SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

30749
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\ Interviewer Mrs* Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed Tanner Thomas __
1213 Louisiana, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age 78
"I was born down here at Rob Roy on the river on the Emory place* My
mother's name was Dinah Thomas and my father's name was Greene Thomas* He
taken sick and died in the War on the North side* That's what my mother
told me* I was born under Mars Jordan Emory's administration*
"I 'member somebody brought me here to Pine Bluff to Lawyer Bell's
house* I stayed two or three months, then Mars Jordan sent for me and
carried me back out to Rob Roy and I stayed with my mother* She had done
married again but I stayed with her all the time till I got grown and I
married*
"I come here in 1892 and I been here ever since—forty-six years* Oh,
whole lots of these white folks know me*
"I worked at the Standard Lumber Company and Bluff City Lumber Company
and Dilley's Foundry* Then I went to the oil mill# I was the order man* I
was the best lumber grader on the place*
"'Course I knows lots of white folks and they knows me too, I done a
heap of work 'round here in different places in forty-six years*
W I went to school a little but I didn't learn nothin'.
*My mother said they corns and pressed my daddy in the War* 'Course I
don't know nothin' 'bout that but my mother told me*
"Now, what is this you're gettin' up? Well, I was born in slavery times*
You know I was when my daddy was in the War*
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