led the horse and some of the little ones rode it.

We had our hardest times when we would get to a river or big creek. If
the water was swift the horse didn't do any good, for it would shy at
the water and the little ones couldn't stay on, so we would have to
just wait until someone came along in a wagon and maybe have to pay
them with some of our money or some of our goods we were bringing back
to haul us across. Sometimes we had to wait all day before anyone
would come along in a wagon.

We were coming north all this time, up through the Seminole Nation,
but when we got to Weeleetka we met a Creek family of freedmen who
were going to the Agency too, and mammy paid them to take us along in
their wagon. When we got to the Agency mammy met a Negro who had seen
pappy and knew where he was, so we sent word to him and he came and
found us. He had been through most of the War in the Union army.

When we got away into the Cherokee country some of them called the
"Pins" helped to smuggle him on up into Missouri and over into Kansas,
but he soon found that he couldn't get along and stay safe unless he
went with the Army. He went with them until the War was over, and was
around Gibson quite a lot. When he was there he tried to find out
where we had gone but said he never could find out. He was in the
battle of Honey Springs, he said, but never was hurt or sick. When we
got back together we cleared a selection of land a little east of the
Choska bottoms, near where Clarksville now is, and farmed until I was
a great big girl.

I went to school at a little school called Blackjack school. I think
it was a kind of mission school and not one of the Creek nation
schools, because my first teacher was Miss Betty Weaver and she was
not a Creek but a Cherokee. Then we had two white teachers, Miss King
and John Kernan, and another Cherokee was in charge. His name was
Ross, and he was killed one day when his horse fell off a bridge
across the Verdigris, on the way from Tullahassee to Gibson Station.

When I got to be a young woman I went to Okmulgee and worked for some
people near there for several years, then I married Tate Grayson. We
got our freedmen's allotments on Mingo Creek, east of Tulsa, and lived
there until our children were grown and Tate died, then I came to live
with my daughter in Tulsa.

Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves

ROBERT R. GRINSTEAD
Age 80 yrs.
Oklahoma City, Okla.

I was born in Lawrence Coun