"Soon after I's free a man come for me from Louisville to hire me as foreman in his cotton mule barn. So I went there and I worked in Kentucky for 18 year. Fifty-one years ago I married my ol' woman, Rachel Taylor, at Corsicana, Texas, and I think she's jes' as fine as the day I married her. We has six chillen and all works hard for a livin' and we got one lil' grandbaby 10 years ol'. She lives here at our house and we're educatin' her.
"I knows I's goin' to live to be over 100 years ol', 'cause my marster done tol' me so."
Monroe Brackins
Monroe Brackins
MONROE BRACKINS, born in Monroe Co., Mississippi, in 1853, was the property of George Reedes. He was brought to Medina County, Texas, when two years old. Monroe learned to snare and break mustangs and became a cowpuncher. He lives in Hondo, Texas. He has an air of pride and self-respect, and explained that he used little dialect because he learned to talk from the "white folks" as he was growing up.
"I was bo'n in Mississippi, Monroe County. I'm 84 years old. My master, George Reedes, brought me, my father and mother and my two sisters to Texas when I was two years old. My father was Nelson Brackins and my mother was Rosanna.