Harriett Mcfarlin Payne
From:
Arkansas
Interviewer: Mrs. Annie L. LaCotts
Person interviewed: Harriett McFarlin Payne
Dewitt, Arkansas
Age: 83
"Aunt Harriett, were you born in slavery time?"
"Yes, mam! I was big enough to remember well, us coming back from Texas
after we refugeed there when the fighting of the war was so bad at St.
Charles. We stayed in Texas till the surrender, then we all come back in
lots of wagons. I was sick but they put me on a little bed and me and
all the little chillun rode in a 'Jersey' that one of the old Negro
mammies drove, along behind the wagons, and our young master, Colonel
Bob Chaney rode a great big black horse. Oh! he nice-looking on dat
horse! Every once and awhile he'd ride back to the last wagon to see if
everything was all right. I remember how scared us chillun was when we
crossed the Red River. Aunt Mandy said, 'We crossin' you old Red River
today, but we not going to cross you any more, cause we are going home
now, back to Arkansas.' That day when we stopped to cook our dinner I
picked up a lot little blackjack acorns and when my mammy saw them she
said, 'Throw them things down, chile. They'll make you wormy.' (I cried
because I thought they were chinquapins.) I begged my daddy to let's go
back to Texas, but he said, 'No! No! We going with our white folks.' My
mama and daddy belonged to Col. Jesse Chaney, much of a gentleman, and
his wife Miss Sallie was the best mistress anybody ever had. She was a
Christian. I can hear her praying yet! She wouldn't let one of her
slaves hit a tap on Sunday. They must rest and go to church. They had
preaching at the cabin of some one of the slaves, and in the Summertime
sometimes they had it out in the shade under the trees. Yes, and the
slaves on each plantation had their own church. They didn't go
galavanting over the neighborhood or country like niggers do now. Col.
Chaney had lots and lots of slaves and all their houses were in a row,
all one-room cabins. Everything happened in that one room,--birth,
sickness, death and everything, but in them days niggers kept their
houses clean and their door yards too. These houses where they lived was
called 'the quarters'. I used to love to walk down by that row of
houses. It looked like a town and late of an evening as you'd go by the
doors you could smell meat a frying, coffee making and good things
cooking. We were fed good and had plenty clothes to keep us dry and
warm.
"Along about time for de surrender, Col. Jesse, our master, took sick
and died with some kind of head trouble. Then Col. Bob, our young
master, took care of his mama and the slaves. All the grown folks went
to the field to work and the little chillun would be left at a big room
called the nursing home. All us little ones would be nursed and fed by
an old mammy, Aunt Mandy. She was too old to go to the field, you know.
We wouldn't see our mammy and daddy from early in the morning till night
when their work was done, then they'd go by Aunt Mandy's and get their
chillun and go home till work time in the morning.
"Some of the slaves were house negroes. They didn't go to work in the
fields, they each one had their own job around the house, barn, orchard,
milk house, and things like that.
"When washday come, Lord, the pretty white clothes! It would take three
or four women a washing all day.
"When two of de slaves wanted to get married, they'd dress up nice as
they could and go up to the big house and the master would marry them.
They'd stand up before him and he'd read out of a book called the
'discipline' and say, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, all thy strength, with all thy might and thy neighbor as
thyself.' Then he'd say they were man and wife and tell them to live
right and be honest and kind to each other. All the slaves would be
there too, seeing the 'wedden'.
"Our Miss Sallie was the sweetest best thing in the world! She was so
good and kind to everybody and she loved her slaves, too. I can remember
when Uncle Tony died how she cried! Uncle Tony Wadd was Miss Sallie's
favorite servant. He stayed in a little house in the yard and made fires
for her, brought in wood and water and just waited on the house. He was
a little black man and white-headed as cotton, when he died. Miss Sallie
told the niggers when they come to take him to the grave yard, to let
her know when they got him in his coffin, and when they sent and told
her she come out with all the little white chillun, her little
grandchillun, to see Uncle Tony. She just cried and stood for a long
time looking at him, then she said, 'Tony, you have been a good and
faithful servant.' Then the Negro men walked and carried him to the
graveyard out in a big grove in de field. Every plantation had its own
graveyard and buried its own folks, and slaves right on the place.
"If all slaves had belonged to white folks like ours, there wouldn't
been any freedom wanted."
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John Payne
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Carry Allen Patton
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