“I wore jeans and they got so stiff when they were wet that they would stand up.  I wore boots in the winter, but none in the summer.”

“When slavery was going on there was the ‘underground railway’ in Ohio.  But after the surrender some of the people in Ohio were not so good to the colored people.  The old folks told me they were stoned when they came across the river to Ohio after the surrender and that the colored people were treated like cats and dogs.”

“Mary Blue had two daughters, both a little older than me and I played with them.  One day they went to pick berries.  When they came back they left the berries on the table in the kitchen and went to the front room to talk to their mother.  I remember the two steps down to the room and I came to listen to them tell about berry pickin’.  Then their mother told me to go sweep the kitchen.  I went and took the broom and saw the berries.  I helped myself to the berries.  Mary wore soft shoes, so I did not hear her coming until she was nearly in the room.  I had berries in my hand and I closed my hand around the handle of the broom with the berries in my hand.  She says, ‘John, what are you doin’?  I say, ‘nothin’.  Den she say, ’Let me see your hand!  I showed her my hand with nothin’ in it.  She say, ’let me see the other hand!  I had to show her my hand with the berries all crushed an the juice on my hand and on the handle of the broom.”

“Den she say; ‘You done two sins’.  ’You stole the berries!, I don’t mind you having the berries, but you should have asked for them.  ’You stole them and you have sinned.  ’Den you told a lie!  She says, ’John I must punish you, I want you to be a good man; don’t try to be a great man, be a good man then you will be a great man!  She got a switch off a peach tree and she gave me a good switching.  I never forgot being caught with the berries and the way she talked bout my two sins.  That hurt me worse than the switching.  I never stole after that.”

“I stayed with Michael and Mary Blue till I was nineteen.  They were supposed to give me a saddle and bridle, clothes and a hundred dollars.  The massa made me mad one day.  I was rendering hog fat.  When the crackling would fizzle, he hollo and say ‘don’t put so much fire.’  He came out again and said, ‘I told you not to put too much fire,’ and he threatened to give me a thrashing.  I said, ’If you do I will throw rocks at you.’”

“After that I decided to leave and I told Anna Blue I was going.  She say, ‘Don’t do it, you are too young to go out into the world.’  I say, I don’t care, and I took a couple of sacks and put in a few things and walked to my uncle.  He was a farmer at New Creek.  He told me he would get me a job at his brothers farm until they were ready to use me in the tannary.  He gave me eight dollars a month until the tanner got ready to use me.  I went to the tanner and worked for eight dollars a week.  Then I came to Steubenville.  I got work and stayed in Steubenville 18 months.  Then I went back and returned to Steubenville in 1884.”