ces and cotton rows like deers or something, gettin' to that
house, 'cause that mean something bad wrong at massa's house.

"I marries right here in Panola County while slavery still here and my
brother-in-law marries me and Lewis Blakely, and I's 'bout nineteen. My
husban' 'longed to the Blakely's and after the weddin' he had to go back
to them and they 'lowed him come to see me once a week on Saturday and
he could stay till Sunday. I works on for the Lacy's more'n a year after
slavery till Lewis come got me and we moved to ourselves.

"I 'member one big time we done have in slavery. Massa gone and he
wasn't gone. He left the house 'tendin' go on a visit and missy and her
chillen gone and us niggers give a big ball the night they all gone. The
leader of that ball had on massa's boots and he sing a song he make up:

"'Ole massa's gone to Philiman York
And won't be back till July 4th to come;
Fac' is, I don't know he'll be back at all,
Come on all you niggers and jine this ball.'

"That night they done give that big ball, massa had blacked up and slip
back in the house and while they singin' and dancin', he sittin' by the
fireplace all the time. 'Rectly he spit, and the nigger who had on he
boots recernizes him and tries climb up the chimmey."

420259

[Illustration: Richard Jackson]

RICHARD JACKSON, Harrison County farmer, was born in 1859, a slave
of Watt Rosborough. Richard's family left the Rosboroughs when the
Negroes were freed, and moved to a farm near Woodlawn. Richard
married when he was twenty-five and moved to an adjoining farm,
which he now owns.

"I was born on the Rosborough plantation in 1859 and 'longed to old man
Watt Rosborough. He brung my mammy out of North Carolina, but my pappy
died when I was a baby, and mammy married Will Jackson. Besides me they
was six brothers, Jack and Nathan, Josh and Bill and Ben and Mose. I had
three sisters named Matilda and Charity and Anna.

"I 'members my mammy's father, Jack, but don't know where he come from.
I heared him tell of fightin' the Indians on the frontier, and one
mammy's brothers was shot with a Indian arrow.

"The plantation jined the Sabine river and old man Watt owned many a
slave. The old home is still standin' cross the road from Rosborough
Springs, nine miles south of Marshall.

"They was a white overseer on the place and mammy's stepdaddy, Kit, was
niggerdriver and done all the whippin', 'ce