I'll be eighty years old this May. I was born in 1858."
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Ellen Cragin
815-1/2 Arch Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: Around 80 or more
[May 31 1939]
[HW: Escapes on Cow]
"I was born on the tenth of March in some year, I don't know what one. I
don't know whether it was in the Civil War or before the Civil War. I
forget it. I think that I was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi; I'm not
sure, but I think it was.
"My mother was a great shouter. One night before I was born, she was at
a meeting, and she said, 'Well, I'll have to go in, I feel something.'
She said I was walkin' about in there. And when she went in, I was born
that same night.
"My mother was a great Christian woman. She raised us right. We had to
be in at sundown. If you didn't bring it in at sundown, she'd whip
you,--whip you within an inch of your life.
"She didn't work in the field. She worked at a loom. She worked so long
and so often that once she went to sleep at the loom. Her master's boy
saw her and told his mother. His mother told him to take a whip and wear
her out. He took a stick and went out to beat her awake.
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