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When we were ready to drive away my mother went over to the graves, knelt down and said a prayer and then went and stood in front of the house taking a last look at our home. She was crying and I cried because she was crying. Daddy went over and put his arms around mother and they walked over to the wagon and we started away.
Our first settlement we were driving for was Camden and the road was nothing much but a trail. Many times daddy had to cut out and clean out the way. We traveled slow until we got to Camden. We would drive about a half day then stop and let the cattle graze on the grass. I think we started moving about May or June. I remember our corn was about head high and we had good dry weather and no mud to pull through.
Finally we got to Camden. There I saw a lot of things new to me; a ferry boat, slaves, horses and mules, a stage coach, a carriage, a store on the bank of the river; the TRADING POST. Several families were living there in good log houses, then there was a number of campers, boomers, trappers and hunters. There must have been a lot of Indians near by; they came in numbers around our camp, they were friendly, but I was afraid of them. I had always been told that they were dangerous.
A number of people were building log houses, corn cribs etc. and daddy camped there several weeks and did carpenter work.
- Camden was on a pretty good open road leading from the Bluffs (now
Pine Bluff) to Shreveport and there was a pretty good road from Camden
to Washington. Movers were passing nearly ever day going west. One day
a big rich man came through. He had a big fine carriage and a pair of fine
horses for his family, then he had 20 or 25 wagons loaded and pulled, by
horses, mules or oxen. He had about 100 slaves. They camped and rested
at Camden several days. Every night he would entertain the folks by having
his nigger boys and girls pat and dance while another nigger played a banjo.
I had never seen a nigger dance before. This man sold several of his Negro
women to other slave owners at Camden.
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