He reflected a moment; then he said, “Waal, I guess it was a little more ’an fifty years ago.”

I lost my enthusiasm.

Reeves told the Phill-la-me-york story which was told by Austin Pen Parnell.  You will find it in his story.  The only difference between his story and Parnell’s is that Reeves had the conclusion.  He claimed that the old master got in a fight with one of the slaves present and yelled out his identity when he was getting badly beaten.  The story sounds like it came from the Arkansas folklore collection or from someone who contributed it to that collection.

An aftermath of Reeves’ story is finding out that most people consider Henry Banner, whose story has been previously given and whose age was given as eighty-nine, is considered by many persons to be ninety-four.

Neely, one of the adult school-teachers, says that he has gone over Banner’s life carefully with him, and that he must have been twenty-one or twenty-two at the close of the War because during slavery, he had experience at logging, or rather at logrolling, a work so difficult that only full-grown men were used at it.  Since Banner is slightly built, there is scarcely a possibility that he did such work before the normal time.

[HW:  Cf. 30715 for interview with Parnell.]

Interviewer:  Bernice Bowden
Person Interviewed:  Shepherd Rhone
                    10th and Kentucky
                    Pine Bluff, Ark. 
Age:  75

“Yes ma’am, I was bred and born in ’sixty-three in Phillips County, Arkansas, close to Helena, on old Judge Jones’ plantation.  Judge Jones, he was a lawyer.  Remember him?  I ought to, he whiped me enough.  His wife’s name was Caroline Jones.  She used to smack my jaws and pull my ears but she was a pretty good woman.  The old judge was a raw one though.  You had to step around or he’d step around for you.

“I stayed right there till I was grown.  My mother was named Katie Rhone and my father was named Daniel Rhone.  My mother was born in Richmond, Virginia and my father in Petersburg, Virginia.

“Judge Jones brought em here to Arkansas.  My father was a bodyguard for old Judge Jones’ son Tom in the War.  My father stuck with him till peace declared—­had to do it.

“They was thirteen of us chillun and they is all gone but me, and I’ll soon be gone.

“I know when the Yankees come I run from em.  When peace declared, the Yankees come all through our house and took everything they could get hold of to eat.

“The only reason the Yankees whipped the South was they starved em.

“I know one time when peace declared I caught afire and I run and jumped in a tub of water and I had sense enough not to tell my mother.  A girl I was raised up with went and told her though.

“After freedom I worked for old Judge Jones on the half system.  He give me everthing that was due me.  When he was eighty years old, he called all his old tenants up and give em a mule and twenty-five dollars.  He was pretty good to em after all.