"I’ll show you now how my mother happened to find me. One night we was in a old house and we didn’t dare talk loud ’cause we was afraid de soldiers would hear us. We was afraid to light a light. All at once my mother who was in one side of de room said: ’I wish I could find my little boy.’ Den de lady I was with said: ’I found a little boy playin’ in de hole where de hogs wallowed. Come over here and see if dis is your boy.’ So my mother come over and said: ’I can’t see him but I sure can tell by puttin’ my hand on his head.’ So she put her hand on my head and said: ’Yes, dat’s sure ’nough my boy.’
"But I wouldn’t go with her. I wouldn’t leave dat other woman. About 2 o’clock dat night de hail began to hit de house and we had to git out. So I went with de other woman and it was about two or three days before I would go with my mother. Two or three days later we all met again and my mother said: ’Don’t you know your mother.’ I knowed it was my mother 'cause my brother what was deaf and dumb was with her. Den I went on with her. I would talk to my brother with signs.
"Den we went to a little place away, away from Pilot Knob. Den my mother was free and she said, ’Robert, we is all free.’ I was too young to know anything ’bout it. After we was free we put in a little stuff in de ground. We had to go to de woods to get some brush and make a brush fence around de garden to keep de cattle out. We got permission from a man dat owned a farm to build our own log house. It took two or three days to build a one room house. We made up some mud with water and made it stiff enough to stick to de chinckin’. Den we cut a big hole in one end of de building and got some flat rocks and made a fireplace. We put mud on de inside and outside of de chimney. Sometimes de chimney would catch on fire and we had to run to de branch to get water and put it out. Sometimes it would catch on fire twice or three times in one night.
"We took old gunny sacks and put leaves in dem to make a bed and we slept on de floor and had a old spread and de white folks gave us some old quilts. To make a fire we got some spunk out of a log and then took two flint rocks and to-reckly it would make a spark and catch that spunk. We banked de fire at night.