SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

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a fertilizer, and then a cotton sower • Shat was the higgest I knowed ah out
farming when I was a hoy* My mother lived ahout fifteen years after slavery*
I reckon*
"In the time of slavery, you couldn't marry a woman* You just took up
with her. Mother married the same man she had heen going with after freedom.
She had four children after the surrender as fer as I can tell — three girls
and two hoys*
Tt I moved from North Carolina to Louisiana. Stayed there one year and then
moved here. Bought forty acres of land* Bought it after I f d heen here a year*
It took me four years to pay for that. $hen next time I "bought eighty acres .\
and paid for them* Paid them out in two years. Then I "bought eighty acres
more and paid for them in two years. Couldn't pay for them cash at first, hut
could have paid for the last eighty when I "bought them if I had a wanted to*
Then I hought eighty more and then I hought eighty again and then forty and
on till I had five hundred and three acres of farm land. I gojfe the three
over when I got the sorghum mill*
"I left my farm and come to the city for doctor's treatment. I«y old lady
and I worked out five hundred and three acres of land. I got five children
living. I gave each one of them forty acres of land. Most of the rest I sold*
I got a fellow here that owes me for one of the places now. He lives over on
Third and Dennison. His name is Wright. My old lady an me held on to that
anddidn f t lose it evito in all these hard years.
?t My daughter kept after me to come here and she "built this little house out
here where I could holler or do anything I wanted to do and not disturb nohody.
I couldn't feel at home up in a hig house with other people^ Four or five
months ago it would take two people to put me to hed. I would get off from
home and have to carry me hack# But I am gettin along fine now. This high