"I wore the bell night and day, and my father would chain me to a tree till I nearly died from the cold and bein' so hongry. My father didn't 'lieve in church and my missy 'lieved there a Lord, but I wouldn't have 'lieved her if she try larn me 'bout 'ligion, 'cause my father tell me I wasn't any more than a damn mule. I slep' on a chair and tried to res' till my father died, and then I sang all day, 'cause I knowed I wouldn't be treated so mean. When missy took that bell offen me I thinks I in Heaven 'cause I could lie down and go to sleep. When I did I couldn't wake up for a long time and when I did wake up I'd be scairt to death I'd see my father with his whip and that old bell. I'd jump out of bed and run till I give out, for fear he'd come back and git me.
"I was 'bout 17 year old then and I so happy not to have that bell on me. Missy make us work hard but she have plenty to eat and I could sleep. On Christmas she cook us a real dinner of beef meat.
"Plenty time I listens to the cannon popping till I mos' deaf, and I was messenger boy and spy on the blue bellies. When I'd git back to the Southern sojers I he'ped 'em bury they dead and some what was jus' wounded I he'ped carry home.
"When we heered was was over and we's free, we all jus' jumped up and hollers and dances. Missy, she cries and cries, and tells us we is free and she hopes we starve to death and she'd be glad, 'cause it ruin her to lose us. They was a big bunch of us niggers in town and we stirrin' 'round like bees workin' in and out a hive. We was jus' that way. I went wild and the first year I went north, but I come back 'gain to Texas.
"After 'while I marries a Indian maid. It was nothin' much but Indians 'round and there wasn't much law. I lived with her 'bout two year and then the Indians come and captured her jus' befo' she was to give birth. They kilt her or carried her 'way and lef' me for dead, and I never seed or heered of her since. While I was sick a outlaw, what was Tomas Jafferies, he'ped me git well and then I turns outlaw and follows all signs of Indians, all over the earth. But I never could git word of my wife.
"It mus' be 'bout 15 year after that, I marries Feline Ford, by a preacher. My first weddin' was common weddin' with the Indian maid. I jus' give her deerskin in front of Tomas Jefferies and she my wife."
[Allen Thomas]
Allen Thomas, 97, was owned by several ranchers of Jefferson and Orange Counties, Texas, but recalls Moise Broussard of Hamshire the best. Ill health has affected his memory and his story is not coherent. He is a familiar figure on the streets of Beaumont, Texas, a small man clad in none too clean and somewhat ragged clothes, with a tow sack across his shoulders, into which he puts such things as he finds in his wanderings about the city. Rumor has it that Allen is fairly well to do and that his begging attitude is assumed, for reasons of his own.
"I figgers I's gwine be 97 year old on de fourth of August, I's borned over in Duncan Woods, over in Orange County. My daddy's name was Lockin Thomas. I never see my daddy. He git drown in de river here at Beaumont. My mammy's Hetty Anderson.
"I 'longed to three masters. One John Adam and he was mean. One Stowers, and he was mean but not so mean to me. Den dere Moise Broussard, he was purty mean, but he never beat me. De las' man what finish raise me was Amos Harrison and he purty good man. He wife name Mag and dey lives on Turtle Bayou over in Chambers County. He buy me from Lewis Pinder. He was good. My brudder was Kelly Idonia and I had a sister Lessie Williams. Dey beat her with clubs. I's walk over many a dead person. Dey beat 'em to death.