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"I was born in Louisville, Kentucky. I was not born a slave.
"We was the most erlierst (earliest) settlers at Brassfield. I come here in 1880 when it was jus' corn stalks and cotton
and thick woods along the river. There was two little houses here and I lived in one of them.
"I was so small when my mama died I don't recollect her life in slavery times if she told anything. I was the
youngest child she had. Father died when I was small. I was the youngest child she had. Father died when I was
small. I was eight or nine when they brought me from Kentucky to Memphis, Tennessee to an orphant's home.
Father worked at a gold mine till he died. Their names was Tempest and Cane Slaughter. All of us took to Mr.
Walker and Miss Street. They was white folks. Good as could be to us little black children. I didn't get to live there
long. I call her my stepmother come and got me. She raised me. She was a slavery time woman. She signed up for
me. She had no children of her own. She lived at 248 Elliott and Eckols Streets in Memphis. She died. Then I
scuffled hard anywhere I could.
"I was a young miss and I started out nursing the Yellow Fever. I nursed it two years straight. All you could hear:
'Get up,' 'Come on,' 'I needs you.' That was in 1878. You see nurses and doctors in a hurry all the time. The year
when it was about gone, I had it 1879. It was a long time before us black folks started having Yellow Fever. Then
some died with it.
"The way they treated the Yellow fever was give them beef soup, beef tea. Put dark red soup in water. We put
chunks of beef in things and sweated it. They et crackers. Only places open was drug stores and saloons. Fifty dollar
fine to give sick folks a piece of watermelon. The Memphis doctors give up. A train load of nurses and doctors was
sent in there. They pulled up their sleeves and got to work. I do recollect, they come from Charleston, South
Carolina. They had orange bushes with them and had orange leaves shipped in. They steeped the leaves and put
whiskey in the tea. They tied the ones sick in the bed and started letting them sip that tea. Pretty soon they was
raving crazy and yellow as pumpkins. They got well. That stamped out the plague. They had two crews of
nurses---one for day and one for night uses. We nurses went to the Howard Association for our pay. We got two
dollars fifty cents a day. That was big pay. They had to have food given by force but they craved water. If you hang
a piece of beef up it soon be green. We had to go get fresh beef to cook every time. The odor was terrible. When
whole families died and a house been closed up and then be opened seemed like a fog come out. It would knock you
down. They first tried to wash the sheets and clothes but they was so yellow you couldn't boil them clean. You
couldn't soak them clean. Then the law said burn them. Then they said the smoke carried the disease, so they had
men take the sheets and clothes to the middle of the Mississippi River and throw them in. The law stopped that and
then they took the sheets way off and burn them. They made pine boxes and put a lean sheet around the corpse.
They died so fast you couldn't get coffins.
"The way the disease was, you take a chill last two hours, then you have a bad headache and start throwing up
(vomiting) and working off. You be too sick to live or die. Your fever go so high. If you put a cold cloth on your
head it would blister and leave a milk white mark. Some said they was 'God's children marked on the forehead.' If
they got well they peeled from top of head to end of toe yellow tough skin. Colored folks sure do peel off. When I
peeled that old tough black skin I looked tender and light as a baby. I kept getting back my same color.
"After them three years I started cooking and nursing. I washed and ironed. Me and my husband made three or four
crops. He farmed long as he ever lived I reckon. That is all he ever said he done till he worked at timber some. He is
dead.
"I had thirteen children. I got two boys and two girls living now. One boy blind. I needs a pension but I never got
it."
Age 70
Myers, Betty Helena, Arkansas (Miss Irene Robertson)
