"Mr. Herring thought hard of me because I told the others the truth. I went into the office one day and Mr. Herring said, 'Parnell, I understand you have been knocking on me.' I said, 'Well, I'll tell you, Mr. Herring, if telling the truth about things is knocking on them, I certainly did.' He never said anything more about it, and I didn't either.
"I rented a place on Twelfth and Maple and then rented around there two or three times, and finally bought a place at 3704 West Twelfth Street. I moved to Little Rock March 18, 1911. That was twenty-seven years ago.
Parents
"My father was named Henry Parnell. He died in the year 1917 in the time of the great war. He was ninety-five years old when he died. His master had the same name. My mother's name was Priscilla Parnell. She belonged to the same family as he did. They married before freedom. My father was a farmer and my mother was a housewife and she'd work in the field too.
"My grandmother on my mother's side was named Hester Parnell. I don't know what her husband's name was. My mother, father, and grandmother were all from North Carolina. My grandmother did house and field work.
House
"My mother and father lived in a two-room house hewed out of big logs—great big logs. The logs were about four inches thick and twelve inches wide. It didn't take many of them to build a wall—about ten or twelve of them on a side. They were notched down so as to almost come together. They chinked up the cracks with mud and covered it with a board.
"I laid in bed many a night and looked up through the cracks in the roof. Snow would come through there when it snowed and cover the bed covers. We thought you couldn't build a roof so that it would keep out rain and snow, but we were mistaken. Before you would make a fire in them days, you had to sweep out the snow so that it wouldn't melt up in the house and make a mess. But we kept healthy just the same. Didn't have no pneumonia in those days.
"The house had two rooms about eight feet apart. The rooms were connected by a hall which we called a gallery in those days. The hall was covered by the same roof as the house and it had the same floor. The house sot east and west and had a chimney in each end. The chimneys were made out of sticks and mud. I can build a chimney now like that.
"It was large at the bottom and tapered at the top. It was about six or seven feet square at the bottom. It grew smaller as it went toward the top. You could get a piece of wood three and a half or four feet long in the boddom of it. Sometimes the wood would be too large to carry and you would just have to roll it in.