They got
cooked fer up at Jep Davises house till they got a house built for them
and give them a wife. Maybe they would see a woman on another plantation
and claim her. Then the master had to talk that over.
Freedom
"Jep Davis had been to town. He got a notice to free his niggers. He had
the farm bell rung. We all went out up to his house. He said, 'You are
free. Go. If you can't get along come back and do like you been.' They
left. Went hog wild. I was the last one to go. He said, 'Mattie, come
back if you find you can't make it.' I had a hard time for a fact. I had
a sister married in Atlanta. I went with them in 1866. I married to
better my living. We quit. I met a man come to Arkansas and sent back
for me when he got the money. I was in Atlanta thirty years. I was
married in Arkansas in 1895. Been here ever since 'ceptin' visits back
in Georgia. My husband was a good farmer and a good shoemaker. He left
me six good rent houses and this house here when he died." (She has an
income of forty dollars per month--rent on houses.) "He was a hard
worker.
"I'd go to see my white folks after freedom. I loved 'em all.
"Jep Davis died out of the church. Him and Jack (Robertson, Robson,
Robinson?) was deacons together in the Baptist church and their farms
j'ined.
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