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I do remember that I never saw a pair of shoes until I was old enough to york. My father was a cobbLer and. I used to have to whittle out shoe pegs l‘or him and I had to walk soxaetirae8 s ix miles to get pine knots which we lit at night so my mother could see to work.

	I did not stay with my father and mother long as I was only about 14 when I started north. I worked for farmers every place I could find work and sometimes would work a month or maybe two • The last farmer I worked for I stayed a year and I got i~ board and room arid. five dollars a month which was paid at the end of every six months. I st~yed in Pennsylvania for some years and. came toCanton in 1884. I have always worked at fa~i work except now and then in a factory.

	I had two brothers, Dan and Tom, and one sister, Dora, but I never heard from them or saw them after the war. I have been rna~ried twice. My first wife was Sally Dillis Blaire and we were married in 1889. I got a divorce a few years later and I don‘t know whatever became of her. My second wife is still living. Her neme was Hattie Belle Reed and I married her in 190?. No, I never had any children.

	I don‘t believe I had a bed when I was a slave as I don‘t remember any. M home, after the war, n~r mother and father‘s bed was made of wood with ropes stretched across with a straw tick on top. ‘Us kids‘ slept under this bed on a ‘trundle‘ bed so that at night my mother could just reach dawn and look &fter any one of us if we were sick or anything.

	I was raised on ash cakes, yams and butter milk. These ash cakes were ~nall balls made of dough an5~ my mother would rake the ashes out o±~ the fire place and lay these balls on the~ hot coals and then cover them over with
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