"At Natchez, ma didn't do anything. We children didn't do nothin' either
there. But pa joined the army. He joined it the next day after he got
there. Then I went to work waiting on the sixty-fourth--lemme see--yes,
it was the Sixty-Fourth Brass Epaulettes. I was waiting on one of the
sergeants. He was a Yankee sergeant. The sergeant's name was Josephus,
and the captain of the Company was Lieutenant Knowles. I was with them
two years and six months. I never did get hurt. When they went to fight
at New Orleans, the captain wouldn't lemme take part in it. He said that
I was so brave he was a 'fraid I might get hurt.
"Me and my father were the only ones working in the family at that time.
I stayed right in Natchez but my father didn't. My father's first stop
was in Bullocks Bar right above Vidalia. That was where his company was
stationed first. Lemme see, he went from there to Davis Bend. I wasn't
with them. He was in a colored regiment. I was with a white regiment.
He left Davis Bend and want to Vicksburg. His next trip was up the
Sunflower River. His next trip he went from there up here to De Valls
Bluff. That is where he come free. That was the end of the fighting
there--right there.
"From there he come back to Rodney. We all want to Davis Bend while pa
was there. When he left and went to De Valls Bluff, ma went to Rodney.
I stayed with the soldiers two years and a half down there at Natchez.
That's as far as I went with them. When they left I stayed.
"I went to Rodney with my mother and stayed with her and the rest of the
children till she died. My ma died in 1874. My father died down here in
Pine Bluff several years ago. After ma died, pa married another woman.
He went back to Pine Bluff and was killed by a train when he was
crossing a trestle.