“I used to work in the field when I was able.  That was when I was in the country.  When I came to the city I usually did washing and ironing.  Now I can’t do anything.  All the people I used to work for is dead.  There was one woman in particular.  She was a good woman, too.  I don’t have any help at all now, except my son.  He has a family of his own—­wife and seven children.  Right now, he is cut off and ain’t making nothing for himself nor nobody else.  But I thank God for what I have because things could be much worse.”

Interviewer’s Comment

Here again, there is a confusion of patrollers with Ku Klux.  It seems to point to a use of the word Ku Klux before the War.  Of course, it is clear that the Ku Klux Klan operated after the War.

Ella Daniels’ age is given as seventy-four on her insurance policy, and I have placed that age on the first page of this story in the heading.  But three children were born after her and before the close of the War.  She says they were born two years apart.  Allowing that the youngest was born, in 1864, the one next to her would have been born in 1860, and she would have been born in 1858.  This seems likely too because she speaks of nursing the children and going from house to house (page two) and must have been quite a child to have been able to do that.  Born in 1858, she would have been seven years old in 1865 and would have been able to have been doing such nursing as would have been required of her for two years probably.  So it appears to me that her age is eighty, but I have recorded in the heading the same age decided upon for insurance.

Interviewer:  Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed:  Mary Allen Darrow, Forrest City, Arkansas
Age:  74

“I was born at Monticello, Arkansas at the last of the Cibil (Civil) War.  My parents’ names was Richard and Ann Allen.  They had thirteen children.  Mother was a house girl and papa a blacksmith and farmer.

“My great-grandma and grandpa was killed in Indian Nation (Alabama) by Sam and Will Allen.  They was coming west long ’fo’e the war from one of the Carolinas.  I disremembers which they told me.  Great-grandpa was a chief.  They was shot and all the children run but they caught my Grandma Evaline and put her in the wagon and brought her to Monticello, Arkansas.  They fixed her so she couldn’t get loose from them.  She was a little full-blood Indian girl then.  They got her fer my great-grandpa a wife.  He seen her and thought she was so pretty.

“She was wild.  She wouldn’t eat much else but meat and raw at that.  She had a child ’fo’e ever she’d eat bread.  They tamed her.  Grandpa’s pa that wanted the Indian wife was full-blood African.  Mama was little lighter than ‘gingercake’ color.