would have been 110 if she had
lived.

"My mother used to feed the white prisoners--the Federal soldiers who
were being held. They paid her and told her to keep the money because it
was Union Money. You know at that time they were using Confederate
money. My father kept it. He had a little box or chest of gold and
silver money. Whenever he got any paper money, he would change it into
gold or silver.

"Mother used to make these ginger cakes--they call 'em stage planks. My
brother Jimmie would sell them. The men used to take pleasure in trying
to cheat him. He was so clever they couldn't. They never did catch him
napping.

"Somebody burnt our house; it was on a Sunday evening. They tried to say
it caught from the chimney. We all like to uv burnt up.

"My father was a carpenter, whitewasher, anything. He was a common
laborer. We didn't have contractors then like we do now. Mother worked
out in service too. Jimmie was the oldest boy. He taught school too.

"My father set the first table that was ever set in the Anthony Hotel,
he was the cause of the first stove being brought here to cook on.

"Some of the children of the people that raised my mother are still
living. They are Beebes. Roswell Beebe was a little one. They had a
colored man named Peter and he was teaching Roswell to ride and the pony
ran away. Peter stepped out to stop him and Roswell said, 'Git out of
the way Peter, and let Billie Button come'.

"I get some commodities from the welfare. But I don't get nothing like a
pension. My husband worked at the Missouri Pacific shops for fifty-two
years, and he don't git nothing neither. It was the Iron Mountain when
he first went there on June 8, 1879. He was disabled in 1932 because of
injuries received on the job in March, 1931. But they hurried him out of
the hospital and never would give him anything. That Monday morning,
they had had a loving cup given them for not having had accidents in the
plant. And at three p.m., he was sent into the hospital. He had a fall
that injured his head. They only kept him there for two days and two
hours. He was hurt in the head. Dr. Elkins himself came after him and
let him set around in the tool room. He stayed there till he couldn't do
nothing at all.

"In 1881, he got his eye hurt on the job in the service of the Missouri
Pacific. It was the Iron Mountain then. He was off about three or four
months. They didn't pay his wages while he was off. They told him they
would g