ght her to
Arkansas. She had ten children and I'm the only one living. Mama was a
dancing woman. She could dance any figure. They danced in the cabins and
out in the yards.

"The Yankees come one day to our house and I crawled under the house. I
was scared to death. They called me out. I was scared not to obey and
scared to come on out. I come out. They didn't hurt me. Mr. Ben Hode hid
a small trunk of money away. He got it after the War. The slaves never
did know where it was hid. They said the hair was on the trunk he hid
his money in. It was made out of green hide for that purpose.

"Mama had a slave husband. He was a field hand and all kind of a hand
when he was needed. Mama done the sewing for white and black on the
place. She was a maid. She could cook some in case they needed her. She
died first. Papa's foot got hurt some way and it et off. He was so old
they couldn't cure it. He was named Alfred Hode. Mama was Viney Hode.
She said they had good white folks. They lived on Ben Hode's place two
or three years after freedom.

"I farmed, cooked, and ironed all my life. I don't know how to do
nothing else.

"I live with my daughter. I got a son."

Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: James Henry Stith
2223 W. Nineteenth Street
Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 72

"I was born la Sparta in Hancock County, Georgia, in January 26, 1866.
My father was named William Henry Stith, and I was a little tot less
than two years old when my mother died. My father has called her name
often but I forget it. I forget the names of my father's father, too,
and of mother's people. That is too far back.

"My father was born in 1818. He was born in Georgia. His master was
named W.W. Simpson. He had a master before Simpson. Simpson bought him
from somebody else. I never can remember the man's name.

Houses

"The first houses I saw in Georgia were frame or brick houses. There
weren't any log houses 'round where I was brought up. Georgia wasn't a
log house state--leastwise, not the part I lived in. In another part
there were plenty of sawmills. That made lumber common. You could get
longleaf pine eighty to ninety feet long if you wanted it. Some little
towns didn't have no planing mills and you would have to send to Augusta
or to Atlanta for the planing work or else they would make planed lumber
by hand. I have worked for four and five weeks at a time dressing
lumber--floo