“The Civil War was terrible.  One morning before we was all out of bed the Yankees come.  It was about daylight.  He and the three boys were there.  They didn’t burn any houses and they didn’t hesitate but they took everything.  They took all Miss Betty’s nice silverware.  They took fine quilts and feather beds.  That was in the fall of the year.  They drove off a line of our slaves (a block long) fer as from me to that railroad.  Made them go.  They walked fast in front of the cavalrymen.  They took mama and my sisters.  She got away from them with her girls and found her way back to papa at Lynchburg.

“Colonel Radford went and took some of the slave men and his boys.  They brought home plenty beds and a barrel of salt.  He brought back plenty.  He sent his slave man to town any time.  They had no notion leaving.

“One time some Yankees come.  I run hid around Miss Betty’s long dress.  She was crying.  They was pulling her rings off her fingers.  I told them to quit that.  One of the mean things said, ’Little nigger, I shoot your head off.’  They took all her nice clothes.  They said they took all niggers.  I sassed them.  They went in another room.  I shot under Miss Betty’s big skirt.  They looked about for me but they thought I run off to my mama.  She was gone but they didn’t know it.  I seen my best times then.  We had a good time there.  Miss Betty was good and kind to me.  Good as I wanted.  I wish I had that good now.

Freedom

“The soldiers come and I knowed it was the Yankees I hated.  They took all they could find and wasted a lot of it.  I was scared.  I kept hid about.  The slaves put their beds and clothes up on the wagons and went off behind them and some clumb up in the wagons.  I heard Miss Betty say, ‘They need not follow them off, they are already free.’  The way she said it, like she was heart broken, made me nearly cry and I remember her very words till this day.  She was a good woman.

“Mama come and got me long time after that and I didn’t want to go nor stay neither.  It was like taking me off from my own home.  Papa was freeborn and freedom I couldn’t understand till I was long grown.  I never got a whooping in my life.  I was taught politeness.

“During slavery we bought mighty little.  Flour in barrels, salt.  We had Maple sugar and sorghum molasses in bounty.  We was happy and had plenty to eat and wear.

“I learned to make the fine cakes from a Jew woman (Jewess), Mrs. Isaac.  I’ve been called a cook here in Forrest City.  I was taught by Mrs. Isaac to make angel food, coffee cake, white bread and white cakes.  From that I made the other kinds my own self.”

Interviewer’s Comment

People in Forrest City send for Ida and keep her a week or two baking Christmas and wedding cakes.

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Milton Ritchie
                    R.F.D., Brinkley, Arkansas
Age:  78