lantation belong to the woman. He was a preacher. He rode a circuit and
was gone. They had a colored overseer or foreman like. She wanted a
overseer just to be said she had one but he never agreed to it. He was a
good man.

"Mother said over in sight on a joining farm the overseers whooped
somebody every day and more than that sometimes. She said some of the
white men overseers was cruel.

"Mother quilted for people and washed and ironed to raise us. After
freedom mother sent for my sister. I don't recollect this but mother
said when she heard of freedom she took me in her arms and left. The
first I can recollect she was cooking for soldiers at the camps at
Montgomery, Alabama. They had several cooks. We lived in our own house
and mother washed and ironed for them some too. They paid her well for
her work.

"I recollect some of the good eating. We had big white rice and big soda
crackers and the best meat I ever et. It was pickled pork. It was
preserved in brine and shipped to the soldiers in hogheads (barrels). We
lived there till mother died and I can recollect that much. When mother
died we had a hard time. I look back now and don't see how we made it
through. We washed and ironed mostly and had a mighty little bit to eat
and nearly nothing to wear. It was hard times for us three children. I
was the baby child. My brother hired out when he could. We stuck
together till we all married off."

Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person Interviewed: Molly Brown
Age: 90 or over Brinkley, Ark.

One morning early I (Irene Robertson) got off the bus and started up
Main Street. I hadn't gone far before I noticed a small form of a woman.
She wore men's heavy shoes, an old dark dress and a large fringed woolen
shawl; the fringe was well gone and the shawl, once black, was now brown
with age. I passed her and looked back into her face. I saw she was a
Negro, dark brown. Her face was small with unusually nice features for a
woman of her race. She carried a slick, knotted, heavy walking stick--a
very nice-looking one. On the other arm was a rectangular split basket
with wires run through for a handle and wrapped with a dirty white rag
to keep the wire from cutting into her hand or arm.

I stopped and said, "Auntie, could you direct me to Molly Brown's
house?"

"I'm her," she replied.

"Well, I want to go home with you."

"What you want to go out there for?"

"I want you to tell me about times when you were