Mazique Sanco

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My mistress owned a beautiful home and three hundred twenty acres of land in the edge of Columbia, in South Carolina, just back of the state house. Her name was Mrs. Louisa Green and she was a widow lady. That's where I was born, but when her nephew, Dr. Edward Flemming, married Miss Dean, I was given to him for a wedding present, and so was my mother and her other children. I was a very small boy then, and when I was ten Dr. Flemming gave me to his crippled mother-in-law for a foot boy. She got crippled in a runaway accident, when her husband was killed. He had two fine horses, fiery and spirited as could be had. He called them Ash and Dash, and one day he and his wife were out driving and the horses ran the carriage into a big pine tree, and Mr. Dean was killed instantly, and Mrs. Dean couldn't ever help herself again. I waited on her. I had a good bed and food and was let to earn ten cent shin plasters.

When the war was over she called up her five families of slaves and told us we could go or stay. Some went and some stayed. I was always an adventurer, wanting to see and learn things, so I left and went back to my mother with Mrs. Flemming.

I only stayed there a few months and hired out to Major Legg, and worked for him several years. I felt I wasn't learning enough, so I joined the United States Army and with a hundred and eighty-five boys went to St. Louis, Missouri. From there we were transferred with the Tenth Cavalry to Fort Concho. I helped haul the lumber from San Antonio to finish the buildings at the fort. I was there five years.

After I went to work at private employment I did some carpenter work, but most of the houses were adobe or pecan pole buildings, so I got a job from Mr. Jimmy Keating as mechanic for awhile, and then drifted to Mexico. Odd jobs were all I could get for awhile, so I landed in El Paso and got a job in a hotel.

That was the start of my success, for I learned to be a skilled chef and superintended the kitchens in some of the largest hotels in Texas. I made as high as $80.00, in Houston. My last work was done at the St. Angelus Hotel here in San Angelo and if you don't believe I'm a good cook, just look at my wife over there. When I married her she was fourteen years old and weighed a hundred and fifteen pounds. Now it's been a long time since I could get her on the scales, not since she passed the two hundred pound mark.