me to the prairie to gather wild strawberries for his supper so he could tell the Missouri people he ate wild strawberries the day before he left Texas. I parted the tall grass and found the strawberries growing under it. I gathered bucketsful during that year before the land was broken and put in cotton. We had many of these wild plants set out in the garden, where Aunt Pollie cultivated them, but the hot summer sun would always kill them. This was on the Eastern slope of the land Pa gave to Allen Beadle. Pa purchased "Dump Mary" and her three children, and brought them to Texas. Several years later he returned to Missouri and bought three or four more Negroes.

Lived at Home

I cannot remember the price at which cotton seed sold, but that was not a question of such great importance then as now. Our living never came from cotton, but from the corn, wheat, vegetables and livestock that were raised on the place. Cotton was produced merely as a surplus crop. It was the money crop with which we bought sugar, coffee and clothes for the family. Most of the clothing for Negroes was spun, woven, and made by Aunt Pollie and the Negro women.

A cotton gin was built on the place and the Negroes ginned the cotton, and ground the wheat and corn raised on the plantation.