Lord bless her heart she was good to my mammy and her chillun!  I had two little brothers, twins, and when dey come to dis world I can remember how our old mistress would come every day to see about dem and my mammy.  She’d bring things to eat, clothes for the babies and everything else.  Yes sir!  My mother didn’t want for anything as long as she stayed with Miss Liza, not even after de Negroes was freed.  When I was a little girl I was give to my young mistress, and I stayed with her till my folks was coning to Arkansas and I come too.”

“Why did your folks move to Arkansas?”

“Well, you see we heard this was a good country and there was a white man come there to get a lot of niggers to farm for him down on the river and we come with him.  He brought a lot of families on a big boat called a flatboat.  We were days and nights floating down the river.  We landed at St. Charles.  I married in about two years and haven’t ever lived anywhere else but Arkansas County and I’ve always been around good white folks.  I’d been cold and hungry a lot of times if it wasn’t for some of dese blessed white folkes’ chillen; dey comes to see me and brings me things to eat and clothes too, sometimes.”

“How many tines did you marry, Aunt Add.?”

“Just one time; and I just had four chillen, twins, two times.  One child died out of each sit—­just left me and Becky and Bob.  Bob and Dover, his wife, couldn’t get along but I think most of it’s his fault, for Dover’s just as good to me as she can be.  My own child couldn’t be better to me den she is.

“I don’t know, honey, but looks to me like niggers was better off in dem days den they are now.  I know dey was if dey had good white folks like we did.  Dey didn’t have to worry about rent, clothes, nor sumpin to eat.  Dat was there for them.  All they had to do was work and do right.  Course I guess our master might not of been so good and kind ef we had been mean and lazy, but you know none of us ever got a whippin’ in our life.

“Honey, come back to see Aunt Add. sometime.  I likes to talk to you.”

Interviewer:  Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed:  Jennie Butler
                    3012 Short Main Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age:  Between 103 and 107

[HW:  Nurses ? ? ?][TR:  Illegible]

“I was born February 10, 1831 in Richmond, Virginia.  I was a nurse raised by our white folks in the house with the Adamses.  Sue Stanley (white and Indian) was my godmother, or ‘nursemother’ they called em then.  She was a sister-in-law to Jay Goold’s wife.  She married an Adams.  I wasn’t raised a little nigger child like they is in the South.  I was raised like people.  I wasn’t no bastard.  My father was Henry Crittenden, an Indian full blooded Creek.  He was named after his father, Henry Crittenden.  My mother’s name was Louisa Virginia.  Her parents were the Gibsons, same nationality as her husband.  My ‘nursemother’ was a white woman, but she had English and Indian blood in her.  My mother and father were married to each other just like young people are nowadays.  None of my people were slaves and none of them owned any slaves.