ar.

"After the War, my father farmed. He worked on shares. They never
cheated him that he knew about. If they did, he didn't know it. He owned
his horses and cows."

#657
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: John G. Hawkens
Biscoe, Arkansas
Age: 71

"I was born in Monroe County, Mississippi December 9, 1866. My parents
was Frances Hawkens. She was a half white woman. I was told my daddy was
a white man, Mr. Young. Mother was a cook and house woman. Grandmother
was a field woman. She was dark but had some Indian blood in her. I
believe they said it was part Choctaw Indian. I don't remember a
grandfather.

"Lamar County, Alabama was across the line from Monroe County,
Mississippi. One of the Hawkens girls (white girl) married a man in
Mississippi. The master had three boys and one or two girls. Grandmother
was sold to the Hawkens and mother was born there in Alabama. There was
another woman they owned called Mandy. They was all the slaves they
owned that I knowd of.

"When the War come on, the old man Hawkens was dead. His widow had three
sons but one was married and off from her home somewhere. All three boys
went to war. Her married son died in the War.

"One son went to war but he didn't want to go. He ask his mother if she
rather free the Negroes or go to war. She said, 'Go fight till you die,
it won't be nothing but a breakfast spell.' He went but come back on a
furlough. He spent the rest of the time in a cave he dug down back of
the field. He'd slip out and come to the house a little while at night.
It was in the back woods and not very near anybody else.

"Aunt Mandy, another old man, grandmother and my mother lived in a house
in the yard, two of us was born in slavery. My sister Mandy was fifteen
years old when slavery ended.

"The way we first heard about freedom, one of the boys come home to stay
but no one knew that when he came. He told sister Mandy cook him a good
supper and he would tell her something good. She cooked him a good
supper and set the table. He set to eat and she ask him what it was. He
told her, 'All the slaves are free now.' From that on it was talked. We
left there. My mother and sister Mandy told me I wasn't born. We went to
Mississippi then. I was born over there. Some sharecropped and some
worked as renters.

"Sister Mandy told so many times about carrying fire in a coffeepot--had
a lid and handle--to the son in the cav