"I was born down here on White River near Arkansas Post, August, 1849. I
belonged to Thomas Mitchel and when they (Yankees) took Arkansas Post,
our owners gathered us up and my young master took us to Texas and he
sold me to an Irishman named John McInish in Marshall for $1500. $500 in
gold and the rest in Confederate money. They called it the new issue.
"I was twelve years old then and I stayed in Texas till I was
forty-eight. I was at Tyler, Texas when they freed us. When they took us
to Texas they left my mother and baby sister here in Arkansas, down here
on Oak Log Bayou. I never saw her again and when I came back here to
Arkansas, they said she had been dead twenty-eight years. Never did hear
of my father again.
"I'm supposed to be part Creek Indian. Don't know how much. We have one
son, a farmer, lives across the river. Married this wife in 1873.
"My wife and I left Texas forty-one years ago and came back here to
Arkansas and stayed till 1922. Then we went to Chicago and stayed till
1930, and then came back here. I'd like to go back up there, but I guess
I'm gettin' too old. While I was there I preached and I worked all the
time. I worked on the streets and the driveways in Lincoln Park. I was
in the brick and block department. Then I went from there to the asphalt
department. There's where I coined the money. Made $6.60 in the brick
and block and $7.20 a day in the asphalt. Down here they don't know no
more about asphalt than a pig does about a holiday. _A man that's from
the South and never been nowhere, don't know nothin', a woman either_.
"Yes ma'm, I'm a preacher. Just a local preacher, wasn't ordained. The
reason for that was, in Texas a man over forty-five couldn't join the
traveling connection. I was licensed, but of course I couldn't perform
marriage ceremonies. I was just within one step of that.
"I went to school two days in my life. I was privileged to go to the
first free school in Texas. Had a teacher named Goldman. Don't know what
year that was but they found out me and another fellow was too old so
they wouldn't let us go no more. But I caught my alphabet in them two
days. So I just caught what education I've got, here and there. I can
read well--best on my Bible and Testament and I read the newspapers. I
can sorta scribble my name.
"I've been a farmer most of my life and a preacher for fifty-five years.
I can repair shoes and use to do common carpenter work. I can help build
a house. I only preach occasionally now, here and there. I belong to the
Allen Temple in Hoboken (East Pine Bluff).
"I think the young generation is gone to naught. They're a different cut
to what they was in my comin' up."