"I was born in 1862, September first. I got that off the Bible. My
father, he belonged to a doctor and the doctor, he was a kind of a wait
man to him. And the doctor learnt him how to read and write. Right after
the War, he was a teacher. He was ready to be a teacher before most
other people because he learnt to read and write in slavery. There were
so many folks that came to see the doctor and wanted to leave numbers
and addresses that he had to have some one to 'tend to that and he
taught my father to read and write so that he could do it.

"I was born in Tennessee, in Haywood County. My father was born in North
Carolina, so they tell me. He was brought to Tennessee. He was a slave
and my mother was a slave. His name was Washington Curry and my mother's
name was Eliza Douglass before she married. Her master was named John
Douglass and my father's master was named T.A. Curry, Tom Curry some
folks called him.

"I don't know just how many slaves Tom Curry owned. Lemme see. There was
my daddy, his four brothers, his five sisters. My father's father had
ten children, and my father had the same number--five boys and six
girls. Ten of us lived for forty years. My mother had ten living
children when she died in 1921. Since '21, three girls died. My father
died in 1892.

"My father's master had around a hundred slaves. Douglass was a richer
man than my father's master. I suspect he had two hundred slaves. He was
my mother's father as well as her master. I know him. He used to come to
our house and he would give mama anything she wanted. He liked her. She
was his daughter.