Bill Simms
From:
Kansa
THE AMERICAN GUIDE
TOPEKA, KANSAS
EX SLAVE STORY
OTTAWA, KANSAS
INTERVIEWER: Leta Gray
Told by Bill Simms, ex slave, age 97 years, Ottawa, Kansas.
[TR: Information moved from bottom of last page.]
"My name is Bill Simms."
"I was born in Osceola, Missouri, March 16, 1839."
"I lived on the farm with my mother, and my master, whose name was
Simms. I had an older sister, about two years older than I was. My
master needed some money so he sold her, and I have never seen her since
except just a time or two."
"On the plantation we raised cows, sheep, cotton, tobacco, corn, which
were our principal crops. There was plenty of wild hogs, turkey, ant
deer and other game. The deer used to come up and feed with the cattle
in the feed yards, and we could get all the wild hogs we wanted by
simply shooting them in the timber."
"A man who owned ten slaves was considered wealthy, and if he got hard
up for money, he would advertise and sell some slaves, like my oldest
sister was sold on the block with her children. She sold for eleven
hundred dollars, a baby in her arms sold for three hundred dollars.
Another sold for six hundred dollars and the other for a little less
than that. My master was offered fifteen hundred dollars for me several
times, but he refused to sell me, because I was considered a good husky,
slave. My family is all dead, and I am the only one living.
"The slaves usually lived in a two-room house made of native lumber. The
houses were all small. A four or five room house was considered a
mansion. We made our own clothes, had spinning wheels and raised and
combed our own cotton, clipped the wool from our sheep's backs, combed
and spun it into cotton and wool clothes. We never knew what boughten
clothes were. I learned to make shoes when I was just a boy and I made
the shoes for the whole family. I used to chop wood and make rails and
do all kinds of farm work."
"I had a good master, most of the masters were good to their slaves.
When a slave got too old to work they would give him a small cabin on
the plantation and have the other slaves to wait on him. They would
furnish him with victuals, and clothes until he died."
"Slaves were never allowed to talk to white people other than their
masters or someone their master knew, as they were afraid the white man
might have the slave run away. The masters aimed to keep their slaves in
ignorance and the ignorant slaves were all in favor of the Rebel army,
only the more intelligent were in favor of the Union army."
"When the war started, my master sent me to work for the Confederate
army. I worked most of the time for three years off and on, hauling
canons, driving mules, hauling ammunition, and provisions. The Union
army pressed in on us and the Rebel army moved back. I was sent home.
When the Union army came close enough I ran away from home and joined
the Union army. There I drove six-mule team and worked at wagon work,
driving ammunition and all kinds of provisions until the war ended. Then
I returned home to my old master, who had stayed there with my mother.
My master owned about four hundred acres of good land, and had had ten
slaves. Most of the slaves stayed at home. My master hired me to work
for him. He gave my mother forty acres of land with a cabin on it and
sold me a forty acres, for twenty dollars, when I could pay him. This
was timbered land and had lots of good trees for lumber, especially
walnut. One tree on this ground was worth one hundred dollars, if I
could only get it cut and marketed, I could pay for my land. My master's
wife had been dead for several years and they had no children. The
nearest relative being a nephew. They wanted my master's land and was
afraid he would give it all away to us slaves, so they killed him, and
would have killed us if we had stayed at home. I took my mother and ran
into the adjoining, Claire County. We settled there and stayed for
sometime, but I wanted to see Kansas, the State I had heard so much
about."
"I couldn't get nobody to go with me, so I started out afoot across the
prairies for Kansas. After I got some distance from home it was all
prairie. I had to walk all day long following buffalo trail. At night I
would go off a little ways from the trail and lay down and sleep. In the
morning I'd wake up and could see nothing but the sun and prairie. Not a
house, not a tree, no living thing, not even could I hear a bird. I had
little to eat, I had a little bread in my pocket. I didn't even have a
pocket knife, no weapon of any kind. I was not afraid, but I wouldn't
start out that way again. The only shade I could find in the daytime was
the rosin weed on the prairie. I would lay down so it would throw the
shade in my face and rest, then get up and go again. It was in the
spring of the year in June. I came to Lawrence, Kansas, where I stayed
two years working on the farm. In 1874 I went to work for a man by the
month at $35 a month and I made more money than the owner did, because
the grasshoppers ate up the crops. I was hired to cut up the corn for
him, but the grasshoppers ate it up first. He could not pay me for
sometime. Grasshoppers were so thick you couldn't step on the ground
without stepping on about a dozen at each step. I got my money and came
to Ottawa in December 1874, about Christmas time."
