he Indians takes my hoss away from me. It
was 'bout fifty mile to a train and I didn't have no money, but I found
a white man what wants wood cut and I works near a month for him and
gits $2.00. I gits on a train and comes a hundred mile from where that
railroad was goin' 'cross the country, and I has to walk near all that
hundred miles. Once and now a white man comin' or goin' lets me ride.
But I got there and the job pays me sixty cents a day. That was lots of
money them days. Near as I 'member, it was 1867 or 1868 when I comes to
Texas.

"Then I marries Agnes Frazer, and we has a big weddin' and a preacher
and a big supper for two or three weeks. Her pappy kilt game and we et
barbecue all the time. We had eleven chillen, one a year for a long
time, five boys and six gals. One made a school teacher and I ain't seen
her nearly forty-five years, 'cause she done took a notion to go north
and they won't let her back in Texas 'cause she married a white man in
New York. I don't like that. She don't have no sense or she wouldn't
done that, no, sir.

"Since the nigger been free it been Hell on the poor old nigger. He has
advance some ways, but he's still a servant and will be, long as Gawd's
curse still stay on the Negro race. We was turnt loose without nothin'
and done been under the white man rule so long we couldn't hold no job
but labor. I worked most two years on that railroad and the rest my life
I farms. Now I gits a little pension from the gov'ment and them white
folks am sho' good to give it to me, 'cause I ain't good for work no
more.

420003

[Illustration: Preely Coleman]

PREELY COLEMAN was born in 1852 on the Souba farm, near New Berry,
South Carolina, but he and his mother were sold and brought to
Texas when Preely was a month old. They settled near Alto, Texas.
Preely now lives in Tyler.

"I'm Preely Coleman and I never gits tired of talking. Yes, ma'am, it am
Juneteenth, but I'm home, 'cause I'm too old now to go on them
celerabrations. Where was I born? I knows that 'zactly, 'cause my mammy
tells me that a thousand times. I was born down on the old Souba place,
in South Carolina, 'bout ten mile from New Berry. My mammy belonged to
the Souba family, but its a fact one of the Souba boys was my pappy and
so the Soubas sells my mammy to Bob and Dan Lewis and they brung us to
Texas 'long with a big bunch of other slaves. Mammy tells me it was a
full month 'fore they gits to