. Jesse Ford was Marmaduke's half-brother in Texas.
He come to Mississippi to get his part of the niggers and the rest was
put on a block and sold. Master Marmaduke broke his neck when he fell
downstairs. I never heard such crying before nor since as I heard that
day. Said they lost their best master. They knowed how bad they got
whooped on Ozoo River.

"Master Marmaduke walked and bossed his overseers. He went to the big
towns. He never did marry. My last master was Tom Williams. He was so
nice to us all. He confessed religion. He worked us hard, then hard
times come when he went to war. He knowed our tracks--foot tracks and
finger tracks both.

"Somebody busted a choice watermelon, plugged it out with his fingers
and eat it. Master Tom said, 'Fenna, them your finger marks.' Then he
scolded him good fashioned. Old Mistress Frankie say, 'Don't get
scared, he ain't go to whoop him, they kin. Fenna kin to him, he not
goiner hurt him.'

"At the crossroads there was a hat shop. White man brought a lot of
white free niggers to work in the hat shop. Way they come free
niggers. Some poor woman had no living. Nigger men steal flour or a
hog, take it and give it to her. She be hungry. Pretty soon a mulatto
baby turned up. Then folks want to run her out the country. Sometimes
they did.

"Old man Stinson (Stenson?) left and went to Ohio. They wrote back to
George to come after them to Ohio. Bill Harris had a baltimore
trotter. The letter lay about in the post office. They broke it open,
read it, give it to his owner. He got mad and sold George. He was Sam
Harrises carriage driver. Dick and him was half-brothers. Dick learned
him about reading and writing. When the war was over George come
through on the train. Sam Harris run up there, cracked his heels
together, hugged him, and give him ten dollars. He sold him when he
was so mad. I don't know if he went to Ohio to Stinson's or not.

"We stayed in the old country twenty-five or thirty years after
freedom.

"When we left Miss Helland Harris Williams', Tim Terrel come by there
with his leg shot off and was there till he could get on to his folks.

"When I come here I was expecting to go to California. There was cars
going different places. We got on Mr. Boyd's car. He paid our way out
here. Mr. Jones brought his car to Memphis and stopped. Mr. Boyd
brought us right here. That was in 1892. We got on the train at
Raleigh, North Carolina.

"Papa bought forty acres land from