[7] [HW: Jeff Davis captured May 10, 1865, outside Irwinsville, Ga.]
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Nettie Hopson
Helena (home--Poplar Grove), Arkansas
Age: ?
"I don't know how old I is. I am old. I been here so long. I feel my age
now right smart. I want to do things and give out. I know I'm old. I
look old. I was born in Alabama.
"Mother was sold to Bud Walls at Holly Grove. Papa bought her and
brought us to this state. My father died seven months before I was born
my mother told me. She married ag'in. She was the mother of ten
children. We all lived and do better than we do now. Mother was light.
She worked in the field ever since I come to know 'bout things. Her name
was Martha Foster. I don't know my father's name but Foster. The rest of
the family was called Walls. Whether they wanted to be called that, they
was called Walls' niggers 'fore and after freedom both.
"My husband is living. My daughter died first day of March. It sorter
addled me."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Molly Horn
Holly Grove, Arkansas
Age: 77
"My ma and pa belong to the same white folks. I was born in North
Carolina. Ma and pa had six children. I don't know how many owners they
ever had in North Carolina. Ma and pa was named Sarah and Jad Nelson.
"When I was a baby Rubin Harriett bought me and mama. His wife was Becky
Harriett. Ma was too old to sell without me. They didn't want to sell me
but they couldn't sell her widout me. I am the baby of our family. Papa
didn't get to come to Arkansas. That parted them. After freedom her
other children came. I heard ma say how they kept papa dodged round from
the Yankees. The white folks kept him dodged round. He was a field hand.
Ma was a cook and house girl. She never did work in the field till she
come out here. She said white folks didn't whoop him; he wouldn't take
it. I don't know why they thought he wouldn't be whooped.
"I could walk when I first seed the Yankees. I run out to see em good.
Then I run back and told Miss Becky. I said, 'What is they?' She told ma
to put all us under the bed to hide us from the soldiers. One big Yankee
stepped inside and says to Miss Becky, 'You own any niggers?' She say,
'No.' Here I come outen under the bed and ask her fer bread. Then the
Yankee lieutenant cursed her. He made the other four come outen under
the bed. They all commenced to cryin' and I commenced to cry. We never
seed nobody lack him fore. We was scared to deaf of him. He talked so
loud and bad. He loaded us in a wagon. Mama too went wid him straight
to Helena. He put us in a camp and kept us. Mama cooked fer the Yankees
six or seven months. She heard em--the white soldiers--whisperin' round
bout freedom. She told em, 'You ain't goiner keep me here no longer.'
She took us walkin' back to her old master and ax him for us a home.
Then she married man on the place. He was real old. I had five half
brothers and sisters then. I was a good size girl then.
"They had run him and some more men to Texas. They went in a wagon and
walked. They made one crop there. He said fifteen or sixteen families
what belong to different owners went out there. They heard some people
talking--overheard it was free times. They picked up and left there at
night. They dodged round in the woods and traveled at night. When he got
back he made terms to work as a share cropper.
"Master, he didn't give us nuthin'. I didn't hear they would give em
anything. Truth of it was they didn't have much to keep less givin' the
niggers something. We all had little to eat and wear and a plenty wood
to burn and a house to shelter us. The work didn't slack up none. The
fences down, the outhouses had to have more boards tack on. No stock
cept a scrub or so. We had no garden seed cept what be borrowed round
and raised. Times was hard. We had biscuits bout once a week, lucky if
we got that.
"The Ku Klux got after our papa. They fixin' to kill him. He hid in the
gullies. They come to our house once or twice but I never seed em. Papa
come once or twice and took us all and hid us fore sundown. They quit
huntin' him.
"We farmed wid Mr. Hess. Mr. Herrin wouldn't let nobody bother his
hands.
"We had good times. I danced. We had candy pullings bout at the houses.
We had something every week. I used to dance in the courthouse at
Clarendon--upstairs. Paul Wiley was head music man. All colored
folks--colored fiddlers.
"I was married over fifty years. Bunt Sutton's mother helped bout my
weddin' supper. (Bunt Sutton's mother was a white woman.) She and her
family all was there. She had then two boys and two girls. Mama bought
me a pure white veil. I was dressed all in white. We had a colored
preacher to marry us. We married at night, borrowed lamps and had em
settin' about. There was a large crowd. Ann Branch was the regular
cake-cooker over the country. She cooked all my cakes. They had roast
pork and goose and all sorter pies. Then I went on to my new home on
another man's place bout one-fourth mile from mama's house. Bunt
Sutton's mama was a widow woman.
