The Slave-Story of Dempsey Jordan as he tells it. I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1836. I was owned by Charlie Jordan , he died and I became property of his children. After maser's death, mistress was manager of his saloon. Also maser was a trader in his line of business. I had one brother Joe Jordan , and did not have any sisters. Mistress traded brother off when he was 6 or 7 years old, so I did not have much home life. Our quarters was small, one room house built in the back yard of Maser's home. The house was built out of rough lumber like the smoke houses built in these days. Our bed was built like a bench and had hides stretched over it then we piled it up with straw and moss, we really kept warm. Father's name was Allen Jordan , Mother, Judie Jordan . Our family was all the slaves that Maser and Mistress kept. Father was brought to this country from Africa. I do not know where Mother came from. Father helped Maser or his son in the saloon, and Mother was Mistress' cook and housekeeper. After I got big enough they put me in the kitchen to wash bottles, carrying in wood, water and building fires. Yes I have earned some money during slavery time in the way of tips and shoe shines. Mistress would let me keep half of what I made and in this way I bought all of my clothes so Mistress was not out anything on me for clothes. Yes we had plenty of good clothes. Father and Mother wore these royal clothes, but I gets my trousers just like the white people wears them cause I bought them myself after I was big enough to work. I had nice Sunday trousers and shirts and dress shoes at that time looked like the work shoes we has now. In cold weather my clothes were tan hides and they were so warm. I never did wear out my wedding clothes. They were trousers and white shirt with great big bandana handkerchief, but that was after freedom. We had plenty to eat all the time, such as cornbread made out of grated corn cooked in great iron skillet- that was real bread. Then we had flour every morning for breakfast, meat of all kinds such as pork, beef, fish, and once and awhile we had possum and rabbits, but fish is what I liked best. We would take a lot of hog grease and fry them fish good and brown just about like we do now only we don't ever get any fish now to fry. Yes, mistress had about acre, she worked in garden and we got just anything we wanted to eat out of it. That was my living, greens and so on like that. Maser he was a jolly good man always had plenty life about him. Mistress she was a plum angel. They were sure good to their black folks. Never no cursing, kicking, and abusing us negroes and always giving us something to keep us cheered up. They had one son and of course was humored to anything he wanted, but he was a real good child, never into nothing, he was all time playing pranks on us as well as his father and mother.

The house they lived in it was a real home had 6 rooms in it among some beautiful shade trees. Mistress she had tan hides with the fur still on them all over the floor with the fur turned up. Maser he had about 20 acres there and all he kept in it was his saddle horses and milk cow. He did not have but 3 slaves he kept all the time, but I'se seen him when he had most a hundred at a time but he would trade on them all the time. He woke us every morning about 5 o'clock so'es we could tend to his stock and open his saloon in time to have everything cleaned by the time people began to stir good. He worked us till 9 or 10 o'clock every night except Saturday nights and he stayed open till 12 o'clock, then he would turn us a loose to prowl around until Monday morning again then the same old job again. Yes we had jail there in town for the bad and wild slaves that was captured in their home county. I seen maser have some of them kind of slaves and he would keep them chained all the time he had them. At night he would put them in jail and lock them up so they could not get away. I'se seen him whip lots of slaves because they would not do what he told them to do. Some of them he traded for came direct from Africa and he would have to tame them. He had to whip them to get them under control. He has had to handle them every way. He had one I'se remember, he first put chain on and locked him up at night, but that slave was stubborn and he tried every way to handle that slave. Finally he put a chain around that negro's neck and fastened it to a rafter in the jail so that negro would have to stand up every night and in the morning before he let him loose, would hit that negro 25 licks with a raw hide. He finally made a pretty good negro out of him while he owned him. Then maser sold that negro for a pretty good price for he was a healthy, stout negro. After he new Maser got him you know that negro killed his Maser and tried to run off, but his Mistress was too much for him. She got on her horse and overtaken that negro and shot him twice with one of these old cap and ball guns. She thought she had killed him, but she didn't. He lay around out there in the woods several days and some spanish people nursed him back to health. One morning he came back to Maser and said he wanted to stay with him. Maser went to the negroes Mistress and bought him back for about one-half price and kept him nearly a year. He never did give Maser anymore trouble but he finally sold him to another man and I never did see or hear of that negro again. I expect they finally had to kill him because he was a real mean negro, didn't care for nothing or nobody.

