His mistress left and he never saw her again.  General [HW:  John Bell] Hood was the [TR:  illegible word] he thinks, but he was given to Captain Condennens to wait on him.  They went to Marietta, Ga., and Kingston, Ga.  “Rumors came about that we were free and everybody was drifting around.  The U.S.  Government gave us food then like they do now and we hunted work.  Everybody nearly froze and starved.  We wore old uniforms and slept anywhere we could find, an old house or piece of a house.  In 1865-1869—­the Ku Klux was miserable on the colored folks.  Lots of folks died out of consumption in the spring and pneumonia all winter.

“There wasn’t any doctors seeing after colored folks for they had no money and they used herbs—­only medicine they could get.”

Only herbs he remembers he used is:  chew black snake roots to settle sick stomach.  Flux weed tea for disordered stomach.  People eat so much “messed up food” lot of them got sick.

Wylie Neal wandered about and finally came to Chattanooga.  They got old uniforms and victuals from the “Yanks” about a year.

Colonel Stocker come and got up a lot of hands and paid their way to Memphis on the train.  From there they were put on the Molly Hamilton boat and went to Linden, Arkansas, on the St. Francis River.  “He fared fine” there.  In 1906[TR:  ?] he came to Hazen and since then he has owned small farms at Biscoe and forty acres near Hazen.  It was joining the old Joe Perry place.  Dr. ——­ got a mortgage on it and took it.  Wylie Neal lives with his niece and she is old too so they get relief and a pension.

“He don’t believe in dreams but some dreams like when you dream of the dead there’s sho’ goner be falling weather.”  He “don’t dream much” he says.

He has a birthmark on his leg.  It looks like a bunch of berries.  He never heard what caused it.  It has always been there.

Interviewer:  Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed:  Sally Nealy
                    105 Mulberry Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age:  91

“Yes mam, I was a slave!  I was sixteen years old when the war begun.  I was born in Texas.

“My old master was John Hall and my young master was Marse Dick.  Marse John went to war the 5th day of May in 1861 and he was killed in June.  They wasn’t nothin’ left to bring home but his right leg and his left arm.  They knowed it was him cause his name was tattooed on his leg.

“He was a mean rascal.  He brought us up from the plantation and pat us on the head and give us a little whisky and say ’Your name is Sally or Mary or Mose’ just like we was dogs.

“My old mistress, Miss Caroline, was a mean one too.  She was the mother of eight children—­five girls and three boys.  When she combed her hair down low on her neck she was all right but when she come down with it done up on the top of her head—­look out.

“It was my job to scrub the big cedar churns with brick dust and Irish potato and polish the knives and forks the same way.  Then every other day I had to mold twelve dozen candles and sweep the yard with a dogwood bresh broom.