Willie Johnson
From:
Arkansas
Interviewer: Samuel S. Taylor
Person interviewed: Willie Johnson (female)
1007 Izard, Little Rock, Arkansas
Age: 71
"My father said he had a real good master. When he got up large enough
to work, his master learned him a trade. He learned the mechanic's
trade, such as blacksmithing and working in shops. He learned him all
of that. And then he learned him to be a shoemaker. You see, he
learned him iron work and woodworking too. And he never whipped him
during slavery time. Positively didn't allow that.
"My father's name was Jordan Kirkpatrick. His master was named
Kirkpatrick also. My father was born in Tennessee in Sumner County.
"My father married in slave time. You know, they married in slave
time. I have heard people talking about it. I have heard some people
say they married over 'gain when freedom came. My father had a
marriage certificate, and I didn't hear him say anything about being
married after freedom. I have seen the certificate lots of times. I
don't know the date of it. The certificate was issued in Sumner
County, Tennessee.
"My father and mother belonged to different masters. My mother's
master was a Murray. She had a good many people. Her name before she
married was Mary Murray. I don't know just how my mother and father
met. The two places weren't far apart. They lived a good distance from
each other though, and I remember hearing him tell how he had to go
across the fields to get to her house after he was through with the
day's work. The pateroles got after him once. They didn't catch him,
so they didn't do anything to him. He skipped them some way or
another.
"I have heard them say that before the slaves were set free the
soldiers were going 'round doing away with everything that they could
get their hands on. Just a while before they were set free, my father
took my mother and the children one night and slipped off. He went to
Nashville. That was during the War. It wasn't long after that till
everybody was set free. They never did capture him and get him back.
"During the War they went around pressing men into service. Finally
once, they caught him but they let him go. I don't know how he got
away.
"I can remember he said once they got after him and there was a white
man and his family living in the house. He rented a room from the
white man. That was in Nashville. These pateroles or whatever they was
got after him and claimed they were coming to get him, and the old man
and the old woman he stayed with took him upstairs and said they would
protect him if the pateroles came back. I don't know whether they came
back or not, but they never got him.
"My father supported himself and his family in Nashville by following
his trade. He seems to have gotten along all right. He never seemed to
have any trouble that I heard him speak of.
"I was born in 1867 in Nashville, Tennessee, about half a block from
the old Central Tennessee College[G]. I think it became Walden
University later on, and I think that it's out now. That's an old
school. My oldest sister was graduated from it. I could have been if I
hadn't taken up the married notion.
"I got part of my schooling in Nashville and part here. When I left
Nashville, I was only a child nine years old. I only went to school
four sessions after we came out here. I didn't like out here. I wanted
to stay back home. My father came out here because he had heard that
he could make more money with his trade here than he could in
Nashville, which he did. He was shoeing horses and building wagons and
so on. Just in this blacksmithing and carpenter work.
"I wanted to learn that. I would stay 'round the shop and help him
shoe horses. But they wouldn't let me take it up. I got so I could do
carpenter work pretty good. First I learned how to make a box
square--that is a hard job when a person doesn't know much.
"I never heard my father say anything about the food the slaves ate. I
have heard him talk about the good times they had around hog killing.
His master raised sweet potatoes and corn and wheat and things like
that. I guess they ate just about what they raised.
"My father never was a sharecropper. He knew nothing of rural work
except the mechanical side of it. He could make or do anything that
was needed in fixing up something to do farm work with. I have seen
him make and sharpen plows. The first cotton stalk cutter that was
made within ten miles of here was made by my father. The people 'round
here were knocking off cotton stalks with sticks until my father began
making the cutter. Then everybody began using his cutter. That is, the
different farmers and sharecroppers around here began using them. I
was scared of the first one he made. He made six saws or knives and
sharpened them and put them on a section of a log so that it could be
hitched to a mule and pulled through the fields and cut the cotton
stalks down.
"My mother's old master was her father. I think my father's father was
a Negro and his mother was an Indian. My mother's mother was an
American woman, that is, a slavery woman. My mother and father were
lucky in having good people. My mother was treated just like one of
her master's other children. My father's master had an overseer but
he never was allowed to touch my father. Of course my mother never was
under an overseer."
[Footnote G: [HW: Central Tennessee College estab. about 1866-7.]]
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Angeline Jones
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