ionary Baptis' Church when I was fifteen and has
belonged to it ever' since.

"No sir, I never got in de habit of votin' and never did vote, never
thought it was necessary."

Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Rev. Frank T. Boone
1410 W. Seventeenth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 80

[HW: Free Colonies]

"I was born in Nansemond County, Virginia on my father's place near the
center of the County. I was born free. We were members of the colonies.
You know there were what is known as Free Colonies. They were Negroes
that had always been free. The first landing of the Negroes in America,
they claimed, formed a colony. The Negro men who came over, it is said,
could buy their freedom and a number of them did.

"But I didn't become free that way. My ancestors were a white man and an
Indian woman. He was my great-grandfather. None of my family have been
slaves as far back as I know.

"There was one set of white people in Virginia called Quakers. Their
rule was to free all slaves at the age of twenty-one. So we got some
free Negroes under that rule. My mother who was a Negro woman was freed
under this rule. My father was always free.

"My grandmother on my father's side owned slaves. The law was that
colored people could own slaves but they were not allowed to buy them. I
don't know how many slaves my grandmother owned. I didn't know they were
slaves until the War was over. I saw the colored people living in the
little houses on the place but I didn't know they was slaves.

"One morning my grandmother went down to the quarters and when she came
back she said to my aunt, 'Well, the slaves left last night.' And that
was the first I knew of their being slaves.

"My father's name was Frank Boone. I was named for him. My mother's name
was Phoebe Chalk. I don't know who her mother and father were. She said
that her mother died when she was a child. She was raised by Quaker
people. I presume that her mother belonged to these Quaker people.

"On our place no grown person was ever whipped. They was just like one
family. They called grandmother's house the big house. They farmed. They
didn't raise cotton though. They raised corn, peas, wheat, potatoes, and
all things for the table. Hogs, cows, and all such like was raised. I
never saw a pound of meat or a peck of flour or a bucket of lard or
anything like that bought. We rendered our own lard, pickled our own
fish, smoked our ow