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Biscoe, Arkansas
Age 63
"Mama was Harriett Baldwin. She was born in Virginia. Her owners was Mistress Mollie Fisher and Master Coom
Fisher. It was so cold one winter that they burned up their furniture keeping a fire. Said seemed like they would
freeze in spite of what all they could do.
"Grandpa was sold away from grandma and three children. He didn't want to be sold nary bit. When they would be
talking about selling him be go hide under the house. They go on off. He'd come out. When he was sold he went
under there. He come out and went on off when they found him and told him he was sold to this man. Grandma said
he was obedient. They never hit him. He was her best husband. They never sold grandma and she couldn't 'count for
him being let go. Grandma had another husband after freedom and two more children. They left there in a crowd
and all come to Arkansas. Grandma was a cook for the field hands. She had charge of ringing a big dinner-bell hung
up in a tree. She was black as charcoal. Mama and grandma said Master Coon and old Mistress Mollie was good to
them. That the reason grandpa would go under the house. He didn't want to be sold. He never was seen no more by
them.
"Grandma said sometimes the meals was carried to the fields and they fed the children out of troughs. They took all
the children to the spring and set them in a row. They had a tubful of water and they washed them and dried them
and put on their clean clothes. They used homemade lye soap and greased them with tallow and muttom suet. That
made them shine. They kept them greased so their knees and knuckles would ruff up and bleed.
"Grandma and mama stopped at Fourche Dem. They was so glad to be free and go about. Then it scared them to
hear talk of being sold. It divided them and some owners was mean.
"In my time if I done wrong most any grown person whoop me. Them mama find it out, she give me another one. I
got a double whooping.
"Times is powerful bad to raise up a family. Drinking and gambling, and it takes too much to feed a family now.
Times is so much harder that way then when I was growing."
Interviewer Miss Sallie C. Miller"
