"My father married in slave time. You know, they married in slave time. I have heard people talking about it. I have heard some people say they married over 'gain when freedom came. My father had a marriage certificate, and I didn't hear him say anything about being married after freedom. I have seen the certificate lots of times. I don't know the date of it. The certificate was issued in Sumner County, Tennessee.
"My father and mother belonged to different masters. My mother's master was a Murray. She had a good many people. Her name before she married was Mary Murray. I don't know just how my mother and father met. The two places weren't far apart. They lived a good distance from each other though, and I remember hearing him tell how he had to go across the fields to get to her house after he was through with the day's work. The pateroles got after him once. They didn't catch him, so they didn't do anything to him. He skipped them some way or another.
"I have heard them say that before the slaves were set free the soldiers were going 'round doing away with everything that they could get their hands on. Just a while before they were set free, my father took my mother and the children one night and slipped off. He went to Nashville. That was during the War. It wasn't long after that till everybody was set free. They never did capture him and get him back.
"During the War they went around pressing men into service. Finally once, they caught him but they let him go. I don't know how he got away.
"I can remember he said once they got after him and there was a white man and his family living in the house. He rented a room from the white man. That was in Nashville. These pateroles or whatever they was got after him and claimed they were coming to get him, and the old man and the old woman he stayed with took him upstairs and said they would protect him if the pateroles came back. I don't know whether they came back or not, but they never got him.
"My father supported himself and his family in Nashville by following his trade. He seems to have gotten along all right. He never seemed to have any trouble that I heard him speak of.
"I was born in 1867 in Nashville, Tennessee, about half a block from the old Central Tennessee College[G]. I think it became Walden University later on, and I think that it's out now. That's an old school. My oldest sister was graduated from it. I could have been if I hadn't taken up the married notion.
"I got part of my schooling in Nashville and part here. When I left Nashville, I was only a child nine years old. I only went to school four sessions after we came out here. I didn't like out here. I wanted to stay back home. My father came out here because he had heard that he could make more money with his trade here than he could in Nashville, which he did. He was shoeing horses and building wagons and so on. Just in this blacksmithing and carpenter work.
"I wanted to learn that. I would stay 'round the shop and help him shoe horses. But they wouldn't let me take it up. I got so I could do carpenter work pretty good. First I learned how to make a box square—that is a hard job when a person doesn't know much.
"I never heard my father say anything about the food the slaves ate. I have heard him talk about the good times they had around hog killing. His master raised sweet potatoes and corn and wheat and things like that. I guess they ate just about what they raised.