J. W. Stinnett, age 75 yrs
Slave Born, Creek Freedman, Route 1, Box 139, Muskogee, Oklahoma
What with raising nine grandchildren whose mammy is dead, this old head of mine has too many
troubles to remember much about thems 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 where he went I don't know,
because he take off to the north during the war and never came 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 fed 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 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.
Contributed by M. Dawson, May 2002
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