ages and all on them, they were lost so we guess at our ages."

"Most of the slave owners were good to their slaves although some of
them were brutish of course."

"In 1877 a lot of people began coming out here to Kansas, and in 1878
there were several, but in 1879 there were an awful lot of colored
people immigrating. We came in 1877 to Kansas City, October 1. We landed
about midnight. We came by train. Then there was nothing but little huts
in the bottoms. The Santa Fe depot didn't amount to anything. The
Armours' Packing house was even smaller than that. There was a swinging
bridge over the river. The Kaw Valley was considered good-for-nothing,
but to raise hemp. There was an awful lot of it grown there though, and
there were also beavers in the Kaw River, and they used to cut down
trees to build their dams. I worked several years and in 1880 I came to
Franklin County."

"We raised a lot of corn, and castor beans. That was the money crop.
Corn at that time wasn't hard to raise. People never plowed their corn
more than three times, and they got from forty to fifty bushels per
acre. There were no weeds and it was virgin soil. One year I got
seventy-two bushel of corn per acre, and I just plowed it once. That may
sound 'fishy' but it is true."

"There used to be a castor bean mill here, and I have seen the wagons of
castor beans lined from Logan Street to First Street, waiting to unload.
They had to number the wagons to avoid trouble and they made them keep
their places. There also used to be a water mill here, but it burned."

"There were lots of Indians here in the Chippewas. They were harmless