venison and coffee. Then the women and children would sleep in the
wagons while the men kept watch for wild life.

Mammy Emiline was a faithful old black mammy, true to life and
traditions, and refused her freedom, at the close of the war, as wanted
to stay and raise "Old Massa's chilluns," which she did, for she was
nursing her sixth generation in the Waddell family at the time of her
death. Even to that generation there was a close tie between the
southern child and his or her black mammy. A strange almost unbelievable
thing happened to Emiline; she was born a deaf mute, but her hearing and
speech was restored many years before her death, when lightening struck
a tree under which she was standing.

Superstitious beliefs were strong in her and her tales of "hants" were
to "her little white chilluns", really true but hair-raising. Then she
would talk and live again the "days that are no more", telling them of
the happy prosperous, sunny land, in her negro dialect, and then tell of
the ruin and desolation behind the Yankees; the hard times my white
folks had in the reconstruction days--negro and carpetbag rule; then
give them glimpses of good--much courage, some heart and human feeling;
perhaps ending with an outburst of the negro spiritual, her favorite
being, "Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home."

After a faithful service of 106 years, Emiline died in 1932 at the home
of Mrs. John G. High, a great-granddaughter of L.W.C. Waddell living
nine miles north of Lonoke, and the grown up great-great-grandchildren
still miss Mammy.