“My father’s father—­I can’t remember what his name was.  I know his mother was Candace.  I never did see his father but I saw my grandma.  He was dead before I was born.  My mother’s mother was named Malinda Evans.  Only one thing I remember that was remarkable about her.  Her husband was a free man named Mike Evans.  He come from up North and married her in slave time and he bought her.  He was a fine carpenter.  They used to hire him out to build houses.  He was a contractor in slave time.  I remember him well.

“After the War, he used to have white men getting training for the carpenter’s training under him.  He was Grandma Evans’ husband.  He wasn’t my father’s father.  My father was born before Grandma Evans was freed.  All the rest of them were born afterward.  They sold her to him but the children all belonged to the Douglasses.  He probably paid for her on time and they kept the children that was born.

“The doctor was good to my father.  Way after freedom, he was our family doctor.  He was at my father’s bedside when father died.  He’s dead now.

“My father was a carpenter and a wait man (waiter).  He was a finished carpenter.  He used to make everything ’round the house.  Sometimes he went off and worked and would bring the money back to his master, and his master would give him some for himself.

“My mother worked ’round the house.  She was a servant.  I don’t know that she ever did the work in the field.  My daddy just come home every Saturday night.  My father and mother always belonged to different masters in slavery time.  The Douglasses and the Currys were five or six miles apart.  My father would walk that distance on Saturday night and stay there all day Sunday and git up before day in the morning Monday so that he would be back home Monday morning in time for his work.  I remember myself when we moved away.  That’s when my memory first starts.

“I could see that old white woman come out begging and saying, ’Uncle Washington, please don’t carry Aunt Lize away.’  But we went on away.  When we got where we was going, my mother made a pallet on the floor that night, and the three children slept on the pallet on the floor.  Nothing to eat—­not a bite.  I went to bed hungry, and you know how it is when you go to bed hungry, you can’t sleep.  I jerk a little nod, and then I’d be awake again with the gnawing in my stomach.  One time I woke up, and there was a big light in the house, and father was working at the table, and mama reached over and said, ’Stick your head back under the cover again, you little rascal you.’  I won’t say what I saw.  But I’ll say this much.  We had the finest breakfast the next morning that I ever ate in all my life.

“I used to hear my people talk about pateroles but I don’t reckon I can recall now what they said.  There is a man in Washington named Bob Sanders.  He knows everything about slavery, and politics too.  He used to be a regular politician.  He is about ninety years old.  They came there and got him about two year ago and paid him ten dollars a day and his fare.  Man came up and got him and carried him to the capitol in his car.  They were writing up something about Arkansas history.