Seabe Tuttle
From:
Arkansas
Interviewer: Zillah Cross Peel
Information given by: Seabe Tuttle
Residence: Washington County, seven miles east of Fayetteville.
Seabe Tuttle who was born in slavery in 1859, belonged to James
Middleton Tuttle of Richland, which was about seven miles east of
Fayetteville.
"I was just a baby when the war was but I do recollect a lot of things
that my ma told me about the War. Our folks all come from Tennessee. My
mother was named Esther, she belonged to Ole Man Tom Smith who gived
her to Miss Evaline, who was Mister Mid Tuttle's wife. The Tuttles and
Smiths lived joining farms."
"You see, Mister Tuttle was a colonel in the Confederate army and when
he went off with the army he left all his slaves and stock in care of
Mr. Lafe Boone. Miss Mollie and Miss Nannie, and Miss Jim and another
daughter I disrecolect her her name, all went in carriages and wagons
down south following the Confederate army. They took my pa, Mark, and
other servants, my mother's sister, Americus and Barbary. They told them
they would bring them back home after the War. Then my mother and me and
the other darkies, men and women and children, followed them with the
cattle and horses and food. But us didn't get no further than Dardanelle
when the Federals captured us and took us back to the Federal garrison
at Ft. Smith, where they kept us six months. Yes'm they were good to us
there. We would get our food at the com'sary. But one day my ma and my
sister, Mandy, found a white man that said he would bring us back to
Fayetteville. No'm, I disremember his name."
"We found us a cabin to live in here. Didn't have to pay rent then likes
they do now. We lived here but after a while my mother died. They had
two battles 'round here, the Battle of Prairie Grave and one was the
Battle of Pea Ridge, after we comed back but no soldiers bothered us. I
remember that back from where the Christian church is now, down to the
Town Branch, there was a whole lot of Federal soldiers staying, they
called it then Cato Branch, cause a man by the name of Cato owned all
that land."
"Yes'm, I guess we had a purty good master and missus. We never did get
treated much rough."
"After the War, Miss Evaline brought back all the colored people that
she took with her, but my father. He got married down there and didn't
come back for a long time. Then he did and died here. Two of Miss
Eveline's daughters married down there. They didn't have no boys 'tall,
just four girls."
"When Peace was made the slaves all scattered. We none was givin'
nothin' for as I know. I worked on a farm for $13. a month and my board,
for a man down at Oxford's Bend, then I went down to Van Buren where I
worked as a porter in a hotel then I went to Morrilton and I married. We
come back here and I worked all the time as a carpenter. I worked for
Mister A.M. Byrnes. I helped build a lot of fine houses round here and I
helped put a roof on the Main Building at the University."
"Yes'm, I own my home down by the school, I can't make much money these
days. It kinda worries me. My folks all dead but three of my brothers
children. One of these is blind. He lives on the old home my mother had.
The county gives him a little food and a little money."
"Yes'm, my white folks were all good to us. Purty good to us."
"After Peace was made though, we all jes' scattered, somehow."
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Clayton Holbert
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Henry Turner
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