State—­Arkansas

Name of worker—­Samuel S. Taylor

Address—­Little Rock, Arkansas

Date—­December, 1938

Subject—­Ex-slave

Name and address of informant—­Lewis Brown, 2100 Pulaski Street, Little
Rock.

“I was born in 1855, April 14, in Kemper County, Mississippi, close to Meridian.  I drove gin wagons in the time of the war in a horse-power gin.  I carried matches and candles down to weigh cotton with in slavery times.

“They had to pick cotton till dark.  They had to tote their weight hundred pounds, two pounds, whatever it was down to the weighing place and they had to weigh it.  Whatever you lacked of having your weight, you would get a lick for.  On down till they called us out for the war, that was the way it was.  They were goin’ to give my brother fifty lashes but they come and took him to the army, and they didn’t git to whip him.

“My father was Lewis Bronson.  He come from South Carolina.  My mother was stole.  The speculators stole her and they brought her to Kemper County, Mississippi, and sold her.  My mother’s name was Millie.  My father’s owner was Elijah McCoy.  Old Elijah McCoy was the owner, but they didn’t take his name.  They went back to the old standard mark after the surrender.  They went back to the people where they come from, and they changed their names—­they changed off of them old names.  McCoys was my masters, but my father went back to the name of the people way back over in there in South Carolina, where he come from.  I don’t know nothin’ bout them.  He was the father of nine children.  He had two wives.  One of them he had nine by, and the other one he had none by.  So he went back to the one he had the nine children by.

Early Life

“I was ten years old when war was ended.  I had to carry matches and candles to the cotton pickers.  It would be too dark for them to weigh up.  They couldn’t see.  They had tasks and they would be picking till late to git their tasks done.  Matches and candles come from the big house, and I had to bring it down to them.  That was two years before the war.

“I wasn’t big enough to do nothing else, only drive to the gin.  I drove horse-power to the gin.—­drove mules to the gin.  I would drive the cows out to the pasture too.  The milk women would milk them.  Lawd, I could not do no milking.  I was too small.  The milk women would milk them and I would drive the cows one way and the calves another so that they couldn’t mix.  And at night I would go git them and they would milk them again.  The milk women milked them.  What would I know bout milkin.

“I never did any playin’, ‘cept plain marbles and goin’ in swimmin’.

Schooling