“Mother said she would run hide every time the Yankee men come.  She said she felt safer in the dark.  They took so many young women to wait on them and mother was afraid every time they would take her.

“She said she had been at the end of a corn row at daylight ready to start chopping it over, or pull fodder, or pull ears either.  She said they thought to lie in bed late made you weak.  Said the early fresh air what made children strong.

“On wash days they all met at a lake and washed.  They had good times then.  They put the clothes about on the bushes and briers and rail fences.  Some one or two had to stay about to keep the clothes from a stray hog or goat till they dried.  And they would forage about in the woods.  It was cool and pleasant.  They had to gather up the clothes in hamper baskets and bring them up to iron.  Mother said they didn’t mind work much.  They got used to it.

“Mother told about men carried money in sacks.  When they bought a slave, they open up a sack and pull out gold and silver.

“The way she talked she didn’t mind slavery much.  Papa lived till a few years ago but he never would talk about slavery at all.  His name was Willis Bell.”

Interviewer:  Miss Sallie C. Miller
Person interviewed:  Mary Myhand, Clarksville, Arkansas
Age:  85

“My mammie died when I was a little girl She had three children and our white folks took us in their house and raised us.  Two of us had fever and would have died if they hadn’t got us a good doctor.  The doctor they had first was a quack and we were getting worse until they called the other doctor, then we commence to get well.  I don’t know how old I am.  Our birthdays was down in the mistress’ Bible and when the old war come up, the house was burned and lost everything but I know I am at least 83 or 84 years old.  Our white folks was so good to us.  They never whipped us, and we eat what they eat and when they eat.  I was born in White County, Tennessee and moved to Missouri but the folks did not like it there so we come to Benton County, Arkansas.  One side of the road was Benton County and the other side was Washington County but we always had to go to Bentonville, the county seat, to tend to business.  I was a little tod of a girl when the war come up.  One day word come that the ‘Feds’ were coming through and kill all of the old men and take all the boys with them, so master took my brother and a grandson of his and started South.  I was so scared.  I followed them about a half mile before they found me and I begged so hard they took me with them.  We went to Texas and was there about one year when the Feds gave the women on our place orders to leave their home.  Said they owned it now.  They had just got to Texas where we was when the South surrendered and we all come back home.

“We stayed with our white folks for about twenty years after the war.  They shore was good to me.  I worked for them in the house but never worked in the field.  I came across the mountain to Clarksville with a Methodist preacher and his family and married here.  My husband worked in a livery stable until he died, then I worked for the white folks until I fell and hurt my knee and got too old.  I draws my old age pension.