Page, Annie

The following data is extracted from Arkansas Slave Narratives.

Interviewer: Mrs. Bernice Bowden Person interviewed: Annie Page 412-1/2 Pullen Street, Pine Bluff, Arkansas Age: 86


"I was born 1852, they tell me, on the fifteenth of March. I was workin' a good while 'fore surrender.

"Bill Jimmerson was my old master. He was a captain in Marmaduke's army. Come home on thirty days furlough once and he and Daniel Carmack got into some kind of a argument 'bout some whisky and Daniel Carmack stabbed him with a penknife. Stabbed him three times. He was black as tar when they brought him home. The blood had done settled. Oh Lawd, that was a time.

"My eyes been goin' blind 'bout six years till I got so I can't excern (discern) anything.

"Old miss used to box me over the head mightily and the colored folks used to hit me over the head till seem like I could hear a bell for two or three days. Niggers ain't got no sense. Put 'em in authority and they gits so uppity.

"My brother brought me here and left me here with a colored woman named Rachael Ross. And oh Lawd, she was hard on me. Never had to do in slavery times what I had to do then.

"But the devil got her and all her chillun now I reckon. They tell me when death struck her, they asked if the Lawd called her, and they say she just turned over and over in the bed like a worm in hot ashes."

Source: Arkansas Slave Narratives

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