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caxe8,1~ but had. got so old and his knees had give out on him, and. I seed I wuz agoin‘ to lose mah place so I turned it over to a manS to keep up mah taxes, so I‘d havé~ a place to lib. De relief gibes me a little he‘p now, an‘ me an‘ my wife makes out de bee‘ we can.‘

	The house is the familiar type of two-room Negro house, with a porch across the front, and a shed room on the back. The bedroom had been papered with scraps of wallpaper of varied designs and so old that most of it had fallen off. The mantel is covered with the colored comics section, cut in a fancy pattern of scallops. At the entrance of the house Is a sack nailed to the floor and used. for a foot mat, and at the two upper corners of the door are horse shoes for good luck. Nelson said he is a member of the African Methodist Episcopal ZIon Church, and has been a Methodist all his life; that he and. his wife Virginia, had only two chillun‘ and dey were befedead.“

	Nelson‘s wife, Virginia, came from a family of slaves, although she ~ was not one herself. She said her folks were owned by Mr. Joe Pickett of Camden, Wilcox County, Alabama. She said she just can remember Mr. Joe taking her in his buggy,and she called him “Toe-«Toe,‘ as she couldn‘~ say his name plainly. She also said as she grew older she always spoke of Mr. Joe, as ‘ipy Papa,“ instead of ‘my master,“ for ‘he sho‘ was good to rue.“ She remembers her mother being chambermaid on the ‘Old. Eleariora,‘ a boat on the Alabama river, and as a small child going back and forth on the boat with her. When they finally settled. in Mobile, her mother Worked for the family of Dr. Heustig who lived in the corner house now Occupied by the new Federal Court House and Custom House, at St. Louis and. St. Joseph streets.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:	Personal interview with Nelson and Virginia Birdsong, Summerville, on Front Street.

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