yet. What they
thought was so wonderful was that I knit every stitch of it without
glasses. But that is not so funny, because I have never worn glasses in
my life. I guess that is some more of my Indian blood telling.

"Sometimes I have to laugh at some of these young people. I call them
young because I knew them when they were babies. But they are already
all broken down old men and women. I still feel young inside. I feel
that I have had a good life."

--- 11 1938
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: J. N. Gillespie
1112 Park Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 75

"I was born near Galveston, in Texas, January 19, 1863, so they tell me.
I been in this town and been living right here at 1112 Park Street for
fifty-three years and ain't never had no trouble with anybody.

"My grandparents were Gillespie's. My grandma was an Indian woman. She
was stolen off the reservation--her and her daughter. The daughter was
about twelve years old and big enough to wait table. Both of them were
full blooded Cherokee Indians. My grandma married a slave, and when she
growed up, my mother married a slave; but my mother's parents were both
Indians, and one of my father's parents was white, so you see about
three-fourths of me is something else. My grandmother's name before her
first marriage was Courtney and my mother's first name was Parthenia.

"When they were stolen, they were made slaves. Nick Toliver bought 'em.
He was their first master, far as I heard 'em say. After old man Nick
Toliver died, Tom Brewer bought my mother. Toliver and Brewer were the
only two masters she had.

"After freedom came, my grandma took back her own name, Gillespie.
Grandma's second husband was named Berry Green. She was free and in the
Indian reservation when she married Gillespie, but she was a slave when
she married Berry Green.

"After my mother came to be of age, she married a man named Willis. He
was a slave. That is why I am like I am now. If my grandma had stayed
in the nation, I never would have been a slave, and I wouldn't need to
be beatin' around here trying to get just bread and meat.

"After freedom, she taken her mother's name by her free husband,
Gillespie, and she made her husband take it too. That how I got the name
of Gillespie."

Occupation of Forefathers

"After they were made slaves, my grandmother cooked and my mother waited
table and worked as a house girl. My grandma