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3219 W. Sixteenth Little Rock, Ark.
Age 73
Occupation Housewife
"The Jay Hawkers would travel at night. When they came to a cabin, they would go in and tell them that owned it
they wanted something to eat and to get it ready quick. They stopped at one place and went in and ordered their
dinner. They et the supper and went away and got sick after they left. They got up the next morning and examined
the road and the horse tracks and went on. They all thought something had been given to them, but I don't guess
there was. They caught my mother and brought her here and sold her. If they caught a nigger, they would carry him
off and sell him. That's how my mother came to Arkansas.
"I don't know what year I was born in. I know the month and the day. It was February tenth. I have kinder kept up
with my age. As near as I can figure, I am seventy-three years old. I was 18 in 1884 when I married. I must have
been born about 1864. I was brought up under my step father; he was a very mean man. When he took a notion to
he'd whip me and mother both.
"My mother was born somewheres in Missouri, but whereabouts I don't know. One of her masters was John Goodet.
His wife was named Eva Goodet. He was a very mean man and cruel, and his wife was too. My grandmother
belonged to another slaveholder and they would allow her to go to see my mother. She was allowed to work and do
things for which she was given old clothes and other little things. She would take em and bring em to my mother.
As soon as she had gone, they would take them things away from my mother, and put em up in the attic and not
allow her to wear them. They would let the clothes rot and mildew before they'd let my mother wear them. If my
mother left a dish dirty - sometimes there would be butter or flour or something in the dish that would need to be
soaked - they would wait till it was thoroughly soaked and then make her drink the old dirty dish water. They'd
whip her if she didn't drink it.
"Her other master was named Harrison. He was tolerable but nothing to bragg on.
"After she was Jayhawked and brought down South, they sold her to John Kelly, a man in Arkansas somewhere.
She belonged to John Kelly and his wife when freedom came. John Kelly and his wife kept her working for them
without pay for two years after she was free. They didn't pay her anything at all. They hardly gave her anything to
eat and wear. They didn't tell her she was free. She saw colored people going and coming in a way they wasn't used
to, and then she heard her Mistress' youngest daughter tell her mother, 'You ought to pay Hannah something now
because you know she is free as we are. And you ought to give her something to eat and wear.' The mother said,
'You know I can't do that hard work; I'm not used to it.' After hearing this my mother talked to the colored people
that would pass by and she learned for sho enough she was free.
"There was a colored man there that they were keeping too. One Sunday, they were taking him to church and
leaving my mother behind. She said to them, 'Well, I will be gone when you come back, so you better leave Bill
here this morning.' Her old mistress said to her, 'Yes; and we'll come after you and whip you every step of the way
back.' But she went while they were at church and they did not catch her either.
"The Saturday before that she made me a dress out of the tail of an old bonnet and a big red handkerchief. Made
waist, sleeves and all out of that old bonnet and handkerchief. She left right after they left for church, and she
dressed me up in my new dress. She put the dress on me and went down the road. She didn't know which way to go.
She didn't know the way nor which direction to take. She walked and she walked and she walked. Then she would
step aside and listen and ask the way.
"It was near night when she found a place to stay. The people out in the yard saw her pass and called to her. It was
the youngest daughter of Mrs. Kelly, the one she had overheard telling her mother she ought to set her free and pay
her. She stayed with John Kelly's daughter two or three days. I don't know what her name was, only she was a
Kelly. Then she got out among the colored people and got to working and got some clothes for herself and me.
From then on, she worked and taken care of me.
"From there she went to Pocahontas and worked and stayed there till I was about fifteen years old. Meanwhile, she
married in Pocahontas. Then she moved to Newport. When I was fifteen, I married in Newport. My mother
supported herself by cooking and washing. Then she got a chance to work on a small boat cooking and doing the
boat washing, and there would be weeks that some of the deck hands would have to help her because they would
have such a crowd of raftsmen. Sometimes there would be twenty or thirty of them raftsmen - men who would cut
the logs and raft them to go and bring them down the river. Then the deck hands would have to help her. I too
would have to wash the dishes and help out.
