7. Special skills and interests—Quilt making and knitting.
8. Community and religious activities—Assisted husband in ministry.
9. Description of informant—Hair divided into many pigtails and wrapped with rags. Skin, dark. Medium height, slender, clothing soiled.
10. Other points gained in interview—Spends all her time piecing quilts, aside from housework.
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Hettie Mitchell (mulatto)
Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 69
"I am sixty-nine years old. I was raised in Dyersburg, Tennessee. I can tell you a few things mother told us. My own grandma on mother's side was in South Carolina. She was stole when a child and brought to Tennessee in a covered wagon. Her mother died from the grief of it. She was hired out to nurse for these people. The people that stole her was named Spence. She was a house woman for them till freedom. She was never sold. Spences was not cruel people. Mother was never sold. She was the mother of twelve and raised nine to a good age—more than grown. The Spences seemed to always care for her children. When I go to Dyersburg they always want us to come to see them and they treat us mighty well.
"Mother was light. She said she had Indian strain (blood) but father was very light and it was white blood but he never discussed it before his children. So I can't tell you excepting he said he was owned by the Brittians in South Carolina. He said his mother died soon after he was sold. He was sold to a nigger trader and come in the gang to Memphis, Tennessee and was put on the block and auctioned off to the highest bidder. He was a farm hand.
"Mother married father when she was nineteen years old. She was a house girl. She lived close to her old mistress. She was very, very old before she died she nearly stayed at my mother's house. Her mind wasn't right and mother understood how to take care of her and was kind to her. The Spences heard about grandma. They wrote and visited years after when mother was a girl.