"I don't know when I was born. I don't know exactly, but I was born in
slavery time before the War began. I was big enough to wait on the table
when they was fighting. I remember when they was setting the Negroes
free. I was born in Aberdeen, Mississippi, in Monroe County. Seven miles
from the town of Aberdeen, out on the prairies, that is where I was
born.
"I figure out my age by the white woman that raised me. She sent me my
age. When they was working the roads, my road boss, I told him I was
forty-five years old and he didn't believe it. So I sent to the white
woman that raised me from a month-old child. When I left her, I'd done
got grown. Her name was Narcissus Stephenson; she had all our ages and
she sent mine to me.
"She may be dead now. I could've stayed right there if she isn't dead,
because she never did want me to come away. Right out in Arkansas, I
come,--to my sorrow. Well, I done right well till I got crippled. Got
hit by an automobile. That's what I'm doin' here now."