ler
hominy. She make 'ash cat', cornbread wrop in cabbage leaf and put ashes
'round it.

"The old plantation 'bout on the line 'tween Virginny and Mis'sippi and
us live near the Madstone. That a big stone, all smooth and when a dog
bite you you go run 'round the Madstone and wash yourself in the hot
springs and the bites don't hurt you.

"I seed lots of sojers and my daddy fit with the Yankees and they have a
big fight close there and have a while lots of dead bodies layin' 'round
like so many logs and they jus' stack 'em up and sot fire to 'em. You
seed 'em burnin' night and day. They lay down and shoot and then jump up
and stick 'em and sometimes they drunk the blood outten where they stick
'em, 'cause they can't git no water.

"After freedom us go in ox team to New Orleans and daddy he raise cotton
and sell it and mommer sell eggs. My daddy a workin' man and he help
build the big custom house in New Orleans and help pull the rope to pull
the boats up the canal from the river. That Canal Street now. He put he
name on top that custom house and it there to this day. You can go there
and see it. He help build the hosp'tal, too.

"One time us live close to the bay and that gran' and us take a stove
and cotch catfish and perch and cook 'em on the bank and us go meet
oyster boats and daddy git 'em by the tub.

"I git marry in Baton Rouge when I sixteen and my husban' he name Arras
Shaw and he lots older'n me and I couldn't keep him. He in Port Arthur
now. My husban' and I sawmill 20 year in Grayburg, here in Texas, and
then us sep'rate. I been in Beaumont 16 year and I's rice farm cook in
the camp on the Fannett Road. They tells me I got uncles in Africy. I
goes to Sanctified church and that all I can do now.

420050

[Illustration: Mary Ellen Johnson]

MARY ELLEN JOHNSON, owner of a little restaurant at 1301 Marilla
St., Dallas, Texas, is 77 years old. She was born in slavery to the
Murth family, about ten miles from San Marcos, Texas. She neither
reads nor writes but talks with little dialect.

"I don't know so fur back as befo' I was born, 'cept what my mammy told
me, and she allus said little black chillen wasn't sposed to ask so many
questions. Her name was Missouri Ellison, 'cause she belonged to Miss
Micelder Ellison and then when she married with Mr. Murth, her daddy
said my mammy was her 'heritance.

"My first mem'ries are us playin' in the backyard with Miss Fannie and