"I don't know what the slaves was expecting to get, but my parents when
they left Ben See's place had nothing but the few clothes in the house.
They didn't give em nothing. They had some clothes all right, enough to
cover themselves. I don't know what kind or how much because I wasn't
old enough to know all into such details.
"When we left Ben See's plantation and went down into Alabama, we left
there on a wagon. Daddy was driving four big steers hitched to it. There
was just three of us children. The little boy my mother was schooling
then, it died. It died when we went down betwixt New Falls and
Montgomery, Alabama. I don't know when we left Alabama nor how long we
stayed there. After he was told he was free, I know he didn't make nare
another crop on Ben See's plantation.
1865-1938
"My father, when he left from where we was freed, he went to hauling
logs for a sawmill, and then he farmed. He done that for years, driving
these old oxen. He mostly did this logging and my mother did the
farming.
"I can't tell you what kind of time it was right after the Civil War
because I was too young to notice. All our lives I had plenty to eat.
When we first came to Arkansas we stopped at old Mary Jones down in
Riceville, and then we went down on the Gates Farm at Biscoe. Then we
went from there to Atkins up in Pope County. No, he went up in the sand
hills and bought him a home and then he went up into Atkins. Of course,
I was a married woman by that time.
"I married the second year I came to Arkansas, about sixty-two or
sixty-three years ago. I have lived in Little Rock about thirty-two or
thirty-three years. When I first came here, I came right up here on
Seventeenth and State streets.