"One day I'm in a 'simmon tree in middle a li'l pond, eatin' 'simmons, and my sister, Mandy, come runnin'. She say, 'Us niggers am free.' I looks over to the house and seen the niggers pilin' they li'l bunch of clothes and things outside they cabins. Then mammy come runnin' with some other niggers and mammy was head runner. I clumb down out that tree and run to meet her. She say Marse Tom done told her he gwine keep me and pay her for it. She's a-scared I'll stay if I wants to or not and she begs me not to.
"We gits up to the house and all the niggers standin' there with they li'l bundles on they head and they all say, 'Where we goin'?'
"Mammy said, 'I don't know where you all gwine but me, myself, am gwine to go to Miss Mary.' So all the niggers gits in the cart with mammy and we goes to Miss Mary. She meets us by the back door and say, 'Come in, Jane, and all you chillen and all the rest of you. You can see my door am open and my smokehouse door am open to you and I'll bed you down till we figurates a way for you.'
"We all cries and sings and prays and was so 'cited we didn't eat no supper, though mammy stirs up some victuals.
William Moore
"It warn't long afore we found places to work. Miss Mary found us a place with a fine white man and we works on sharance and drifts round to some other places and lives in Corsicana for awhile and buys mammy a li'l house and she died there.
"I got married and had three chillen, cute, fetchin' li'l chillen, and they went to school. Wasn't no trouble 'bout school then, but was when 'mancipation come. My brother Ed was in school then and the Ku Klux come and drove the Yankee lady and gen'man out and closed the school.
"My chillen growed up and my wife died and I spent mos' my days workin' hard on farms. Now I'm old and throwed 'way. But I'm thankful to Gawd and praiseful for the pension what lets me have a li'l somethin' to eat and a place to stay."