ees couldn't git over but they buil' pontoos
while some make the horses swim 'cross. One night while at Deer Pond, I
hear something like thunder until 'bout eleven the next day. W'en the
thing I t'ought was thunder stop', master tell us that evenin' we was
free. I wasn't surprise to know for as little as I was I know the
Yankees was goin' to free us with the help of God.

I was married twice, an' had two gals an' a boy with firs' wife. I have
t'ree boys with the second; the younges' is jus' eight.

Lincoln did jus' what God inten' him to do, but I think nothin' 'bout
Calhoun on 'account of what he say in one of his speech 'bout collud
people. He said: "keep the niggers down."

To see collud boys goin' 'round now with paper an' pencil in their han's
don't look real to me. Durin' slavery he would be whip' 'til not a skin
was lef' on his body.

My pa was a preacher why I become a Christian so early; he preach' on
the plantation to the slaves. On Sunday the slaves went to the white
church. He use to tell us of hell an' how hot it is. I was so 'fraid of
hell 'til I was always tryin' to do the right thing so I couldn't go to
that terrible place.

I don't care 'bout this worl' an' its vanities 'cause the Great Day is
comin' w'en I shall lay down an' my stammerin' tongue goin' to lie
silent in my head. I want a house not made with han's but eternal in the
Heavens. That Man up there, is all I need; I'm goin' to still trus' Him.
Before the comin' of Chris' men was kill' for His name sake; today they
curse Him. It's nearly time for the world to come to en' for He said
"bout two thousand years I shall come again" an' that time is fas'
approachin'.

Source

Interview with Henry Brown, 637 Grove Street. He is much concerned with
the Scottsboro Case and discusses the invasion of Italy into defenseless
Ethiopia intelligently.

Project #1655
W. W. Dixon,
Winnsboro, S. C.

JOHN C. BROWN AND ADELINE BROWN
EX-SLAVES 86 YEARS AND 96 YEARS OLD.

John C. Brown and his wife, Adeline, who is eleven years older than
himself, live in a ramshackle four-room frame house in the midst of a
cotton field, six miles west of Woodward, S. C. John assisted in laying
the foundation and building the house forty-four years ago. A single
china-berry tree, gnarled but stately, adds to, rather than detracts
from, the loneliness of the dilapidated house. The premises and
thereabout are owned by the Federal Land Bank. The o