SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

He was the only one kept the box« It was a wooden box nailed up and
a silt In the top* A* B* Howe and Captain Howe was two more Yankee
white men there watching round all day* Ozan was the sheriff at
Sardis, Mississippi soon after the war. Some more colored folks come
up to vote* We stood around and watched* We saw D* Sledge vote; he
owned half of the county. We knowed he voted Democrat so we voted
the other ticket so It would be Republican* I voted for President
Grant* I don't believe in women voting* They used to have the
Australian Ballot System* It's a heap more the man that 9 a elected
than it is the party* We all voted for Hoover; he was a Republican
and foe he got one term served out we was about on starvation* I
ain't voted since* That President claim to be a Democrat* He ain Y t
no Democrat* I don f t know what he be*
I been farming and preaching* I started preaching in Mississippi*
I joined the conference in Arkansas in 1886 and started preaching at
Surrounded Hill (Biscoe)* I come here in 1884 from Pinola County,
Mississippi* I had some stock and they was fencing up everything over
there* I had no land so I come to an open country* It wasn't long
before they fenced it in* I come to Brinkley and worked for Gun and
Black sawmill and I been here forty or fifty years* I don't know jess
how long* I couldn't starve to death in a whole year here* The peo*»
pie wouldn't let me* I got lot of friends9 both black and white* here*
I married December 17, 1874 in the Baptist church* Glasco Wilson
was the preacher married me* My wife died here in dis house nine years
ago* We had ten children but jes two livin now* My girl married a
preacher and live at Hope, Arkansas* My son preaches in Parson, Eiansas*
s* 78