Person Interviewed: J. W. Stinnett
Place of Birth: Grayson County, Prairie Grove, Texas
Date of Birth: 1863
What with raising nine grandchildren whose mammy is dead, this old head of mine has too many troubles to remember much about them slave days, but anyways I was born in 1863, at a place in Grayson County, Texas, name of Prairie Grove. My mammy come from Virginia, where pappy come from I don’t know, and where he went I don’t know, because he take off to the north during the war and never come back. His name was George Stinnett and mammy’s name was Mary Stinnett. They belonged to a big and fat Creek Indian name of Frank Stinnett who one time lived right around Muskogee here. That was before the war I guess, for mammy told me when the fighting begun the old master bundled up a tent with some food stuffs and moved down to Texas, taking mammy and pappy with him. They was his only slaves and they said he treated them good and feed them good. That old Indian live in a tent during the summer and cook everything on the open fire, but in the winter he go into his log cabin, coming out once in a while for to hunt squirrels and rabbits for the stew. Mammy said he didn’t have much of a farm, just a little patch of garden ground. After they moved to Texas my mammy said she broke the planting ground with oxen, then when pappy run off she had all the work to do in the house and in the field.