“I lived in the quarters with my father and mother and we stayed there after the war—­long time after the war.  I stayed there till I got to be grown.  I continued there.  I ’member her house and yard.  Had a big yard.

“I can read some.  Learned it at Miss Nancy Davis’ plantation after the war.  They had a little place where they had school.  I went to church some a long time ago.

“Abraham Lincoln was a white man.  He fought in the time of the war, didn’t he?  Oh, yes, he issued freedom.  The Yankees and the Rebels fought.

“After the war I worked at farm work.  I ain’t did no real hard work for over a year.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  John Wells, Edmondson, Arkansas
Age:  82

“I was born down here at Edmondson, Arkansas.  My owner was a captain in the Rebel War (Civil War).  He run us off to Texas close to Greenville.  He was keeping us from the Yankees.  In fact my father had planned to go to the Yankees.  My mother died on the way to Texas close to the Arkansas line.  She was confined and the child died too.  We went in a wagon.  Uncle Tom and his wife and Uncle Granville went too.  He left his wife.  She lived on another white man’s farm.  My master was Captain R. Campbell Jones.  He took us to Texas.  He and my father come back in the same wagon we went to Texas in.  My father (Joe Jones Wells) told Captain R. Campbell Jones if he didn’t let him come back here that he would be here when he got here—­beat him back.  That’s what he told him.  Captain brought him on back with him.

“What didn’t we do in Texas?  Hooeee!  I had five hundred head of sheep belonging to J. Gardner, a Texan, to herd every day—­twice a day.  Carry ’em off in the morning early and watch ’em and fetch ’em back b’fore dark.  I was a shepherd boy is right.  I liked the job till the snow cracked my feet open.  No, I didn’t have no shoes.  Little round cactuses stuck in my feet.

“I had shoes to wear home.  Captain Jones gave leather and everything needed to Uncle Granville.  He was a shoemaker.  He made us all shoes jus’ before we was to start back.  Captain Jones sent the wagon back for us.  My father come back right here at Edmondson and farmed cotton and corn.  Uncle Tom and Uncle Granville raised wheat out in Texas.  They didn’t have no overseer but they said they worked harder ’an ever they done in their lives, ’fore or since.

“My father went to war with his master.  Captain Jones served ’bout three years I judge.  My father went as his waiter.  He got enough of war, he said.

“Captain R. Campbell Jones had a wife, Miss Anne, and no children.  I seen mighty near enough war in Texas.  They fit there.  Yes ma’am, they did.  I seen soldiers in Greenville, Texas.  I seen the cavalry there.  They looked so fine.  Prettiest horses I ever seen.