t 12
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the side which we would light. There were no sewere at that time.“ .!I had no chance to go to school when a boy, but after I came

to Kansas I was too old to go to school, and I had to work, but I attended night school, and learned to read and write and figure.“

	“The farm land was nearly all broke up by ox teams, using about six oxen on a plow. In Missouri we lived near the Santa Fe Trail, and the settlers traveling on the trail used oxen, and some of them used cows. The cows seem to stand the road better than the oxen and also gave some milk. The travelers usually aimed to reach the prairie States in the s pring ‚ s o they could have gras s for thel r oxen and horses during the summer.“

	~‘i have lived here ever since I came here. I was married when I was about thirty years old. I married a slave girl from Georgia. Back in Missouri, if a slave wanted to marry a woman on another plantation he bad to ask the master, and if both masters agreed they were marri ed • The ma;fl s tayed at his ow, and the wife at her owners. He cou~4 go to see her onSaturday night and Sunday. Sometimes only evezy two weeks • if a man was a big strong man ‚ neighboring plantation owners would ask him to come over and see his gals ‚ hoping ‘that ~e might want to marry one of tbe~ but if a Negro was a small man he was not cared for as a husband, as they valued their slaves as only for what they could do~. just like they would hors es • When they were marri ed and if they had children they belonged to the man who owned the woman. Osceola is where the saying originated, ‘I ‘ni from Missouri, show me. ‚ After the war the smart guys came ‘through and talked the people into voting bonde, but there was no railroad built and most co~nities paid their bonds, but

‘:: : the county in which Osceola stands refused to pay for their bonds be-