The Lincoln story is included on my part merely because it is at least legendary material.  I don’t know what basis of fact it could or might have.

Interviewer:  S.S.  Taylor
Person interviewed:  Hannah Travis,
                    3219 W. Sixteenth,
                    Little Rock, Ark. 
Age:  75
Occupation:  Housewife

“The Jay Hawkers would travel at night.  When they came to a cabin, they would go in and tell them that owned it they wanted something to eat and to get it ready quick.  They stopped at one place and went in and ordered their dinner.  They et the supper and went away and got sick after they left.  They got up the next morning and examined the road and the horse tracks and went on.  They all thought something had been given to them, but I don’t guess there was.  They caught my mother and brought her here and sold her.  If they caught a nigger, they would carry him off and sell him.  That’s how my mother came to Arkansas.

“I don’t know what year I was born in.  I know the month and the day.  It was February tenth.  I have kinder kept up with my age.  As near as I can figure, I am seventy-three years old.  I was 18 in 1884 when I married.  I must have been born about 1864, I was brought up under my step father; he was a very mean man.  When he took a notion to he’d whip me and mother both.

“My mother was born somewheres in Missouri, but whereabouts I don’t know.  One of her masters was John Goodet.  His wife was named Eva Goodet.  He was a very mean man and cruel, and his wife was too.  My grandmother belonged to another slaveholder and they would allow her to go to see my mother.  She was allowed to work and do things for which she was given old clothes and other little things.  She would take em and bring em to my mother.  As soon as she had gone, they would take them things away from my mother, and put em up in the attic and not allow her to wear them.  They would let the clothes rot and mildew before they’d let my mother wear them.  If my mother left a dish dirty—­sometimes there would be butter or flour or something in the dish that would need to be soaked—­they would wait till it was thoroughly soaked and then make her drink the old dirty dish water.  They’d whip her if she didn’t drink it.

“Her other master was named Harrison.  He was tolerable but nothing to bragg on.

“After she was Jayhawked and brought down South, they sold her to John Kelly, a man in Arkansas somewhere.  She belonged to John Kelly and his wife when freedom came.  John Kelly and his wife kept her working for them without pay for two years after she was free.  They didn’t pay her anything at all.  They hardly gave her anything to eat and wear.  They didn’t tell her she was free.  She saw colored people going and coming in a way they wasn’t used to, and then she heard her Mistress’ youngest daughter tell her mother, ’You ought to pay Hannah something now because you know she is free as we are.  And you ought to give her something to eat and wear.’  The mother said, ’You know I can’t do that hard work; I’m not used to it.’  After hearing this my mother talked to the colored people that would pass by and she learned for shor enough she was free.