I did not stay with my father and mother long as I was only about 14
when I started north. I worked for farmers every place I could find work
and sometimes would work a month or maybe two. The last farmer I worked
for I stayed a year and I got my board and room and five dollars a month
which was paid at the end of every six months. I stayed in Pennsylvania
for some years and came to Canton in 1884. I have always worked at farm
work except now and then in a factory.

I had two brothers, Dan and Tom, and one sister, Dora, but I never heard
from them or saw them after the war. I have been married twice. My first
wife was Sally Dillis Blaire and we were married in 1889. I got a
divorce a few years later and I don't know whatever became of her. My
second wife is still living. Her name was Kattie Belle Reed and I
married her in 1907. No, I never had any children.

I don't believe I had a bed when I was a slave as I don't remember any.
At home, after the war, my mother and father's bed was made of wood with
ropes stretched across with a straw tick on top. 'Us kids' slept under
this bed on a 'trundle' bed so that at night my mother could just reach
down and look after any one of us if we were sick or anything.

I was raised on ash cakes, yams and butter milk. These ash cakes were
small balls made of dough and my mother would rake the ashes out of the
fire place and lay these balls on the hot coals and then cover them over
with the ashes again. When they were done we would take 'em out, clean
off the ashes and eat them. We used to cook chicken by first cleaning
it, but leaving the feathers on, then cover it with clay and lay it in a
hole filled with hot coals. When it was done we would just knock off the
clay and the feathers would come off with it.