n't never been in any kind
of trouble."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Jake Walker, Wheatley, Arkansas
Age: 68

"I was born seven or eight miles from Hernando, Mississippi. My pa was a
slave over twenty years. He belong to Master Will Walker, and his white
mistress was Ann. They brought him from 'round Athens, Georgia. He was
heired through his master. His own mother died at his birth and he was
the son of a peddler through the country. He was a furriner but pa never
could tell. His young master never told him. His ma was the nurse about
the place. The peddler was a white man of some kind. He kept coming
about selling goods. The dogs made a bad racket. They never bought
nothing much. Old master suspicioned him trying to get away with
something about the place. He come right out and accused him to being up
to something. He denied it. He told the peddler not to come back. He
never. After it was over she told her mistress. He wanted her to go on
off with him. That made them mad. But he never was seen about there.

"When Will Walker got married he wanted my pa and he was give to him, a
horse and buggy, two mules, a lamb, and five young cows. He had some
money and he come to Mississippi. I reckon he did buy some land. He got
to be a slave owner before freedom. Pa said he drove the horse to the
buggy and his master rode a mule, led a mule and brought his cows, and
they kept the lamb in the buggy with them nearly all the way.

"I think they was good to him. His young mistress cried so much they all
went back once before freedom. They went on Christmas time. Only time he
ever was drunk. He got down and nearly froze to death. The white folks
heard he was somewhere down. They went and got him one Sunday morning in
a two-horse wagon. He was nearly dead. That was his first and last
spree.

"Pa said he nursed three of his young mistress' babies, Alfred, Tom, and
Kenneth.

"After freedom pa went to Texas with Alfred Walker. He owned a ranch out
on the desert and raised Texas ponies and big horn cows. They sent a
carload of young cattle to St. Louis and pa stopped back in Mississippi
and married ma. She was a Walker too, Libbie Walker. There was fourteen
of us children. They nearly all went to Louisiana to work in the timber.
I come to Clarendon. I been married three times. My last wife left me
and took my onliest child. Only child I ever had. They was at Hot
Springs last account I had of them.