*Sol Walton, 88, was born in Mobile, Alabama, a slave of Sam Lampkin.
Sol and his father stayed on the Lampkin Plantation, then in
Mooringsport, Louisiana, until 1873, and farmed on shares. From 1876 to
1922 Sol worked in the T.& P. shops, in Marshall, Texas. Sol and his
wife are supported by odd jobs Sol secures about town and they receive
money from a son who is in a CCC camp.*
"I was knockin' round, a good-sized chap, way back yonder in Buchanan's
and Henry Clay's time. I was born in 1849, in Mobile, Alabama, and
belonged to Sam Lampkin. My father was bought by the Lampkins and he
allus kept the name of his first master, Walton. My mammy was a Alabama
Negro and her name was Martha, and I had four brothers and four sisters,
Robert, Jim, Richard, Alex, Anna, Dora, Isabella, Bettie.
"My master was Sam Lampkin and his wife was Missus Mary, and their first
plantation was in Alabama, but they moved to Mississippi when I was
'bout six, and we lived on Salt Water Creek. They had a big, frame house
and we lived in log quarters, slept on rough rail beds and had plenty to
eat, peas, pumpkins, rice and other truck we raised on the place, and
plenty of fish out of the creek.
"The first work I done in slavery was totin' water and dinner to the
field hands, in gourd buckets. We didn't have tin buckets then. The
hands worked from sun to sun, and if the overseer seed 'em slackin' up
he cussed 'em and sometimes whacked 'em with a bullwhip. I seed 'em
whipped till their shirt stuck to their back. I seed my mammy whipped
for shoutin' at white folks meetin'. Old massa stripped her to the waist
and whipped her with a bullwhip. Heaps of 'em was whipped jus' 'cause
they could be whipped. Some owners half fed their hands and then whipped
them for beggin' for grub.
"After our folks came in from the field they et supper and some went to
Salt Water Creek to cotch fish and crabs. They used to spin at night,
too. On Christmas Day massa allus give the slaves a little present,
mostly somethin' to wear, 'cause he goin' to git that anyhow.
"Massa never had but one white overseer. He got kilt fightin'. The hands
was burnin' logs and trash and the overseer knocked a old man down and
made some of the niggers hold him while he bullwhipped him. The old man
got up and knocked the overseer in the head with a big stick and then
took a ax and cut off his hands and feet. Massa said he didn't ever want
another white overseer and he made my cousin overlooker after that.
"The slaves had their own prayer meetin's and that's 'bout the biggest
pleasure they had. We'd slip off sometimes to dances and parties, but
the patterrollers come and run us home with hounds. The black and white
children all played together and there was 'bout sixty of us.
"The old folks told us ghost stories but I never seed a ghost but once,
after I was married. Me and some men was walkin' down the Shreveport
road and saw a big house all lit up and fiddlin' and dancin' goin' on
inside. But when we got close the music stops and the lights went out.
When we got on past a piece it lit up and the fiddlin' starts 'gain. I
wasn't scared, but we didn't hang round to see what made it do that way.
"Some of the cullud folks on our place could read and write. They larned
it theyselves. The white folks didn't larn 'em. All they larned 'em was
to work hard. But they took care of us when we was sick and old women
made lots of medicine. There was boneset tea and willow tea and shuck
tea and cottonseed tea for chills and fever and Jerusalum Oak for worms.
[Illustration: _Sol Walton_]
"Master left Mississippi for Texas 'bout time the war got goin' good,
with his fam'ly and sixty slaves. We'd been on the road three weeks when
a gang of Yankees come on us one day at dinner. The niggers scatters
like birds. 'Bout half of 'em never come back, but the rest of us come
on and settled seven miles southwest of Mooringsport, in Louisiana.
Young master went to the war after we got there and come home sev'ral
times. But they didn't talk the war 'mongst us cullud folks.
"Nothin' special happened the day they said we was free, 'cept some of
'em didn't stay ten minutes. Master told 'em if they'd stay he'd give
them the third and fourth. The ones who left wasn't promised nothin' and
didn't git nothin'. My folks stayed for 'most twenty years after
'mancipation, workin' on the halves.
"I left my folks in '73 and come to Jimmie D. Scott's place, in Texas,
'bout eight miles east of Marshall, and worked for $10.00 the month.
That's where I met Liza Montecue, who is my wife. She was born on the
Scott's place the same year I was born. We moved to Marshall in '76 and
I got a job in the railroad shops and worked till the big strike in
1922. I didn't belong to the strike but the strikers wouldn't let me
work. After they run me off my job, I never could get back on and had to
make a livin' at anythin' I could find till my boy got in the CCC camp.
I been married sixty-four years and raised eight children, and three of
'em lives here and works at anythin' they can find to make a dollar."