t know how many brothers
my father had. I have heard my mother say she had four sisters. I never
heard her say nothin' 'bout no brothers--just sisters.

"I had six children. Got three living and three dead. They was grown
though when they died. I had three boys and three girls. I got two boys
living and one girl. The boy in St. Louis does pretty well. But the
other in Little Rock doesn't have much luck. If he'd get out of Little
Rock, he would find more to do. The one in St. Louis don't make much now
because they done cut wages. He's a dining-car waiter. This girl what's
here, she does all she can for me. She has a husband and my husband is
dead. He's been dead a long time.

"I belong to Bethel A.M.E. Church. You know where that is. Rev. Campbell
is a good man. We had him eight years. Then we got Brother Wilson one
year and then they put Campbell back.

"I don't know what to think of these young people. Some of them is
running wild.

"When I was working for myself, I was generally a maid. But that is been
a long time ago. I washed and ironed and done laundry work when I was
able a long time ago. But I can't do it now. I can't do it for myself
now. I washed for myself a little and I got the flu and got in bad
health. That was about four years ago. I reckon it was the flu; I never
did have no doctor. When I take the least little cold, it comes back on
me."

Interviewer's Comment

This old lady appears nearer eighty than sixty-nine, and she speaks with
the sureness of an eyewitness.

Interviewer: Mrs. Blanche Edwards
Person interviewed: Emmeline Waddille (deceased)
Lonoke County, Arkansas
Age: 106

She immigrated with her owner, L.W.C. Waddille, to Lonoke County in
1851, coming to Hickory Plains and then to Brownsville. They moved from
Hayburn, Georgia in a covered wagon drawn by oxen.

She lived with a great-granddaughter, Mrs. John High, seven miles north
of Lonoke, until 1932, when she died. She had nursed six generations of
the Waddille family. She was born a deaf-mute but her hearing and speech
were restored many years ago when lightening struck a tree under which
she was standing.

Emmeline told of how they would stop for the night on the rough journey,
and while the men fed the stock, the women and slaves would cook the
evening meal of hoecake, fried venison, and coffee. The women slept in
the wagons and the men would sleep on the creek watching for wild life.
With other