It's kinda hard to tell most all what has happened in my life 'cause I've been so many places and see so much, but I'll do the best I can.  First off, I'm in my sixty-ninth year, for I was born in a place they call the Black Hills, bout five miles from Kingston, Jamaica, in 1868. Father's name was Henry Ransom and he was a whaler, you know, worked on a ship that went out after whales, and then sold the whale oil here in the States, but he was born in Jamaica and lived there when he wasn't out to sea, until he comes to Galveston to live when I was about fourteen years old.  But, I've got to go back a while and tell you about him. He was married three times and had thirty-six children, so I reckon he wasn't off to sea all of the time. He had twelve children by each wife and my mother was his last wife and I was the last child she had, so I am the youngest of the thirty-six.  Now what I am going to tell you happened long before I was born, but I have heard my father tell it and I'll tell it just like he did. Like I told you, he worked on a whaler boat, and when they got back home he finds his wife had died while he was gone. That was his second one.  He goes out to sea again and when they get their boat load of whale oil, they bring it to New Orleans to sell it. This was in slave times here in the States, but papa was a British man and was protected.  I don't know just how it came, but anyway, while he was in New Orleans he buys my mama and her three children. She was a slave and belonged to some people named Royal . I don't remember either her or him saying who her first husband was, but she had three children when papa bought her and took them back with him to Jamaica. Her first name was Ellen , but from what I have put together, I guess things wasn't very pleasant for her down there with his other children, but I guess it was better than being a slave here in the States.  I reckon I must be about fourteen when my father and the four of us children that was living came to Galveston. Eight of my mother's children had died, and my father's by his other wives were all grown up and wouldn't leave Jamaica.  He learns to be a paperhanger, and that is how I learned the trade. I didn't have much chance for no learning, I was too busy helping him, and I reckon it was God's will, 'cause he died when I was twenty years old, and my older brother had left us, and I was the one that had to keep up things. 

There's one thing that I remember, though, about my father and I laugh whenever I think about it. You know how women are; they've got to fuss about this and that once in a while. Well, when my mother would start fussing about something that father did that she didn't like, he would tell her 'don't you talk to me like that, - I bought you and paid for you.' Then she would get riled up for sure.  My mother died about six years after my father, and they are both buried at Galveston. I got married then and buy some land on Avenue R, and build me a house. After Avenue S, out toward the Gulf, is all sand hills mostly, and where Avenue T was is now the Seawall, Where the Galvez Hotel is, it used to be about a half-a-mile from there to the water.  We live there till the 1900 storm. That sure was an awful sight. I was at my house that day when it hit and my wife was visiting some folks. I knew the wind was blowing hard, but didn't think much about it until the house kinda rocked. I opened the door and the water rushed in. Then, I knew we had a real storm. I went to the front door and jumped in the water and I don't know to this day if I swam through the gate or over the picket fence. That was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and I swam for two and one-half hours and rescued forty-five people from houses that had blowed down or was just about to, and swam with them to a brick building where hundreds of people were. It wasn't till two days after that I found my wife. She was in a house that hadn't gone down.  I hear folks tell about what a smell all those dead people made, but I was right there and it smelled just like any mud does after a rain. You see the salt water just pickled the dead folks and they didn't mortify right away.  Well, they gathered up all the dead bodies they could find, and put them in a big warehouse on the Strand right near 23rd street, and those they could identify they put a card on with their name and those they couldn't they just put 'unidentified'. Then, they puts a piece of iron weight on each one, carries them to a barge and goes out about fifteen miles in the Gulf and dumps them overboard, but most every one of them bodies came back to Galveston. Then, they pile them up, just like you cross-pile cord wood, and pour oil all over them and burn them. It sure was a awful sight, but I guess it was all they could do. 

Yes, sir I swam in that water for two and one-half hours right when the storm was the worst. Why, I used to swim across the Bay where the bridge is now, lots of times.  Let's see now, that storm was in September, and the next May my wife died. Then, I get a job on a boat, and follow the sea for awhile, till we lands one time at Vera Cruz in Mexico.  We had several of the crew who spoke Mexican and I learned to speak it pretty well, so when we landed at Vera Cruz I heard they wanted trainmen on the railroad, and paid lots more than they did on boats, so I get me a job firing and then I get to be engineer.  I reckon I am the only one in the States that can say I was the engineer for President Diaz. Yes sir, I pulled his train. It was always the second section. First, there would be the pilot train to go just ahead of us, then the President's train, and a train loaded with soldiers following right behind us.  I know I pull the train one day out of Mexico City to a town over on the West Coast, where the ones that was working on the docks was striking for more money. They was getting thirty cents a day, Mex., and wanted forty cents. When we got there the guard train in back pulled in right behind us, and the soldiers unloaded and marched to the docks. Pretty quick we could hear shooting, and then the soldiers come back. Of course, down in Mexico in them times, you didn't want to be too curious about things, but I heard that the soldiers had the workers that was striking lined up on a barge and killed twenty-six of them. That old Presidente sure settled strikes quick in them days.  Yes sir, I have been most all over Mexico and most of the world, too. About the only place I wanted to go and didn't was the South Sea Islands. I've been in the 'fever' country of Mexico where it's mostly parrots and monkeys that live there, and there ain't no doctor going to do you no good if that fever takes you. I've seen monkeys take the fever, go down and take a drink of water and swell up and bust. Yes sir, I've seen what I've told you. "I've seen lots of things, lots of them, but since I've come back to the States and got naturalized and married again, I've sorta settled down. I do some paper hanging when I can get a job of it to do, but I ain't so spry no more. I've tried to get a government pension, but they want me I should sell my house here and live on that, but I ain't going to do it. Yes sir, all I'm doing most is living a God-fearing life. I don't believe in no lying or things like that, but I've been around a whole lot and folks like to hear me tell of some of my experiences, and maybe to please them I stretch things just a little, but the Lord won't hold that against me, will he?