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'Course, we works for them, too, and they pays us a little and when Christmas comes we can buy our own things. They gives us our own ground and sometimes we makes two bales of cotton on it. They puts us in debt and makes us work so many years to pay for it. Finally Lucy and me gits married out of de Book and comes down here to Marse McNeel's. "When we was freed we was all glad, but I stayed 'round and worked for Marse Dave and he pays me a little. I'd play, 'Young Girl, Old Girl', 'High Heel Shoes,' and 'Calico Stockings.' Sometimes we have dances, and I'd play de fiddle for white folks and cullud folks both. But we has to watch the eats, 'cause niggers what they marsters don't give 'em no Christmas sneak over and eat it all up. Iffen it come Monday, we has de week off. "Come Christmas time old marse sometimes give us two-bits and lots of extra eats. We wore red russet shoes and good homespun clothes, and we done better'n now. But de white folks fed us good and give us good clothes. We didn't have no funerals like now, they jus' dig a hole and make you a box, and throw you in and cover you up. 'Course they didn't larn us read and write, and didn't 'low no church, but us steal off and have it sometimes, and iffen old Marse cotch us he give us a whalin'. "We had better houses then, good plank houses, and de big house was sho' big and nice. Some niggers jus' come from Africa and old Marse has to watch 'em close, 'cause they is de ones what mostly runs away to de woods. Sometimes de slaves run away to de woods and iffen they don't cotch 'em fust they finally gits hongry and comes home, and then they gits a hidin'. My mamma's name Maria Simmons and my papa, Lewis. "I fust went to de field when I 'bout 15 year old, but they larned us to work when we was chaps, we would he'p our mammas in de rows. Iffen he cotched us we sho' gits a hidin'. We is slippin' 'long quiet like and a paddle roller jump out from behin' a bush and say, 'Let's see your pass.' We didn't have none but I has a piece of paper and I gives it to him and he walks to where it am more light, and then we run, right through old burdock bushes with briars stickin' us and everything. "I 'members once I slips away come dark from de plantation, with some others. She was sister to Marse John McNeel, what with his brothers owned all de land hereabouts. I's born in Fort Bend County, up near Richmond, and my old marster was Marse Dave Randon, and his wife, Miss Nancy, was my missus. "They named me San Jacinto 'cause I's born durin' de San Jacinto war, but they calls me Cinto. We come long way and we goin' to die together.

She and me marry right after 'mancipation. That's Lucy over there, she my wife and I calls her Red Heifer, 'cause her papa's name was Juan and he was a Mexican. Although Uncle Cinto claims to be 111, he says he was named San Jacinto because he was born during the "San Jacinto War", which would make his age 101. Greenville McNeel, who owned the plantation before Marion Huntington. Miss Kate Huntington says the cabin occupied by the old couple is part of the old slave quarters built by J.

He lived in a brick cabin with his wife, Aunt Lucy, on the Huntington Plantation, in Brazoria Co., Texas. Unclee Cinto Lewis, ex-slave, claims to be 111 years old.