Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Laura Abromsom, R.F.D., Holly Grove, Arkansas
Receives mail at Clarendon, Arkansas
Age: 74


"My mama was named Eloise Rogers. She was born in Missouri. She was sold
and brought to three or four miles from Brownsville, Tennessee. Alex
Rogers bought her and my papa. She had been a house girl and well cared
for. She never got in contact wid her folks no more after she was sold.
She was a dark woman. Papa was a ginger cake colored man. Mama talked
like Alex Rogers had four or five hundred acres of land and lots of
niggers to work it. She said he had a cotton factory at Brownsville.

"Mistress Barbara Ann was his wife. They had two boys and three girls.
One boy George went plumb crazy and outlived 'em all. The other boy died
early. Alex Rogers got my papa in Richmond, Virginia. He was took outer
a gang. We had a big family. I have eight sisters and one brother.

"Pa say they strop 'em down at the carriage house and give 'em five
hundred lashes. He say they have salt and black pepper mixed up in er
old bucket and put it all on flesh cut up with a rag tied on a stick
(mop). Alex Rogers had a nigger to put it on the place they whooped. The
Lord puts up wid such wrong doings and den he comes and rectifies it. He
does that very way.

"Pa say they started to whoop him at the gin house. He was a sorter
favorite. He cut up about it. That didn't make no difference 'bout it.
Somehow they scared him up but he didn't git whooped thater time.