Sam Ritchie five or six miles away. I never beard much about them. They
had Negro overseers. Papa was a foreman. He tanned the cow hides and
made shoes for all the hands on Ritchie's place. He made our shoes over
there too. They said Stevens and Ritchies didn't keep bad dogs. Mistress
Eliza Ritchie was a Stevens before she married. Papa never was sold. He
said they was good to them. Mama was named Eliza too and papa George
Ritchie.

"When freedom was on papa went to Atlanta and got transportation to
Chattanooga. I don't know why. He met me and mama. She picked me up and
run away and met him. We went in a freight box. It had been a soldier's
home--great big house. We et on the first story out of tin pans. We had
white beans or peas, crackers and coffee. Meat and wheat and cornbread
we never smelt at that place. Somebody ask him how we got there and he
showed them a ticket from the Freedmans bureau in Atlanta. He showed
that on the train every now and then. Upstairs they brought out a stack
of wool blankets and started the rows of beds. Each man took his three
as he was numbered. Every night the same one got his own blankets. The
room was full of beds and white guards with a gun over his shoulder
guarded them all night long. We stayed there a long time--nearly a year.
They tried to get jobs fast as they could and push em out but it was
slow work. Mama got a place to cook at--Mrs. Crutchfield's. She run a
hotel in town but lived in the country. We stayed there about a year.
Papa was hired somewhere else there.

"Papa got us on a farm in middle Tennessee after that. We come to Mr.
Hooper's place and share cropped one year, then we went to share crop
for Wells Brothers close to Murfreesboro. I been on the farm all my life
since then.