“I married during slavery time.  I don’t remember just how old I was then.  My old man knows my age, but I can’t remember it.  But he’s been dead this year makes thirteen years.  I had one child before the surrender.  I was just married to the one man.  I was married after the surrender.  I don’t want to be married again.  I never seed a man I would give a thought to since he died.  Lord knows how long we’d been married before he died.

“We came here and stayed four years and we bought a home down on Arch Street Pike about ten miles from here.  I lived there sixty years.  I’ve got the tax receipts for sixty years back.  I ain’t never counted the ones I paid since he’s been dead.

“I was the mother of three children and none of them are living.  All of them dead but me.

“They made like they was goin’ to give old slave folks a pension.  They ain’t gimme none yit.  I’m just livin’ on the mercy of the people.  I can’t keep up the taxes now.  I wish I could git a pension.  It would help keep me up till I died.  They won’t even as much as give me nothin’ on the relief.  They say these grandchildren ought to keep me up.  I have to depend on them and they can’t hardly keep up theirselves.

“When the Civil War broke out, my baby was about seven years old.  My mother was here when the stars fell.  She had one child then.

“I remember a war before the Civil War.  I heard the white folks talking about it.  They wouldn’t tell colored folks nothing.  They’d work them to death and beat them to death.  They’d sell them just like you sell hogs.  My mother was sold from me when I was little.  Old lady Eford, she was my mistress and mammy too.  If she ever slapped me, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout it.

“My daddy made his farm jus’ like colored people do now.  White man would give him so much ground if he’d a mind to work it.  He had a horse he used.

“We lived a heap better than the people live now.  They fed you then.  You ate three times a day.  When twelve o’clock come, there dinner was, cooked and ready.  Nothin’ to do but eat it, and then set down and res’ with the other people.  There was them that was good.

“But them what was mean done the colored folks bad.

Early Days

“I was little when my mother was sold from me.  I was runnin’ about though in the yard.  I couldn’t do nothing.  But I was a smart girl.  The first work I can remember doin’ was goin’ to the field ploughing.  That is the first thing I remember.  I was little.  I just could come up to the plough.  I cut logs when I was a little child like them children there (children about ten years old playing in the street).  I used to clean up new ground—­do anything.

“My mother and father both worked in the field.  My father was sold away from me jus’ like my mother was.  Old lady Eford was my mother and father too.  That was in Clayton, Alabama.  Old Tom Eford had three boys—­one named Tom, one named William, and there was the one named Giles what I told you about.  William was the oldest, Tom was the second, and Giles was the youngest.