"My great-grandmother on my mother's side was in Union County when I
knew anything of her--close to El Dorado. I was about twenty-two years
old when she died. She was tall and spare built, dark ginger cake color.
Coarse straight black hair that had begun to mingle with gray. She never
did get real gray, and her hair was never white. Even when she died, at
a hundred and thirteen years, her hair was mostly black mingled with
gray.
"The overseer knocked her in the head in slavery times, and they had to
put a silver half-dollar in her head to hold her brains in. I have seen
the place myself. When I was a little fellow she used to let me feel the
place and she would say, 'That's where the overseer knocked granny in
the head, son. I got a half-dollar in there.' I would put her hair
aside--my but she had beautiful hair!--and look at the place.
"My wife could tell you what my mother told her. She has seen the marks
on my mother's back and has asked, 'Mama, what's all these marks on your
back?' And mama would say, 'That's where I was whipped in slavery times,
daughter.' She never did like to tell the details. But the scars were
awful.
"My grandmother was roughly treated and she had pretty near lost her
eyesight from the ill treatment. She got so before she died that she
could hardly see to go nowhere. I don't know what it was they done to
her that made her eyesight bad, but she insisted that it was due to bad
treatment in slavery time.