about
it. It sounded powerful like one of old Judge's boys. Dey rode on and
didn't bother me and I never was a bit afraid of 'em any more.

I went to school one month after de War. I never learned much but I
learned to read some where along de road dat I come over. My father
come from Athens, Georgia, and took us away with him. I learned the
carpenter's trade from him. He was so mean to me dat I run away when I
was nineteen. I went back to Rome, Georgia, and got a job with a
bridge gang and spent two years with 'em. I went then to Henderson,
Kentucky, and worked for ten years. There was hundreds of colored
people coming to de mines at Krebs and Alderson and I decided to come
along, too. I never worked in de mines but I did all sorts of
carpentering for them.

I married in Atoka, Oklahoma, thirty-three years ago. I never had no
children.

I've made lots of money but somehow it always got away from me. But me
and my wife have our little home here and we are both still able to
work a little, so I guess we are making it all right.

Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves

HAL HUTSON
Age 90 yrs.
Oklahoma City, Okla.

I was born at Galveston, Tennessee, October 12, 1847. There were 11
children: 7 brothers; Andrew, George, Clent, Gilbert, Frank, Mack and
Horace; and 3 girls: Rosie, Marie and Nancy. We were all Hutsons.
Together with my mother and father we worked for the same man whose
name was Mr. Barton Brown, but who we all call Master Brown, and
sometimes Mr. Brown.

Master Brown had a good weather-board house, two story, with five or
six rooms. They lived pretty well. He had eight children. We lived in
one-room log huts. There were a long string of them huts. We slept on
the floor like hogs. Girls and boys slept together--jest everybody
slept every whar. We never knew what biscuits were! We ate "seconds
and shorts" (wheat ground once) for bread. Ate rabbits, possums baked
with taters, beans, and bean soup. No chicken, fish and the like. My
favorite dish now is beans.

Master Brown owned about 36 or 40 slaves, I can't recall jest now, and
about 200 acres of ground. There was very little cotton raised in
Galveston--I mean jest some corn. Sometimes we would shuck corn all
night. He would not let us raise gardens of our own, but didn't mind
us raising corn and a few other truck vegetables to sell for a little
spending change.

I learned to read, write and figger at an early age. Master Brown's
boy and I w