Circumstances of Interview
state—­Arkansas
name of worker—­Samuel S. Taylor
address—­Little Rock, Arkansas
date—­December, 1938
subject—­Ex-Slave
[TR:  Repetitive information deleted from subsequent pages.]

1.  Name and address of informant—­J.H.  Curry, Washington, Arkansas

2.  Date and time of interview—­

3.  Place of interview—­Washington, Arkansas

4.  Name and address of person, if any, who put you in touch with informant—­

5.  Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you—­

6.  Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.

Personal History of Informant

1.  Ancestry—­father, Washington Curry; mother, Eliza Douglass; grandmother; Malinda Evans; grandfather, Mike Evans.

2.  Place and date of birth—­Born in Haywood County, Tennessee in 1862.

3.  Family—­

4.  Places lived in, with dates—­Tennessee until 1883.  From 1883 until now, in Arkansas.

5.  Education, with dates—­He took a four-years’ course at Haywood after the war.

6.  Occupations and accomplishments, with dates—­Minister

7.  Special skills and interest—­Church work.

8.  Community and religious activities—­Preacher

9.  Description of informant—­

10.  Other points gained in interview—­His father was a slave and he tells lots of slavery.

[HW:  Master Educates Slave]

Text of Interview (Unedited)

“I was born in 1862, September first.  I got that off the Bible.  My father, he belonged to a doctor and the doctor, he was a kind of a wait man to him.  And the doctor learnt him how to read and write.  Right after the War, he was a teacher.  He was ready to be a teacher before most other people because he learnt to read and write in slavery.  There were so many folks that came to see the doctor and wanted to leave numbers and addresses that he had to have some one to ’tend to that and he taught my father to read and write so that he could do it.

“I was born in Tennessee, in Haywood County.  My father was born in North Carolina, so they tell me.  He was brought to Tennessee.  He was a slave and my mother was a slave.  His name was Washington Curry and my mother’s name was Eliza Douglass before she married.  Her master was named John Douglass and my father’s master was named T.A.  Curry, Tom Curry some folks called him.

“I don’t know just how many slaves Tom Curry owned.  Lemme see.  There was my daddy, his four brothers, his five sisters.  My father’s father had ten children, and my father had the same number—­five boys and six girls.  Ten of us lived for forty years.  My mother had ten living children when she died in 1921.  Since ’21, three girls died.  My father died in 1892.

“My father’s master had around a hundred slaves.  Douglass was a richer man than my father’s master.  I suspect he had two hundred slaves.  He was my mother’s father as well as her master.  I know him.  He used to come to our house and he would give mama anything she wanted.  He liked her.  She was his daughter.