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Bradley County Coleman, Betty Age: 80 1112 1 ⁄2 Indiana Street Pine Bluff, Arkansas Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden [M:8: pt. 2: 36–37] “My father belonged to Mr.Ben Martin and my mother and me belonged to the Slaughters. I was small then and didn’t know what the war was about, but I remember meetin’ the Yankees and the Ku Klux. “Old master had about fifteen or twenty hands but Mr. Martin had a plenty—he had bout a hundred head. “I member when the war was goin’ on we was livin’ in Bradley County. We was goin’ to Texas to keep the Yankees from gettin’ us. I member Mr. Gil Martin was just a young lad of a boy. We got as far as Union County and I know we stopped there and stayed long enough to make two crops and then peace was declared so we come back to Warren. “While the war was goin’ on, I member when my mother took a note to some soldiers in Warren and asked em to come and play for Miss Mary. I know they stood under a sycamore and two catawba trees and played. There was a perty big bunch of em. Us chillun was glad to hear it. I member just as well as if ’twas yesterday. “I member when the Yankees come and took all of Miss Mary’s silver— took every piece of it. And another time they got three or four of the colored men and made em get a horse apiece and ride away with em bareback.Yankees was all ridin’ iron gray horses, and lookin’ just as mad. O Lord, yes, they rid right up to the gate. All the horses was just alike—iron gray. Sho was perty horses. Them Yankees took everything Miss Mary had. “After the war ended we stayed on the place one year and made a crop and then my father bought fifty acres of Mr. Ben Martin. He paid some on it every year and when it was paid for Mr. Ben give him a deed to it. “I’m the only child my mother had. She never had but me, one. I went to school after the war and I member at night I’d be studyin’my lesson and rooting potatoes and papa would tell us stories about the war.I used to love to hear him on long winter evenings. “I stayed right there till I married. My father had cows and he’d kill hogs 46 Lankfordtext:Lankford / Final Pages 7/14/09 10:06 AM Page 46 and had a peach orchard, so we got along fine. Our white folks was always good to us.” Green, O.W. Age: 78 Del Rio, Texas [M:4: pt. 2 (TX): 90–93] “I was bo’ned in Arkansas. Frank Marks was my father and Mary Ann Marks my mother. She was bo’n on the plantation. I had two brothers. “I don’ ’member de quarters, but dey mus’ of had plenty, ’cause dey was two, three thousand slaves on de plantation. All my kin people belonged to Massa Mobley. My grandfather was a millman and dey had one de bigges’ grist mills in de country. “Our massa was good and we had plenty for to eat. Dere was no jail for slaves on our place but not far from dere was a jail. “De Ku Klux Klan made everything pretty squally,so dey taken de orphan chillen to Little Rock and kep’ ’em two, three years. Dere was lots of slaves in dat country ’round Rob Roy and Free Nigger Bend. Old Churchill, who used to be governor, had a plantation in dere. “When I was nine years ol’dey had de Bruce and Baxter revolution.’Twas more runnin’dan fightin’. Bruce was ’lected for governor but Baxter said he’d be governor if he had to run Brooks into de sea. “My young Massa, Jack Mobley, was killed in de war, is how I come to be one of de orphan chillen. “While us orphan chillen was at Little Rock dere come a terrible soreness of de eyes. I heard tell ’twas caused from de cholera. Every little child had to take turns about sittin’by de babies or totin’them. I was so blind, my eyes was so sore, I couldn’t see. The doctor’s wife was working with us. She was tryin’ to figure up a cure for our...

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