Birth, Family, and Master

“I was born in Mississippi in Tippa County not far from the edge of Tennessee.  I wasn’t raised in Arkansas, but all my children was raised here.  I really don’t know just where in Tippa county I was born.  My mother’s name was Ann Toler.  Toler was my step father.  My real father, I don’t know.  My mother never told me nothin’ bout him and I don’t know that; I can’t tell what I don’t know.

“My grandfather on my mother’s side was Captain Ellis.  That is the one come after me when I was small to carry me back to my folks.  I didn’t know him, and I said ’I don’t want to go ’way with them strange Niggers’.  He’s dead now.  They’re all dead long ago.  I have got children over fifty years old myself.  I am the mother of nine children—­three of them living.  One of the living ones is Arthur Finger.  He lives in St. Louis.  I expected to hear from him today, but didn’t.  Cornelius Finger.  (He is a brownskin boy, spare made), lives in Palestine, Arkansas, near Forrest City.  Arthur is my baby boy.  Elmira was my baby girl.  She’s the one you met.  She’s married and has children of her own.

“Captain Ellis’ wife was named Minerva.  She was my mother’s mother.  She’s been dead years.  I got children older than she was when she died.  She died in Mississippi.  I got a cousin named Molly Spight.  She’s dead.  My mother’s sister was named Emmaline; she is dead now too.

“My mother was colored.  I don’t know nothin’ about my father, and my mother never taught me nothin’ ’bout him.

“My step father and mother were both field hands.  They worked in the field.

“I don’t know just when I was born, but I am just sure that it was before the war.  I remember hearing people talk about things in the war.

“My mother’s master was named Whitely, I think, because she was named Whitley before she married.

“I have been married three times.  The first man I married was ’Lijah Gibbs.  The second time I married, I married Joe Finger.  The third time I married Will Reese.  He warn’t no husband at all.  They’re all dead.  Folks always called me Finger after my second husband died, because I didn’t live with my third husband long.

House

“They had log houses.  You would never see no brick chimney nor nothing of that kind.  The logs were notched down and kinda kivered flat—­no roof like now.  They might have rafters on them, but the top was almost flat.  Wouldn’t be any steep like they is now.  In them times they wouldn’t have many rooms.  Sometimes they would have two.  They wouldn’t have so many windows.  Just old dirt chimneys.  They’d take and dig a hole and stick sticks up in it.  Then they’d make up the dirt and put water in it and pull grass and mix it in the dirt.  They’d build a frame on the sticks and then put the mud on.  The chimney couldn’t catch fire till the house got old and the mud would fall off.  When it got old and the mud got to fallin off, then they would be a fire.  I’ve seen that since I been in Arkansas.