“My father was not a field hand.  He was what they called the first man ’round there.  He was a regular leader on the plantation—­boss of the tool room.  He was next to the master of them, you might say.  He was a kind of boss.

“I never heard of his working for other men besides his master.  I believe he drove the stage for a time from Arkadelphia to Camden or Princeton.  I don’t know just how that come about.  My sister though has a more exact remembrance than I have, and she can probably tell you the details of it.

Boyhood Experiences

“My father used to take me to the mill with him when I was a kid.  That was in slavery time.  He went in a wagon and took me with him.

“The biggest thing I did was to play with the other kids.  They had me do such work as pick berries, hunt up the stock, drive the sheep home from the pasture.  And as near as I can remember it seems like they had me more picking berries or gathering peaches or something like that.

Food, Houses, Clothes

“Corn bread, buttermilk and bacon and all such as that and game—­that was the principal food.  The people on our place were fed pretty well.  We lived off of ash cakes and biscuits.

“The slaves lived in old log houses.  I can almost see them now.  Let’s see—­they usually had just one window.  The slaves slept on pallets mostly and wore long cotton shirts.

Patrollers

“I have heard a great deal of talk about the pateroles—­how they tied ropes across the road and trapped them.  Sometimes they would be knocked off their horses and crippled up so that they had to be carried off from there.  Of course, that was sometimes.  They was always halting the slaves and questioning them and whipping them if they didn’t have passes.

How Freedom Came

“The way I understand it there came a rumor all at once that the Negroes were free.  It seems that they throwed up their hands.  They had a great fight at Pine Bluff and Helena and De Valls Bluff.  Then came peace.  The rumor came from Helena.  Meade and Thomas winded the thing up some way.  Sherman made his march somewhere.  The colored soldiers and the white soldiers came pouring in from Little Rock.  They come in a rush and said, ‘Tell them niggers they’re free.’  They run into the masters’ and notified them they were going to take all the Negroes to Little Rock.  It wasn’t no time afterwards before here come the teams and the wagons to take us to Little Rock.

“When they brought us here, they put us in soldiers’ camps in a row of houses up just west of where the Arch street graveyard is now.  They put us all there in the soldiers’ buildings.  They called them camps.  They seemed to be getting us ready for freedom.  It wasn’t long before they had us in school and in church.  The Freedmen’s Bureau visited us and gave us rations just like the Government has been doing these last years.  They gave us food and clothes and books and put us in school.  That was all done right here in Little Rock.