"My husband voted some but I don't pay no tention to votin'.
"I own a place but it don't do no good. My son is cripple and I can't
work. I done passed hard work now. My husband bought this place before
he died. I don't get help from nowhere.
"This is hardest times in my life. Well, education doin' a heap of good.
The papers tell you how to do more things. It makes folks happier if
they can read.
"Now I don't be bothered much wid young folks. You heard em say flies
don't bother boilin' pots ain't you? I does nough to keep me going all
the time and the young folks shuns work all they can cept jes' what it
takes for em to live on right now. Their new ways ain't no good to me."
#773
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Cora L. Horton
918 W. Ninth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: Between 50 and 60?
"My grandfather on my mother's side was a slave. After my mother had
been dead for years, I went to Georgia where he was. I never had seen
him before and I would always want to see him, because I had heard my
mother speak of him being alive and he would write to her sometimes. I
said if I ever got to be grown and my grandfather stayed alive, I was
going to Georgia to see him. So the first opportunity I got I went. That
was a long time ago. If I'd waited till now he'd a been dead. He's been
dead now for years. He lived a long time after I visited him. His name
was John Crocker. He lived in Marshallville, Georgia.
"I couldn't tell how he and my mother got separated. I don't know. I
don't believe I ever heard her say. In Georgia when she was quite a
girl, I think she said some of her people left Georgia and went to
Covington, Tennessee. Some of the white people that was connected with
them in slavery were named Hollinsheds and my auntie went in that name.
That is, her husband did. My mother's name was Adelaide Crocker. She was
never a slave. Her mother was.
"My mother and father had children--twelve of them. I don't know how
many children my grandparents had. I know three uncles--William, Harmon,
and Matthew. They were all my grandmother's children and they were
Flewellens. She married a Flewellen. Those were my father's brothers. My
auntie's husband was named Dick Hollinshed. They all come from Georgia.
"It comes to me now. I remember hearing my mother say once that her
father was sold. I think she said that her father was sold from her
mother. She didn't seem to know much about it--only what she heard her
father say.
"A man came through the country when I was a girl before my mother died.
She died when I was young. He came to our house and he said he was a
relative of my mother's and he went on to tell what he knew of her folks
in slave times. By him telling so much about her folks, she thought he
really was related to her. But after he left, she found out that he was
just a fraud. He was going 'round throughout the country making it by
claiming he was related to different people. I don't know how he found
out so much about the different people he stopped with. I suppose there
was a lot of people made it that way.
"I don't know what my grandparents did in slavery time. When I did see
my grandfather, he wasn't able to do anything. He didn't live so
long after I seen him. My mother's mother was dead and he had married
another woman. I never did see my grandmother. I do remember seeing one
of my granduncles. But I was so small I don't remember how he looked.
"I used to hear my grandma say that they weren't allowed to have a
church service and that they used to go out way off and sing and pray
and they'd have to turn a pot down to keep the noise from going out. I
don't know just how they fixed the pot.
"I had one auntie named Jane Hunter. When she died, she was one hundred
and one years old. She married Rev. K. Hunter over here in North Little
Rock. She had been married twice. She was married to Dick Hollinshed the
first time. She's been dead ten years. She was thirty-eight years old
when Emancipation came. She baked the first sacrament bread for the
C. M. E. Church when it was organized in 1870.
"My grandmother lived a hundred years too. That was my father's mother.
I knew both of them. My grandmother lived with us. That is, she lived
with us a while when my mother died. She lived here a while before she
died, and then she went back to Georgia because she had a son there
named William Flewellen. He is a presiding elder in the C. M. E. church,
in Georgia.
"My father was a railroad man and when my mother did anything at all,
she worked in the field. My father farmed during the time when he was
working on the railroad.
"I have heard my grandmother talk about slaves being put on the block
and sold and then meeting way years after and not knowing one another.
She told me about a woman who was separated from her son. One day, years
after slavery, when she had married again and had a family, she and her
husband got to talking about old slave times. She told him about how she
had been sold away from her baby son when he was a little thing. She
told him how he had a certain scar on his arm. Her husband had a similar
scar and he got to talking about slave times, and they found out that
they were mother and son. He left her and went on his way sad because he
didn't want to stay on living as husband with his mother. I don't think
those people were held accountable for that, do you?"
[HW: Omit]