Rube Witt

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"I was born on the Jess Witt place, right here in Harrison County, on the tenth day of August, in 1850, and allus lived in and round Marshall. My father and mother, Daniel and Jane, was bred and born in Texas, and belonged to the Witts. I had five brothers, named Charlie and Joe and George and Bill and Jim, and six sisters, named Mary and Susan and Betsy and Anna and Effie and Lucinda. They all lived to be growed but I'm the onliest chile still livin'.

"Master Witt had a big place, I don't recall how many acres. He didn't have so many slaves. Slavery was a tight fight. We lived in li'l cabins and slept on rough plank beds and et bacon and peas and pa'ched corn. We didn't hardly know what flour bread was. Master give us one outfit of clothes to a time and sometimes shoes. We worked all day in the fields, come in and fed the stock and did the chores and et what li'l grub it took to do us and went to bed. You'd better not go nowhere without a pass, 'cause them patterrollers was rolling round every bush.

"My missus was named Kate and had two chillen. The Witts had a good set of niggers and didn't have to whip much. Sometimes he give us a light brushin' for piddlin' round at work. I seed plenty niggers whipped on ole man Ruff Perry and Pratt Hughes places, though. They was death on 'em. Lawyer Marshall used to whip his niggers goin' and comin' every day that come round.

"I 'members white folks sayin' war was startin' 'bout keepin' slaves and then I seed 'em mendin' the harness and wagons to go and fight. I was the houseboy for the Witts durin' the war and 'bout time it was over I enlisted at Alexandria as a soldier and they sent me to Mansfield. The Yanks had done won the victory when our reg'ment got there. They turned us loose to git home the best we could. I come back to the Witts and master calls up all the slaves and says we was free, but if we stayed and worked for him we'd have plenty to eat and wear, and if we left, it'd be root, hawg or die. Most of 'em left but I stayed a year. You'd ought to seed 'em pullin' off them croaker-sack clothes when master says we's free.

"I come to Marshall with my mother and the whole state was under United States law. The 8th Regiment of Illinois was at Marshall for two years after the war, and no man, black, white or red or what is you, darsn't git cotched after dark without a pass. When they'd stop you, if you couldn't give the U.S. sign, 'Grant's Friend,' they'd shoot the devil out of you. You didn't pass 'less you knowed the sign.

"The Confederates had a big gun powder mill on Mill's Creek, two and a half miles north of Marshall and it stayed operatin' two or three years. But Gen. Atichon and Capt. Bishop and Lt. Rives and a bunch of Yanks tried to capture it and the Confederates blowed it up.

"When I was 'bout sixteen my mother hires me out to a Mr. Acorns, who was refugeed from Georgia to Marshall. Ole man Acorns was a mile of hell anywhere you met him and he nearly beat me to death and I run away. His son and him and 'nother man starts after me and I has to light a shuck. We sho' had some race down that hill over where the new water tower is in Sunny South, but they didn't cotch me. The white folks round here didn't 'lieve us niggers was free then.

"Then I goes to work for Mr. Edmond Key, Sr., and stays with him till I'm growed. I used to help chase rabbits where the court house is now. I recalls the Buzzard Roost Hotel and some stores was on that square then.

"I cooks for the old Capitol Hotel eighteen years, then I quit and tries railroadin', but it didn't take long to decide to go back to the cook apron. I allus made a livin' from cookin' and preachin', and I've preached forty-five years. The only times I voted was for high sheriff once and for President Garfield and President Grant.

"I marries in 1915 and my wife is still with me. I'm too stove up with rhumatis' now to work and her and me gits $15.00 a month from the government."