“When I was bout grown I went to school a little bit to James A. Kerr here at Holly Grove.  I was good and grown too.

“I was settin’ on the gate post—­they had a picket fence.  I seen some folks coming to our house.  I run in the house and says, ’Miss Mai Liza, the Yankees coming here!’ She told her husband to get in the bed.  He says, ‘Oh God, what she know bout Yankees?’ Miss Mai Liza say, ’I don’t know; she’s one of em, I speck she knows em.’  One of the officers come in and asked him what was the matter.  He said he was sick.  He had boils bout on him.  He had a Masonic pin on his shirt.  He showed it to the officer.  He asked Lou and Becky and all the servants if he hadn’t been bushwhacking.  They all said, ‘No.’  He said he wanted something to eat.  They went to the well house and got him some milk.

“They camped below the house.  They went to their store house and brought more rations up there in a wagon.  Lou cooked and she had help.  She set a big table and they had the biggest dinner.  They had more hams.  They had ‘Lincoln Coffee’ there that day.  It was a jolly day.  They never et up there no more or bothered round our house no more.  The officer had something on his bare arm he showed.  He said, when he went to leave, ‘Aunt Lou, you shall not be hurt.’

“Mr. Oats had taken long before that day all his slaves to Texas.  He took all but Wash Martin.  They went in wagons and none of them ever come back.

“Miss Callie Edwards was older than Miss Henrietta Jackson.  They kept Wash Martin going through the bottoms nearly all time from their houses at Golden Hill to Indian Bay.  They kept him from one place to the other to keep him out of the war.  They hired him out to school Miss Henrietta.  Miss Callie Edwards died then they give him to Miss Henrietta.

“During the war Mrs. Keeps come up to our house.  They heard a gun.  She was jes visiting Mrs. Oats.  Mrs. Keeps went home and the bushwhackers had killed him.  He was dead.

“I never seen no Ku Klux in my whole life.

“I remember the stage coach that run every two or three days from Helena to Clarendon.

“I don’t remember bout freedom.  Dr. Green, Hall Green’s daddy, told his colored folks they was free.  They told our folks.  I heard em talking bout it.  I was kept quiet.  It was done freedom, fore I knowed it.  I stayed on and done like I been doin’.  I stayed on and on.

“When I was grown I come here to school and soon married.  I washed and ironed and cooked all over Holly Grove.  I was waiting on the table at the boarding house here at Holly Grove.  Mr. Oats was talking bout naming the town.  They had put the railroad through.  I ask em why didn’t they name the town Holly Grove.  It was thick with holly trees.  They named it that, and put it up on the side of the depot.  That way I named the town.

“My folks give me five acres of land and Julia Woolfolk give a blind woman on the place five acres.  I didn’t know what to do wid it.  I didn’t have no husband.  I was young and foolish.  I let it be.