William L Dunwoody
From:
More Arkansas
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: William L. Dunwoody
2116 W. 24th Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: About 98
[HW: Remembers Jeff Davis]
"I was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in the year 1840.
"My father was killed in the Civil War when they taken South Carolina.
His name was Charles Dunwoody. My mother's name was Mary Dunwoody. My
father was a free man and my mother was a slave. When he courted and
married her he took the name of Dunwoody.
Houses
"Ain't you seen a house built in the country when they were clearing up
and wanted to put up somethin' for the men to live in while they were
working? They'd cut down a tree. Then they'd line it--fasten a piece of
twine to each end and whiten it and pull it up and let it fly down and
mark the log. Then they'd score it with axes. Then the hewers would come
along and hew the log. Sometimes they could hew it so straight you
couldn't put a line on it and find any difference. Where they didn't
take time with the logs, it would be where they were just putting up a
little shack for the men to sleep in.
"Just like you box timber in the sawmill, the men would straighten out a
log.
"To make the log house, you would saw your blocks, set em up, then you
put the sills on the blocks, then you put the sleepers. When you get
them in, lay the planks to walk on. Then they put on the first log. You
notch it. To make the roof, you would keep on cutting the logs in half
first one way and then the other until you got the blocks small enough
for shingles. Then you would saw the shingles off. They had plenty of
time.
Food
"The slaves ate just what the master ate. They ate the same on my
master's place. All people didn't farm alike. Some just raised cotton
and corn. Some raised peas, oats, rye, and a lot of different things. My
old master raised corn, potatoes--Irish and sweet--, goober peas
(peanuts), rye, and wheat, and I can't remember what else. That's in the
eating line. He had hogs, goats, sheep, cows, chickens, turkeys, geese,
ducks. That is all I can remember in the eating line. My old master's
slaves et anything he raised.
"He would send three or four wagons down to the mill at a time. One of
them would carry sacks; all the rest would carry wheat. You know flour
seconds, shorts and brand come from the wheat. You get all that from the
wheat. Buckwheat flour comes from a large grained wheat. The wagons came
back loaded with flour, seconds, shorts and brand. The old man had six
wheat barns to keep the wheat in.
"All the slaves ate together. They had a cook special for them. This
cook would cook in a long house more than thirty feet long. Two or three
women would work there and a man, just like the cooks would in a hotel
now. All the working hands ate there and got whatever the cook gave
them. It was one thing one time and another another. The cook gave the
hands anything that was raised on the place. There was one woman in
there cooking that was called 'Mammy' and she seed to all the chilen.
Feeding the Children
"After the old folks among the slaves had had their breakfast, the cook
would blow a horn. That would be about nine o'clock or eight. All the
children that were big enough would come to the cook shack. Some of them
would bring small children that had been weaned but couldn't look after
themselves. The cook would serve them whatever the old folks had for
breakfast. They ate out of the same kind of dishes as the old folks.
"Between ten and eleven o'clock, the cook would blow the horn again and
the children would come in from play. There would be a large bowl and a
large spoon for each group of larger children. There would be enough
children in each group to get around the bowl comfortably. One would
take a spoon of what was in the bowl and then pass the spoon to his
neighbor. His neighbor would take a spoonful and then pass the spoon on,
and so on until everyone would have a spoonful. Then they would begin
again, and so on until the bowl was empty. If they did not have enough
then, the cook would put some more in the bowl. Most of the time, bread
and milk was in the bowl; sometimes mush and milk.
"There was a small spoon and a small bowl for the smaller children in
the group that the big children would use for them and pass around just
like they passed around the big spoon.
"About two or three o'clock, the cook would blow the horn again. Time
the children all got in there and et, it would be four or five o'clock.
The old mammy would cut up greens real fine and cut up meat into little
pieces and boil it with corn-meal dumplings. They'd call it pepper pot.
Then she'd put some of the pepper pot into the bowls and we'd eat it.
And it was good.
"After the large children had et, they would go back to see after the
babies. If they were awake, the large children would put on their
clothes and clean them up. Then where there was a woman who had two or
three small children and didn't have one large enough to do this, they'd
give her a large one from some other family to look after her children.
If she had any relatives, they would use their children for her. If she
didn't then they would use anybody's children.
"About eleven o'clock all the women who had little children that had not
been weaned would come in to see after them and let them suck. When a
woman had nursing children, she would nurse them before she went to
work, again at around eleven o'clock and again when she came from work
in the evening. She would come in long before sundown. In between times,
the old mammy and the other children would look after them.
War Memories
"I saw Jeff Davis once. He was one-eyed. He had a glass eye. My old
mistiss had three girls. They got into the buggy and went to see Jeff
Davis when he come through Auburn, Alabama. We were living in Auburn
then. I drove them. Jeff Davis came through first, and then the
Confederate army, and then the Yankees. They didn't come on the same day
but some days apart.
"The way I happened to see the Yanks was like this. I went to carry some
clothes to my young master. He was a doctor, and was out where they were
drilling the men. I laid down on the carpet in his tent and I heard
music playing 'In Dixie Land I'll take my stand and live and die in
Dixie.' I got up and come out and looked up ever which way but I
couldn't see nothing. I went back again and laid down again in the tent,
and I heard it again. I run out and looked all up and around again, and
I still couldn't see nothin'. That time I looked and saw my young master
talking to another officer--I can't remember his name. My young master
said, 'What you looking for?'
