“The Williams was good to us all.  Master’s wife heired two women and a girl.  Mama cooked, ironed, and worked in the field in time of a push (when necessary).

“I was hauling for the Rebel soldiers one rainy evening.  It was dark and lightning every now and then.  General Ransom was at the hotel porch when Sherman turned the bend one mile to come in the town.  It was about four o’clock in the evening I judge.  General Ransom’s company was washing at Boom’s Mill three miles.  About one thousand men was out there cooking and in washing, resting.  General Ransom went hollering, ‘Yankees!’ Went to his men.  They got away I reckon.  Sherman killed sixty men in that town I know.  General Ransom went on his horse hollering, ’Yankees coming!’ He went to his home eight miles from there.  They went on through rough as could be.

“I hauled when it was so dark the team had to take me in home at night.  My circuit was ten miles a day.

“My young master Bill Williams come in April soon as he got home and told us we was free but didn’t have to leave.  We stayed on and worked.  He said he had nothing but the land and we had nothing.  At the end of the year he paid off in corn and a little money.  Us boys left then and mother followed us about.  We ain’t done no better since then.  We didn’t go far off.

“Forty-seven years ago I went to Weldon, North Carolina in a wagon, took the train to Gettysburg and from there come to Biscoe, Arkansas.  I been about here ever since.  Mr. Biscoe paid our way.  We worked three years to pay him back.  I cleared good money since I cone out here.  I had cattle I owned and three head of horses all my own.  Age crept up on me.  I can’t work to do much good now.  I gets six dollars—­Welfare money.

“Times is a puzzle to me.  I don’t know what to think.  Things is got all wrong some way but I don’t know whether it will get straightened out or not.  Folks is making the times.  It’s the folks cause of all this good or bad.  People not as good as they was forty years ago.  They getting greedy.”

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  James Williams, Brinkley, Arkansas
Age:  72

“I come from close to Montgomery, Alabama.  Man named John G. Elliott sent and got a number famlees to work his land.  He was the richest man in them parts round Fryers Point, Mississippi.  I was born after the Civil War.  They used to say we what was raisin’ up havin’ so much easier time an what they had in slavery times.  That all old folks could talk about.  Said the onlies time the slaves had to comb their hair was on Sunday.  They would comb and roll each others hair and the men cut each others hair.  That all the time they got.  They would roll the childerns hair or keep it cut short one.  Saturday mornin’ was the time the men had to curry and trim up the horses and mules.  Clean out the lot and stalls.  The women would sweep and scour the floors for Sunday.