|
|
Helena, Arkansas
Age 79
"I was born in north Georgia. It was not fer from Rome. We belong to Master Belton Moore and Miss Jane Moore.
They had a big family, some grandchildren old as their own. That was my job playing wid the children. My parents'
name Rob Moore and Pilfy Calley. She lived five miles from Belton Moore's house. She was hired out over at
Moore's the way she and papa met up. I know now I was hired out too. I run after then children a long time it
seemed like to me. I loved them and they cried after me. I get so tired I'd slip off and go up in the loft and soon be
asleep. I learned to climb a ladder that very way. It was nailed up streight against the side of the wall. They'd ask me
where I been. They never did whoop me fer that. I tell 'em I been 'sleep. I drapped off 'sleep. I was so tired. Papa
helped with the young calves and the feeding and in the field too. Mama was a fast hand in the field. They called her
a little guinea woman. She could outdo me when I was grown and she was getting old. She washed fer the Calley's.
I remember they was a old men and woman. Mama lived in the office at their house. He let her ride a horse to
Moore's to work. I rode home wid her many a time. She rode a side saddle. I rode sideways too. She used a battling
stick long as she lived when she washed.
"Papa died two years after the surrender in Atlanta, Georgia. The Moore's moved there and he went along. He left
mema at Master Calley's and I was still kept at the old home place. Aunt Jilly kept me and my two oldest sisters.
Her name was Jilly Calley. I seen mama right often. They fetched papa back to see us a few times and then he died.
We all went to Atlanta where he was buried. Mama lived to be purty nigh a hundred years old. She had fourteen
children. I had two sisters and eight helf-brothers and three half-sisters. Some died so young they never was named.
My stepfather was mean to her and beat her, caused some of their deaths. She was a midwife in her later years. She
made us a living till I married. She was gone with Dr. Harrison a lot. He'd come take her off and bring her home in
the buggy. I married and immigrated to Dell, Arkansas. We lived there a year and went to Memphis. Mama come
there and died at my house. She got blind. Had to lead her about. My steppapa went off and never come back. He
got drunk whenever he could get to it. We hunted him and asked about him. I think he went off with other women.
We heard he did.
"Freedom---I heard Miss Jane say when she was packing up to go to Atlanta, 'I will get a nurse there. They will
make her go to school.' I thought she was talking about me. I wanted to go. I loved the children. I got to go to school
in the country a right smart. I can read and write. We and my two sisters all was in the same class. It seemed strange
then. he had a colored man teacher, Mr. Jacobin. It was easier for me to learn than my sisters. They are both dead
now.
"I got three living children---one here and two in Memphis. After I got my hip broke I live about with them so they
can wait on me.
"I don't know about this new way of living. My daughter in Memphis raising her little girl by a book. She don't
learn her as much manners as children used to know. She got it from the white lady she works for. It tells how to do
your child. Times done changed too much to suit my way of knowing.
'The Old Time Religion' is the only good pattern fer raising a family. Mighty little of that now."
Interviewer Pernella M. Anderson"
