Eddie tried to
maintain the farm and the house after James’s death. For about a year she worked the garden, sent
her older kids to school, took care of the young ones, and kept the house. The farm yielded just enough produce each
year to feed the big family, but Eddie knew that it would not be enough as the
youngest children grew up.
Nineteen-year-old Eugene, Eddie’s
oldest son and second-oldest child, moved away.
He went north to Michigan, looking for work in Detroit’s burgeoning
automotive industry. Eugene’s
ten-year-old brother Henry, who had just completed the third grade, quit school
and went to work for his grandfather in town.
These departures helped Eddie makes ends meet each month, but there were
still problems. Mildred and Harold had
started school, which meant Eddie had to find money for books, clothes, and
shoes. Old William Dixon was putting
Henry up with his other farmhands as long as Henry worked for him, but he was
also demanding rent. William was
determined never to let his daughter or grandchildren have a free ride. He seemed happily unaware that with young
Henry putting in between fifty and sixty hours of work on William’s lands each
week, the ride would not exactly have been free.
Finally, in the spring of 1928,
Eddie Robertson made the decision to move back to town and to place herself at
the mercy of her father. It was the only
thing she could do. The mortgage on the
Stringtown farm was past due, and she was faced with the choice of paying the
bank or feeding her children.
William Dixon allowed Eddie and her
children to live in one of his houses on two conditions. First, he wanted the Stringtown farm. Even with the back mortgage payments that would
have to be paid, the farm and the big house would make William a nice
profit. Second, Eddie and the children
had to work whenever and wherever William needed them.
Eddie Robertson and her children
were about to become slaves of William Dixon.
Eddie Dixon Robertson
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