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914 W. Tenth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age 84 Ct. Will Glass' story, No.----?
"I was born June 1, 1856; the place at that time was called Lynngrove, Louisiana. It was just about a mile from the
post office, and was in Morehouse Parish in the first ward--in the tenth ward I mean.
"My father was named Alec Summerville. He named himself after the Civil War. They were going around letting
the people choose their names. He had belonged to Alec Watts; but when they allowed him to select his own name
after the war, he called himself Summerville after the town Summerville (Somerville), Alabama. His mother was
named Charlotte Dantzler. She was born in North Carolina. John Haynes bought her and brought her to Arkansas.
My father was an overseer's child. You know they whipped people in those days and forced them. That is why he
didn't go by the name of Watts after he got free and could select his own name.
"The name of my mother's mother was Celia Watts. I don't know my grandfather's first name. Old man Alec Watts'
father gave my mother to him. I didn't know anything about that except what was told to me. They bought her from
South Carolina. They came to Louisiana. My father was bought in South Carolina too. After the Haynes met the
Watts, Watts married old man Haynes' daughter. He gave my father to his daughter, Mary Watts. She was Mary
Watts after she was married. She was Mary Haynes before. Watts' father gave my mother to Alec Watts. That is just
the way it was.
"My mother and father had three children to live. I think there were about thirteen in all. There are just two of us
living now. I couldn't tell you where Jeffrey Summerville, my living brother, is living now.
"The slaves lived in hewed-log houses. I have often seen hewed-log houses. Have you ever seen one? You cut big
logs and split them open with a maul and a wedge. Then you take a pole ax and hack it on both sides. Then you
notch it--cut it into a sort of tongue and groove joint in each end. Before you cut the notches in the end, you take a
broad ax and hew it on both sides. The notch holds the corners of the house--ties every corner. You put the rafters
up just like you do now. Then you lathe the rafters and then put boards on top of the rafters. Sometimes shingles
were used on the rafters instead of boards.
"You would finish off the outside of the walls by making clay cakes out of mud and filling up the cracks with them.
When that clay got hard, nothing could go through the walls. Sometimes thin boards were nailed on the inside to
finish the interior.
"They had planks--homamade wooden beds. They made tables and chairs. They caned the chairs. They made the
tables with four legs. You made it just like you would make a box, adding the legs.
"A little house called the smokehouse was built in one of the corners of the yard. They would weigh out to each one
so much food for the week's supply--mostly meat and meal, sometimes rice. They'd give you parched meal and rye
too.
"Sometimes they had the slaves cook their food in the cabins. Mostly all the time. My people ate in the kitchen
because my mother was the cook and my father was the yard man. The others mostly cooked at home--in their
cabins.
"My mother and father worked around the house and yard. Slaves in the field had to pick a certain amount of cotton.
The man had to pick from two to three hundred pounds of cotton a day if he wasn't sick, and the woman had to pick
about one hundred fifty. Of course some of them could pick more. They worked in a way of speaking from can till
can't, from the time they could see until the time they couldn't. They do about the same thing now.
"I remember the time the white folks used to make the slaves all come around in the yard and sing every Sunday
evening. I can't remember any of the songs straight through. I can just remember them in spots.
'Give me Jesus, you can have all the world In the morning when I arise, Give me Jesus.'
(Fragment)
'Lie on him if you sing right
Lie on him if you pray right
God knows that your heart is not right
Come, let us go to heaven anyhow.'
(Fragment)
'The ark was seen at rest upon the hill
On the hills of Calvary
And Great Jehovah spoke
Sanctify to God upon the hill.'
(First verse) 'Peter spied the promised land
On the hill of Calvary
And Great Jehovah spoke
Sanctify to God upon the hill.'
(Second verse)
There was lots more that they sung.
"They could go to parties too, but when they went to them or to anything else, they had to have a pass. When they
went to a party the most they did was to play the fiddle and dance. They had corn huskings every Friday night, and
they ground the meal every Saturday. The corn husking was the same as fun. They didn't serve anything on the
place where I was. I never knew them to serve anything at the corn shuckings or at the parties. Sometimes they
would give a picnic, and they would kill a hog for that.
"Right after the war, my father hired me out to nurse. Then I stayed around the house and helped my stepmother,
and the white girls taught me a little until I got to be thirteen years old. Then I got three months' schooling in a
regular school. I came here in 1915. I had been living in Newport before that. Yes, I been married, and that's all you
need to know about that. I got two children: one fifty-three years old, and the other sixty.
"I don't have much thinking to do about the young people. It's a lost race without a change."
"Mother" Lindsay is a Bible-reading, neat and clean-appearing, pleasant-mannered business woman, a little bulky,
but carrying herself like a woman thirty years. She runs a cafe on Ninth Street and manages her own business
competently. She refers to it as "Hole in the Wall." I had been trying for sometime to catch her away from her home.
It was almost impossible for me to get a story from her at her restaurant or at her home.
She doesn't like to sit long at a time and doesn't like to tell too much. When she feels quarters are a little close and
that she is telling more than she wants to, she says, "Honey, I ain't got no more time to talk to you; I got to get back
to the cafe and get me a cup of coffee."
Will Glass, who has a story of his own, collaborated with her on her story. He has an accurate and detailed memory
of many things. He is too young to have any personal memories. But he remembers everything he has been told by
his grandparents and parents, and they seem to have talked freely to him unlike the usual parents of that period.
Interviewer Mrs. Bernice Bowden"
