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Age 87
Home 101 Rock Street, Fapetteville, Arkansas.
There is no hint of elision in the speech of Adeline Blakeley, scarcely a trace of vernecular. All of her life her
associations have been with white persons. She occupies a position, rare in post-slavery days, of negro servant,
confidant and friend. After the death of Mrs. Hudgins, family intimates, wives of physicians, bankers' wives and
other Fayetteville dowagers continued periodically to come to see Adeline. They came not in the spirit of Lady
Bountifuls condescending to a hireling, but because they wanted to chat with an old time friend.
As told by:
"Honey, look in the bible to get the date when I was born. e want to ave it just right. Yes, here's the place, read it to
me. July 10, 1850? Yes, I remember now, that's what they've always told me. I wanted to be sure, though. I was
born in Hickman County, Tenn. and was about a year when they brought me to Arkansas. My mother and her
people had been bought by Mr. John P. Parks when they were just children--John and Leanna and Martha. I was the
first little negro in the Parks kitchen. From the first they made a pet out of me. I was little like a doll and they treated
me like a plaything-----spoiled me------rotten.
After Mr. Parks came to Arkansas he lived near what is now Prarie Grove, but what do you think it was called
then-----Hog Eye. Later on they named it Hillingsley for a man who settled there. We were two miles out on the
Wire Road, the one the telegraph line came in on Honey, Almost every community had a "Wire Road".
It was the custom to give a girl a slave when she was married. When Miss Parks became Mrs. Blakeley she moved
to Fayetteville and chose me to take with her. She said since I was only 5 she could raise me as she wanted me to
be. But I must have been a lot of trouble and after she had her baby she had to send me back to her father to grow up
a little. For you might say she had two babies to take care of since I was too little to take care of hers. They sent a
woman in my place.
Honey, when I got back, I was awful! I had been with the negroes down in the country and said 'hit' and 'hain't' and
words like that. Of course all the children in the house took it up from me. Mrs. Blakeley had to teach me to talk
right. Your Aunt Mora was born while I was away. I war too little to take full change of her, but I could sit in a
chair and hold her on my lap.
Mrs. Blakeley taught her children at home. Ker teaching was almost all they had before they entered the University.
When I was little I wanted to learn, learn all I could, but there was a law against teaching a slave to read and write.
One woman------she was from the North did it anyway. But when folks can read and write its going to be found out.
It was made pretty hard for that woman.
After the war they tried to get me to learn, but I tossed my head and wouldn't let them teach me. I was about 15 and
thought I was grown and wouldn't need to now any more. Mary, it sounds funny, but if I had a million dollars I
would give it gladly to be able to read and write letters to my friends.
I remember well when the war started. Mr. Blakeley, he was a cabinet maker and not very well, was not considered
strong enough to go. But if the war had kept up much longer they would have called him. Mr. Parks didn't believe in
seceding. He held out as long as it was safe to do so. If you didn't go with the popular side they called you
'abolitionist' or maybe 'Submissionist'. But when Arkansas did go over he was loyal. He had two sons and a
son-in-law in the Confederate army. One fought at Richmond and one was killed at Gettysburg.
The little Blakeley boy had always liked to play with the American flag. He'd march with it and carry it out on the
porch and hang it up. But after the trouble began to brew his mother told him he would have to stay in the house
when he played with the flag. Even then somebody saw him and scolded him and said 'Either burn it or wash it.' The
child thought they meant it and he tried to wash it. Dyes weren't so good in those days and it ran terribly. It was the
awfulest thing you ever saw.
Fayetteville suffeved all thru the war. You see we were not very far from the dividing line and both armies were
about here a lot. The Federals were in charge most of the time. They had a Post here, set up breast works and
fortified the square. The court house was in the midile of it then. It was funny that there wasn't more real fighting
about he e. There were several battles but they were more like skirmishes------just a few men killed each time. They
were terrible just the same. At first they buried the Union soldiers where the Confederate cemetery is now. The
Southerners were placed just anywhere. Later on they moved the Northern caskets over to where the Federal
Cemetery is now and they took up the Southern men when they kno where to find them and placed them over on the
hill where they are today.
Once an officer came into our home and liked a table he saw, so he took it. Mrs. Blakeley followed his horse as far
as she could pleading with him to give it back because her husband had made it. The next day a neighbor returned
it. He had found it in the road and recognized it. The man who stole it had been killed and dropped it as he fell.
