SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

Interviewer Mrs. Bernioe Bowden
Person interviewed Rosa Simmons
82? West 13th Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age 85?
"Yes mam, I was here during that Civil War. I was fifteen years
old then* I was born in Tennessee*
"Hjr boss man carried all the best hands to Texas and carried the
scrub hands across Oypress Creek here in Arkansas, and that v s vhere I
come* I was fifteen when the Yankees come in on my boss man's placef
so you know now I ain 9 t no baby* I thank God that Be left me here to
get old.
"Before the war, I missed two babies ~ my mistress 1 baby and her
sister 1 s baby. Yes'm we had a good master and mistress. We didn't
suffer for no thin 1 and we didn't have no overseer over us« Colonel
Maples was my master* No f m he wasn't no soldier —» that was the name
his mother give him.
"When my folks first come to Arkansas we lived in a cabin that
just had a balin' sack hangin' in the door and one night a bear corns
in and my brother and I broke a board off the side and fell right out
in the cane. We all hollered so some folks come down and shot the
bear. I ain't never seed a bear before and I didn't know what it was.
*I 'member when the Yankees come to my boss man's place. They
wanted to shake hands but he was scared to death and wouldn't do it.
Another time the Yankees captured him and kept him three months©
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