SLAVE NARRATIVES ***

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[TR: ***] = Transcriber Note [HW: ***] = Handwritten Note

[Illustration: Old Slave]

SLAVE NARRATIVES

A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves

TYPEWRITTEN RECORDS PREPARED BY THE FEDERAL WRITERS' PROJECT, 1936-1938 ASSEMBLED BY THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PROJECT WORK PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SPONSORED BY THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Illustrated with Photographs

WASHINGTON 1941

VOLUME II

ARKANSAS NARRATIVES

PART I

Prepared by the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of Arkansas

INFORMANTS

Abbott, Silas Abernathy, Lucian Abromsom, Laura Adeline, Aunt Adway, Rose Aiken, Liddie Aldridge, Mattie Alexander, Amsy O. Alexander, Diana Alexander, Fannie Alexander, Lucretia Allen, Ed Allison, Lucindy Ames, Josephine Anderson, Charles Anderson, Nancy Anderson, R.B. Anderson, Sarah Anderson, Selie Anderson, W.A. Anthony, Henry Arbery, Katie Armstrong, Campbell Armstrong, Cora

Baccus, Lillie Badgett, Joseph Samuel Bailey, Jeff Baker, James Baltimore, William Banks, Mose Banner, Henry Barnett, John W.H. Barnett, Josephine Ann Barnett, Lizzie Barnett, Spencer Barr, Emma Barr, Robert Bass, Matilda Beal, Emmett Beard, Dina Beck, Annie Beckwith, J.H. Beel, Enoch Belle, Sophie D. Bellus, Cyrus Benford, Bob Bennet, Carrie Bradley Logan Benson, George Benton, Kato Bertrand, James Biggs, Alice Billings, Mandy Birch, Jane Black, Beatrice Blackwell, Boston Blake, Henry Blakeley, Adeline Bobo, Vera Roy Boechus, Liddie Bond, Maggie (Bunny) Bonds, Caroline Boone, Rev. Frank T. Boone, J.F. Boone, Jonas Bowdry, John Boyd, Jack Boyd, Mal Braddox, George Bradley, Edward Bradley, Rachel Brannon, Elizabeth Brantley, Mack Brass, Ellen Bratton, Alice Briles, Frank Brooks, Mary Ann Brooks, Waters Brown, Casie Jones Brown, Elcie Brown, F.H. Brown, George Brown, J.N. Brown, Lewis Brown, Lewis Brown, Mag Brown, Mary Brown, Mattie Brown, Molly Brown, Peter Brown, William Brown, William Broyles, Maggie Bryant, Ida Buntin, Belle Burgess, Jeff Burkes, Norman Burks, Sr., Will Burris, Adeline Butler, Jennie Byrd, E.L. Byrd, Emmett Augusta

ILLUSTRATIONS

Old Slave _Frontispiece_

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson Person Interviewed: Silas Abbott R.F.D. Brinkley, Ark. Age: 73

"I was born in Chickashaw County, Mississippi. Ely Abbott and Maggie Abbott was our owners. They had three girls and two boys--Eddie and Johnny. We played together till I was grown. I loved em like if they was brothers. Papa and Mos Ely went to war together in a two-horse top buggy. They both come back when they got through.

"There was eight of us children and none was sold, none give way. My parents name Peter and Mahaley Abbott. My father never was sold but my mother was sold into this Abbott family for a house girl. She cooked and washed and ironed. No'm, she wasn't a wet nurse, but she tended to Eddie and Johnny and me all alike. She whoop them when they needed, and Miss Maggie whoop me. That the way we grow'd up. Mos Ely was 'ceptionly good I recken. No'm, I never heard of him drinkin' whiskey. They made cider and 'simmon beer every year.

"Grandpa was a soldier in the war. He fought in a battle. I don't know the battle. He wasn't hurt. He come home and told us how awful it was.

"My parents stayed on at Mos Ely's and my uncle's family stayed on. He give my uncle a home and twenty acres of ground and my parents same mount to run a gin. I drove two mules, my brother drove two and we drove two more between us and run the gin. My auntie seen somebody go in the gin one night but didn't think bout them settin' it on fire. They had a torch, I recken, in there. All I knowed, it burned up and Mos Ely had to take our land back and sell it to pay for four or five hundred bales of cotton got burned up that time. We stayed on and sharecropped with him. We lived between Egypt and Okolona, Mississippi. Aberdeen was our tradin' point.

"I come to Arkansas railroading. I railroaded forty years. Worked on the section, then I belong to the extra gang. I help build this railroad to Memphis.

"I did own a home but I got in debt and had to sell it and let my money go.

"Times is so changed and the young folks different. They won't work only nough to get by and they want you to give em all you got. They take it if they can. Nobody got time to work. I think