“We could hear the guns at Marks Mill.

“I been married twice.  There was about eleven years betwixt the two marriages.

“I worked on the farm till about ’85.  Then I worked in the planing mill.  I got hit by a car and it broke my hip so I have to walk on crutches now.  Then I got me a little shoe shop and I got along fine till I got so I couldn’t set down long enough to fix a pair of shoes.  I bought this house and I gets help from the Relief so I’m gettin’ along all right now.”

Interviewer:  Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed:  Martha Ruffin
                    1310 Cross Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age:  80

“I was born in North Carolina, and I was seven years old when the Surrender was.  Every one of my children can tell you when they was born, but I can’t.  My mother, Quinettie Farmer was her name.  Brother Robert Farmer is my cousin.  He is about the same age as my husband.  He got married one week and me and my husband the next.  My father’s name was Valentine Farmer.  My grandmother on my mother’s side was Mandy Harrison, and my grandfather’s name on my mother’s side was Jordan Harrison.  My grandpa on my father’s side was named Reuben Farmer, and his wife was Nancy Farmer.  I have seed my grandpa and grandma on my father’s side.  But my mother didn’t see them on my mother’s side.

“I ‘members my daddy’s white folks’ names, Moses Farmer.  My father never was sold.  My daddy, Valentine Farmer, was a ditcher, shoemaker, and sometimes a tanner.  My mother was a house girl.  She washed and ironed.  I couldn’t tell exactly what my grandparents did.  My grandparents, so my parents told me, were mostly farmers.  I reckon Moses Farmer owned about three hundred slaves.

“I was born on Robert Bynum’s place.  He was my mother’s owner.  He married one of the Harrison girls and my mother fell to that girl.  My mother done just about as she pleased.  She didn’t know nothin’ about workin’ in the field till after the Surrender.

“The way my mother and father happened to meet—­my old master hired my daddy to do some work for him and he met my mama that way.

“The way my folks learned they was free was, a white school-teacher who was teaching school where we stayed told my mother she was free, but not to say nothing about it.  About three weeks later, the Yankees come through there and told them they was free and told my old boss that if he wanted them to work he would have to hire them and pay them.  The school-teacher stayed with mother’s folks—­mother’s white folks.  The school-teacher was teaching white folks, not niggers.  She was a Yankee, too.  My mother was the house girl, and the school-teacher stayed with her folks.  The War was so hot she couldn’t git no chance to go back home.

“My daddy farmed after the War.  He farmed on shares the first year.  The next year, he bought him a horse.  He finally owned his own farm.  He owned it when he died.  He had about one hundred acres of land.