"We had better houses then, good plank houses, and de big house was sho' big and nice. 'Course they didn't larn us read and write, and didn't 'low no church, but us steal off and have it sometimes, and iffen old Marse cotch us he give us a whalin'. We didn't have no funerals like now, they jus' dig a hole and make you a box, and throw you in and cover you up. But de white folks fed us good and give us good clothes. We wore red russet shoes and good homespun clothes, and we done better'n now.
"Come Christmas time old marse sometimes give us two-bits and lots of extra eats. Iffen it come Monday, we has de week off. But we has to watch the eats, 'cause niggers what they marsters don't give 'em no Christmas sneak over and eat it all up. Sometimes we have dances, and I'd play de fiddle for white folks and cullud folks both. I'd play, 'Young Girl, Old Girl', 'High Heel Shoes,' and 'Calico Stockings.'
"When we was freed we was all glad, but I stayed 'round and worked for Marse Dave and he pays me a little. Finally Lucy and me gits married out of de Book and comes down here to Marse McNeel's. They puts us in debt and makes us work so many years to pay for it. They gives us our own ground and sometimes we makes two bales of cotton on it. 'Course, we works for them, too, and they pays us a little and when Christmas comes we can buy our own things. I used to haul sugar and 'lasses for Papa John up to Brazoria and sometimes to Columbia.
"Yes, suh, I been here a long time, long time. All my own stuff is dead now, I guess. I got grandchillen in Galveston, I think, but all my own stuff is dead."
[Hagar Lewis]
Hagar Lewis, tall and erect at 82 years of age, lives at 4313 Rosa St., El Paso, Texas. She was born a slave of the Martin family and was given with her mother and family to Mary Martin, when she married John M. McFarland. They lived near Tyler, Smith Co., Texas. When freed she remained with the McFarlands until she married A. Lewis and moved to San Antonio, Texas. Widowed early, she raised two sons. One, chief electrical engineer with the U.S. government, lives in New York City. He provides for his aged mother.
[HW: Illegible]
"I was born Jan. 12th, 1855. My first owners was the Martins, and when their daughter, Mary, married, I was give to her. My mama lived to 112 years old. She had sixteen children. I was the baby.
"Missus Mary McFarland, my mother's missus and mine, taught us children with her own; learned us how to read and write. She treated us just like we were her children. We had very strict leaders, my mother and Missus Mary. She'd say, 'Mammy Lize (my mother), 'you'll have to come and whop Oscar and Hagar, they's fightin!' Mammy Lize would say, 'No, I won't whop 'em, I'll just punish 'em.' And we'd have to stand with our backs to each other. My missus never did much whoppin'.
"We lived in cabins made of logs and chinked with mud mortar. We had beds that had only one leg; they fit in each corner of the walls. They was strong, stout. We could jump on 'em and have lots of fun. We didn' stay in quarters much. The cabins was near a creek where willows grew and we'd make stick horses out of 'em. We called it our horse lot. On the farm was a spring that threw water high, and we'd go fishing in a big lake on one corner of the farm. Marster owned half a league, maybe more.