They had seven or eight guineas and a lot of peafowls.  I never heard a farm bell till I come to Arkansas.  The children et from pewter bowls or earthen ware.  Sometimes they et greens or milk from the same bowl, all jess dip in.  The Yankees took me to General Hood’s army and I was Captain McCondennen’s helper at the camps.[HW:  ?] We went down through Marietta and Atlanta and through Kingston.  Shells come over where we lived.  I saw ’em fight all the time.  Saw the light and heard the roaring of de guns miles away.  It looked like a storm where the army went along.  They tramped the wheat and oats and cotton down and turned the horses in on the corn.  The slaves show did hate to see the Yankees waste everything.  They promised a lot and wasn’t as good as the old masters.  All dey wanted was to be waited on too.  The colored folks was freed when the Yankees took all the stock and cattle and rations.  Everybody had to leave and let the government issue them rations.  Everybody was proud to be free.  They shouted and sung.  They all did pretty well till the war was about to end then they was told to scatter and no whars to go.  Cabins all tore down or burned.  No work to do.  There was no money to pay.  I wore old uniforms pretty well till I come to Arkansas.  I been here in Hazen since 1906.  I come on a boat from Memphis to Linden.  Colonel Stocker brought a lot of us on the train.  The name of the boat was Molly Hamilton.  It was a big boat and we about filled it.  I show was glad to get back on a farm.

I don’t know what is goin to become of the young folks.  Everything is so different now and when I was growin up I don’t know what will become of the younger generation.

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Emaline Neland, Marianna, Arkansas
Age:  Born 1859

“I was born two years before the War.  I was born in Murray County, Tennessee.  It was middle Tennessee.  When I come to remembrance I was in Grant County, Arkansas.  When I remember they raised wheat and corn and tobacco.  Mother’s master was Dr. Harrison.  His son was married and me and my brother Anderson was give to him.  He come to Arkansas ’fore ever I could remember.  He was a farmer but I never seen him hit a lick of work in my life.  He was good to me and my brother.  She was good too.  I was the nurse.  They had two children.  Brother was a house boy.  Me and her girl was about the same size but I was the oldest.  Being with the other children I called her mother too.  I didn’t know no other mother till freedom.

“Freedom!  Well, here is the very way it all was:  Old master told her (mother) she was free.  He say, ’Go get your children, you free as I is now.’  Ain’t I heard her say it many a time?  Well, mother come in a ox wagon what belong to him and got us.  They run me down, caught me and got me in the wagon.  They drove twenty-five miles.  Old Dr. Harrison had moved to Arkansas.  Being with the other children I soon learnt to call her ma.  She had in all ten or eleven children.  She was real dark.