"Mrs. Bilbo's first husband was a Crane. He killed himself. He didn't
intend to. It was in a horse race. The horse ran away with him and
killed him. Then Theoda's father married her. He was a poor man. He
married that widow and got up in the world. They had a gin mill, and a
grist mill, and a sawmill. They got business from everybody. That was
Theoda's daddy--old man Bilbo.
"In 1870, we stayed on Elisha McGhee's farm. We called him Elisha but
his name was Elijah. I began to remember them. The next year, we farmed
for old man William Bilbo. But we didn't get along so well there because
daddy wouldn't let anybody beat him out of anything that was his. That
was Theoda's gran'daddy. Then we went to (Mississippi) Miss Crane's. The
next year she married Theoda Bilbo's daddy and in 1874, my daddy moved
up on his own place at Hurricane Creek. There he built a church and
built a school, and I went to the school on our own place. He stayed
there till 1880. In 1880, we moved to Holly Springs. That was right
after the yellow fever epidemic. I went to school there at Shaw
University. I stayed in that school a good while. It's called Rust
College now. It's named after the Secretary of the Freedman's Aid
Society. Rust was the greatest donor and they named the school after
him. I went to the state school in my last year because they would give
you a lifetime certificate when you finished there.
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