“At Natchez, ma didn’t do anything.  We children didn’t do nothin’ either there.  But pa joined the army.  He joined it the next day after he got there.  Then I went to work waiting on the sixty-fourth—­lemme see—­yes, it was the Sixty-Fourth Brass Epaulettes.  I was waiting on one of the sergeants.  He was a Yankee sergeant.  The sergeant’s name was Josephus, and the captain of the Company was Lieutenant Knowles.  I was with them two years and six months.  I never did get hurt.  When they went to fight at New Orleans, the captain wouldn’t lemme take part in it.  He said that I was so brave he was a ’fraid I might get hurt.

“Me and my father were the only ones working in the family at that time.  I stayed right in Natchez but my father didn’t.  My father’s first stop was in Bullocks Bar right above Vidalia.  That was where his company was stationed first.  Lemme see, he went from there to Davis Bend.  I wasn’t with them.  He was in a colored regiment.  I was with a white regiment.  He left Davis Bend and want to Vicksburg.  His next trip was up the Sunflower River.  His next trip he went from there up here to De Valls Bluff.  That is where he come free.  That was the end of the fighting there—­right there.

“From there he come back to Rodney.  We all want to Davis Bend while pa was there.  When he left and went to De Valls Bluff, ma went to Rodney.  I stayed with the soldiers two years and a half down there at Natchez.  That’s as far as I went with them.  When they left I stayed.

“I went to Rodney with my mother and stayed with her and the rest of the children till she died.  My ma died in 1874.  My father died down here in Pine Bluff several years ago.  After ma died, pa married another woman.  He went back to Pine Bluff and was killed by a train when he was crossing a trestle.

Age and Other Masters

“Blount Steward was the only master any of us ever had, outside of my ma’s first master—­the one in Kentucky.  I don’t know anything about them.  I was eight years old when the war began and twelve years old when it ended.  I must have been older than that because I was twelve years old when I was serving them soldiers.  And I had to come away from them before the war was over.

Slave Work

“The first work I ever did in slave time was dining-room service.  When I left the dining-room table, I left carrying my young mistress to school six miles from Fayette.  They give me to Lela, my young mistress.  She was the young girl I was carrying to school when I got the whipping.  When ol’ mis’ was whippin’ me, I asked her what she was whipping me for, and she said, ‘Nothin’, ’cause you’re mine, and I can whip you if I want to.’  She didn’t think that I had done anything to the girl.  She was just mad that day, and I was around; so she took it out on me.  After that, I never did any more work as a slave, because the whole family ran away about that time.  I don’t reckon pa would ever have run off if ol’ miss hadn’t whipped me and if ol’ massa hadn’t struck him.  They rats good till then; but it looked like the war made them mean.