Little Rock

“My son was living in Little Rock and he kept after me to come here and I come.  After I come, he left and went to Kansas City.  He died there.  I used to do laundry work.  I quit that.  I commenced to do sellin’ for different companies.  I sold for Mack Brady, Crawford & Reeves, and a lot of ’em.

Opinions

“I don’t know what I think about the young people.  They ain’t nothin’ like I was when I was a gal.  Things have changed since I come along.  I better not say what I think.”

Interviewer’s Comment

The interviewee says she is eighty-four, and her story hangs together.  Her husband died thirteen years ago, and they had been married fifty years when he died.  She “recollects” being about twenty years old when she married.  She says she was about twelve years old when her mother died, one year after the close of the Civil War.  This data seems to be rather conclusive on the age of eighty-four.

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Sarah Williams Wells, Biscoe, Arkansas
Age:  Born 1866

“I jess can’t tell much; my memory fails me.  My white folks was John and Mary Williams but I was born two years after the surrender.  Soon after the surrender they went to Lebanon, Tennessee.  My folks stayed on wha I was born round in Murry County.  My father was killed after the war but I was little.  My mother died same year I married.  I heard em say there was John and Frank.  They may be living over there now.  I heard em talking bout war times.  They said my father was a blacksmith in the war.  I come here wid four little children on a ticket to Crocketts Bluff.  We was sick all that year.  Made a fine crop.  The man let another man have us to work.  He was a colored man.  His wife she was mean to us.  She never come to see or do one thing when we all had fever.  The babies nearly starved.  Took all for doctor bills and medicine.  Had $12 when all bills settled out of the whole crop.  In all I had fifteen children.  But two girls and one boy all that livin now.  I farmed and washed and ironed all my life.  My husband was born a slave. (He recently died.)

“The present generation ain’t got no religion.  They dances and cuts up a heap.  They don’t care nothing bout settlin down.  When they marry now, that man say he got the law on her.  She belongs to him.  He thinks he can make her do like he wants her all the time and they don’t get along.  Now that’s what I hear round.  I sho got married and we got along good till he died.  We treated one another best we knowed how.  The times is what the folks making it.  Time ain’t no different, is like the folks make.  This depression is whut the folks is making.  Some so scared they won’t get it all.  They leave mighty little for the rest to get.  They ain’t nothin matter with nothin but the greedy people want it all to split through wid.  I don’t know what going to come of it all.  Nothin I tell you bout it ain’t no good.  Young folks done smarter than I is.  They don’t listen to nobody.”