Interviewer's Comment

The interviewee says she is eighty-four, and her story hangs together.
Her husband died thirteen years ago, and they had been married fifty
years when he died. She "recollects" being about twenty years old when
she married. She says she was about twelve years old when her mother
died, one year after the close of the Civil War. This data seems to be
rather conclusive on the age of eighty-four.




Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Sarah Williams Wells, Biscoe, Arkansas
Age: Born 1866


"I jess can't tell much; my memory fails me. My white folks was John and
Mary Williams but I was born two years after the surrender. Soon after
the surrender they went to Lebanon, Tennessee. My folks stayed on wha I
was born round in Murry County. My father was killed after the war but I
was little. My mother died same year I married. I heard em say there was
John and Frank. They may be living over there now. I heard em talking
bout war times. They said my father was a blacksmith in the war. I come
here wid four little children on a ticket to Crocketts Bluff. We was
sick all that year. Made a fine crop. The man let another man have us to
work. He was a colored man. His wife she was mean to us. She never come
to see or do one thing when we all had fever. The babies nearly starved.
Took all for doctor bills and medicine. Had $12 when all bills settled
out of the whole crop. In all I had fifteen children. But two girls and