"We made everything we wore. Raised and made the cloth and the leather, and the clothes and the shoes.

Contacts with Slaves and Slave Owners

"I don't know nothin' about slavery. I didn't have nothin' to do with them folks. We picked em up on our way in our travels and they had been treated like dogs and hadn't been told they were free. We'd tell em they was free and let em go.

Leaving Richmond

"All I can tell you is that we come on down and never stopped until we got to Memphis, and we tarried there twenty-five years. We came through Louisiana and Georgia on our way out here and picked up many slaves who didn't know they was free. They was using these little boats when we came out here. In Louisiana and Georgia when we came out here, they weren't thinkin' bout telling the niggers they were free. And they weren't in Clarksville either. We landed in Little Rock and made it our headquarters.

Occupations

"Christian work has been the banner of my life-labor work, giving messages about the Bible, teaching. Mostly they kept me riding—I mean with the doctors. When we were riding, the doctors didn't go in a mother's room; he sent the rider in. They call em nurses now and handle them indifferently. The doctor jus' stopped in the parlor and made his money jus' sitting there and we women did all the work. In 1912, I gave up my riding license. It was too rough for me in Arkansas. And then they wouldn't allow me anything either.

"Now I have a poor way of making a living because they have taken away everything from me. I prays and lives by the Bible. I can't get nothin' from my husband's endowment. He was an old soldier in the Civil War on the Confederate side and I used to get $30 a month from Pine Bluff. He was freed there. Wilson was President at the time I put in for an increase for him in the days of his sickness. He was down sick thirty years and only got $30 a month. The pension was increased to $60 for about one year. He died in 1917, March 10, and was in his ninetieth year or more from what he told me. The picture shows it too.

Voting

"Paying my taxes was the votin' I ever done. They never could get me to gee nor haw. There wasn't any use voting when you can see what's on the future before you. I never had many colored friends. None that voted. And very few Indians and just a few others. And them that stood by me all the while, they're sleeping.