didn't see it, I heard about it."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Hannah Hancock
[HW: Biscoe, Arkansas?]
Age: Past 80

"I was born in Chesterfield County, South Carolina. My mother's name was
Chloa. We lived on Hardy Sellers plantation. She was the white folks
cook. I et in the white folks kitchen sometimes and sometimes wid the
other children at maw's house. Show my daddy was livin. But he lived on
another man's farms. His master's name was Billy Hancock and his name
was Dave. Der was a big family of us but dey all dead now but three of
us. Ize got two sisters and a brother still livin, I reckon. I ain't
seed them in a long time. Mrs. Sellers had several children but they
were all married when I come along and she was a widow. Joe Pete was her
son and he lived close, about a mile across the field, but it was
farther around the road. Billy Hancock married Mrs. Sellers daughter. My
mistress didn't do much. Miss Becky Hancock wove cloth for people. You
could get the warp ready and then run in the woof. She made checked
dresses and mingledy looking cloth. They colored the cloth brown and
purple mostly. Mrs. Sellers get a bolt of cloth and have it all made up
into dresses for the children. Sometimes all our family would have a
dress alike. Yesm, we did like dot. Granny made de dresses on her
fingers. She was too old to go to de field an she tote water from the
big spring and sometimes she water de hands when dey be hoeing. She
would cut and dry apples and peaches. Nobody knowed how to can. They
dried de beef. It show was good. It was jess fine. No maam, Granny
didn't have no patterns. She jess made our dresses lack come in her
haid. We didn't get many dresses and we was proud of em and washed and
ironed and took care of em.

"I recollects hearing de men talking about going off to war and em
going. No jess de white men left from Mrs. Sellers place. De children
didn't set around and hear all that was said. They sent us off to play
in the play houses. We swept a clean place and marked it off and had our
dolls down there. We put in anything we could get, mostly broken dishes.
Yes maam, I had rag dolls and several of them. No wars real close but I
could hear the guns sometimes.

"Mrs. Sellers had two large carriage horses. The colored boys took them
down in the bottoms and took off a lot of the meat and groceries and hid
them 'fo the Yankees come along. They didn't