"I had on a pair of these brogans with brass plates on them, and they
were flapping open and I tripped up just as the rebel soldiers were
running by. One of them said, "There's a like yeller nigger, les take
her." Mrs. Farmer, the Union woman ran out and said, "No you won't;
that's my nigger." And she took us in her house. And we stayed there
while there was danger. Then my father came back from the drug store,
she said she didn't see how he kept from being killed.
"At that time, there were about four houses to the block. On the place
where we lived there was the big house, with many rooms, and then there
was the barn and a lot of other buildings. My father rented that place
and turned the outbuildings into little houses and allowed the freed
slaves to live in them till they could find another place.
"My husband was an orphan child, and the people he was living with were
George Phelps and Ann Phelps. They were freed slaves. That was after the
war. They came here and had this little boy with them, that is how I
come to meet that gentlemen over there and get acquainted with him. When
they moved away from there Phelps was caretaker of the Oakland Cemetery.
We married on the twenty-seventh day of March, 1879. I still have the
marriage license. I married twice; my first husband was George W.
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