Just before the Battle of Prarie Grove the Federal men came thru. Some officers stopped and wanted us to cook for
them. Paid us well, too. One man took little Nora on his lap and almost cried. He said she reminded him of his own
little girl he'd maybe never see again. He gave her a cute little vory handled pen knife. He asked Mrs. Blakeley if he
couldn't leave his pistols with her until he came back thru Fayetteville. She told him it was asking too much, what
would happen to her and her family if they found those weapons in her possession? But he argued that it was only
for a few days. She hid them under a tub in the basement and after waiting a year gate them to her brother when he
came through. The Yankees met the Southerners at Prairie Grove. The shots sounded just like popcorn from here in
Fayetteville. We always though the men got killed there.
The soldiers camped all around everywhere. Lots of them were in tents and some of the officers were in houses.
They didn't burn the college--where Miss Sawyer had taught, you know. The officers used it for their living
quarters. They built barracks for the men of upright logs. She that building across the street. It's been lots of things,
a livery stable, veternary barn, apartment house. But it was one of the oldest but dings in Arkansas. They've kept on
remodeling it. The Yankees made a commissary out of it. Later on they moved the food up on the square and used it
for a hospital. I can remember lots of times seeing the feet of dead men sticking out of the windows.
Your Aunt Nora's mother saved that building from being burned. How did it happen? Well you see both sides were
firing buildings------the Confederates to keep the Yankees from getting them, and the other way about. But the
Southerners did most of the burning. Mrs. Blakeley's little boy was sick with fever. She and a friend went up,
because they feared burnings. They sat there almost all night. Parties of men would come along and they would
plead with them. One sat in one doorway and the other in the building next. Mrs. Blakely was a Southerner, the
other woman a Northerner. Between them they kept the buildings from being burned; saved their own homes
thereby and possibly the live of the little sick boy.
It was like that in Fayetteville. There were so many folks on both sides and they lived so close together that they got
to know one another and were friends. Things like this would happen. One day a Northern officer came over to our
house to talk to his wife who was visiting. He said he would be away all day. He was to go down to
Prarie Grove to get 'Old Man Parks, dead or alive'. Not until he was on his way did somebody tell him that he was
talking about the father of his wife's hostess. Next day he came over to apologize. Said he never would have made
such a cruel remark if he had known. But he didn't find his man. As the officers went in the front door, Mr. Parks
went out of the back and the women surrounded him until he got away.
There was another time when the North and South took refuge together. During the war even the little children were
taught to listen for bugle calls and know what they meant. We had to know------and how to act when we heard
them. One day, I remember we were to have peas for dinner, with ham hock and corn bread. I was hungry that day
and everything smelled so good. But just as the peas were port of them out of the pot and in a dish on the table the
signal came 'To Arms'. Cannon followed almost immediately. We all ran for the ellar, leaving the food as it was.
The cellar was dug out only a little way down. It had been raining and snowing all day--melted as it fell. It was
about noon and the seep water had filled a pool in the middle of the cellar. They placed a tub in the water and it
floated like a little boat. They put Nora and a little girl who was visiting her and me in it. The grown folks clung to
the damp sides of the cellar floor and wall. After the worst bombing was over we heard someone upstairs in the
house calling. It was the wife of a Northern officer. He had gotten away so fast he had forgotten his pistols. She had
tried to follow him, but the shots had frightened her. We called to her to come to the basement. She came, but in
trying to climb up the slick sides she slid down and almost into our tub. She looked so funny with her big fat legs
that I giggled. Mrs. Blakeley slapped me------ it was one of the few times she struck me. I was glad she did, for I
would have laughed out. And it didn't do to laugh at Northerners.
It was night before the fighting was over. An old man who was in the basement with us went upstairs because he
heard someone groan. Sure enough a wounded men had dragged himself to our door. He laid the men, almost
fainting down before the fireplace. It was all he could do. The man died. When we finally came up there wasn't a
pea, nor a bit of ham, not a crum of cornbread. Floaters had cleaned the pot until it shone.
We had a terrible time getting along during those years. I don't believe we could have done it except for the
Northern soldiers. You night say the Confederacy was kept up by private subscription, but the Yankees had the
whole Federal government back of them. They had good rations which were issued uncooked. They could get them
prepared anywhere they liked. We were cod cooks so that is the way we got our food-----preparing it for soldiers
and eating it with them. They had quite a veriety and a lot of everything. They were given bacon and coffee and
sugar and flour and beans and somthing they called 'mixed vegetables'. Those beens were little and sweet--not like
the big ones we have today. The mixed vegetables were liked by lots of folks--I didn't care for them. Everything
was ground up together and then dried. You had to soak it like dried peas before cooking.
