"We went right next farm and rented land from Buck Towers and farmed until Ma died. Then I went to Fayetteville and worked at odd jobs there awhile. I worked too, on the Fayetteville College building. I stayed around Fayetteville 40 years. I was married when I first went there to a light colored woman. A Cherokee Indian. We had seven children, all girls. Only one is livin’ now. She is the one I live with in Webb City, Missouri. I don’t live with my wife now. My daughter’s name is Mrs. Sam Cox. Her husband Sam Cox works at a garage in Webb. They have seven children too. Two girls, five boys, all living.
"When I was married I was a coachman and wore my coach clothes—Begum hat (high silk hat), black double-breasted flap tailed coat and black broadcloth pants. My shoes were low and had beads all over the front. I looked like Booker T. Washington. And I like him most next to Abraham Lincoln.
"I use to work for Judge Brown in Fayetteville as coachman. Then I come here and worked for Mrs Louise Corn of Webb City for 13 years. I ain’t workin’ now, only firin’ the boiler for the First National Bank in winter-time. My son-in-law Sam Cox, he works at the Bank on the side and I help him a little. Mostly, I’m jest man about town."
"Now, tell me in passing, Charlie, do you remember any men passing through your place in Warrensburg, looking for escaped slaves?"
"Yes I remember some tough men driving like mad through our place many times, with big chains rattling. We called them slave hunters. They always came in big bunches. Five and six together on horse back. Patrollers they was. They were almost as bad to us as them outlaws who used to come by and eat up all Marse Warren’s chickens. There was some Texas bad men, too. John Reid, The Webb Boys, and Little Preston Smith.
"But, I’m sure glad it is all over now, but we didn’t git nothin’ out of it like we expected. We thought they was goin’ to divide up the farms and give us some of it. No Sah! They was so mad at us for being freed that they got rid of us as soon as they could, and we was only too glad to go.
"I gits a small old-age pension now and live purtty quiet like, but I tell you Sah, times ain’t like they use to be. These yer young negroes—I don’t think so much of anyhow."