In 1874 and 1875 I worked for halves and made nough to buy a farm in St. Francis County.  It cost $925.  I bought it in 1887.  Eighty acres to be cleared down in the bottoms.  My family helped and when my help got shallow, the children leaving me, I sold it for $2,000, in 1904.  I was married jess once and had eight children; five livin and three dead.  Me and the old woman went to Oklahoma.  We went in January and come back to Biscoe (Arkansas) in September.  It wasn’t no place for farming.  I bought 40 acres from Mr. Aydelott and paid him $500.  I sold it and come to Mr. Joe Perry’s place, paid $500 for 40 acres of timber land.  We cleared it and I got way in debt and lost it.  Clear lost it!  Ize been working anywhere I could make a little since then.  My wife died and I been doing little jobs and stays about with my children.  The Welfare gives me a little check and some supplies now and then.

No maam, I can’t read much.  I was not learnt.  I could figure a little before my eyes got bad.  The white folks did send their children to pay schools but we colored children had to stay around the house and about in the field to work.  I never got no schoolin.  I went with old missus to camp meeting down in Georgia one time and got to go to white church sometimes.  At the camp meeting there was a big tent and all around it there was brush harbors and tents where people stayed to attend the meetins.  They had four meetins a day.  Lots of folk got converted and shouted.  They had a lot of singings They had a lots to eat and a big time.

I don’t think much about these young folks now.  It seems lack everybody is having a hard time to live among us colored folks.  Some white folks has got a heap and fine cars to get about in.  I don’t know what go in to become of ’em.

People did sing more than I hear them now but I never could sing.  They sing a lot of foolish songs and mostly religious songs.

I don’t recollect of any slave uprising.  I never heard of any.  We didn’t know they was going to have a war till they was fighting.  Yes maam, they heard Lincoln was going to set ’em free, but they didn’t know how he was going to do it.  Everybody wanted freedom.  Mr. Hammond (white) ask me not long ago if I didn’t think it best to bring us from Africa and be slaves than like wild animals in Africa.  He said we was taught about God and the Gospel over here if we was slaves.  I told him I thought dot freedom was de best anywhere.

We had a pretty hard time before freedom.  My mother was a field woman.  When they didn’t need her to work they hired her out and they got the pay.  The master mated the colored people.  I got fed from the white folks table whenever I curried the horses.  I was sorter raised up with Mr. Nealy’s children.  They didn’t mistreat me.  On Saturday the mistress would blow a cone shell and they knowed to go and get the rations.  We got plenty to eat.  They had chickens and ducks and geese and plenty milk.  They did have hogs.