"I have heard my mother tell about slaves bein' sold. It was kinda like a fair they have now. They would go there, and some of 'em sold for a thousand dollars. They said somethin' about puttin' 'em on a block; the highest bidder, you know, would buy 'em. I don't know how they got 'em there, for they wasn't much of a way for 'em to go 'cept by oxen, you know. It was back in Alabama where she saw all that. Of course, there was more of that down in Mississippi than Alabama, but she didn't know nothin' about that.
"I remember the cotton they raised on the Patterson place. They picked the seeds out with their fingers and made cloth out of it. They would take coarse wool--not merino wool, for that was too fine--and use the coarse wool for a filler. That was what they would make me do, pick the seed out of that cotton to keep me out of mischief. I remember that pretty well. Kep' me tied down, and I would beg the old man to let me go, and when he did, if I got into anything, I was back there pickin' seeds pretty quick.
"We would get up about daybreak. They might have got up before I knew anything about it, but sometimes I got up with my mother.
"What little school I went to was German, at D'Hanis and Castroville. I went to the priest at D'Hanis and to the sisters at Castroville. No education to amount to anything. That was after we were freed. I went to school at the same time that Johnny Ney and his sister, Mary, went to school. I would like to see Johnny and talk to him now. Your grandmother and her sisters and brothers went to that school and I remember all of 'em well. One of them boys, George, was killed and scalped by the Indians, and that was caused by them boys playin' and scarin' each other all the time. He was with them Rothe boys, and they always had an Indian scare up someway to have fun with each other, especially to scare George. So when they did discover the Indians and hollered to George, he wouldn't run, because they had fooled 'im so much. So the Indians slipped up on him and killed 'im.
"Yes, I knew all the Millers better than I did nearly any of the rest of the old settlers up there. Aunt Dorcas, that was George's mother, she nursed me through the measles. I was awful sick, and when my mother heard it and come up after me, she told my mother to leave me there, she would take care of me. I tell you she took good care of me too.
"But that was after freedom. You see, my mother didn't want to come to Texas. She laid out nearly two years before they got hold of her and got her to come to Texas. Alabama wasn't thickly settled then. There was bottoms of trees and wild fruit she could eat. She stayed out by herself, and would come and get something to eat and leave again. But Patterson told her if she would come to Texas she would be treated right and not be whipped or nothin' like that. And so far as I know, she never was whipped. He kep' his word with her. She was useful and they needed her. She wove the cloth and was such a good worker.
"The first cow we ever owned, we cut cockleburrs out of a field of about seven or eight acres. Mr. John Ware gave her a cow to cut the burrs out.
"After the war, my uncle carried my mother and his wife and chillen away, and when they started with Margaret--she was his niece and my cousin--they overtook 'em and took Margaret back. She was house girl, she didn't do nothin' but work in the house. I don't know whether they ever paid her anything or not. They needed her to wait on the old lady.
"I don't know how that come about when they told 'em they was free. I don't know whether mother read it in the paper or he come and told 'em. We went on, and came right on up the same creek to a place where a man had a ranch by the name of Roney. It was an old abonded (abandoned) place, and we didn't have anything to eat. My uncle got out and rustled around to get some bread stuff and got some co'n, but while he was gone was when we suffered for something to eat. We didn't have anything to kill wild game with. We would fish a little. When he left he went up in the Davenport settlement, up there about where your grandfather lived. We got milk and careless weeds, but that was all we had, and we were awful glad to see the co'n come. And that was my first taste of javelin (javelina). It evidently was an old male javelin, for I couldn't eat it. I don't think my uncle ever stole anything in his life. I was with him all the time and I know he didn't. My mother, she went over to Davenports' and my uncle got out and rustled to see where he could get something to do. So they moved up in the Sabinal Canyon and he got on Old Man Joel Fenley's place.
"Old Man 'Parson' Monk, I think, was the first person I ever heard preach. That was down here in the Patterson settlement (formerly a settlement six miles south of the present town of Sabinal). The preachin' was right there on the place. I joined the church after I was grown, but that was the cullud church, then. My mother she joined the white church. She joined the Hardshell Baptist. She never did live in any colony and the cullud church was too far. They had lots of camp meetin's. I never was at but one camp meetin' that I know of. They would preach and shout and have a good time and have plenty to eat. That was what most of 'em went for. But the churches then seemed to be more serious than they are now. They preached the 'altar.' You know, like anyone wanted to join the church, they was a mourner, you see, seekin' for religion. And they would sing and pray with 'em till they professed the religion. I had a sister that never went to a meetin' that she didn't get to shoutin' and shout to the end of the sermon. I always tried to get out of the way before I joined because if she got to me, she would beat on me and talk to me. We always tried to get to her, if she had her baby in her arms, because she would jes' throw that baby away when the Spirit moved her.