From the WPA Slave
Narratives:
Abe Kelley - Choctaw
Age 101
My birthday was July 4th, 1836. I've heared my parents say that many a time.
They come from South Carolina, but whether I was birthed there or not, I don't
rightly know. My mother's name was Odie and my father's name was
According-to-Hoyle.
They moved around right considerable with Old Marster to different places in
Mississippi, but I can't exactly remember the names of the places now.
Ole Marster's name was Jim Kelley and he had a big plantation. Seems to me I
members hearing that he had eighty-odd niggers.
We lived in the quarters. They was just little log houses. We didn't have no
gardens; we got out vegetables out of Ole Miss' garden. Ever' Sadderday we was
give out three pounds of meat and a peck of meal. We cooked it in our own
houses and all ate out of one big pot. They milked ten or fifteen cows on the
place, so us had plenty of milk to drink. Our beds was made into the wall with
two posts holding up the foot. You might call 'em 'bunks', - we called 'em 'jinnies'.
When I was a boy I played marbles and played with Injun rubber balls. Mostly I
waited on Ole Miss and swept the yard and drove the cows up and kept off the
calves. She whipped me too pretty warm when I didn't do right.
I was seventeen years old before I ever had on a pair of shoes. And I was a
big boy before I wore pants. The nigger boys just wore a long shirt.
When the War come, four Kelley boys went and fought. The Yankees come to the
plantation and done a little of ever'thing, tearing up and taking off. I
remember when they carried off two horses and one of 'em was Ole Marster's
riding horse. Then they carried off two mules and a cart. And they took all of
Ole Miss' meat.
After freedom, I worked on the I.C. Railroad for eight years and got good
money most of the time, but wages rise and fall. I was a big strong man and
could do a heap of work. Then I farmed as long as I was able. I been living
Southeast of town on Mr Emmet Brown's place for the past thirty-six years.
I'se come in to live with my daughter now.
I remembers hearing my mother say she was the mother of twelve children, but I
don't exactly remember how many I had. They is two girls living now. I was
married three times.
I always been tolerably well till late years and I wants to live as long as I
kin.
Abe Kelley -- Additional Interview
Yes'm, I aint feeling so good today. No'm, I aint sick, ------just
painful............
Old Master lived in a brick house with a big hall in the middle. The kitchen
was in the back yard. They cooked on a fireplace for white and black.
They didn't have no screens then and there was plenty of flies. I fanned the
flies off the table with a peafowl feather fan. Come along a lady about every
month with two or three bundles of them. She made her living that way, selling
them. Her little son toted them for her. Old Miss called the lady Mrs
Highsniff. She lived two or three miles away, I reckon, ------not in no
talking distance.
They raised cotton on the place, then Old Miss had it spun and weaved. She
hired a lady to come weave it and she was on the place sometimes two weeks.
We had to git up at 3 A.M. in the morning, then we carried our breakfast to
the field. It was a all right breakfast though ------fried meat and bread.
When we was working far from the house, we carried our dinner too, but if we
was close by, they blowed the horn.
We didn't raise no chickens. What use did niggers have for chickens? Old Miss
raised them; she had about fifteen head o' turkeys and twenty head o' geese.
Overseers was pretty tight, - so tight that Old Master would tell them to
stop, that they was being too tight. Some of the niggers would run away off in
the woods. Old Master had a woman, Nancy, that stayed in the woods three
years.
I don't know why they didn't catch her because there was certain men that
raised 'nigger dogs', --- they could follow a nigger's tracks. But they used
them on white folks too.
When a nigger and a girl wanted to get married, he would go to Old Master and
say, 'Master I wants this gal for my wife,' and Master would say, 'All right,
I'll fix you a house when you marry.' Then when the day come around, people
would hold each end of a broom, and the man and gal stepped over it -----and
then we was man and wife.
Interviewer's Notes: Height, 6 feet; weight, 150 pounds; color, dark brown;
African features; lives with his daughter; receives Government pension of
$4.00 a month; Memory not clear.
Interviewer: Unknown
Transcribed by Ann Allen Geoghegan
Mississippi Narratives
Prepared by
The Federal Writer’s Project of
The Works Progress Administration
For the State of Mississippi
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"If you teach them where they come from, they won't need as much help finding where they are going!" Cordelia Carothers " Aunt Dee" Geoghegan (1894-1987)
Project Manager: Ann
Allen Geoghegan State Coordinator Assistant State Coordinators and
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