“I never went to school much.

“My mother was a widow woman and I had to work.  That was in South Carolina.

“I come to Arkansas in 1890.  I didn’t marry till I was about thirty-seven.  I got one child living.  That’s my daughter; I live with her.  She’s a bookkeeper for Perry’s Undertaking Company.

“When I come to Arkansas I stopped down here in Ashley County.  I farmed till I come to Pine Bluff.  I been here forty years.  I worked at the stave mills.  I just worked for three different firms in forty years.

“I used to own this place, but I had to let it go on account of taxes.  Then my daughter bought it in.

“I been tryin’ to get a pension but don’t look like I’m go in’ to get it.

“I have to stay here with these children while my daughter works.  It takes all she makes to keep things goin’.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson. 
Person interviewed:  Emmett Augasta Byrd, Marianna, Arkansas
Age:  83

“I was born in Washington County, Missouri.  I’m eighty-three years old.  Mother’s owner was William Byrd.  He got killed in a dispute over a horse.  A horse trader shot him.  His name was Cal Dony.[TR:  There is a mark that may be a line over the ‘o’ or a tilde over the ’n’.] Father’s owner was Byrd too.  Mother was Miss Harriett Byrd’s cook.  Yes, I knowed her very well.  I was nine years old when I was stole.

“Me and my older brother was both stole.  His name was Hugh Byrd.  We was just out.  It was in September.  A gang out stealing horses stole us.  It was when Price made his last raid to Missouri.  It was some of the soldiers from his gang.  We was playing about.  They overtook us and let us ride, then they wouldn’t let us git off.  They would shot us if we had.  In a few days we was so far off.  We cried and worried a heap.

“It was eighteen years before I see my mother.  The old snag I was riding give out and they was leading so they changed me.  I cried two or three days.  They didn’t pay my crying no ’tention.  They had a string of nigger men and boys, no women, far as from me ’cross to that bank.  I judge it is three hundred yards over there.

“After the battle of Big Blue River my man got killed and another man had charge of me and somebody else went off with my brother.  I never seen him.  That battle was awful, awful, awful!  Well, I certainly was scared to death.  They never got out of Missouri with my brother.  In 1872 he went to St. Louis to my mother.  She was cooking there.  My father went with the Yankees and was at Jefferson Barracks in the army during the War.  He was there when we got stole but she went later on before he died.  He was there three months.  He took pneumonia.  They brought me in to Kansas and back by Ft.  Smith.