"How be you?" she asked pleasantly when answering my knock at her door. When it was explained that her recollections about slave life before the war were wanted, she beamed delightedly.
"Yes'm. Come on in an' set, an' soon's I fix the fire I'll tell you everything about slave times. Everything I kin remember."
She wiped off a chair for her visitor, then busied herself at the old wood and coal cook stove, where some vegetables were simmering in an antiquated iron kettle, and "fat meat" was frying in the skillet.
"I was a slave," she stated. "I was born in Kentucky. In Grayson or Hardin County. I don't know which 'zactly, 'cause we lived in both counties; an' I never did think to ask ole Miss Howard who raised me; and I forgot to ask my mother if she knowed, and I don't think she knowed." Sarah paused for a moment, then continued plaintively, "I wish I knowed for sure."
"Who was old Miss Howard?"
"She was white folks. I was raised by de Howards. Mr. and Mrs. Jim Howard. They owned me. We called him Pap, and her Old Miss. My mother's name was Waggoner. She belonged to Mr. Howard too. My father he belonged to another man and lived on a farm near us. No mam, no'm, we was never sold. I'll tell you how 'twas. You see, Mr. Howard's father—he came over from England. He called all his sons to his bedside at de last and gave each of them some of de colored people and told them to take good care of them and never to let them be sold. I had a cousin, June, who was sold here at de courthouse door in Savannah. Him and another boy was sold down South.
"The Howards brought me from Kentucky to Missouri. That was befo' de war. I've been here a long time. I'm 93 years old.
"Sure I know how old I is", she remonstrated.
"I's 93 years old right now (1937). And I knows my birthday too. I knows it for sure. It come on February 17th. I'se sure about dat, for it comes so close to dat of Abe Lincoln. His birthday is February 12th."
Memories of the past surged through Aunt Sarah's mind and awakened emotions. She rose to her feet, and speaking with the enraptured ecstasy of her race when roused by religious fervor, testified.