Reeves' story was taken because of his clear memories of his parents and grandparents. He described to me an old log house still standing in Union County.
I got all agog with excitement. I asked him for the exact location. He gave it. Then I suggested that maybe he would go down with me sometime to visit it. He agreed. Then at the last moment caution began to assert itself, and I said, "When was the last time you saw the cabin?"
He reflected a moment; then he said, "Waal, I guess it was a little more 'an fifty years ago."
I lost my enthusiasm.
Reeves told the Phill-la-me-york story which was told by Austin Pen Parnell. You will find it in his story. The only difference between his story and Parnell's is that Reeves had the conclusion. He claimed that the old master got in a fight with one of the slaves present and yelled out his identity when he was getting badly beaten. The story sounds like it came from the Arkansas folklore collection or from someone who contributed it to that collection.
An aftermath of Reeves' story is finding out that most people consider Henry Banner, whose story has been previously given and whose age was given as eighty-nine, is considered by many persons to be ninety-four.
Neely, one of the adult school-teachers, says that he has gone over Banner's life carefully with him, and that he must have been twenty-one or twenty-two at the close of the War because during slavery, he had experience at logging, or rather at logrolling, a work so difficult that only full-grown men were used at it. Since Banner is slightly built, there is scarcely a possibility that he did such work before the normal time.
[HW: Cf. 30715 for interview with Parnell.]