"I went to school in Pocahontas and met my future husband (Travis). I brought many a waiter to serve when they
had a crowd. I took Travis to the boat and he was hired to wait on the men. When they had just the crew - Captain,
Clerk, Pilot, Engineer, Mate, and it seems there was another one - I waited on the table myself. I help peel the
potatoes and turn the meat. When we had that big run, then Mr. Travis and some of the others would come down
and help me. The boat carried freight, cotton, and nearly anything might near that was shipped down to town.
Pocahontas was a big shipping place.
"My mother said they used to jump over the broom stick and count that married. The only amusement my mother
had was work. I don't know if she knowed there was such a thing as Christmas.
"Mother's little house was a log cabin like all the other slaves had.
"They didn't give her anything much to eat. They was farmers. They raised their own cattle and hogs. The niggers
did the same - that is, the niggers raised everything and got a little to eat. They had one nigger man that was around
the house and others for the field. They didn't allow the slaves to raise anything for themselves and they didn't give
them much.
"The slaves made their own clothes and their own cloth. They would not let the slaves have anything much. To keep
them from being stark naked, they'd give them a piece to wear.
"Mama got to see her mother in 1885. When I married she left and went to Missouri and found her sister and
half-sister and her mother and brother or cousin. She found her sister's oldest daughter. She was a baby laying in the
cradle when mama ran through the field to get away from a young man that wanted to talk to her.
"My grandmother was a full-blooded Indian. Her husband was a French Negro. Nancy Cheatham was her name.
"The Ku Klux never bothered us. They bothered some people about a mile from us. They took out the old man and
whipped him. They made his wife get up and dance and she was in a delicate state. They made her get out of bed
and dance, and after that they took her and whipped her and beat her, and she was in a delicate state too.
"There was a man there in Black Rock though that stopped them from bothering anybody. He killed one of them.
They went to the train. They was raging around there then. He got off the train and they tried to take him to jail. The
jail was way out through the woods. He hadn't done anything at all. They just took hold of him to take him to the
jail because he had just come into the town. They had tugged him down the road and when they got to the woods,
he took out his gun and killed one of them, and the rest left him alone. The man who was killed had a wife and four
or five children. They sent the nigger to the penitentiary. He stayed there about a year and come out. That broke up
the Ku Klux around Black Rock and Portia. They never seemed to get much enjoyment out of it after that.
"I heard from different ones' talk that a big hogshead full of money was given to the Negroes by the Queen, but they
never did get it. I think they said the queen sent that money. I reckon it was Queen Victoria, but I don't know. But
the white folks got it and kept it for themselves.
"Didn't nobody have any rights then. They would just put em up on a block and auction them off. The one that give
the most he would take em. Didn't nobody have no schooling only white folks. The white children would go to
school but they didn't allow her to go.
"Once there was a slave woman. They worked her day and night. She had a little log cabin of her own. The spirit
used to come to her at night and tell her if she would follow them she wouldn't have to work all the rest of her life.
At first she was scared. But finally, she got used to them and she listened to them. She got directions from them and
followed them. She went up into the loft and found a whole lot of money hid there. She took it and built her a new
house and used it. I heard my grandmother tell this. That was my step-grandmother named Dilsey.
"One of my bosses had a lot of money and he hid it in a cave. They tried to find it and to make my mother tell where
it was hid, but she didn't know and couldn't tell. They came back several times and tried to find him at home but
they couldn't catch him. That was in Missouri before freedom came.
"I hate my father. He was white. I never did have no use for him. I never seen him because Mama was jayhawked
from the place. I never heard my mother say much about him either, except that he was red-headed. He was my
mother's master. My mother was just forced. I hate him."
Interviewer Miss Irene Robertson"
