“His age—­he lived to be about eighty years old.  He died in Hot Spring County.

Grandmother on Father’s Side

“My grandmother on my father’s side was named Hetty.  Her master was named Sam Abbott.  She lived right close to seventy-four or seventy-five years.  She been gone quite a while now.  She used to live with papa.

Other Ancestors

“I don’t know so much about another of my ancestors.

Wife

“My wife didn’t have many people.  She knows her mother, her mother’s mistress, and all.  Her ma was named Martha Henson.  That was her married name.  Her mistress’ last name was Stribling.  Martha Henson was a well-treated slave.  The Striblings lived in Rockport, Arkansas, but their native home was Georgia.  I don’t know where the Striblings are now.  The old man died before the Civil War broke out.  I guess they are all dead and in torment.  My wife’s grandmother and grandfather on her mother’s side were gone so far back that neither she nor I know anything about them.

Whippings

“My great-grandmother on my mother’s side was in Union County when I knew anything of her—­close to El Dorado.  I was about twenty-two years old when she died.  She was tall and spare built, dark ginger cake color.  Coarse straight black hair that had begun to mingle with gray.  She never did get real gray, and her hair was never white.  Even when she died, at a hundred and thirteen years, her hair was mostly black mingled with gray.

“The overseer knocked her in the head in slavery times, and they had to put a silver half-dollar in her head to hold her brains in.  I have seen the place myself.  When I was a little fellow she used to let me feel the place and she would say, ’That’s where the overseer knocked granny in the head, son.  I got a half-dollar in there.’  I would put her hair aside—­my but she had beautiful hair!—­and look at the place.

“My wife could tell you what my mother told her.  She has seen the marks on my mother’s back and has asked, ’Mama, what’s all these marks on your back?’ And mama would say, ’That’s where I was whipped in slavery times, daughter.’  She never did like to tell the details.  But the scars were awful.

“My grandmother was roughly treated and she had pretty near lost her eyesight from the ill treatment.  She got so before she died that she could hardly see to go nowhere.  I don’t know what it was they done to her that made her eyesight bad, but she insisted that it was due to bad treatment in slavery time.

Patrollers

“I have heard that the pateroles used to run the slaves if they didn’t have a pass from their mistress and master.  The pateroles would run them and catch them and whip them.