Jennie Wormly Gibson
From:
More Arkansas
#653
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Jennie Wormly Gibson
Biscoe, Arkansas
Age: 49
"Gran'ma was Phoebe West. Mama was Jennie West. Mama was a little girl
when the Civil War come on. She told how scared her uncle was. He didn't
want to go to war. When they would be coming if he know it or get
glimpse of the Yankee soldiers, he'd pick up my mama. She was a baby.
He'd run for a quarter of a mile to a great big tree down in the field
way back of the place off the road. He never had to go to war. Ma said
she was little but she was scared at the sight of them clothes they
wore. Mama's and grandma's owners lived at Vicksburg a lot of the time
but where that was at Washington County, Mississippi. They had lots of
slaves.
"Grandma was a midwife and doctored all the babies on the place. She
said they had a big room where they was and a old woman kept them. They
et milk for breakfast and buttermilk and clabber for supper. They always
had bread. For dinner they had meat boiled and one other thing like
cabbage, and the children got the pot-liquor. It was brought in a cart
and poured in wooden troughs. They had gourds to dip it out with. They
had gourds to drink their cool spring water with.
"Daylight would find the hands in the field at work. Grandma said they
had meat and bread and coffee till the war come on. They had to have a
regular meal to work on in the morning.
"Grandma said their something to eat got mighty slim in war times and
kept getting slimmer and slimmer. They had plenty sorghum all the time.
Them troughs was hewed out of a log and was washed and hung in the sun
till next mealtime. They cooked in iron pots and skillets on the fire.
Grandma worked where they put her but her main trade was seeing after
the sick on that place.
"They had a fiddler on the place and had big dances now and then.
"This young generation won't be advised no way you can fix it. I don't
know what in the world the folks is looking about. The folks ain't good
as they used to be. They shoots craps and drinks and does low-down
things all the time. I ain't got no time with the young generation.
Times gone to pieces pretty bad if you axing me."
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James Gill
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Mike Genes
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