“My father was born in Mississippi—­Sardis, Mississippi—­and my mother was a Tennesseean—­Cartersville[HW:?] Tennessee, twenty-five miles above Memphis. [HW:  Carter, in Carter County, about 35 m. north of Memphis, but no Cartersville.] [TR:  moved from bottom of following page.]

“After peace was declared, they met in Tennessee.  That was where my mother was born, you know.  They fell in love with one another in Shelby County, and married there.  My mother had been married once before during slavery time.  She had been made to marry by her master.  Her first husband was named Eli.  He was my oldest sister’s father.  Him and my mother had the same master and missis.  She was made to marry him.  She was only thirteen years old when she married him.  She was fine and stout and her husband was fine and stout, and they wanted more from that stock.  I don’t know how old he was but he was a lot older than she was.  He was a kind of an elderly man.  She had just one child by him—­my oldest sister, Georgia.  She was only married a short time before freedom came.

“My father farmed.  He was always a farmer—­raised cotton and corn.  My mother was a farmer too.  Both of them—­that is both of her husbands—­were farmers.

“My mother and father used to go off to places to dance and the pateroles would get after them.  You had to have a pass to go off your place and if you didn’t have a pass, they would make you warm.  Some of them would get caught sometimes and the pateroles would whip them.  They would sure got whipped if they didn’t have a pass.

“The old master come out and told them they were free when peace was declared.  He said, ‘You are free this morning—­free as I am.’

“Right after the War, my mother come further down in Tennessee, and that is how she met my father where she was when she was married.  They went farming.  They farmed on shares—­sharecropped.  They were on a big place called Ensley place.  The man that owned the place was called Nuck Ensley.

“My mother and father didn’t have no schooling.  I never heard that they were bothered by the Ku Klux.

“She didn’t live with her first husband after slavery.  She left him when she was freed.  She never did intend to marry him.  She was forced to that.”

Interviewer’s Comment

Nelson evidently rents rooms.  A yellow sallow-faced, cadaverous, and dissatisfied looking “gentleman” went into the house eyeing me suspiciously as he passed.  In a moment he was out again interrupting the old man with pointless remarks.  In—­out again—­standing over me—­peering on my paper in the offensive way that ill-bred people have.  He straightened up with a disgusted look on his face.  He couldn’t read shorthand.

“What’s that you’re writin’?”

“Shorthand.”

“What’s that about?”

“History.”

“History uv whut?”