place
and work good and behave ourselves because old Master take care of us
that way. But on lots of other places the men slipped off.

I never did see many soldiers during the War, and there wasn't any
fighting close to where we live. It was kind of down in the bottoms,
not far from the Verdigris and that Gar Creek, and the soldiers would
have bad crossings if the come by our place.

We did see some whackers riding around sometimes, in little bunches
of about a dozen, but they never did bother us and never did stop.
Some of the Negro girls that I knowed of mixed up with the poor Creeks
and Seminoles, and some got married to them after the War, but none of
my family ever did mix up with them that I knows of.

Along towards the last of the War I never did see old Chief come
around any more, and somebody say he went down into Texas. He never
did come back that I knows of, and I think he died down there.

One day my pappy come home and tell us all that the Creek done sign up
to quit the War, and that old Master send word that we all free now
and can take up some land for our own selves or just stay where we is
if we want to. Pappy stayed on that place where he was at until he
died.

I got to be a big girl and went down to work for a Creek family close
to where they got that Checotah town now. At that time it was just all
a scattered settlement of Creeks and they call it Eufaula town. After
while I marry a man name Joe Johnson, at a little settlement they call
Rentesville. He have his freedmen's allotment close to that place, but
mine is up on the Verdigris, and we move up there to live.

We just had one child, named Louisa, and she married Tom Armstrong.
They had three-four children, but one was named Ton, and it is him I
live with now. My husband's been dead a long, long time now.

Oklahoma Writers' Project
Ex-Slaves
[Date stamp: AUG 16 1937]

MS. JOSIE JORDAN
Age 75 yrs.
840 East King St.,
Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I was born right in the middle of the War on the Mark Lowery
plantation at Sparta, in White County, Tennessee, so I don't know
anything much about them slave days except what my mammy told me long
years ago. 'Course I mean the Civil War, for to us colored folks they
just wasn't no other war as meanful as that one.

My mother she come from Virginia when a little girl, but never nobody
tells me where at my pappy is from. His name was David Lowery when I
was born, but I guess he had plenty other n