Rosa Simmons
From:
Arkansas
Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden
Person interviewed: Rosa Simmons
823 West 13th Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas
Age: 85?
"Yes mam, I was here during that Civil War. I was fifteen years old
then. I was born In Tennessee.
"My boss man carried all the best hands to Texas and carried the scrub
hands across Cypress Creek here in Arkansas, and that's where I come. I
was fifteen when the Yankees come in on my boss man's place, so you know
now I ain't no baby. I thank God that He left me here to get old.
"Before the war. I nussed two babies--my mistress' baby and her sister's
baby. Yes'm we had a good master and mistress. We didn't suffer for
nothin' and we didn't have no overseer over us. Colonel Maples was my
master. No'm he wasn't no soldier--that was the name his mother give
him.
"When my folks first come to Arkansas we lived in a cabin that just had
a balin' sack hangin' in the door and one night a bear come in and my
brother and I broke a board off the side and fell right out in the cane.
We all hollered so some folks come down and shot the bear. I ain't never
seed a bear before and I didn't know what it was.
"I 'member when the Yankees come to my boss man's place. They wanted to
shake hands but he was scared to death and wouldn't do it. Another time
the Yankees captured him and kept him three months. They took his horse
and he finally come home on a mule that didn't have but three legs. I
guess the Yankees give him the mule. He turned the old mule loose and
said he never wanted to see another Yankee. If he saw any kind of a
white man comin' down the road he run in the house and hid between the
feather bed and the mattress.
"One time the Yankees come and drunk the sweet milk and took all the
butter, turkeys and hogs and then broke the powder horn against the
maple tree.
"The cook say 'I'm gwine tell Marse Joe you drink all this milk.' The
Yankees say, 'Let the damn fool alone--here we are tryin' to free her
and she ain't got no sense.' They said there wouldn't be any more hard
times after the war.
"But I sure have seen some hard times. I have washed and cooked and done
'bout everything.
"When I get up in the morning I got the limburger (lumbago) in my back
so I ain't able to do much. Sometimes I have something to eat and
sometimes I don't."
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Carol Graham
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Mahalia Shores
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