Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 375 pages of information about Slave Narratives.

Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 375 pages of information about Slave Narratives.

“I live in Junction City but am here visiting my daughter.”

Interviewer:  Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed:  Anthony Taylor
                    2424 W. Ninth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age:  68, or 78?

“I was born in Clark County adjoining Hot Spring County, between Malvern and Arkadelphia.  Clark County was named after old man General Clark.  He was worth four or five thousand acres of land.

“My father’s name was Anthony McClellan.  Why they called me Anthony Taylor was my stepfather was named Taylor.  My mother’s name was Lettie Sunnaville.  My mother has been dead thirty or forty years and my father died six months before I was born.  He died a natural death.  Sickness.  He was exposed and died of pneumonia.

“Fayette Sunnaville was my grandfather on my mother’s side.  That was my mother’s father.  Rachel Sunnaville was my mother’s mother’s name.  I don’t know the names of my father’s people.  They was sole[HW:?] in slavery.  But it is been so far back; I don’t remember nothing, and I don’t know whether they would or not if they was living.

“We stayed on the old plantation for seven or eight years before we had sense enough or knowed enough to get away from there and git something for ourselves.  That is how I come to raise such big potatoes.  I been raising them fifty years.  These are hill potatoes.  You have to know how to raise potatoes to grow ’em this big. (He showed me some potatoes, sweet, weighing about seven pounds—­ed.)

“I have heard my mother and my grandfather tell lots of stories about slavery.  I can’t remember them.

“Old man Bullocks had about eight or ten families that I knew about.  Those were the families that lived right near us in the quarters.  I didn’t say eight or ten hands—­I said eight or ten families.  Them was the ones that was right near us.  We was awful small after freedom but them what was with him stayed with him quite a while—­stayed with the old master.  He would pay them so much after freedom come.

“Lawd.  I could tell you things about slavery.  But I’m forgitful and I can’t do it all at once.  He had the whole county from Arkadelphia clean down to Princeton and Tulip—­our old mars did.  Lonoke was between Princeton and Tulip.  Princeton was the county-seat.  He must have had a large number of slaves.  Those ten families I knew was just those close ’round us.  Most of the farm was fur pine country land.  There would be thirty or forty acres over here of cultivation and then thirty or forty acres over there of woods and so on.  He had more land than anybody else but it wasn’t all under cultivation.

“He’s been dead now twenty or thirty years.  I don’t know that he was mean to his slaves.  If he had been, they wouldn’t have gone on after freedom.  They would have moved out.  You see, they didn’t care for nothing but a little something to eat and a fine dress and they would have gone on to somebody else and got that.

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Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.