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St. Marys Street, Helens, Arkansas
Age 55 or 56?
"Grandma was Patsy Smith. She said in slavery they had a certain mount of cotton to pick. If they didn't have that
amount they would put their heads between the rails of the fences and whoop them. They whooped them in the
obenin' when they weighed up the cotton. Grandma was raised in Virginia. She was light. Mama was light. They
was carried from Virginia to Louisiana in wagons. They found clothes along the road people had lost. She said
several bundles of good clothes. They thought they had dropped off of wagons shead of them. They washed and
wore the clothes. Some of 'em fit so they wore them. Mama left her husband and brother in Virginia. Ed Smith was
her second husband. He was a light man. My grandpa was a field man. I never heard if grandpa was sold. Jimmie
Stansberry was the man that bought or brought mema and grandma to Louisiana. Mama cooked and worked in the
field both. Grandma did too. She cooked in Louisiana more than mema. They belong to Lou and Jimmie Stansberry
and they had two boys. They lived close to Minden, Louisiana. I don't know so much about my parents and grandma
talked but we didn't pay enough attantion to remember it all. She was old and got things confused.
"They was glad when freedom come but they lived on with Jimmie Stansbarry. I remember them. Grandma raised
me after my parents died. Then she lived with me till she died. She was awful old when she died. They would talk
about how different Virginia and Louisiana was. It took them a long time to make that trip."
Interviewer Mrs. Bernice Bowden"