"My master's name was Simms and I was known as Simms Bill, just like
horses. When I came out here I just changed my name from Simms Bill, to
Bill Simms."
"Ottawa was very small at the time I came here, and there were several
Indians close by that used to come to town. The Indians held their war
dance on what is now the courthouse grounds. I planted the trees that
are now standing on the courthouse grounds. I still planted trees until
three or four years ago. There were few farms fenced and what were, were
on the streams. The prairie land was all open. This is what North Ottawa
was, nothing but prairie north of Logan Street, and a few houses between
Logan Street and the river. Ottawa didn't have many business houses.
There was also an oil mill where they bought castor beans, and made
castor oil on the north side of the Marais des Cygnes River one block
west of Main Street. There was one hotel, which was called Leafton House
and it stood on what is now the southwest corner of Main and Second
Streets."
"I knew Peter Kaiser, when I came here, and A.P. Elder was just a boy
then."
"The people lived pretty primitive. We didn't have kerosene. Our only
lights were tallow candles, mostly grease lamps, they were just a pan
with grease in it, and one end of the rag dragging out over the side
which we would light. There were no sewers at that time."
"I had no chance to go to school when a boy, but after I came to Kansas
I was too old to go to school, and I had to work, but I attended night
school, and learned to read and write and figure."
"The farm land was nearly all broke up by ox teams, using about six oxen
on a plow. In Missouri we lived near the Santa Fe trail, and the
settlers traveling on the trail used oxen, and some of them used cows.
The cows seem to stand the road better than the oxen and also gave some
milk. The travelers usually aimed to reach the prairie States in the
spring, so they could have grass for their oxen and horses during the
summer."
"I have lived here ever since I came here. I was married when I was
about thirty years old. I married a slave girl from Georgia. Back in
Missouri, if a slave wanted to marry a woman on another plantation he
had to ask the master, and if both masters agreed they were married. The
man stayed at his owners, and the wife at her owners. He could go to see
her on Saturday night and Sunday. Sometimes only every two weeks. If a
man was a big strong man, neighboring plantation owners would ask him to
come over and see his gals, hoping that he might want to marry one of
them, but if a Negro was a small man he was not cared for as a husband,
as they valued their slaves as only for what they could do, just like
they would horses. When they were married and if they had children they
belonged to the man who owned the woman. Osceola is where the saying
originated, 'I'm from Missouri, show me.' After the war the smart guys
came through and talked the people into voting bonds, but there was no
railroad built and most counties paid their bonds, but the county in
which Osceola stands refused to pay for their bonds because there was
no railroad built, and they told the collectors to 'show me the railroad
and we will pay,' and that is where 'show me' originated."
"My wife died when we had three children. She had had to work hard all
her life and she said she didn't want her children to have to work as
hard as she had, and I promised her on her death bed, that I would
educate our girls. So I worked and sent the girls to school. My two
girls both graduated from Ottawa university, the oldest one being the
first colored girl to ever graduate from that school. After graduation
she went to teach school in Oklahoma, but only got twenty-five dollars a
month, and I had to work and send her money to pay her expenses. The
younger girl also graduated and went to teach school, but she did not
teach school long, until she married a well-to-do farmer in Oklahoma.
The older girl got her wages raised until she got one hundred and
twenty-five dollars per month. I have worked at farm work and tree
husbandry all my life. My oldest daughter bought me my first suit of
clothes I ever had."
"I have been living alone about twenty-five years. I don't know hew old
I was, but my oldest daughter had written my mother before she died, and
got our family record, which my mother kept in her old Bible. Each year
she writes me and tells me on my birthday how old I am."
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Belle Williams
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Clayton Holbert
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