*Millie Ann Smith was born in 1850, in Rusk Co., Texas, a slave of
George Washington Trammell, a pioneer planter of the county. Trammell
bought Millie's mother and three older children in Mississippi before
Millie's birth, and brought them to Texas, leaving Millie's father
behind. Later he ran away to Texas and persuaded Trammell to buy him, so
he could be with his family.*
"I's born 'fore war started and 'members when it ceased. I guess mammy's
folks allus belonged to the Trammells, 'cause I 'member my grandpa, Josh
Chiles, and my grandma, call Jeanette. I's a strappin' big girl when
they dies. Grandpa used to say he come to Texas with Massa George
Trammell's father when Rusk County was jus' a big woods, and the first
two years he was hunter for the massa. He stay in the woods all the
time, killing deer and wild hawgs and turkeys and coons and the like for
the white folks to eat, and the land's full of Indians. He kinda taken
up with them and had holes in the nose and ears. They was put there by
the Indians for rings what they wore. Grandpa could talk mos' any Indian
talk and he say he used to run off from his massa and stay with the
Indians for weeks. The massa'd go to the Indian camp looking for grandpa
and the Indians hided him out and say, 'No see him.'
"How mammy and we'uns come to Texas, Massa George brung his wife and
three chillen from Mississippi and he brung we'uns. Pappy belonged to
Massa Moore over in Mississippi and Massa George didn't buy him, but
after mammy got here, that 'fore I's born, pappy runs off and makes his
way to Texas and gits Massa George to buy him.
"Massa George and Missy America lived in a fine, big house and they
owned more slaves and land than anybody in the county and they's the
richest folks 'round there. Us slaves lived down the hill from the big
house in a double row of log cabins and us had good beds, like our white
folks. My grandpa made all the beds for the white folks and us niggers,
too. Massa didn't want anything shoddy 'round him, he say, not even his
nigger quarters.
"I's sot all day handin' thread to my mammy to put in the loom, 'cause
they give us homespun clothes, and you'd better keep 'em if you didn't
want to go naked.
"Massa had a overseer and nigger driver call Jacob Green. If a nigger
was hard to make do the right thing, they ties him to a tree, but Massa
George never whip 'em too hard, jus' 'nough to make 'em 'have.
"The slaves what worked in the fields was woke up 'fore light with a
horn and worked till dark, and then there was the stock to tend to and
cloth to weave. The overseer come 'round at nine o'clock to see if all
is in the bed and then go back to his own house. When us knowed he's
sound asleep we'd slip out and run 'round, sometimes. They locked the
young men up in a house at night and on Sunday to keep 'em from runnin'
'round. It was a log house and had cracks in it and once a little nigger
boy pokes his hand in tryin' to tease them men and one of 'em chops his
fingers off with the ax.
"Massa didn' 'low no nigger to read and write, if he knowed it. George
Wood was the only one could read and write and how he larn, a little boy
on the 'jining place took up with him and they goes off in the woods and
he shows George how to read and write. Massa never did find out 'bout
that till after freedom.
"We slips off and have prayer but daren't 'low the white folks know it
and sometime we hums 'ligious songs low like when we's workin'. It was
our way of prayin' to be free, but the white folks didn't know it. I
'member mammy used to sing like this:
"'Am I born to die, to lay this body down.
Must my tremblin' spirit fly into worlds unknown,
The land of deepes' shade,
Only pierce' by human thought.'
"Massa George 'lowed them what wanted to work a little ground for
theyselves and grandpa made money sellin' wild turkey and hawgs to the
poor white folks. He used to go huntin' at night or jus' when he could.
[Illustration: _Millie Ann Smith_]
"Them days we made our own med'cine out of horsemint and butterfly weed
and Jerusalem oak and bottled them teas up for the winter. Butterfly
Weed tea was for the pleurisy and the others for the chills and fever.
As reg'lar as I got up I allus drank my asafoetida and tar water.
"I 'member Massa George furnishes three of his niggers, Ed Chile and
Jacob Green and Job Jester, for mule skinners. I seed the government
come and take off a big bunch of mules off our place. Mos' onto four
year after the war, three men comes to Massa George and makes him call
us up and turn us loose. I heered 'em say its close onto four year we's
been free, but that's the first we knowed 'bout it.
"Pappy goes to work at odd jobs and mammy and I goes to keep house for a
widow woman and I stays there till I marries, and that to Tom Smith. We
had five chillen and now Tom's dead and I lives on that pension from the
government, what is $16.00 a month, and I's glad to git it, 'cause I's
too old to work."