and brung him home and buried him under a big shade tree in the yard.
That the saddes' time I ever seen, nobody there to do anythin' but missy
and neighbor women and some real young niggers like me. She was cryin'
and all us slaves takin' on. It's a wonder we ever did git massa buried.
We carried him on our backs to the grave.

"After that we had to carry missy to the mountains and hide her, 'cause
everything, house and sheds and all, was burnt, and all her stock kilt
by sojers and outlaws. When she come out of hidin' she didn't have a
thing, not even a bed.

"But she was a brave woman, and said, 'Louis, we'll fix some kind of
quarters for you.' She went to work to rebuild the place. She said, 'You
niggers is free, but I need you and I'll pay you $2.00 a month.' She
did, too. She cut some logs and builded her one room and then we all
build us a room and that was the best we could do. I 'lieve the Lawd
blessed that woman. After freedom, that's how I lived the first year,
and she paid me every cent she promised. I stayed with her three years.

"Then I heared of a railroad job in Texas, and married Josie Sewel in a
big weddin' and we had a great time. I gits a job on that railroad for
fifty cents a day and it never lasted more'n a year, so I goes to
farmin'.

"We had fourteen chillun, four dead now, and the rest farmin' all over
Texas. I has more'n a hundred grandchillun. Josie, she done die twenty
years ago.

"I don't know as I 'spected massa's land to be 'vided and give us, but
they was plenty of land for everybody, and missy allus treated us right.
Wages was terrible small for a long time after I married and sometimes
they wouldn't pay us, and we had to beg or steal. I's went a whole two
days without nothin' to eat. If it hadn't been for them there Klu Klux,
sometimes the niggers would have went on the warpath for starvin'. But
the Klu Kluxers wouldn't let 'em roam none, if they tried they stretch
them out over a log and hit them with rawhide, but never say a word.
That was got the niggers--they was so silent, not a sound out of them,
and the nigger he can't stand that.

"I gits a pension and works when I can and gits by. Some the young
niggers is purty sorry, they's had so much and don't 'preciate none of
it. I's glad for what I can git, 'cause I 'members them old times after
the war when it was worse'n now.

420178

JEFF CALHOUN, about 98, was born a slave of the Calhoun family, in
Alton,