her hand if she was "a little
girl on the floor" in 1866 she would be only somewhere between
seventy-five and eighty years of age.

Her master and mistress were Mitchell and Elizabeth Simmons and they had
two sons and two daughters. They lived on a plantation about twelve
miles from Farmersville, Louisiana.

Rachel was a house girl and her mother was the cook. Besides doing house
work, she was nursemaid and as she grew older did her mistress' sewing
and could also weave and knit. From the way she smiled and rolled her
eyes I could see that this was the happiest time of her life. "My white
folks was so good to me. I sat right down to the same table after they
was thru."

While a child in the home of her white folks she played with her
mistress' children. In her own words "My mistress give us a task to do
and when we got it done, we went to our playhouse in the yard."

When the war came along, her master was too old to go but his two sons
went and both lived through the war.

Questioned about the Yankees during the war she said, "I seen right
smart of the Yankees. I seen the 'Calvary' go by. They didn't bother my
white folks none."

Rachel said the ABC's for me but cannot read or write. She said her
mistress' children wanted to teach her but she would rather play so grew
up in ignorance.

After the war Rachel's white folks moved to Texas and Rachel went to
live with her mistress' married daughter Martha. For her work she was
paid six dollars a month. She was not given any money by her former
owners after being freed, but was paid for her work. Later on Rachel
went to work in the field making a crop with her brother, turning it
over to the owner of the land for groceries and other supplies and when
the cotton was weighed "de white folks taken out part of our half. I
knowed they done it but we couldn't do nothin bout it."

Rachel had four husbands and eleven children. Her second husband
abandoned her, taking the three oldest and leaving five with her. One
boy and one girl were old enough to help their mother in the field and
one stayed in the house with the babies, so she managed to make a living
working by the day for the white people.

The only clash with the Ku Klux Klan was when they came to get an army
gun her husband had bought.

Being a woman, Rachel did not know much about politics during the
Reconstruction period. She had heard the words "Democrat," "Radical" and
"Republican" and that was about all she