everything Miss Mary had.

"After the war ended we stayed on the place one year and made a crop and
then my father bought fifty acres of Mr. Ben Martin. He paid some on it
every year and when it was paid for Mr. Ben give him a deed to it.

"I'm the only child my mother had. She never had but me, one. I went to
school after the war and I member at night I'd be studyin' my lesson and
rootin' potatoes and papa would tell us stories about the war. I used to
love to hear him on long winter evenings.

"I stayed right there till I married. My father had cows and he'd kill
hogs and had a peach orchard, so we got along fine. Our white folks was
always good to us."




Interviewer: Thomas Elmore Lucy
Person interviewed: Lucy Cotton
Russellville, Arkansas
Age: 72
[Jan 7 1938]


"Lucy Cotton's my name, and I was born on the tenth day of June, 1865,
jist two months after the surrender. No suh, I ain't no kin to the other
Cottons around here, so far as I knows. My mother was Jane Hays, and she
was owned by a master named Wilson.