what it is to be one hundred and twenty years old—the age of Funtemah, the slave of Washington.

SENEX.