She spoke as follows:
“Of course you have heard that I was free born?”
“Yes,” I replied, “you were the first free born person of your race, that I ever saw.”
“I was born near Spotsylvania, Virginia, in 1815. That’s been a long time ago. I’ll soon be eighty-six years old. My children, and grand-children are kind to me, and don’t want me to work, but I am not satisfied to sit idle.
“My father was a Frenchman of some importance, by the name of Truell; my only recollection of him was his long curly hair that came down to his shoulders. My mother was free born, and gave me away.
“One bright spring day she was sweeping her front yard, and I, a little girl of six years, was taking up the trash, that she swept together, when a pretty white girl sixteen, or seventeen, rode past the gate, and called for a drink of water. As she handed the drinking gourd back, she said, ‘That’s a handy little girl you have there, I wish you’d give her to me.’ ‘All right,’ mother replied, and the lady passed on, and nothing more was thought of it, till nearly a year afterward, a nice covered wagon drove up to our gate, and the same lady called for me.
“A few days before, she had married a Mr. Edmond Winston, and they were going to housekeeping.
“My mother gathered together my little budget of clothes, and handed little Kitty, and the clothes over to the colored driver, saying, ‘Here take her.’
“And they took me; I have never thought mother acted right.
“The new married couple lived in Virginia about a year after that, when they decided to come to Tennessee, and brought me with them. We came a long journey, in that same covered wagon, and settled in District No. 1, Montgomery county, near where Fortson’s Spring now is.