"I am eighty-one years old. I was born close to Saratoga, North
Carolina. My mother died before I can recollect and my grandmother
raised me. They said my father was a white man. They said Jim Beckton. I
don't recollect him. My mother was named Mariah Tyson.

"I recollect how things was. My grandmother was Miss Nancy Tyson's cook.
She had one son named Mr. Seth Tyson. He run her farm. They et in the
dining room, we et in the kitchen. Clothes and something to eat was
scarce. I worked at whatever I was told to do. Grandma told me things to
do and Miss Nancy told me what to do. I went to the field when I was
pretty little. Once my uncle left the mule standing out in the field and
went off to do something else. It come up a hard shower. I crawled under
the mule. If I had been still it would been all right but my hair stood
up and tickled the mule's stomach. The mule jumped and the plough hit me
in my hip here at the side. It is a wonder I didn't get killed.

"After the Civil War was times like now. Money scarce and prices high,
and you had to start all over new. Pigs was hard to start, mules and
horses was mighty scarce. Seed was scarce. Everything had to be started
from the stump. Something to eat was mighty plain and scarce and one or
two dresses a year had to do. Folks didn't study about going so much.

"I had to rake up leaves and fetch em to the barn to make beds for the
little pigs in cold weather. The rake was made out of wood. It had
hickory wood teeth and about a foot long. It was heavy. I put my leaves
in a basket bout so high [three or four feet high]. I couldn't tote
it--I drug it. I had to get leaves in to do a long time and wait till
the snow got off before I could get more. It seem like it snowed a lot.