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1007 Izard, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age 71
"My father said he had a real good master. When he got up large enough to work, his master learned him a trade. He
learned the mechanic's trade, such as blacksmithing and working in shops. He learned him all of that. And then he
learned him to be a shoemaker. You see, he learned him iron work and woodworking too. And he never whipped
him during slavery time. Positively didn't allow that.
"My father's name was Jordan Kirkpatrick. His master was named Kirkpatrick also. My father was born in
Tennessee in Sumner County.
"My father married in slave time. You know, they married in slave time. I have heard people talking about it. I have
heard some people say they married over 'gain when freedom came. My father had a marriage certificate, and I
didn't hear him say anything about being married after freedom. I have seen the certificate lots of times. I don't
know the date of it. The certificate was issued in Sumner County, Tennessee.
"My father and mother belonged to different masters. My mother's master was a Murray. She had a good many
people. Her name before she married was Mary Murray. I don't know just how my mother and father met. The two
places weren't far apart. They lived a good distance from each other though, and I remember hearing him tell how
he had to go across the fields to get to her house after he was through with the day's work. The pateroles got after
him once. They didn't catch him, so they didn't do anything to him. He skipped them some way or another.
"I have heard them say that before the slaves were set free the soldiers were going 'round doing away with
everything that they could get their hands on. Just a while before they were set free, my father took my mother and
the children one night and slipped off. He went to Nashville. That was during the War. It wasn't long after that till
everybody was set free. They never did capture him and get him back.
"During the War they went around pressing men into service. Finally once, they caught him but they let him go. I
don't know how he got away.
"I can remember he said once they got after him and there was a white man and his family living in the house. He
rented a room from the white man. That was in Nashville. These pateroles or whatever they was got after him and
claimed they were coming to get him, and the old man and the old woman he stayed with took him upstairs and said
they would protect him if the pateroles came back. I don't know whether they came back or not, but they never got
him.
"My father supported himself and his family in Nashville by following his trade. He seems to have gotten along all
right. He never seemed to have any trouble that I heard him speak of.
"I was born in 1867 in Nashville, Tennessee, about half a block from the old Central Tennessee College.* I think it
became Walden University later on, and I think that it's out now. That's an old school. My oldest sister was
graduated from it. I could have been if I hadn't taken up the married notion.
"I got part of my schooling in Nashville and part here. When I left Nashville, I was only a child nine years old. I
only went to school four sessions after we came out here. I didn't like out here. I wanted to stay back home.
My father came out here because he had heard that he could make more money with his trade here than he could in
Nashville, which he did. He was shoeing horses and building wagons and so on. Just in this blacksmithing and
carpenter work.
"I wanted to learn that. I would stay 'round the shop and help him shoe horses. But they wouldn't let me take it up. I
got so I could do carpenter work pretty good. First I learned how to make a box square--that is a hard job when a
person doesn't know much.
"I never heard my father say anything about the food the slaves ate. I have heard him talk about the good times they
had around hog killing. His master raised sweet potatoes and corn and wheat and things like that. I guess they ate
just about what they raised.
"My father never was a sharecropper. He knew nothing of rural work except the mechanical side of it. He could
make or do anything that was needed in fixing up something to do farm work with. I have seen him make and
sharpen plows. The first cotton stalk cutter that was made within ten miles of here was made by my father. The
people 'round here were knocking off cotton stalks with sticks until my father began making the cutter. Then
everybody began using his cutter. That is, the different farmers and sharecroppers around here began using them. I
was scared of the first one he made. He made six saws or knives and sharpened them and put them on a section of a
log so that it could be hitched to a mule and pulled through the fields and cut the cotton stalks down.
"My mother's old master was her father. I think my father's father was a Negro and his mother was an Indian. My
mother's mother was an American woman, that is, a slavery woman. My mother and father were lucky in having
good people. My mother was treated just like one of her master's other children.
My father's master had an overseer but he never was allowed to touch my father. Of course my mother never was
under an overseer."
Interviewer Miss Irene Robertson"
