“My old master in Virginia was Joe Hudson. My father used to ketch oysters and fish. We could look up the Patomac river and see the ships comin’ in. In Virginia I lived next to a free state and the runaways was tryin’ to get away. At Harper’s Ferry—that’s where old John Brown was carryin’ em across. My old mistis used to take the runaway folks when the dogs had bit their legs, and keep em for a week and cure em up. This time o’ year you could hear the bull whip. But I was lucky, they was good to me in Virginia and good to me in Arkansas.
“Yes, chile, I was in Alexandria, Virginia in Kinsale County when they come after me by night. I was hired out to Captain Jim Allen. I had been nursin’ for Captain Allen. He sailed on the sea. He was a good man. He was a Christian man. He never whipped me but once and that was for tellin’ a story, and I thank him for it. He landed his boat right at the landin’ on Saturday. Next day he asked me bout somethin’ and I told him a story. He said, ‘I’m gwine whip you Monday morning!’ He wouldn’t whip me on Sunday. He whipped me and I thank him for it. And to this day the Lindsey’s could trust me with anything they had.
“I was in Virginia a play-chile when the ships come down to get the gopher wood to build the war ships. Old mistis had a son and a daughter and we all played together and slep together. My white folks learned me my A B C’s.
“They come and got me and carried me to Richmond—that’s where they sold em. Sold five of us in one bunch. Sold my two brothers in New Orleans—Robert and Jesse. Never seed them no more. Never seed my mother again after I was sold.
“Yes, chile, I was here in Arkansas when the war started, so you know I been here a long time.
“I was here when they fit the last battle in Pine Bluff. They called it Marmaduke’s Battle and they fit it on Sunday morning. They took the old cotehouse for a battery and throwed up cotton bales for a breastworks. They fit that Sunday and when the Yankees started firin’ the Rebels went back to Texas or wherever they come from.
“When we heard the Yankees was comin’ we went out at night and hid the silver spoons and silver in the toilet and buried the meat. After the war was over and the Yankees had gone home and the jayhawkers had went in—then we got the silver and the meat. Yes, honey, we seed a time—we seed a time. I ain’t grumblin’—I tell em I’m havin’ a wusser time now than I ever had.
“Yankees used to call me a ‘know nothin’ cause I wouldn’t tell where things was hid.
“Yes, chile, I’m this way—I like everbody in this world. I never was a mother, but I raised everbody else’s chillun. I ain’t nothin’ but a old mammy. White and black calls me mamma. I’ll answer at the name.
“I was married twice. My last husband and me lived together fifty years. He was a preacher. My first husband, the old rascal—he was so mean to me I had to get rid of him.