“Ma said when she married they had a corn shucking and a big dinner four o’clock in the morning.  Her name was Luiza.  She had two children by him.  Aunt Jane on Welches place took him away from her.  He quit mother cold to go wid her.  After freedom she married Ben Pitts.  The way she married at the corn shucking, they jumped over the broom back’ards and Master Bob Young ’nounced it.  She was killed no time after freedom, but she had had six children.  Miss Nippy kept me.  She was good to me and trained me to read.  We all never left after freedom.  I never left till I was good and grown.

“I always thought Master Bob Young buried his money during the War.  Children wasn’t allowed to watch and ask questions.  I was standing in the chimney corner and seen him bury a box of something in the flower garden.  I was in Miss Nippy’s room.  I never did know if it was money or what.  He had a old yaller dog followed him all the time.  Truman was a speckled dog set about on the front porch to bark.

“Sam, the boy that was bought when I was in St. Louis, was hard to control.  Bob Young beat him.  He died.  They said he killed him.  They buried him in the white folks’ cemetery.

“They celebrated Christmas visiting and big parties.  We would have eggnog and ten or fifteen cakes.  Master Bob Young was a consumptive.  He had it thirty-five years.  They all died out with it.  They kept a big ten or fifteen gallon demijohn with willow woven around the bottom full of whiskey, all the time upstairs.  They kept the door locked.

“I stole miny ah drink.  Find the door unlocked.  I got too much one time.  It made me sick.  I thought I had a chill.  She thought I been upstairs.  They was particular with the children, both black and white then.  They put the children to bed by sundown and they would set around the fire and talk.  She raised Elnora and the baby Altona after mother got killed.  She give them good clothes and good to eat.  Their papa took the boy.  He left after mother got killed.  We took a pride in the place like it was our own.  We didn’t know but what it was our very own.

“We had a acre in garden.  We raised everything.  We had three or four thousand pounds of meat and three cribs of corn.  I ketched it when I left them.  I made thirty-three crops in my life.  My children all grown and gone.  My son-in-law died.  He had dropsy eight months.  He had a dead liver.  I’ve wanted since he died.  I’ve had a hard time since he died.  He was a worker and so good to us all.

“Mother worked with a white woman.  Mother was full-blood Indian herself.  The woman’s husband got to dealing with his daughter.  She had three babies in all.  They said they put them up in the ceiling, up in a loft.  This old man got mad with Bob Young and burnt his gin.  Mother seen him slipping around.  They ask her but she wouldn’t tell on him, for she didn’t see him set it on fire.  They measured the tracks.  He got scared mother would tell on him.  One night