“It was over forty years ago.  Me and my wife lived at a big sawmill near Elliott, Arkansas, just ten miles outside of Camden.  White folks used to come up there and catch niggers and carry them back to Louisiana with them, claiming that they owed debts.  One time two white men came to Elliott looking for a nigger.  They came through the Negro quarters and all the men were off that day because it was a holiday.  The nigger saw them first and ran to the woods.  They ran after him and caught him.  They came back through the quarters and tied him to one of the horses and then went on to Louisiana—­them ridin’ and him walkin’ tied up with his arms behind him and roped to the horse like he was some kind of cattle or something.  The niggers followed them with guns a little distance, but one nigger telephoned to El Dorado and the officers there were on the lookout for them.  At night, the officers in plain clothes went over and chatted with them white men.  When they saw the nigger, they asked what it was they had there.  They told the one that asked that it was a damn nigger that owed money back in Louisiana and got smart and run away without paying up.  The officers drew their guns and put handcuffs on them and carried them and the nigger away to Jail.

“They put everybody in jail that night.  But the next morning they brought them to trial and fined the white men a hundred and fifty dollars apiece and after the trial they turned the nigger loose.  That broke up the stealing of niggers.  Before that they would come and take a Negro whenever they wanted to.

“Niggers were just beginning to wake up then, and know how to slip away and run off.  We had whole families there that had run off one by one.  The man would run away and leave his children, and as they got old enough, they would follow him one by one.

Right After the War

“Right after the War, my people farmed on shares.  We had a place we leased on the Hudson place that we stayed on.  We leased it for five years but we stayed there seven or maybe eleven years.  When we left there we bought a place of our own.  On the Hudson place we cleared up about thirty acres of land and ’tended it as long as we stayed there.  We put out a lot of fruit trees on it.  Had lots of peaches, and plums, and quinces—­do you know what quinces are?—­and danvils (these danvil plums you know).  They are kinda purple looking fruit made in the shape of a prune.  They are about two inches through—­jus’ about half as big as your fist.

“When we moved to our own place, we stayed in the same county.  It was just about three-fourths of a mile from the Hudson place—­west of it.

Moving to Arkansas

“I came to Arkansas with the intention of going to school.  But I jus’ messed myself up.  Instead of goin’ to school, I went and got married.  I was out here just one year before I got married.  I married the first time in 1887—­February fourteenth, I think.  My first wife taken sick with rheumatism and she died in 1908.  We were married thirty-one years.  I married again about 1913.