sold to folks close by. She could go to see her.

"Freedom come on. The colored folks slip about from place to place and
whisper, 'We goiner be set free.' I think my mama left at freedom and
come to twenty or twenty-two miles from Oxford, Mississippi. I don't
know where I was born. But in Mississippi somewheres.

"There is something wrong about the way we are doing somehow. It is from
hand to mouth. We buys too many paper sacks. They say work is hard to
get. One thing now didn't used to be, you have to show the money before
you can buy a thing. Seem like we all gone money crazy. Automobiles and
silk stockings done ruined us all. White folks ought to straighten this
out."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Mary Williams, Clarendon, Arkansas
Age: Born 1872
Light color

"My father was a slavery man two and one-half miles from Somerville,
Tennessee. Colonel Rivers owned him. Argile Rivers was papa's name.

"He went to war. His job was hauling food to the soldiers. He lay out in
the woods getting to his soldiers with provisions. He'd run hide under
the feed wagon from the shot. Him and old master would be together
sometimes. His master died, or was hurt and died after the War a long
while.

"He said his master was good to him all time. They had to work hard. He
raised one boy and me."

[HW: Ex-slave]

Name of Interviewer: Irene Robertson
Subject: Ex-Slave--Herbs "Hant" experiences
Story:--Information

This information given by: Mary Williams
Place of residence: Hazen, Arkansas
Occupation: Field Worker
Age: 69
[TR: Information moved from bottom of first page.]

Mary Williams mother's name was Mariah and before she married her master
forced her to go wrong and she had a son by him. They all called him Jim
Rob. He was a mulatta. Then Mariah married Williams on General Garretts
farm. The Rob Roy farm and the Garrett farm joined. Mary was born at Rob
Roy, Arkansas near Humphrey. Mary said the master married her mother and
father after her mother was stood up on a stump and auctioned off. Her
mother was a house girl. Soon there were rumors of freedom but their
family lived on where they were. Her father said when he was a boy he
attended the draw bars and met the old master to get a ride up behind
him.

Once when her father was real small he was eating biscuit with a hole in
it made by a grown person sticking finger down in it, then fill the hole
with molasses. That was a rari