SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

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30704 - ' J
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Interviewer ; Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed Ervin E. £fciith
811 Ringo Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age 84
n I have been in this state for forty-nine years. I will be here fifty
years on the fifteenth of December.
"I was born in Ebenezer Township, York County, South Carolina, on the
twenty-ninth day of April, in 1854. That makes me eighty-four years old on
Friday. I was born on Good Friday—on Good Friday at six o'clock in the
morning.
"I am telling you what I was instructed all of my life* My father,
ii. D. Sciith, and my mother, Haria, told me these things. My mother carried
a nickname, Salina, all her life, but her real name was Haria«
"I'll tell you how they happened to keep such good records. V/e had a
little advantage over the other people of that day. My father never got
any school education, but his brothers instructed him—his half-brothers*
They were white. They was good, too* I mean them brothers thought just as
much of me as they did of anybody else. So my father got pretty good
training. He got it from his brothers and that's how he learned to keep
such ^ood records.
Relatives
"I am told my mother cooked for one family for forty-two years. Her
: -ai(i8ii name was Haria Harris. She was three-fourths white. She come from
^Q j-ndian tribe—old Cataw^ba Indians. Her own daddy was a white man, but
!;e - ^rand daddy on her mother 1 s side was an Indian*