Angeline Jones
From:
Arkansas
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Angeline Jones
Near Biscoe and Brinkley, Arkansas
Age: 79
[Date Stamp: May 31 1938]
"I was born in Memphis, Tennessee. Mother was cooking. Her name was
Marilla Harris and she took my pa's name, Brown. He was Francis Brown.
I was three years old when the surrender come on. Then grandma, my
mama and pa and me and my brother come with a family to Biscoe. There
wasn't no Biscoe but that's where we come to anyhow. Mama and grandma
cooked for a woman. They bought a big farm and started clearing. Some
of it was cleared. Mama's been dead forty years. I farmed all my whole
life. I don't know nothing else.
"Grandma had a right smart to say during slavery times. She was
cooking for her mistress and had a family. She'd hide good things to
take to her children. The mistress kept a polly parrot about in the
kitchen. Polly would tell on grandma. Caused grandma to get whoopings.
She talked like a good many of 'em. She got sick. The woman what
married grandma's brother was to take her place. She wasn't going to
be getting no whoopings. She sewed the parrot up. He got to dwindling.
They doctored him. She clipped his tongue at the same time so he never
could do no good talking. He died. They never found out his trouble.
Grandma said they worried about the parrot but she never did; she
knowed what been done. Grandma come from Paris, Tennessee but I think
the same folks fetched 'er. I don't think she said she was sold. She
said slavery times was hard. Mama didn't see as hard times as grandma
had. Grandma shielded her in the work part a whole heap to get to
live where she did. They loved to be together. She's been dead and
left me forty odd years. I works and support myself, and my kin folks
help all they can."
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Charlie Jones
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Willie Johnson
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