The interview was held in a dark room, and for the first time in my life I took notes without seeing the paper on which I was writing.

Interviewer:  Mary D. Eudgins
Person Interviewed:  Miss Adeline Blakeley Age:  87
Home:  101 Rock Street, Fayetteville, Arkansas.

There is no hint of elision in the speech of Adeline Blakeley, scarcely a trace of vernacular.  All of her life her associations have been with white persons.  She occupies a position, rare in post-slavery days, of negro servant, confidant and friend.  After the death of Mrs. Hudgins, family intimates, wives of physicians, bankers’ wives and other Fayetteville dowagers continued periodically to come to see Adeline.  They came not in the spirit of Lady Bountifuls condescending to a hireling, but because they wanted to chat with an old time friend.

Interviewer’s note.

As told by: 
Adeline Blakeley

“Honey, look in the bible to get the date when I was born.  We want to have it just right.  Yes, here’s the place, read it to me.  July 10, 1850?  Yes, I remember now, that’s what they’ve always told me.  I wanted to be sure, though.  I was born in Hickman County, Tenn. and was about a year when they brought me to Arkansas.  My mother and her people had been bought by Mr. John P. Parks when they were just children—­John and Leanna and Martha.  I was the first little negro in the Parks kitchen.  From the first they made a pet out of me.  I was little like a doll and they treated me like a plaything—­spoiled me—­rotten.

After Mr. Parks came to Arkansas he lived near what is now Prarie Grove, but what do you think it was called then—­Hog Eye.  Later on they named it Hillingsley for a man who settled there.  We were two miles out on the Wire Road, the one the telegraph line came in on, Honey.  Almost every conmunity had a ‘Wire Road’.

It was the custom to give a girl a slave when she was married.  When Miss Parks became Mrs. Blakeley she moved to Fayetteville and chose me to take with her.  She said since I was only 5 she could raise me as she wanted me to be.  But I must have been a lot of trouble and after she had her baby she had to send me back to her father to grow up a little.  For you might say she had two babies to take care of since I was too little to take care of hers.  They sent a woman in my place.

Honey, when I got back, I was awful:  I had been with the negroes down in the country and said ‘hit’ and ‘hain’t’ and words like that.  Of course all the children in the house took it up from me.  Mrs. Blakeley had to teach me to talk right.  Your Aunt Nora was born while I was away.  I was too little to take full charge of her, but I could sit in a chair and hold her on my lap.

Mrs. Blakeley taught her children at home.  Her teaching was almost all they had before they entered the University.  When I was little I wanted to learn, learn all I could, but there was a law against teaching a slave to read and write.  One woman—­she was from the North did it anyway.  But when folks can read and write its going to be found out.  It was made pretty hard for that woman.