Harrison Boyd
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"I was fifteen years when they says we're free. That's the age my Old Missy done give me when the war stopped. She had all us niggers' ages in a book, and told me I was born near Henderson. My Old Marse was Wash Trammel and he brunged me and my mama and papa from Alabama. Mama was named Juliet and papa, Amos. Marse Trammel owned my grandpa and grandma, too, and they was named Jeanette and Josh.
"The plantation was two made into one, and plenty big, and more'n a hundred slaves to work it. Marse lived in a hewed log house, weather-boarded out and in, and the quarters was good, log houses with bed railin's hewed out of logs. We raised everything we et, 'cept sugar, and Marse bought that in big hogsheads. We got our week's rations every Sunday, and when we went to eat, everybody's part was put out to them on a tin plate.
"Marse Trammel give a big cornshucking every fall. He had two bottom fields in corn. First we'd gather peas and cushaws and pumpkins out the corn field, then get the corn and pile it front the cribs. They was two big cribs for the corn we kep' to use and five big cribs for sale corn. My uncle stayed round the sale corn cribs all spring, till ginnin' time, 'cause folks come for miles after corn. Marse had five wheat cribs and one rye crib. We went ten mile to Tatum to git our meal and flour ground.
"The patterrollers darsn't come 'bout our place or bother us niggers. Marse Wash allus say, 'I'll patterroller my own place.' Marse was good to[Pg 113] us and only once a overseer beat a woman up a trifle, and Marse Trammel fired him that same day.
"The sojers 'fiscated lots of corn from Marse and some more owners in Rusk County piled corn up in a big heap and made me go mind it till the rest the sojers got there. I was settin' top that corn pile, me and my big bulldog, and the General rode up. My dog growled and I made him hush. The General man say to me, 'Boy, you is 'scused now, go on home.' I got to a fence and looked back, and that General was hewin' him a hoss trough out a log. The sojers come in droves and set up they camp. I sot on a stump and watched them pass. They stayed three, four days till the corn was all fed up.
"While they's camped there they'd cotch chickens. They had a fishin' pole and line and hook. They'd put a grain of corn on the hook and ride on they hoss and pitch the hook out 'mong the chickens. When a chicken swallowed the corn they'd jerk up the line with that chicken and ride off.
"Marse had six hundred bales cotton in the Shreveport warehouse when war was over. He got word them Yankees done take it on a boat. He got his brother to take him to Shreveport and say, 'I'll follow that cotton to Hell and back.' He followed his cotton to Alabama and got it back, but he died and was buried there in Alabama 'fore Old Missy knowed it.
"I stayed with her four years after surrender and then went to farmin' with my folks, for $10.00 a month. After a year or two I went to railroadin', helping cut the right-of-way for the T.& P. Railroad, from Marshall to Longview. They paid us $1.50 the day and three drinks of whiskey a day.
"I marries four times but had only one child, but I never done nothin' 'citin'. I lives by myself now, and gits $11.00 pension to eat on.