Yes, I have seen and helped dress lots of slaves for sale. When Maser would get a buyer he had us wash and clean up the negroes so when we got that done we would grease their face, hands and feet so they would look real good or fat just like you would want a good fat yearling to look when you wanted to sell him. Maser said they would bring the best price then when he would sell a slave. When they would be sold and separated from their people you never heard such bawling and hollering that would take place. But Maser made good money buying and selling slaves as long as he lived, course Mistress quit that when he died. Maser would set a regular day for his slave trading and people came from everywhere on that day to bid on the slaves cause they knew he always had a big bunch on hand to pick from. No sir, Maser or the white folks did not teach us to read or write, Maser did not have much to do with church life although he gave money to the work of the church, he never did go out much. Mistress was a religious woman, and I had to drive her to church when she wanted to go or wherever she went. She taught me to always tell the truth regardless of how it hurt me. We had a place fixed there at the white folks church when we wanted to go to church. When Maser died every place closed up for the funeral and all his slaves was grieving and the yard filled with people. Brother Powell preached his funeral, and all the negroes crying so he said; let the negroes sing a last farewell song before we leave. We sang: "Our Maser he was good to his slaves, but never more shall he say that my work here is done, but yonder in Heaven there is a home waiting for me". Mister, before Maser died he called his wife, son and all his slaves to his bedside and put his arm around them and said; you hear them angels singing for your old dad, I must go on to them because my work here is done and they are waiting for me. Then he lay back on the bed and closed his eyes and was dead. He died without a struggle. No sir, that man was not afraid of death, cause he said, you hear them angels, they are waiting for me. Yes, I'se heard that some slaves tried to run off to the north when the war started, but them Patter Rollers would always catch them and bring them back to their Maser after giving them a good whipping. If they didn't do right the Patter Rollers were always watching him to see that he did. We could not go from one plantation to another without a pass from our Maser or Mistress. If they caught us on some other plantation without a pass we got 39 licks with a rawhide whip the first time and increased the licks each time they caught us. When they got through with us we would be beat nearly to-death. Of course, I'se slipped off lots of times when Maser would be sound asleep and the Patter Rollers never did catch me. But you know son, I was taking a great chance. I would go and see my girl lots of nights and one time I crawled 100 yards to her room and got in the bed with her and lay there until nearly daylight talking to her. One time I was there with her and them Patter Rollers come that night and walked all around in that room and this here negro was in her bed down under that moss and they never even found me. I sure was scared.

I never did play any ring games or things like that, both white and black children played together. The boys, both black and white, was out riding yearlings, catching some one calf, tying can to its tail or pushing it in the water to see it swim, making negro shooters, robbing birds nests and all kinds of things like that, Son, I don't know what would become of people if their boys were as bad as we was. Then we was all time into something. Its a wonder that any of us ever came through alive both black and white, and fathers and mothers just lived on our backs, but they never did do us any good. The very next day we would do the same thing over again. Yes we have hung miseltoe over our door and the first girl that walked under it was our wife. Then we use to wear rabbit's foot for charm, it would charm our Maser or Mistress and they would be real good to us so we would always have good luck when we wore that rabbit's foot around our necks. We was all superstitious and still are, because I still believes in lots of them old time-charms. If we would use them now we could be lots better, instead we just depend on luck. Well we had awful good care when we became sick. Maser he always had doctor to look after us. We used charm to keep us well, and roots and herbs gathered from the woods and fields. Spices and camphor strings tied around our necks, weak tea from saspras roots and so on to keep off chills and fever and malaria, and them kind of medicine are still better than lots of this dope these here doctors here give, they will make you sick if you are not so they can get a doctor bill off of you. I'se remember plenty about that war. I stayed home and helped Mistress because the first thing they did was to get all the young boys, both black and white in service, and when that war started Mistress began to knit socks, caps, coats and things for the soldier boys. She kept me and my mother home making clothes on that spinning wheel and sent them to the soldier boys. Mistress only had one son in the war and he was wounded. They let him come home before the war closed, but his health was broken. No one was well anymore after that terrible war. The northern soldiers came to New Orleans and captured the town and put everybody under soldiers rule, you couldn't go anywhere or do anything cause they would not let you. Of course our soldiers recaptured it but not until they had done lots of damage to our little town, then we lost the war. The morning news came Mistress she called all us to her back door and told us we was free, then we began to wonder what we was going to do as we had no home or job, nothing to eat or wear. Things began