"Then we comes to a white man's house and asks could we stay all night. He give us a good supper and let us sleep in his barn and breakfast next mornin' and his wife fixes up some victuals in a box and we starts to Mansfield. We was sceered most to death when we come to that man's house, fear he'd take us back to old man Bias. But we had to have somethin' to eat from somewheres. When mammy tells him how we left old man Bias, he says, 'That damn rascal ought to be Ku Kluxed.' He told us not to be 'fraid.
"We come to Mansfield and finds Frank and mammy hires me and James out to a white widow lady in Mansfield, and she sho' a good, sweet soul. She told mammy to come on and stay there with us till she git a job. We stayed with her two years.
"Then old man Charlie Stewart brung us to Marshall, and when I's eighteen I marries and lives with him twenty-six years. He worked on the railroad and helped move the shops from Hallsville to Marshall. He laughed and said the first engine they run from here to Jefferson had a flour barrel for a smokestack. He died and I married Tom Osborne, but he's dead eight years.
"I raises a whole passel chillen and got a passel grandchillen. They allus brings me a hen or somethin'. My boy is cripple and lives with me, and my gal's husband works for Wiley College. Old man Bias' son got in jail and sent for me. He say, 'Annie, you is my sister, and help me git out of jail.' I told him I didn't help him in and wouldn't help him out. I washed and ironed and now gits $9.00 pension. My boy got his leg cut off by the railroad. He can't do much."
[Horace Overstreet]
Horace Overstreet was born in Harrison Co., Texas, in 1856, a slave of M.J. Hall. He was brought to Beaumont when a youth and still lives there.
"I born near Marshall what was de county seat and my master was call' Hall. My mother name Jennie and my father's name Josh. He come back from de 'federate War and never got over it. He in de army with he young massa.
"Dat old plantation must have been 'bout 200 acres or even mo', and 'bout 500 head of slaves to work it. Massa Hall, he big lawyer and bought more niggers every year. He kep' a overseer what was white and a nigger driver. Sometime dey whip de slaves for what dey call dis'bedjonce. Dey tie 'em down and whip 'em. But I was raise' 'round de house, 'cause I a fav'rite nigger.
"De niggers didn't have no furniture much in dere houses, maybe de bedstead nail up to de side de house, and some old seats and benches. De rations was meat and meal and syrup 'lasses. Dey give 'em de shirt to wear, made out of lowers. Dat what dey make de cotton sack out of. De growed people has shoes, but de chillen has no need.
"Christmas time and Fourth July dey have de dance, jus' a reg'lar old breakdown dance. Some was dancin' Swing de Corner, and some in de middle de floor cuttin' de chicken wing. Dey has banjo pickers. Seem like my folks was happy when dey starts dancin'. Iffen dey start without de permit, de patterroles run up on dem and it 150 lashes. Law, dem niggers sho' scatter when de patterroles comes. Jus' let a nigger git de start and de patterrole sho' got to git a move on hisse'f to git dat nigger, 'cause dat nigger sho' move 'way from dat place!