“I was born in December 27, 1918 in Wilkes County, North Carolina. I was put out in other people’s homes when I was eight years old. I had a white daddy and a brown skinned mama. My daddy was from well to do people but he never owned up to me and I never saw him. My mother was Lilly Wards.

I started working before I was 9 years old. I could cook and I could do most any old thing. I started digging out in the fields at the same time. I got married in 1938 and we started sharecropping and I worked out on the farm until I was 68 years old. I have been on Roby and Besse Fulk’s farm since I was 20 years old, I’m still on that farm. We are family. I then started working as a caregiver out in a neighbor’s home. I can pray the fire out of a burn or cure a baby of thrush and stop bleeding. I can do these things because I never laid eyes upon my father.

I belong to the old Primitive Baptist church. We make our music with our mouth and our feet. We do not have any instruments in our church. I was neighbors with Tim and Denise and met many wonderful people. I helped raise Lucas; he is a very special boy. When they left, Tim gave me a guitar.”