Stars

My grandfather Chester (b. 1913) told me a story about how when he was a boy he knew an old woman who had been a slave.  I wish I could remember her name - they all called her Aunt something?  Or Granny? He said she was so old, the children would always ask her how old she was, and she would always answer, “don’t know when I was born, don’t know when I’ll die, but I was born when the stars fell out of the sky.” 

I’ve long wondered what she was referring to, and figured it must have been a local meteor shower. I’ve tried to research it before but found nothing. Then today, reading the Texas Slave Narratives, I came across this quote from Sylvester Brooks, a slave of Josiah Collier in Green Co, Alabama: 

"Old Marse often told me 'bout de stars fallin'. It was 'long 'bout sundown and growed dark all a sudden and de chickens goes to roost. Den some stars with long tails 'gins to shoot, den it look like all de stars had come out of Heaven, and did dey fall! De stars not all what fell. De white folks and de niggers fell on dere knees, prayin' to Gawd to save dem iffen de world comin' to a end, and de women folks all run down in de cellar and stayed till mornin'. Old Marse say it was in 1833, and he say dem stars fall awhile and quit awhile, like de showers when it rains."

This must be what it was! The storms happen every 33 years but it must have been the 1833 storm for her to be considered ancient by 1920 or so when Chester was a boy. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonids