Preely Coleman, born into slavery, told his life story at age 85 in Tyler, 1935.

Preely Coleman, born into slavery, told his life story at age 85 in Tyler, 1935.

Preely Coleman, born into slavery, told his life story at age 85 in Tyler, 1935. Preely was born in 1852 in New Berry, South Carolina, but he and his mother were sold and taken to Texas when he was only a month old…
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They settled near Alto, where Preely lived most of his life. Here are his words, preserved thanks to the WPA project:
“I’m Preely Coleman and I never get tired of talking. Yes, ma’am, it’s Juneteenth, but I’m at home because I’m too old to go to the celebrations. Where was I born? I know exactly, because my mother told me a thousand times times I was born down on the old Souba plantation, in South Carolina, about ten miles from New Berry. My mother belonged to the Souba family, but actually one of the Souba boys was my father, so the Soubas sold my mother to Bob and. Dan Lewis, and they took us to Texas along with a large group of other slaves. My mother told me it took a whole month to get to Alto, their new home.
“When I was a child, I had quite a good time, because there were a lot of children on the plantation. We used to have big races. During the war, the soldiers would stop on their way to Mansfield, Louisiana, to eat something and spend the night, and there we would do the There was a mulberry tree we ran to, and we lined up while the soldiers said, ‘Now the first one to touch the tree gets a quarter,’ and I almost always got there first. I got a lot of quarters by touching that old mulberry tree !
“So the kids decided to get me in trouble, because I was winning all the quarters. They threw a rope around my neck and started dragging me down the street, and down the hill, and I almost suffocated. My only friend was Billy, and he fought to try to free me. They were about to throw me into the great spring at the bottom of the hill, but we met Captain Berryman, a white man, who took his knife and cut the rope from my neck and took me by the heels, diving me up. and down into the spring until I came to. They never tried to kill me again.
“My mother was married to John Selman while we were going to Texas, without ceremony, you know, but with the consent of her master. Now, our masters, the Lewises, lost their property, and so the Selmans bought me and my mother. They paid $1,500 for my mother and I was included.
“The Massa Selman had five cabins in his yard, arranged in a semicircle. Growing enough to hoe and then to plow. We had to be ready for camp at dawn and when the horn sounded, the massa called, ‘All ready for camp. ‘ At 11:30 the horn sounded again, which was a conch, and we ate lunch, and at 12:30 we had to go back to work.
“The Massa Tom made us wear shoes, because there were a lot of branches and stumps and our feet would get hurt, and they were red leather shoes. I’ll never forget them, they were so stiff at first that we could hardly stand them. But the Massa Tom was a good man, although he loved dram. He kept the bottle in the center of the dining table all the time and at every meal he made toddy. We slaves ate under the trees in the summer and in the kitchen in the winter , and generally we had bread with meat broth or milk, but sometimes honey.
“I remember well when freedom came. We were in the camp and the massa came and said, ‘You are all free like me.’ There was singing and dancing and before the night we were all on the road to freedom.”