Mazique Sanco
"I only stayed there a few months and hired out to Major Legg, and worked for him several years. I felt I wasn't learning enough, so I joined the United States Army and with a hundred and eighty-five boys went to St. Louis, Missouri. From there we were transferred with the Tenth Cavalry to Fort Concho. I helped haul the lumber from San Antonio to finish the buildings at the fort. I was there five years.
"After I went to work at private employment I did some carpenter work, but most of the houses were adobe or pecan pole buildings, so I got a job from Mr. Jimmy Keating as mechanic for awhile, and then drifted to Mexico. Odd jobs were all I could get for awhile, so I landed in El Paso and got a job in a hotel.
"That was the start of my success, for I learned to be a skilled chef and superintended the kitchens in some of the largest hotels in Texas. I made as high as $80.00, in Houston. My last work was done at the St. Angelus Hotel here in San Angelo and if you don't believe I'm a good cook, just look at my wife over there. When I married her she was fourteen years old and weighed a hundred and fifteen pounds. Now it's been a long time since I could get her on the scales, not since she passed the two hundred pound mark."
[Clarissa Scales]
Clarissa Scales, 79, was born a slave of William Vaughan, on his plantation at Plum Creek, Texas. Clarissa married when she was fifteen. She owns a small farm near Austin, but lives with her son, Arthur, at 1812 Cedar Ave., Austin.
"Mammy's name was Mary Vaughan and she was brung from Baton Rouge, what am over in Louisiana, by our master. He went and located on Plum Creek, down in Hays County.
"Mammy was a tall, heavy-set woman, more'n six foot tall. She was a maid-doctor after freedom. Dat mean she nussed women at childbirth. She allus told me de last thing she saw when she left Baton Rouge was her mammy standin' on a big, wood block to be sold for a slave. Dat de last time she ever saw her mammy. Mammy died 'bout fifty years ago. She was livin' on a farm on Big Walnut Creek, in Travis County. Daddy done die a year befo' and she jes' grieves herself to death. Daddy was sho' funny lookin', 'cause he wore long whiskers and what you calls a goatee. He was field worker on de Vaughan plantation.
"Master Vaughan was good and treated us all right. He was a great white man and didn't have no over seer. Missy's name was Margaret, and she was good, too.
"My job was tendin' fires and herdin' hawgs. I kep' fire goin' when de washin' bein' done. Dey had plenty wood, but used corn cobs for de fire. Dere a big hill corn cobs near de wash kettle. In de evenin' I had to bring in de hawgs. I had a li'l whoop I druv dem with, a eight-plaited rawhide whoop on de long stick. It a purty sight to see dem hawgs go under de slip-gap, what was a rail took down from de bottom de fence, so de hawgs could run under.