September 19, 1848 – October 1, 1914 Slavery and the Civil War
Greene E. Evans was born into slavery on the B. B. Degraffenreid
plantation in northern Fayette County, Tennessee. When he was
eight years old, his name appeared on an 1855 inventory of
Degraffenreid’s property, along with the names of his mother,
Adelia, and his siblings: Samuel (13), John (10), Martha (6),
and Amanda (5). [The inventory called him “Green,” but in
adulthood he typically signed his name as “Greene,” with a final
“e.”] Evans later told an interviewer that his father was the
slave of “the richest man in Fayette County,” who owned “over 50
slaves.” The slave schedule of the 1850 U.S. Census named Baker
Boswell Degraffenreid* as the owner of 74 slaves; in fact,
before he gave slaves as gifts to some of his children in the
1840s, he owned more than 100. Although Alfred Evans’s wife and
children lived on the Degraffenreid property, it is likely that
Alfred himself was the slave of neighbors – probably
Degraffenreid’s son-in-law Elijah L