On January first every year everybody ate peas and “hog jole” and received the new rules.  The masters would say, “don’t be running up here telling me on the overseer.”  They had a bush harbor church and the white preacher came to preach to black and white sometimes.  They taught obedience and the Golden Rules.  No schools—­Henry said since freedom the white men had cheated him out of all he had ever made, with pen-and-ink.  He rather be whipped with a stick than a writing pen.  He said Mr. and Mrs. Williams were good people.  Henry learned to knit his socks and gloves at night watching the grown people.  They made a certain number of broches every night.  He liked that.

Henry said Mr. Williams let him carry his gun hunting with him and taught him how to shoot squirrels.  They were plentiful.  He had a lot of dogs.  The master went to the deer stand and Henry managed the twelve hounds.  He didn’t like to fox hunt.  About a hundred men and thirty dogs, horns, etc. out for the chase.  They came from Nashville and in the country.  A fox make three rounds from where he is jumped and then widens out.  They brought “fine whiskey” out on the chases.

When they had corn shuckings one Negro would sit on the fence and lead the singing, the others shuck on each side.  The master would pour out a tin cup full of whiskey from a big jug for each corn shucker, and Mrs. Williams would give each a square of gingerbread.

Mr. Williams set aside a certain number of acres of land every year to be cleared, fenced and broke for cultivation by spring.  Six or eight men worked together.  They used tong-hand sticks to carry the logs to the piles where they were burning them.  A saw was a side show, they used mall, axe and wedge.  After the log rolling there would be a big supper and a good one.  The visitors got what they wanted from the table first.  “That was manners.”

“We took turns going to the Methodist church at Nashville with Mr. and Mrs. Williams.  They went in the fine carriage and the maid held the baby but anybody else rode along behind on horseback.  The carriage horses were curried every day, kept up and ate corn and fodder.  Mr. and Mrs. Williams came to Nashville to big weddings and dances often.”

After Henry Walker came to Hazen, Colonel Yopp had him feed his dogs and attend him on big fox hunting trips.  Since Colonel Yopp died January 1928 Henry seldom, or perhaps has never sung the song he sang to Colonel for dimes if he needed a little change.  He learned the song and whoop back in in slavery days.  He said William Dorch (colored boy) took it up from hearing him sing for Colonel Yopp and would write it for me and sing it and give it with the old Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee whoop.

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Jake Walker
                    3002 Short W. Ninth Avenue, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  95

“Well, I was here—­I was born in 1842, August the 4th.  That makes me ninety-five in the clear.  If I live till next August I’ll be ninety-six.