Tom Holland

Text

"My owner was Massa Frank Holland, and I's born on his place in Walker County. I had one sister named Gena and three brothers, named George and Will and Joe, but they's all dead now. Mammy's name was Gena and my father's named Abraham Holland and they's brung from North Carolina to Texas by Massa Holland when they's real young.

"I chopped cotton and plowed and split rails, then was a horse rider. In them days I could ride the wildest horse what ever made tracks in Texas, but I's never valued very high 'cause I had a glass eye. I don't 'member how I done got it, but there it am. I'd make a dollar or fifty cents to ride wild horses in slavery time and massa let me keep it. I buyed tobacco and candy and if massa cotch me with tobacco I'd git a whippin', but I allus slipped and bought chewin' tobacco.

"We allus had plenty to eat, sich as it was them days, and it was good, plenty wild meat and cornbread cooked in ashes. We toasted the meat on a open fire, and had plenty possum and rabbit and fish.

"We wore them loyal shirts open all way down the front, but I never seed shoes till long time after freedom. In cold weather massa tanned lots of hides and we'd make warm clothes. My weddin' clothes was a white loyal shirt, never had no shoes, married barefooted.[Pg 145]

"Massa Frank, he one real good white man. He was awful good to his Negroes. Missis Sally, she a plumb angel. Their three chillen stayed with me nearly all the time, askin' this Negro lots of questions. They didn't have so fine a house, neither, two rooms with a big hall through and no windows and deer skins tacked over the door to keep out rain and cold. It was covered with boards I helped cut after I got big 'nough.

"Massa Frank had cotton and corn and everything to live on, 'bout three hundred acres, and overseed it himself, and seven growed slaves and five little slaves. He allus waked us real early to be in the field when daylight come and worked us till slap dark, but let us have a hour and a half at noon to eat and rest up. Sometimes when slaves got stubborn he'd whip them and make good Negroes out of them, 'cause he was real good to them.

"I seed slaves sold and auctioned off, 'cause I's put up to the highest bidder myself. Massa traded me to William Green jus' 'fore the war, for a hundred acres land at $1.00 a acre. He thought I'd never be much 'count, 'cause I had the glass eye, but I'm still livin' and a purty fair Negro to my age. All the hollerin' and bawlin' took place and when he sold me it took me most a year to git over it, but there I was, 'longin' to 'nother man.

"If we went off without a pass we allus went two at a time. We slipped off when we got a chance to see young folks on some other place. The patterrollers cotched me one night and, Lawd have mercy on me, they stretches me over a log and hits thirty-nine licks with a rawhide loaded with rock, and every time they hit me the blood and hide done fly. They drove me home to massa and told him and he called a old mammy to doctor my back, and I couldn't work for four days. That never kep' me from slippin' off 'gain, but I's more careful the next time.[Pg 146]

"We'd go and fall right in at the door of the quarters at night, so massa and the patterrollers thinks we's real tired and let us alone and not watch us. That very night we'd be plannin' to slip off somewheres to see a Negro gal or our wife, or to have a big time, 'specially when the moon shine all night so we could see. It wouldn't do to have torch lights. They was 'bout all the kind of lights we had them days and if we made light, massa come to see what we're doin', and it be jus' too bad then for the stray Negro!

"That there war brung suffrin' to lots of people and made a widow out of my missis. Massa William, he go and let one them Yankees git him in one of them battles and they never brung him home. Missis, she gits the letter from his captain, braggin' on his bravery, but that never helped him after he was kilt in the war. She gits 'nother letter that us Negroes is free and she tells us. We had no place to go, so we starts to cry and asks her what we gwine do. She said we could stay and farm with her and work her teams and use her tools and land and pay her half of what we made, 'sides our supplies. That's a happy bunch of Negroes when she told us this.

"Late in that evenin' the Negroes in Huntsville starts hollerin' and shoutin' and one gal was hollerin' loud and a white man come ridin' on a hoss and leans over and cut that gal nearly half in two and a covered wagon come along and picks her up and we never heared nothin' more.

"I married Imogene, a homely weddin' 'fore the war. We didn't have much to-do at our weddin'. I asks missis if I could have Imogene and she says yes and that's all they was to our weddin'. We had three boys and three gals, and Imogene died 'bout twenty years ago and I been livin' with one child and 'nother. I gits[Pg 147] a little pension from the gov'ment and does small jobs round for the white people.

"I 'lieve they ought to have gived us somethin' when we was freed, but they turned us out to graze or starve. Most of the white people turned the Negroes slam loose. We stayed a year with missis and then she married and her husband had his own workers and told us to git out. We worked for twenty and thirty cents a day then, and I fin'ly got a place with Dr. L.J. Conroe. But after the war the Negro had a hard struggle, 'cause he was turned loose jus' like he came into the world and no education or 'sperience.

"If the Negro wanted to vote the Klu Kluxes was right there to keep him from votin'. Negroes was 'fraid to git out and try to 'xert they freedom. They'd ride up by a Negro and shoot him jus' like a wild hawg and never a word said or done 'bout it.

"I's farmed and makin' a livin' is 'bout all. I come over here in Madison County and rents from B.F. Young, clost to Midway and gits me a few cows. I been right round here ever since. I lives round with my chillen now, 'cause I's gittin' too old to work.

"This young bunch of Negroes is all right some ways, but they won't tell the truth. They isn't raised like the white folks raised us. If we didn't tell the truth our massa'd tear us all to pieces. Of course, they is educated now and can get 'most any kind of work, some of them, what we couldn't.[Pg 148]