“No sir, I don’t remember hearing my parents ever tell me just when I was born, the year or the month, but it was sometime during the War. My parents’ master was named Mentor—spelled M-e-n-t-o-r. We come to Pope County several years after the War, and I have lived here in Russellville forty years and raised our family here. Father passed away about fifteen years ago.
“Mother used to tell me that the master wasn’t overly kind to them. I remember she used to talk of some money being promised to them after they were freed, but I don’t know how much. But I do know that none was ever paid to them.
“No sir, I cannot read or write.
“I have been a member of the A. M. E. Church ever since I was a little girl.”
NOTE: Mrs. House is very neat in her dress and general deportment, is industrious, and keeps busy working here and there at odd jobs, but her memory is very uncertain as to many important details about her ancestry.
NOV 30 1936
Mrs. Mildred Thompson
Mrs. Carol Graham
El Dorado District
Ex-Slave—Hoodoo—Haunted Houses
Aunt Pinkey Howard, an old negress of slavery days, can’t “comember” her age but she must be about 85 or 86 years old as she was about fourteen or fifteen when the war closed. In speaking of those days Aunt Pinkie said:
“Oooh, chile, you ought to been there when Mr. Linktum come down to free us. Policemen aint in it. You ought ter seen them big black bucks. Their suits was so fine trimmed with them eagle buttons and they wuz gold too. And their shoes shined so they hurt your eyes. I tell yo ah cant comember my age but it’s been a long time ago.
“My ole Marsa Holbrook lived at Hillsboro and he wuz a good marsta. I never went hungry or wid out cloes in them days. Slavery days was good old days. These days is hard days. Po’ ole neeger caint git enough to feed herself. Them days weuns made our cloth and growed our food and never paid for it. Never did want for nothin’ and Marster had heaps of slaves. Use to bring them across Moro Bay and them neegers always fighting and running off. They’d run off and go across Moro Bay trying to get back home. Marsta neva went after em. Said: ‘Let ’em go. Aint no count no ways.’