“My mother belonged to Sammy Duvall, the father o’ little Sam Duvall who died not long ago.  Little Sam usta be town marshall here and a guard at the pen over at Frankfort.  I was born a slave an’ stayed one till the niggers was freed.

“Bout the time the war was over I seen my first soldier.  The road that passed along in front of our house was a dirt road.  I’d gone with mother to watch her milk a young cow late one night, ’bout dark I guess, when I heard somebody hollerin’ and yellin’ an’ I looked down the road an’ seen ‘em comin’.  I was ‘bout five years old then an’ it looked to me like all the army was comin’ up the road.  The captain was on a hawse an’ the men afoot an’ the dust from the dirt road a flyin’.  There was a moon shinin’ an’ you could see the muskets shinin’ in the moonlight.  I was settin’ on a fence an’ when I seen ’em it scared me so I started to run.  When I jumped off I fell an’ cut a hole in my for’head right over this left eye.  The scar’s there yet.  I run in the house and hid.  Mr. Sammy Duvall had to get on a hawse an’ go to New Liberty an’ fetch a doctor to plug up the hole in my head.  I seen lots of soldiers after that an’ I always run under the bed or hid in a closet or somewheres.  They stayed ’round here for a long time.  Finally provender got low and the soldiers took to stealing.  We called it stealin’, but I reckon it warn’t for they come and got the stuff like meat out o’ the smoke house in broad open daylight.  Mr. Duvall had a chestnut earl stallion he called Drennon an’ they come, or somebody did, an’ got him one night.  One day, ’bout two or three weeks later, Will Duvall, a son o’ Mr. Sammy Duvall, heard that the hawse was over in Henry County where the soldiers had a camp.  So he went over there and found the Captain an’ told him he’d come after old Drennon.  The Captain said to describe him an’ Will said, “Captain, he’s a chestnut earl named Drennon.  If’n I whistl’ a certain way he’ nicker an’ answer me.”

“Well, they went down to the stable where they had a lot of stalls like, under tents.  An’ when they got there, Will, he whistled, an’ sure ’nough, old Drennon nickered.  So the Captain, he said, That’s your hawse all right.  Go in an’ get him an’ take him on home.

Will brought the hawse home an’ took him down in the woods on the creek where the water’d washed all the dirt offen a big, flat rock and we kep him hid for three or four weeks.  We didn’t want to loose him again.

When I was ’bout six years old we moved offen the creek to a new road up on the ridge.  It was on the same farm but to another house.  I had a great big, ole grey cat I called “Tom.”  I wanted to move him so I put him in a pillow slip so’s he couldn’t see where we wus takin’ him so he couldn’t fin’ the way back.  He stayed ’round his new home for a few days an’ then he went back to his ole home.  Mr. Duvall went and got him again for me.  Not many white men would do that for a little nigger boy.  He musta told Tom somethin’ for he never run off no more.