|
|
DeWitt, Arkansas
Age 83
"Aunt Harriett, were you born in Slavery time?"
"Yes, mam! I was big enough to remember well, us coming back from Texas after we refugeed there when the
fighting of the war was so bad at St. Charles. We stayed in Texas till the surrender, then we all come back in lots of
wagons. I was sick but they put me on a little bed and me and all the little chillun rode in a 'Jersey' that one of the
old Negro mammies drove, along behind the wagons, and our young master, Colonel Bob Chaney rode a great big
black horse. Oh! he nice-looking on dat horse! Every once and awhile he'd ride back to the last wagon to see if
everything was all right. I remember how scared us chillun was when we crossed the Red river. Aunt Mandy said,
'We crossin' you old Red river today, but we not going to cross you any more, cause we are going home now, back
to Arkansas.' That day when we stopped to cook our dinner I picked up a lot little blackjack acorns and when my
mammy saw them she said, 'Throw them things down, chile. They'll make you wormy.' (I cried because I thought
they were chinquapins.) I begged my daddy to lets go back to Texas, but he said, 'No! No! We going with our white
folks.' My mama and daddy belonged to Col. Jesse Chaney, much of a gentleman, and his wife Miss Sallie was the
best mistress anybody ever had. She was a Christian. I can hear her praying yet! She wouldn't let one of her slaves
hit a tap on Sunday. They must rest and go to church. They had preaching at the cabin of some one of the slaves,
and in the Summertime sometimes they had it out in the shade under the trees. Yes, and the slaves on each
plantation had their own church. They didn't go galavanting over the neighborhood or country like niggers do now.
Col. Chaney had lots and lots of slaves and all their houses were in a row, all one-room cabins. Everything
happened in that one room,--birth, sickness, death and everything, but in them days niggers kept their houses clean
and their door yards too. These houses where they lived was called 'the Quarters'. I used to love to walk down by
that row of houses. It looked like a town and late of an evening as you'd go by the doors you could smell meat a
frying, coffee making and good things cooking. We were fed good and had plenty clothes to keep us dry and warm.
"Along about time for de surrender, Col. Jesse, our master, took sick and died with some kind of head trouble. Then
Col. Bob, our young master, took care of his mama and the slaves. All the grown folks went to the field to work and
the little chillun would be left at a big room called the nursing home. All us little ones would be nursed and fed by
an old mammy, Aunt Mandy. She was too old to go to the field, you know. We wouldn't see our mammy and daddy
from early in the morning till night when their work was done, then they'd go by Aunt Mandy's and get their chillun
and go home till work time in the morning.
"Some of the slaves were house negroes. They didn't go to work in the fields, they each one had their own job
around the house, barn, orchard, milk house, and things like that.
"When washday come, Lord, the pretty white clothes! It would take three or four women a washing all day.
"When two of de slaves wanted to get married, they'd dress up nice as they could and go up to the big house and the
master would marry them. They'd stand up before him and he'd read out of a book called the 'discipline' and say,
'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, all thy strength, with all thy might and thy neighbor as thyself.'
Then he'd say they were man and wife and tell them to live right and be honest and kind to each other. All the slaves
would be there too, seeing the 'wedden.'
"Our Miss Sallie was the sweetest best thing in the world! She was so good and kind to everybody and she loved
her slaves, too. I can remember when Uncle Tony died how she cried! Uncle Tony Wadd was Miss Sallie's favorite
servant. He stayed in a little house in the yard and made fires for her, brought in wood and water and just waited on
the house. He was a little black man and white-headed as cotton, when he died. Miss Sallie told the niggers when
they come to take him to the grave yard, to let her know when they got him in his coffin, and when they sent and
told her she come out with all the little white chillun, her little grandchillun, to see Uncle Tony. She just cried and
stood for a long time looking at him, then she said, 'Tony, you have been a good and faithful servant.' Then the
Negro men walked and carried him to the graveyard out in a big grove in de field. Every plantation had its own
graveyard and buried its own folks and slaves right on the place.
"If all slaves had belonged to white folks like ours, there wouldn't been any freedom wanted."
Interviewer Miss Irene Robertson"
