"I have been living in this city fifteen years. I come from Chicot
County when I come here. We come to Arkansas in slavery times. They
brought me from Copiah County when I was six or eight years old. When
Mrs. Toliver married she came up here and brought my mother. My mother
belonged to her son and she said, 'Agnes (that was my mother's name),
will you follow me if I buy your husband?' Her husband's name was John
Beasley. She said, 'Yes.' Then her old mistress bought Beasley and paid
fifteen hundred dollars to get my mother to come with her. Then Peachy
went to war and was shot because he come home of a furlough and stayed
too long. So when he went back they killed him. My mother nursed him
when he was a baby. Old man Toliver said he didn't want none of us to be
sold; so they wasn't none of us sold. Maybe there would have been if
slavery had lasted longer; but there wasn't.
"Mother really belonged to Peachy, but when Peachy died, then she fell
to her mistress.
"I have been a widow now for thirty years. I washed and ironed and
plowed and hoed--everything. Now I am gittin' so I ain't able to do
nothin' and the Relief keeps me alive. I worked and took care of myself
and my last husband and he died, and I ain't married since. I used to
take a little boy and make ten bales of cotton. I can't do it now. I
used to be a woman in my day. I am my mother's seventh child.
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