to look dark for us negroes. We went to Mistress and asked her what she was going to do with us. She said she could not do anything as you are free men and women and the Government will not let me keep you. All I can do, she said, is to give you a job and pay you for what you do. She hired my mother and father and said I could continue working just like I did before the war. What I could make receiving tips I had for myself and worked on like this for several years. I married a farm girl that lived on the line of Texas and Louisiana by the name of Arlie Bragle , and we kept drifting until I landed here in Madison County. We had a big wedding, plenty dancing and plenty to eat. We had 4 children, 3 girls and one boy. One of the girls is working in New Orleans and the other are here farming. I have 19 grandchildren. No sir, I did not expect the government to give me anything, though they could have treated us lots better than they did, they could have fixed a way that we could have had a house, but no sir, they turned us a loose like a bunch of stray dogs. Maser he did not have any land to divide but they was plenty of land that nobody did not own then and they would not let us have any of it. We sure did get a raw deal after the war and freedom. No sir, there was not any plantation divided that I ever heard of, and Maser did not give us any thing but a hard deal. We had to work hard for it, if we got sick then we never had any money to get a doctor or medicine with because then we had to shoulder the whole load. It kept us busy to get something to eat, much less get a doctor, if we had sick ones we just had to let them die. We did not have money to have them treated, and what did we get after the war? Nothing but hard work.

The reconstruction day has been hard and our wages low, just barely enough to go by on. I have worked for 15 cents a day, never did get over 40 cents until the world war started and everything got high including wages, but still we never got over $1.25 a day then. After the war between the states, if the slaves left their Masers then for several years the Klu Klux Klan they whipped, tarred and feathered them and made them go back to their Masers, but we got to finally made trades with different white people and the Klu Klux Klan they finally quit bothering us as we learned how and what to do after we was freed. When we were freed there was not a negro in all the south that could read and write his name. We was most like a herd of mules, did not know anything at all in the way of making a living here in this country, but we gradually started to building schools and sending our children to school and they began to learn how to read and write and learn the ways of this country. Some of the negroes began to learn different kinds of trades to where we have some pretty well educated negroes and some that can hold good paying jobs. If I had my way we would deport all of our negro race and send them back to there home country or cut them a state off to its self, cause we are now educating all these negroes and sending them to hell fast as we can. The more you educate one of them the bigger rascal he becomes and gets further away from God and the less he will tell the truth. Of course I think as long as we are going to let the negro live here and have to pay taxes and be a soldier for his country in time of war, he ought to be allowed more voting privileges here in Texas, as the negro he does not have rights here in Texas. We do not have the right to vote if we don't pay our taxes. We have got to pay pole taxes and only use it once. I can't see how the party that stays in power here in Texas are elected because the negroes all vote the other way. Some day we will change all that because they tell me that the negro race is increasing faster than the white people, then we will be in the way that we can get something done for the poor negro. They are in a terrible fix here in this county because the white people can work them and gib them what they want to give and the negro he can't say anything, he has to take what they will give him and keep his mouth shut. I does believe that is the reason these here youngsters are so sorry. They get to where they won't tell the truth and steal all the time. They say if you get after them about their stealing, Uncle we will not go to Heaven if we don't steal from the white people. Son I think that is a terrible condition for any race of people to get in regardless of their race or color. What have I done since the War between the states? I done just what I could get to do, farm mostly, but I'se worked some for wages - mostly farm wages, although I worked one year for a railroad company, helping them build a railroad from New Orleans, Louisiana. I am now getting a small pension from the government. Son there was a long time before they ever tried to help the old slave negro or poor white folks. If my Maser had lived I would not be in this county. I went back to Africa when I was freed, that is the place all these here negroes need to be, but of course this old negro he won't be here long now, as they will soon put me down in the earth that will be my last home. You asked me if I could live on my pension, no sir. I still do little jobs for people here and they give me a few little things all along and that helps me to get by. Son I want to tell you one thing else I have seen in this county when it was an outlaw county, when all the law we has here was 6 guns, man sure did have to be awfully careful if he did not get one of them bullets through him. Now all the road nearly has gone from trails to paved highways. The first time I was ever in Houston there was 3 or 4 stores, mostly saloons, now Houston is one of the largest cities in the state cause I went there a while back and I was plum scared cause it was so large I didn't never know where I was, all that noise and racket.