“I don’t know that the pateroles bothered him very much.  My father and mother were well treated by our master and then both she and my father were quiet and their masters were good to them naturally.

“During slavery times, my father was a farmer.  My mother farmed too.  She was a hand in the field.  They lived in a little log cabin, one room.  They had a bed in there, a few chairs and a homemade table.  They had a plank floor.  I only know what I heard my people speak of.  I don’t know what was what for myself because I was too young.

“From what I can understand they had a big room at the house and the slaves came there and ate there.  They had a colored woman who prepared their meals.  The children mostly were raised on pot liquor.  While the old folk were working the larger young uns mongst the children would take care of the little ones.

“Their masters never forced any breeding.  I have heard of that happening in other places but I never heard them speak of it in connection with our master.

“When the master came back from the war, they told the slaves they were free.  After slavery my people stayed on and worked on the old plantation.  They didn’t get much.  Something like fifty cents a day and one meal.  My folks didn’t work on shares.

“Back there in North Carolina times got tight and it seemed that there wasn’t much doing.  Agents came from Arkansas trying to get laborers.  So about seven or eight families of us emigrated from North Carolina.  That is how my folks got here.

“The Ku Klux were bad in North Carolina too.  My people didn’t have any trouble with them in Arkansas, though.  They weren’t bothered so much in North Carolina because of their owners.  But they would come around and see them.  They came at night.  We came to Arkansas in the winter of 1897.

“I went to public school after the war, in North Carolina.  I didn’t get any further than the eighth grade.  My father and mother didn’t get any schooling till after the war.  They could read a little but they picked it up themselves during slavery.  I suppose their Master’s children learned it to them.

“My father never did see any army service.  I have heard him speak of seeing soldiers come through though.  They looted the place and took everything they wanted and could carry.

“When I first come to this state, I settled in Drew County and farmed.  I farmed for three years.  During the time I was there, I got down sick with slow fever.  When I got over that I decided that I would move to higher ground.  There was a man down there who recommended Little Rock and so I moved here.  I have been here forty-nine years.  That is quite a few days.

“I belong to the Presbyterian Church and have been a member of that church for fifty-five years.  I have never gotten out publicly, but I even do my little preaching round in the house here.