The petticoat is of white muslin with a fifty-two yard lace ruffle in sixteen tiers of lace with beading at the top. It was worn just after the Civil War.
There are also a baby dress and a baby petticoat fifty-six years old.
MAY 31 1938
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Elijah Henry Hopkins
1308½ Ringo Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 81
“My father’s master was old Tom Willingham, an awful big farmer who owned farms in Georgia and South Carolina, both. He lived in southwest Georgia in Baker County. Old man Willingham’s wife was Phoebe Hopkins. Her mother was old lady Hopkins. I don’t know what the rest of her name was. We never called her nothin’ but old lady Hopkins or Mother Hopkins. She was one of the richest women in the state. When she died, her estate was divided among her children and grandchildren. Her slaves were part of her estate. They were divided among her children and grandchildren, too. Tom Willingham’s family come in for its part. He had three sons, Tom, Jr., John, and Robert. My father already belonged to Tom Willingham, Sr., so he stayed with him. But my mother belonged to old lady Hopkins, and she went to Robert, so my daddy and mother were separated before I knew my daddy. My father stayed with old man Willingham until freedom.
“Robert Willingham was my mother’s master. He never married. When he died he willed all his slaves free. But his relatives got together and broke the will and never did let ’em go.
“When I saw my father to know him, I saw him out in Georgia. They told me that was my father. Then he had another wife and a lot of children. My mother brought me up and my father taken charge of me after she died and after freedom—about a year after. It was close to emancipation because the states were still under martial law.
“I was born May 15, 1856, in the Barnwell district, South Carolina. They used to call them districts then. It would be Barnwell County now. They changed and started calling ’em counties in 1866 or thereabouts. I was running around when they mustered the men in for the Civil War, and I was about nine years old when the War ended. I was about ten when my mother died and my father taken charge of me. I was taken from South Carolina when I was about four years old and carried into Georgia and stayed there until emancipation. My mother didn’t tarry long in Georgia after she was emancipated. She went back into South Carolina; but she died in a short time, as I just said. Then my father taken charge of me. I got married in South Carolina in 1885, and then I came out here in 1886—to Arkansas. Little Rock was the first place I came to. I didn’t stay here a great while. I went down to the Reeder farm on the Arkansas River just about sixteen miles above Pine Bluff. I started share cropping but taken down sick. I never could get used to drinking that bottom water. Then I went to Pine Bluff and went to work with the railroad and helped to widen the gauge of the Cotton Belt Road. Then the next year they started the Sewer Contract, and I worked in that and I worked on the first water plant they started. In working with the King Manufacturing Company I learned piping.
“I stayed in Pine Bluff sixteen years. My wife died August 1, 1901. A couple of years after that, I came back to Little Rock, and have been here ever since. I went to work on the Illinois Central Railroad just across the river, which is now the Rock Island Railroad. After it became the Rock Island, the bridge was built across the river east of Main Street. They used to go over the old Baring Cross Bridge and had to pay for it. The Missouri Pacific enjoined the Rock Island and wouldn’t let it go straight through, so they built their own bridge and belted the city and went on around. I got stricken down sick in 1930 and haven’t been able to do heavy work since. You know, a plumber and steam-fitter have to do awful heavy work.
“I get a little old age assistance from the state. They are supposed to give me commodities but my card got out and they ain’t never give me another one. I went down to see about it today, and they said they’d mail me another one.”