Hard on a woman to run a farm by herself. Well now, I don't know. I made out. I raised my children and raised them healthy. I got along well with the farm owner. You might know when I was let to stay on one place for 15 years. You know I must have treated the land right and worked it fair.
Yes ma'am I remembers lots. Seems like women folks remembers better than men. I've got a good daughter. I'm still strong and can get about good. Guess the Lord has been good to me."
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Jennie Ferrell, West Memphis, Arkansas
Age: 65
"I was born in Yellowbush County, Mississippi close to Grenada. Grandmother come from North Carolina. They wouldn't sell grandpa. He was owned by Laston. They never met again. She brought two boys with her. She was a Pernell. Her master brought her away and would have brought her husband but they wouldn't sell. She said durin' her forty years in slavery she never got a whoopin'. She was a field hand. After she come to Mississippi they was so good to her they called her free. She was a midwife. She doctored the rich white and colored. She rode horseback, she said, far and near. In Grenada after freedom she walked. They called her free her master was so good to her. I don't know how she learned to be a midwife. Her master was Henry Pernell. He owned a small place twelve miles from Grenada and another place in the Mississippi bottoms. My folks become renters after freedom. I don't know if they rented from him but I guess they did.
"The Ku Klux never bothered them that I ever heard them mention."