“Mrs. Cynthia Ann Earle wrote a diary during the Civil War.  It was partly published in the Crittenden County Times—­West Memphis paper—­Fridays, November 27 and December 4, 1936.  She tells interesting things happening.  Mentions two books she is reading.  She tells about a flood, etc.  She tells about visiting and spending over a thousand dollars.  Mrs. L.A.  Stewart or Mrs. H.E.  Weaver of Edmondson owns copies if they cannot be obtained at the printing office at West Memphis.”

Interviewer:  Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed:  Sarah Wells
                    1012 W. Sixteenth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age:  84
Occupation:  Field hand

“I was born in Warren County, Mississippi, on Ben Watkins’ plantation.  That was my master—­Ben Worthington.  I don’t know nothin’ about the year but it was before the war—­the Civil War.  I was born on Christmas day.

“Isaac Irby was my father.  I don’t know how you spell it.  I can’t read and write.  I can tell you this.  My mother’s dead.  She’s been dead since I was twelve years old.  Her name was Jane Irby.  My name is Wells because I have been married.  Willis was my husband’s name.  I have just been married once.  I was married to him fifty years.  He has been dead thirteen years the fifteenth of October.  I don’t know how old I was when I was married.  But I know I am eighty-four years old now.  I must have been about twenty or twenty-one when I married.

Slave Houses

“The slaves lived in log houses, dirt chimneys, plank floors.  They had beds made out of wood—­that’s all I know.  I don’t know where they kept their food.  They kept it in the house when they had any.  The slaves didn’t have to cook much.  Mars Ben had a slave to cook for them.  They all et breakfast together, and lunch in the fiel’.

Food and Cooking

“There was a great big shed.  They’d all go up there and eat—­the slaves would all go up and eat.  I don’t know what the grown folks had.  They used to give us children milk and corn bread for breakfast.  They’d give us greens, peas, and all like that for dinner.  Didn’t know nothin’ about no lunch.

Work and Runaways; Day’s Work

“My mother and father worked in the field hoeing, plowing and all like that—­doing whatever they told ’em to do.  They raised corn and ground meal.  Some of the slaves would pick five hundred pounds of cotton in a day; some of them would pick three hundred pounds; and some of them only picked a hundred.  If you didn’t pick two hundred fifty pounds, they’d punish you, put you in the stocks.  If you’d run off, they put the nigger hounds behind you.  I never run off, but my mother run off.