"I larned to read and write a little jes' since freedom. Us used Webster's old blue-back spellers and I has one in de house to dis day and I wouldn't take nothing for it.
"The first year after freedom I farms with mammy and my stepdaddy. Pappy done die. Us done purty good de first year and I keeps on farmin' most my life. I marries Georgia Anne Harper in 1875 or 1876 in Limestone County. Us have four chillen and three is livin'. I marries 'gain in 1882 to Missouri Fisher and us have eight chillen and six is livin'.
"Us gits 'long on what de state give us now, and it ain't so bad. Times is diff'rent. I never done much but farm, so I don't know so much 'bout everything what goes on."
[Sol Walton]
Sol Walton, 88, was born in Mobile, Alabama, a slave of Sam Lampkin. Sol and his father stayed on the Lampkin Plantation, then in Mooringsport, Louisiana, until 1873, and farmed on shares. From 1876 to 1922 Sol worked in the T.& P. shops, in Marshall, Texas. Sol and his wife are supported by odd jobs Sol secures about town and they receive money from a son who is in a CCC camp.
"I was knockin' round, a good-sized chap, way back yonder in Buchanan's and Henry Clay's time. I was born in 1849, in Mobile, Alabama, and belonged to Sam Lampkin. My father was bought by the Lampkins and he allus kept the name of his first master, Walton. My mammy was a Alabama Negro and her name was Martha, and I had four brothers and four sisters, Robert, Jim, Richard, Alex, Anna, Dora, Isabella, Bettie.
"My master was Sam Lampkin and his wife was Missus Mary, and their first plantation was in Alabama, but they moved to Mississippi when I was 'bout six, and we lived on Salt Water Creek. They had a big, frame house and we lived in log quarters, slept on rough rail beds and had plenty to eat, peas, pumpkins, rice and other truck we raised on the place, and plenty of fish out of the creek.
"The first work I done in slavery was totin' water and dinner to the field hands, in gourd buckets. We didn't have tin buckets then. The hands worked from sun to sun, and if the overseer seed 'em slackin' up he cussed 'em and sometimes whacked 'em with a bullwhip. I seed 'em whipped till their shirt stuck to their back. I seed my mammy whipped for shoutin' at white folks meetin'. Old massa stripped her to the waist and whipped her with a bullwhip. Heaps of 'em was whipped jus' 'cause they could be whipped. Some owners half fed their hands and then whipped them for beggin' for grub.
"After our folks came in from the field they et supper and some went to Salt Water Creek to cotch fish and crabs. They used to spin at night, too. On Christmas Day massa allus give the slaves a little present, mostly somethin' to wear, 'cause he goin' to git that anyhow.
"Massa never had but one white overseer. He got kilt fightin'. The hands was burnin' logs and trash and the overseer knocked a old man down and made some of the niggers hold him while he bullwhipped him. The old man got up and knocked the overseer in the head with a big stick and then took a ax and cut off his hands and feet. Massa said he didn't ever want another white overseer and he made my cousin overlooker after that.