Neal.  She had the property and married Tom Neal.  She had been married before and her first husband died but her first husband’s name can’t be recalled.  She had two children—­girls—­by her first husband.  Her second husband just married her to protect them all he could.  He didn’t do anything unless the old mistress told him to do it and how to do it.  Wylie Neal was raised up with the old mistress’ children.  He was born a slave and lived to thirteen years.  “The family had some better to eat and lots more to wear, but they gave me plenty and never did mistreat me.  They had a peafowl.  That was good luck, to keep some of them about on the place.”  They had guineas, chickens and turkeys.  They never had a farm bell.  He never saw one till he came to Arkansas.  They blew a big “Conch shell” instead.  Mistress had cows and she would pour milk or pot-liquor out in a big pewter bowl on a stump and the children would come up there from the cabins and eat [till the field hands had time to cook a meal.][HW:?] Wylie’s mother was a field hand.  They drank out of tin cans and gourds.  The master mated his hands.  Some times he would ask his young man or woman if they knew anybody they would like to marry that he was going to buy more help and if they knew anybody he would buy them if he could.  The way they met folks they would get asked to corn shuckings and log rollings and Mrs. Neal always took some of her colored people to church to attend to the stock, tie the horses and hitch up, maybe feed and to nurse her little girls at church.  The colored folks sat on the back seats over in a corner together.  If they didn’t behave or talked out they got a whipping or didn’t go no more.  “They kept the colored people scared to be bad.”

The colored folks believed in hoodoo and witches.  Heard them talking lots about witches.  They said if they found anybody was a witch they would kill them.  Witches took on other forms and went out to do meaness.  They said sometimes some of them got through latch holes.  They used buttons and door knobs whittled out of wood, and door latches with strings.

People married early in “Them days”—­when Mistress’ oldest girl married she gave her Sumanthy, Wylie’s oldest sister when they come home [they would let her come.] They sent their children to school some but the colored folks didn’t go because it was “pay school.”  Every year they had “pertracted meeting.”  Looked like a thousand people come and stayed two or three weeks along in August, in tents.  “We had a big time then and some times we’d see a colored girl we’d ask the master to buy.  They’d preach to the colored folks some days.  Tell them the law.  How to behave and serve the Lord.”  When Wylie was twelve years old the “Yanks” came and tore up the farm.  “It was just like these cyclones that is [TR:  illegible word] around here in Arkansas, exactly like that.”