After the war they tried to get me to learn, but I tossed my head and wouldn’t let them teach me.  I was about 15 and thought I was grown and wouldn’t need to know any more.  Mary, it sounds funny, but if I had a million dollars I would give it gladly to be able to read and write letters to my friends.

I remember well when the war started.  Mr. Blakeley, he was a cabinet maker and not very well, was not considered strong enough to go.  But if the war had kept up much longer they would have called him.  Mr. Parks didn’t believe in seceding.  He held out as long as it was safe to do so.  If you didn’t go with the popular side they called you ‘abolitionist’ or maybe ‘Submissionist’.  But when Arkansas did go over he was loyal.  He had two sons and a son-in-law in the Confederate army.  One fought at Richmond and one was killed at Gettysburg.

The little Blakeley boy had always liked to play with the American flag.  He’d march with it and carry it out on the porch and hang it up.  But after the trouble began to brew his mother told him he would have to stay in the house when he played with the flag.  Even then somebody saw him and scolded him and said ‘Either burn it or wash it.’  The child thought they meant it and he tried to wash it.  Dyes weren’t so good in those days and it ran terribly.  It was the awfulest thing you ever saw.

Fayetteville suffered all thru the war.  You see we were not very far from the dividing line and both armies were about here a lot.  The Federals were in charge most of the time.  They had a Post here, set up breast works and fortified the square.  The court house was in the middle of it then.  It was funny that there wasn’t more real fighting about here.  There were several battles but they were more like skirmishes—­just a few men killed each time.  They were terrible just the same.  At first they buried the Union soldiers where the Confederate Cemetery is now.  The Southerners were placed just anywhere.  Later on they moved the Northern caskets over to where the Federal Cemetery is now and they took up the Southern men when they knew where to find them and placed them over on the hill where they are today.

Once an officer came into our home and liked a table he saw, so he took it.  Mrs. Blakeley followed his horse as far as she could pleading with him to give it back because her husband had made it.  The next day a neighbor returned it.  He hod found it in the road and recognized it.  The man who stole it had been killed and dropped it as he fell.

Just before the Battle of Prairie Grove the Federal men came thru.  Some officers stopped and wanted us to cook for them.  Paid us well, too.  One man took little Nora on his lap and almost cried.  He said she reminded him of his own little girl he’d maybe never see again.  He gave her a cute little ivory handled pen knife.  He asked Mrs. Blakeley if he couldn’t leave his pistols with her until he came back thru Fayetteville.  She told him