:30774	89
	Interviewer	e1~~PaT1Or~	~- -
	Person Interviewed	Sarah Wells	~	. ~
		1012 W. Sixteenth Street, Little Rock, Arkansas
	A~e ~ 84	OcoupationField. hand






“I was born in Warren County, Mia8issippi, on Ben Watkins‘ plantation.

That was my ~ster~Ben~orthington~ I don‘ t know nothin‘ about the year ~ Vi~ » ~ ~ but lt was berore the war--.the Civil War, I was born on Christmas day.

‚ “Isaac Irby was my father. I don‘t know how you spell it. I can‘t read and write. I can tell you this. My mother‘s dead. She‘s been dead since I was twelve years old. Her naine was J~ane Irby. My name is Wells because I have been married. Willis was my husband‘s naine. I have just

been married once. I was married to him fifty years. He has been dead thirteen years the fifteenth of October. 1 don‘t know how old I was when I was iaarried. But I know I am eighty-tour years old now, I xmi.st have

been about twenty or twenty~one when I married.


Slave Houses

“The slaves lived in log houses, dirt chimneys, plank floors, They had beds made out of wood-—that‘s all I know. I don‘t know where they kept their food. They kept it in the house when they hadany. The slaves

didn‘t have to cook imich. Mars Ben had a slave to cook ftr them. They all et breakfast together, and lunch in the fiel‘.


Food and Cooking

	“There was a great big shed. They‘d all go up there and eat.-.the slaves would all go up and eat • I ‘ t know what the grown folks had,