Mary Poe
From:
Arkansas
Interviewer: Miss Irene Robertson
Person interviewed: Mary Poe, Forrest City, Arkansas
Age: 60
"My papa used to tell about two men he knowd stealing a hog. He was
Wyatt Alexander. He was feeding one evening and the master was out there
too that evening. They overheard two colored men inside the crib lot
house. They was looking at the hogs. They planned to come back after
dark and get a hog. The way it turned out master dressed up ragged and
got inside that night. The first man come. They got a shoat and killed
it, knocked it in the head. The master took it on his back to the log
cabin. When he knocked, his wife opened the door. She seen who it was.
She nearly fell out and when he seen who it was he run off. The master
throwed the hog down. They all got the hot water and went to work. He
left a third there and took part to the other man. He done gone to bed
and he took a third on home. He said he wanted to see if they needed
meat or wanted to keep in stealing practice. He didn't want them to
waste his big hog meat neither. Said that man never come home for two
weeks, 'fraid he'd get a whooping. No, they said he never got a whooping
but the meat was near by gone.
"Seem lack hog stealing was common in North Carolina in them days from
the way he talked.
"Papa said he went down in the pasture one night to get a shoat. He said
they had a fine big drove. He got one knocked over an' was carrying it
out across the fence to the field. He seen another man. He couldn't see.
It was dark. He throwed the hog over on him. The man took the shoat on
to his house and papa was afraid to say much about it. He said way 'long
towards day this man come bringing about half of that hog cleaned and
ready to salt away. They got up and packed it away out of sight.
"My mother was named Lucy Alexander, too."
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