Interviewer: S.S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Mary Estes Peters,
3115 W. 17th Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 78
Biographical
Mary Estes Peters was born a slave January 30, 1860 in Missouri somewhere. Her mother was colored and her father white, the white parentage being very evident in her color and features and hair. She is very reticent about the facts of her birth. The subject had to be approached from many angles and in many ways and by two different persons before that part of the story could be gotten.
Although she was born in Missouri, she was "refugeed" first to Mississippi and then here, Arkansas. She is convinced that her mother was sold at least twice after freedom,—once into Mississippi, one into Helena, and probably once more after reaching Arkansas, Mary herself being still a very small child.
I think she is mistaken on this point. I did not debate with her but I cross-examined her carefully and it appears to me that there was probably in her mother's mind a confused knowledge of the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862. Lincoln's Compensation Emancipation plan advocated in March 1863, the Abolition in the District of Columbia in 1862 in April, the announcement of Lincoln's Emancipation intention in July 1862, the prohibition of slavery in present and future territories, June 19, 1862, together with the actual issuance of the Emancipation in September 1862, and the effectiveness of the proclamation in January 1, 1863, would well give rise to an impression among many slaves that emancipation had been completed.
As a matter of fact, Missouri did not secede; the Civil War which nevertheless ensued would find some slaveholders exposed to the full force of the 1862 proclamation in 1863 at the time of its first effectiveness. Naturally it did not become effective in many other places till 1865. It would very naturally happen then that a sale in Missouri in the latter part of 1862 or any time thereafter might be well construed by ex-slaves as a sale after emancipation, especially since they do not as a rule pay as much attention to the dates of occurrences as to their sequence. This interpretation accords with the story. Only such an explanation could make probable a narrative which places the subject as a newborn babe in 1860 and sold after slavery had ceased while still too young to remember. Her earliest recollections are recollections of Arkansas.
She has lived in Arkansas ever since the Civil War and in Little Rock ever since 1879. She made a living as a seamstress for awhile but is now unable to sew because of fading eyesight. She married in 1879 and led a long and contented married life until the recent death of her husband. She lives with her husband's nephew and ekes out a living by fragmentary jobs. She has a good memory and a clear mind for her age.
Slave After Freedom
"My mother was sold after freedom. It was the young folks did all that devilment. They found they could get some money out of her and they did it. She was put on the block in St. Louis and sold down into Vicksburg, Mississippi. Then they sold her into Helena, Arkansas. After that they carried her down into Trenton (?), Arkansas. I don't know whether they sold her that time or not, but I reckon they did. Leastways, they carried her down there. All this was done after freedom. My mother was only fifteen years old when she was sold the first time, and I was a baby in her arms. I don't know nothing about it myself, but I have heard her tell about it many and many a time. It was after freedom. Of course, she didn't know she was free.