I remember when people used to take wagon loads of corn to
the market in Louisville, and they would bring back home lots of
groceries and things. A colored man told me he had come north to the
market in Louisville with his master, and was working hard unloading the
corn when a white man walks up to him, shows him some money and asks him
if he wanted to be free? He said he stopped right then and went with the
man, who hid him in his wagon under the provisions and they crossed the
Ohio River right on the ferry. That's the way lots of 'em got across
here."

"Did I ever hear of any ghosts. Yes ma'am I have. I hear noises and I
seed something once that I never could figger out. I was goin't thru
the woods one day, and come up sudden in a clear patch of ground. There
sat a little boy on a stump, all by his-self, there in the woods. I asks
him who he wuz & wuz he lost, and he never answered me. Jest sat there,
lookin at me. All of a sudden he ups and runs, and I took out after him.
He run behind a big tree, and when I got up to where I last seed him, he
wuz gone. And there sits a great big brown man twice as big as me, on
another stump. He never seys a word, jest looks at me. And then I got
away from there, yes ma'am I really did."

"A man I knew saw a ghost once and he hit at it. He always said he
wasn't afraid of no ghost, but that ghost hit him, and hit him so hard
it knocked his face to one side and the last time I saw him it was still
that way. No ma'am, I don't really believe in ghosts, but you know how
it is, I lives by myself and I don't like to talk about them for you
never can tell what they might do.

"Lady you ought to hear me rattle bones, when I was young. I caint do it
much now for my wrists are too stiff. When they played Turkey in the
Straw how we all used to dance and cut up. We'ed cut the pigeon wing,
and buck the wind [HW: wing?], and all. But I got rewmaytism in my feet
now and ant much good any more, but I sure has done lots of things and
had lots of fun in my time."

Federal Writers' Project
of the W.P.A.
District #6
Marion County
Anna Pritchett
1200 Kentucky Avenue, Indianapolis, Indiana

FOLKLORE
JOSEPH MOSLEY, EX-SLAVE
2637 Boulevard Place

[TR: Also reported as Moseley in text of interview.]

Joseph Mosley, one of twelve children, was born March 15, 1853, fourteen
miles from Hopkinsville, Kentucky.

His master, Tim Mosley, was a slave trader. He was supposed to have
bought and