Mr. Sam Austin sole old man Burgy (Burgiss?) er piece uv groun’ to bury folks in and he wuz de first man tuh die an be buried dar.  So dey name hit de Burgy Cemetery.

Down dar in Memphis Addition atah the colored Prof.  Dykes place dar use tuh be one uv de bes’ springs.  Course at dat time hit wuz er big ole fiel’ den and de watuch wuz jes lak ice watuh.

Dat make me think.  Mah pa sed he went tuh de wah tuh cook fuh his ole moster, Green Traylor.  Well pa said dar wuz er spring whar dey got watuh.  Said he went tuh git watuh outen de sping and had tuh pull dead men outn de spring an dat day drinked of’n dem dead men all while de wah wuz going on.

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person Interviewed:  Laura Rowland
                    (Bright Mulatto)
Age:  65? 
Address:  Brinkley, Arkansas

“My parents name was Mary Ann and Sam Billingslea.  Mother’s father lived with us when I first remember.  His name was Robert Todd.  He was a brown skin Negro.  They said he was a West Indian.  He talked of olden times but I don’t remember well enough to tell you.  Father owned a home that we was living on when I first remember.  Mother was bright color, too.  Vaden, Mississippi was our trading post.  Mother had twenty children.  She was a worker.  She would work anywhere she was put.  My folks never talked much about slavery.  I don’t know how they got our place.

“I know they was bothered by the Ku Klux.  One night they heard or saw the Ku Klux coming.  The log house set low on the ground but was dug out to keep potatoes and things in—­a cellar like.  The planks was wide, bout a foot wide, rough pine, not nailed down.  They lifted the planks up and all lay down and put the planks back up.  The house look like outside nothing could go under it, it was setting on the hard ground.  When they got there and opened the doors they saw nobody at home and rode off.

“Another time, one black night, a man—­he must have been a soldier—­strided a block step with his horse and ordered supper.  She told him she didn’t have nothing cooked and very little to cook.  He cursed and ordered the supper.  Told her to get it.  She pretended to be fixing it and slipped out the back door down the furrows and squatted in the briers in a fence corner.  Long time after she had been out there hid, he come along, jumped the fence on his horse, jumped over her back, down into the lane and to the road he went.  If the horse hadn’t jumped over her and had struck her he would have killed her.  Now I think he was a soldier, not the Ku Klux.  I heard my father say he was a yard boy.

“I married in Mississippi and came to Malvern and Hot Springs.  He was a mill hand.  I raised three children of my own and was a chamber maid.  I kept house and cooked for Mrs. Bera McCafity, a rich woman in Hot Springs.  My husband died and was buried at Malvern.  I married again, in Hot Springs, and lived there several years.  We went to the steel mill at Gary, Indiana.  He died.  I come back here and to Brinkley in 1920.  One daughter lives in Detroit and one in Chicago.  The youngest one is married, has a family and a hard time; the other makes her living.  It takes it all to do her.  I get $8.00 on the P.W.A.