Betty Bormer (Bonner)

Betty Bormer was born on April 4, 1857, at Johnson Station in Tarrant County, Texas, enslaved by Colonel M. T. Johnson along with her parents, five sisters, four brothers and about seventy-five others. Her mother was the plantation seamstress and her father the shoemaker. Betty's work was looking after the enslaver's small children.

She remembered plenty of food, music on piano, fiddle and banjo, dances held in the dining room of the big house, and a preacher named Jack Ditto. She said the enslaver's children taught some of the enslaved to read and write, and his daughters taught her aunt to play the piano. During the war, soldiers she identified as Quantrill's men came several times and drove off cattle and horses.

When freedom came, the enslaver called everyone to the porch and told them they could go where they pleased. Those who stayed were paid; those who left got a mule or a cow. Her family was allowed to live on a piece of his land until his death about seven years later. After the war she saw the Ku Klux Klan; her uncle was whipped by them. She married several times and had one child. She kept working as a nurse after freedom, and in the late 1930s she lived at Stop Six near Fort Worth on an eleven-dollar state pension.