"I think young folks, both colors, shuns work. Times is running away with itself. Folks is living too fast. They ride too fast and drinks and do all kinds of meanness.
"My father was a mighty poor hand at talking. He said he was sold in a gang shipped to Memphis from New Orleans. Master Allen bought him. He was a boy. I don't know how big. He cleaned fish—scaled them. He butchered and in a few months Mr. Allen set him free. It was surrender when he was sold but Mr. Allen didn't know it or else he meant to keep him on a few years. When he got loose he started farming and farmed till he died. He farmed in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas. He owned a place but a drouth come along. He got in debt and white folks took it.
"I married in Mississippi. My husband immigrated from South Carolina. He was Joe Patton. I washed and ironed and farmed. I rather farm now if I was able.
"I never got no gov'ment help. I ain't posing it. It is a fine thing. I was in Tennessee when it come on. They said I'd have to stay here six months. I never do stay."
Interviewer: Mrs. Annie L. LaCotts
Person interviewed: Harriett McFarlin Payne
Dewitt, Arkansas
Age: 83
"Aunt Harriett, were you born in slavery time?"
"Yes, mam! I was big enough to remember well, us coming back from Texas after we refugeed there when the fighting of the war was so bad at St. Charles. We stayed in Texas till the surrender, then we all come back in lots of wagons. I was sick but they put me on a little bed and me and all the little chillun rode in a 'Jersey' that one of the old Negro mammies drove, along behind the wagons, and our young master, Colonel Bob Chaney rode a great big black horse. Oh! he nice-looking on dat horse! Every once and awhile he'd ride back to the last wagon to see if everything was all right. I remember how scared us chillun was when we crossed the Red River. Aunt Mandy said, 'We crossin' you old Red River today, but we not going to cross you any more, cause we are going home now, back to Arkansas.' That day when we stopped to cook our dinner I picked up a lot little blackjack acorns and when my mammy saw them she said, 'Throw them things down, chile. They'll make you wormy.' (I cried because I thought they were chinquapins.) I begged my daddy to let's go back to Texas, but he said, 'No! No! We going with our white folks.' My mama and daddy belonged to Col. Jesse Chaney, much of a gentleman, and his wife Miss Sallie was the best mistress anybody ever had. She was a Christian. I can hear her praying yet! She wouldn't let one of her slaves hit a tap on Sunday. They must rest and go to church. They had preaching at the cabin of some one of the slaves, and in the Summertime sometimes they had it out in the shade under the trees. Yes, and the slaves on each plantation had their own church. They didn't go galavanting over the neighborhood or country like niggers do now. Col. Chaney had lots and lots of slaves and all their houses were in a row, all one-room cabins. Everything happened in that one room,—birth, sickness, death and everything, but in them days niggers kept their houses clean and their door yards too. These houses where they lived was called 'the quarters'. I used to love to walk down by that row of houses. It looked like a town and late of an evening as you'd go by the doors you could smell meat a frying, coffee making and good things cooking. We were fed good and had plenty clothes to keep us dry and warm.
"Along about time for de surrender, Col. Jesse, our master, took sick and died with some kind of head trouble. Then Col. Bob, our young master, took care of his mama and the slaves. All the grown folks went to the field to work and the little chillun would be left at a big room called the nursing home. All us little ones would be nursed and fed by an old mammy, Aunt Mandy. She was too old to go to the field, you know. We wouldn't see our mammy and daddy from early in the morning till night when their work was done, then they'd go by Aunt Mandy's and get their chillun and go home till work time in the morning.