"I heard my papa talk about the patrollers. He said they used to run them in many a time. That is the reason he had to cross the bridge that night going over the Mississippi into Georgia. The slaves had been set free in Georgia, and he wanted to get there from Alabama.
What the Slaves Got
"The slaves never got nothin' when they were freed. They just got out and went to work for themselves.
Marriage
"My father tended to the white folks' mules. He wasn't no soldier. When he married my mother, he was only fifteen years old. His master told him to go pick himself out a wife from a drove of slaves that were passing through, and he picked out my mother. They married by stepping over the broom. The old master pronounced them master and wife.
Slave Droves
"The drove passed through Alabama, but my father didn't know where it came from nor where it went. They were selling slaves. They would pick up a big lot of them somewhere, and they would drive them across the country selling some every place they stopped. My master bought my mother out of the drove. Droves came through very often. I don't know where they came from.
War Memories
"My father remembered coming through Alabama. He remembered the soldiers coming through Alabama. They didn't bother any colored people but they killed a lot of white people, tore up the town and took some white babies out and busted their brains out. That is what my father said. My father died in 1910. He was pushing eighty then and maybe ninety. He had a house full of grown children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. He wasn't able to do no work when he died. It was during the War that my father ran away into Georgia with me, too.
Breeding