is county. I was
born on Massa John Jeem's place, on the old Jefferson Road, and my
father was Peter Calloway, and he was born in Alabama and his whole
fam'ly brought to Texas by nigger traders. My mother was Harriet Ellis
and I had two brothers named George and Andrew, and four sisters, Lula
and Judy and Mary and Sallie. My old Grandpa Phil told me how he helped
run the Indians off the land.

"Grandpa Phil told me 'bout meetin' his massa. Massa Jeems had three or
four places and grandpa hadn't seed him and he went to one of the other
farms and meets a man goin' down the road. The man say, 'Who you belong
to?' Grandpa Phil say, 'Massa Jeems.' The man say, 'Is he a mean man?'
Grandpa say, 'I don't know him, but they say he's purty tight.' It was
Massa Jeems talkin' and he laughs and gives Grandpa Phil five dollars.

"We niggers lived in log houses and slep' on hay mattress with lowell
covers, and et fat pork and cornbread and 'lasses and all kinds garden
stuff. If we et flour bread, our women folks had to slip the flour
siftin's from missy's kitchen and darsn't let the white folks know it.
We wore one riggin' lowell clothes a year and I never had shoes on till
after surrender come. I run all over the place till I was a big chap in
jes' a long shirt with a string tied round the bottom for a belt. I went
with my young massa that way when he hunted in the woods, and toted
squirrels for him.

"Some white folks might want to put me back in slavery if I tells how we
was used in slavery time, but you asks me for the truth. The overseer
was 'straddle his big horse at three o'clock in the mornin', roustin'
the hands off to the field. He got them all lined up and then come back
to the house for breakfas'. The rows was a mile long and no matter how
much grass was in them, if you leaves one sprig on your row they beats
you nearly to death. Lots of times they weighed cotton by candlelight.
All the hands took dinner to the field in buckets and the overseer give
them fifteen minutes to git dinner. He'd start cuffin' some of them over
the head when it was time to stop eatin' and go back to work. He'd go to
the house and eat his dinner and then he'd come back and look in all the
buckets and if a piece of anything that was there when he left was et,
he'd say you was losin' time and had to be whipped. He'd drive four
stakes in the ground and tie a nigger down and beat him till he's raw.
Then he'd take a brick and grind it up in a powder