"I said, 'I'm looking for them angels I hear playing. Don't you hear em
playing Dixie?' The other officer said, 'Celas, you ought to whip that
nigger.' I went back into the tent. My young master said, 'Whip him for
what?' And he said, 'For telling that lie.' My young master said to him
like this, 'He don't tell lies. He heard something somewhere.'
"Then they got through talking and he come on in and I seed him and
beckoned to him. He came to me and I said, 'Lie down there.' He laid
down and I laid down with him, and he heard it. Then he said, 'Look out
there and tell him to come in.'
"I called the other officer and he come in. The doctor (that was my
young master) said, 'Lie down there.' When he laid down by my young
master, he heard it too. Then the doctor said to him, 'You said William
was telling a damn lie.' He said, 'I beg your pardon, doctor.'
"My young master got up and said, 'Where is my spy glasses? Le'me have a
look.' He went out and there was a mountain called the Blue Ridge
Mountain. He looked but he didn't see nothin'. I went out and looked
too. I said, 'Look down the line beside those two big trees,' and I
handed the glasses back to him. He looked and then he hollered, 'My God,
look yonder' and handed the spy glasses to the other officer. He looked
too. Then the doctor said, 'What are we going to do?' He said, 'I am
goin' to put pickets way out.' He told me to get to my mule. I got. He
put one of his spurs on my foot and told me to go home and tell 'ma' the
Yanks were coming. You know what 'ma' he was talking about? That was his
wife's mother. We all called her 'mother.'
"I carried the note. When I got to Mrs. Dobbins' house, I yelled, 'The
Yanks are coming--Yankees, Yankees, Yankees!' She had two boys. They
runned out and said, 'What did you say?'
"I said, 'Yankees, Yankees!'
"They said, 'Hell, what could he see?'
"I come on then and got against Miss Yancy's. She had a son, a man named
Henry Yancy. He had a sore leg. He asked me what I said. I told him that
the Yanks were coming. He called for Henry, a boy that stayed with him,
and had him saddle his horse. Then he got on it and rode up town. When
he got up there, he was questioned bout how did he know it. Did he see
them. He said he didn't see them, that Celas Neal saw them and the
doctor's mother's boy brought the message. Then he taken off.
"Jeff Davis went on. The Confederates went on. They all went on. Then
the Yanks passed through.
"The first fight they had there, they cleaned up the Sixty-Ninth Alabama
troops. My young master had been helping drill them. He went on and
overtook the others.
Right After the War
"I am not sure just what we did immediately after freedom. I don't know
whether it was a year or whether it was a year and a half. I can just go
by my mother. After freedom, we came from Auburn, Alabama to Opelika,
Alabama, and she went to cooking at a hotel until she got money enough
for what she wanted to do. When she got fixed, she moved then to
Columbus, Georgia. She rented a place from Ned Burns, a policeman. When
that place gave out, she went to washing and ironing. Sterling Love
rented a house from the same man. He had four children and they were
going to school and they took me too.
Schooling
"I fixed up and went to school with them. I didn't get no learning at
all in slavery times.
How Freedom Came
"I don't know whether all the whites did it or not; but I know
this--when they quit fighting, I know the white children called we
little children and all the grown people who worked around the house and
said, 'You all is jus' as free as we is. You ain't got no master and no
mistiss,' and I don't know what they told them at the plantation.
Occupation
"Right after the War, my mother worked--washed--for an old white man. He
took an interest in me and taught me. I did little things for him. When
he died, I took up the teaching which he had been doing.
"At first I taught in Columbus, Georgia. By and by, a white man came
along looking for laborers for this part of the country. He said money
grew on bushes out here. He cleaned out the place. All the children and
all the grown folks followed him. Two of my boys came to me and told me
they were coming. We hoboed on freights and walked to Chattanooga,
Tennessee. We stayed there awhile. Then a white man came along getting
laborers. I never kept the year nor nothin'. He brought us to Lonoke
County, and I got work on The Bood Bar Plantation. Squirrels, wild
things, cotton and corn, plenty of it. So you see, the man told the
truth when he said money grew on bushes.
"I taught and farmed all my life. Farming is the greatest occupation. It
supports the teacher, the preacher, the lawyer, the doctor. None of them
can live without it.
"I can't do much now since that lady knocked me down with her automobile
and made me a cripple. I'd a been all right if so many of them young
doctors hadn't experimented on me. Then I can't see good out of one eye.
I can't do much now. I don't know why they won't give me a pension."
Interviewer's Comment
William Dunwoody had some of his dates and occurrences mixed up as would
be natural for a man ninety-eight years old. But there was one respect
in which he was sharper than anyone else interviewed.
At the close of the first day's interview when I arose to go he said to
me, "Now you got what you want?" I told him yes and that I would be back
for more the next day. Then he said, "Well, if you got what you want,
there's one thing I want you to do for me before you go."
"Certainly, Brother Dunwoody," I said, "I'll be glad to do anything you
want me to do. Just what can I do for you?"
"Well," he said, "I want you to read me what you been writin' there."
And I read it.
A little grandchild about four years old kept us company while he
dictated to me. I furnished pennies for the child's candy and a nickel
for the old man's tobacco.
The old man got a kick out of the dictation. After the first day, he
became very cautious. He would say, "Now don't write this," and he
wouldn't let me take it down the way he said it. Instead, he would make
a long statement and then we would work out the gist of it together. He
is not highly schooled, and he is not especially prepossessing in
appearance; but he is a long way from decrepit--mentally.
He walks with a crutch and has a defect in the sight of one eye. He has
good hearing and talks in a pleasant voice.
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Lucius Edwards
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Nellie Dunne
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