After the war they came to Mrs. Blakeley, the soldiers did and accused her of keeping me against my will. I told
them that I stayed because I wanted to, the Blakeleys were my people. They let me alone, the whites did, but the
negroes didn't like it. They tried to fight me and called me names. There was a well near the square from which
everybody got water. Between it and our house was a negro cabin. The little negroes would rock me. I stood it as
long as I could. Then I told Mrs. Blakeley. She said to get some rocks in my bucket and it they rocked me to heave
back. I was a good shot and they ran. Their mother came to Mrs. Blakeley to co plain, but she told her, after hearing
her thru that I had stood all I could and the only reason I
hadn't been seriously hurt was because her children weren't good shots. They never bothered me again.
It was hard after the war. The Federals stayed on for a long time. Fences were down, houses were burned, stock was
gone, but we got along somehow. When Nora Blakeley was 14 a lady was teaching a subscription school in the hall
across the street------the same hall Mrs. Blakely had saved from burning. She wanted Nora to teach for her. So,
child that she was, she went over and pretty soon she was teaching up to the fourth grade. I went over every
morning and built a fire for her before she arrived.
That fall she went over to the University, but the next year she had to stay out to earn money. She wanted to finish
so badly that we decided to take boarders. They would come to us from way over on the campus. There were always
lots more who wanted to stay then we could take. We bought silver and dishes just as we could way for them, and
we added to the house in the sum er time. I used to cook their breakfasts and dinners and pack baskets of lunch for
them to take over to the Carpus. We has lots of interesting people with us. One was Jeff Davis------later he was
governor and then senator. He and a Creek Indian boy named Sam Rice were great friends. There were lots of
Indians in school a th University then. They didn't have so many Indian schools and tribes would make up money
and send a bright boy here.
Ten years after she graduated from the University Nora married Harvey M. Hudgins. They moved to Eot Springs
and finally ran a hotel. It burned the night of Washington's birthday in 1895. It was terrible, we saved nothing but
the night clothes we were in. Next morning it was worse for we saw small pox flags all over town. Our friends came
to our rescue and gave us clothes and we went with friends out into the country to escape the epidemic. There were
three or four families in one little house. It was crowded, but we were all friends so it was nice after all.
About ten years before Mr. Hudgins had built a building in Fayetteville. They used the second floor for an Opera
House. When we came back here after the fire we took it over to run. Mr. Hudgins had that and all the billboards in
town. We saw all the shows. Several years later the twins, Helen and Wade were born. I always went to see the
shows and took them with me. Folks watched them more than the shows. I kept them neat and clean and they were
so cute.
We saw the circuses too. I remember once Barnum and Bailey were coming to Fort Smith. We were going down. I
didn't tell anybody, but I put $45 in my purse. I made money then. Mr. Hudgins got me a cow and I sold milk and
butter and kept all I made. Why the first evening dress Helen had and the first long pants Bud (Wade) had I bought.
Well, we were going down to Fort Smith, but Bud got sick and we couldn't go. You know, Mary, it seemed so
queer. When Helen and I went to California, we all saw the same circus together. Yes, I've been to California with
her twice. Whenever the train would stop she would come from the pullman to the coach where the colored persons
had to ride to see about me. We went out to visit Sister (Bess Hudgins Clayton) and Bud. While we were there,
Barnum and Bailey came to Los Angeles. It seemed so funny. There we were--away out in California--all the
children grown up and off to themselves. There we were--all of us------seeing the show we had planned to see way
back in Arkansas, years and years before.
You know, Honey, that doll Ann has--she got it for her seventh birthday (Elisabeth Ann Wiggans--daughter of
Helen Hudgins Wiggans). It was restrung for her, and was once before for her mother. But it's the same doll Baby
Dean (Dean Eudgins) carried out of that fire in Not Springs in 1895. Everybody loves Ann. She makes the fifth
generation I've cared for. When Helen is going out she brings Ann down here or I go up there. It's usually down
here tho. Because since we turned the old home into apartments I take care of them, and it's best for me to be here
most of the time.
All the people in the apartments are mighty nice to me. Often for days at a time they bring me so much to eat that I
don't have to cook for myself. A boy going to the University has a room here and tends to the furnace. He's a nice
boy. I like him.
My life's been a full one, Honey, and an interesting one. I can't really say which part of it is best. I can't decide
whether it's a better world now or then. I've had lots of hard work, and lots of friends, lots of fun and I've gone lots
of places. Life is interesting.
Interviewer Miss Irene Robertson
