I was born nine miles south of Nashville, Tennessee.  The first I ever knowed or heard of a war, I saw a lot of the funniest wagons coming up to the house from the road.  I called the old mistress.  She looked out the window and pushed me back up in the corner and shot the door.  She was so scared.  I thought them things they had on their coats (buttons) was pretty.  I found out they was brass buttons.  I peeped out a crack it was already closed ’cept a big crack, I seed through.  Well, the wagons was high in front and high in the back and sunk in the middle.  Had pens in the wheels instead of axels.  Wagon had a box instead of a bed.  The wagons would hold a crib full of corn.  They loaded up everything on the place there was to eat and carried it off.  My folks and the other folks was in the field.  Colored folks didn’t like ’em taking all they had to eat and had stored up to live on.  They didn’t leave a hog nor a chicken, nor anything else they could find.  They drove off all the cows and calves they could find.  Colonel Sam Williams, the old master, soon did go to war then.  The folks had a hard time making a living.  Old mistress had four girls and her baby Ed was one day older than I was.  The children of the hands played around in the woods and every place and stayed in the field if they was big enough to do any work.  Old mistress had all the children pick up scaley barks and hickory nuts and chestnuts and walnuts.  She put them in barrels.  She sold some of them.  She had a heap of sugar maple trees.  They put an elder funnel to run the sap in buckets.  We carried that and she boiled it down to brown sugar.  She had up pick up chips to burn when she simmered it down or made soap.  She kept all the children hunting ginsing up in the mountains.  She kept it in sacks.  A man come by and buy it.  We hunted chenqupins down in the swamps.  There was lots of walnut trees in the woods.

No the slaves didn’t leave Colonel Williams.  He left them.  He brought me and Ed and we went back and moved to the old Williams farm on Arkansas River close to Little Rock.  Then he sent for my folks.  They come in wagons.  They worked for him a long time and scattered about.  I stayed at his house till he said “Henry, you are grown; you better look out for yourself now.”  Ed was gone.  He sent all the girls off to school and Ed too.  They taught me if I wanted to learn but I didn’t care much about it.  I went to the colored school and Ed to the white school.  He learned pretty well.  I never did like to ’sociate or stay ’bout colored folks and I didn’t like to mind ’em.  Old mistress show did brush me out sometimes and they called my mother to tend to me.  When I was real little they drove the hands to the block to be sold out along the road.  Old mistress say:  “If you don’t be good and mind we’ll send yare off and sell you wid ’em.”  That scared me worse than a whooping.  Never did see anybody sold.  Heard them talk a heap about it.  When one of them