J N Gillespie
From:
More Arkansas
--- 11 1938
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: J. N. Gillespie
1112 Park Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 75
"I was born near Galveston, in Texas, January 19, 1863, so they tell me.
I been in this town and been living right here at 1112 Park Street for
fifty-three years and ain't never had no trouble with anybody.
"My grandparents were Gillespie's. My grandma was an Indian woman. She
was stolen off the reservation--her and her daughter. The daughter was
about twelve years old and big enough to wait table. Both of them were
full blooded Cherokee Indians. My grandma married a slave, and when she
growed up, my mother married a slave; but my mother's parents were both
Indians, and one of my father's parents was white, so you see about
three-fourths of me is something else. My grandmother's name before her
first marriage was Courtney and my mother's first name was Parthenia.
"When they were stolen, they were made slaves. Nick Toliver bought 'em.
He was their first master, far as I heard 'em say. After old man Nick
Toliver died, Tom Brewer bought my mother. Toliver and Brewer were the
only two masters she had.
"After freedom came, my grandma took back her own name, Gillespie.
Grandma's second husband was named Berry Green. She was free and in the
Indian reservation when she married Gillespie, but she was a slave when
she married Berry Green.
"After my mother came to be of age, she married a man named Willis. He
was a slave. That is why I am like I am now. If my grandma had stayed
in the nation, I never would have been a slave, and I wouldn't need to
be beatin' around here trying to get just bread and meat.
"After freedom, she taken her mother's name by her free husband,
Gillespie, and she made her husband take it too. That how I got the name
of Gillespie."
Occupation of Forefathers
"After they were made slaves, my grandmother cooked and my mother waited
table and worked as a house girl. My grandma used to make clothes too,
and she could work on one of these big looms."
Patrollers
"My mother told me that when the boys would go out to a dance, they
would tie a rope across the road to make the horses of the patrollers
stumble and give the dancers time to get away. Sometimes the horses'
legs would be broken."
Subject's Occupation
"I wants to work and can't get work; so they ain't no use to worry. I
used to cook. That is all I did for a living. I cooked as long as I
could get something for it. I can't get a pension."
Slave Houses
"I didn't see no log houses when I growed up. Everything was frame."
Right After the War
"Right after the War, my mother stayed around the house and continued to
work for her master. I don't know what they paid her. I can't remember
just how they got free but I think the soldiers gave 'em the
notification. They stayed on the place till I was big enough to work. I
didn't do no work in slave time because I wasn't old enough."
Choked on Watermelon Seeds
"One day I was stealing watermelons with some big boys and I got choked
on some seeds. The melon seeds got in my throat. I yelled for help and
the boys ran away. Old Tom Brewer made me get on my hands and jump up
and down to get the seeds out."
Leaving Galveston
"I was a small boy, might have been seven or eight years old, when I
left Galveston. We came to Bradley County, here in Arkansas. From
Bradley my mother took me to Pine Bluff. After I got big I went back to
Texas. Then I came from Texas here fifty-three years ago, and have been
living here ever since, cooking for hotels and private families.
"I never was arrested in my life. I never been in trouble. I never had a
fight. Been living in the same place ever since I first came here--right
here at 1112 Park Street. I belong to the Christian Church at Thirteenth
and Cross Streets. I quit working around the yard and the building
because they wouldn't pay me anything. They promised to pay me, but they
wouldn't do it."
Interviewer's Comment
Gillespie has an excellent reputation, as indeed have most of the
ex-slaves in this city. He is clear and unfaltering in his memory. He is
deliberate and selects what he means to tell. He is never discourteous.
He is a little nervous and cannot be held long at a time. Indian
characteristics in him are not especially prominent, but you note them
readily after learning of his ancestry. He is brown but slightly copper
in color, and his profile has the typical Indian appearance. He is a
little taciturn, and sometimes acts on his decisions before he announces
them. I cultivated him about three weeks.
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Will Glass
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Cora Gillam
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