Lydia Garrett Stovall, born into slavery, ca. 1855 in the state of Maryland, told her grandchildren only one story about her life before Emancipation. She told them she had seen Pres. Abraham Lincoln pass by the place she lived, when she was just a little girl, "swingin' on a gate." By 1870, (acc. to Fed. Census), young Lydia had been transported to Edwards Depot, Mississippi, where she was enslaved at the end of the Civil War, married, and began bearing children. There are no familiy stories about her time in Mississippi.