SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

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behind the trammels in 1847-48, they pulled up stakes and went down on the
Gu&dalupe Kiver and carried my mother's mother down there. Before they
left JJave .block went on Trammel 1 s bond and got my mother. He made my mother
head housekeeper slave. She had "been taught Spanish. She was tall and fair
with straight black hair. She was married to Bick Samuels, my father.
"After the war my father was elected County Clerk in 1872 on tiie Bepublican
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ticket. He could neither read nor write so was clerk-in name only securing
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one of the white men to attend to the office. .By trade he was a blacksmith.
Interviewer's Comment
uncle Boh Samuels is the son of Bichard Samuels and Mary. He was a slave
of David Block. After freedom he came to Little Rock with a sister and a
trothe^John. Uncle Boh said he often heard his mother speak of a gold mine.
she had a trunk of maps and charts which her mother had given to her. In
this was supposed to he the papers regarding De Soto f s legendary gold mine.
The truniw had been lost as Uncle Boh has no idea where the gold mine is. He
tells the story the same way, never varying a point. He does not claim to
remember Indian trails or names.
uncle Boh is tall and straight. He is blind, ms cxeau in appearance
dressed in slightly faded overalls. He has a short, clean grey beard. He
talks with a clear accent, no Negro accent. During Reconstruction days he
served as County Clerk of Hemstead County under Carpet Baggar rule. During
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those days he was a political power to be reckoned with. He was a national
as well as a state figure in the "Lily White Bepublican fT organization. JHis
wife was a Negro$ good looking but showed little trace of much white blood./
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