JULY 31 ISSUE ANSWERS: Mary Torrey Muzzy, born Sept. 4, 1820, married November 1842, lived at 260 Church Street. She had two daughters. Abbie was a music teacher, choir leader and organist at the Congregational Church. Maria, the more adventurous sister in the photo above, in 1871-1874 taught recently freed slaves at the Union Academy in Columbus, Miss. It had 400 students and was directed by Superintendent J. N. Bishop and taught by six ladies. On March 12, 1871 the following letter was published in The Romeo Observer and located by Richard Daugherty while researching the paper’s articles: “I write hastily and only a few words, to tell you that the Ku Klux have not got me…They passed by our house last week, a little before daybreak without molesting us. We have been repeatedly assured that if they do come here they will not harm the ladies, unless we attempt to defend Mr. Bishop. He himself has no fear of them, because he thinks it is perfectly understood that if they kill him the blacks will burn the city.” The selfish, racial beliefs and laws concerning African Americans in the early 1870’s in Mississippi were still appalling even if blacks were considered free as a result of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Freed slaves were considered 3/5 of an individual and treated as