Emma Watson

Emma Watson was born on Captain Forrester's farm in Ellis County, Texas, around 1852 or 1853. The Bible with her birth date burned, so she took May as her birthday. She never knew her father; her mother, Lucindy Lane, had been sold out of Mississippi away from him before Emma was born. She had sisters named Anna, Martha and Jennie. She was raised largely by the captain's mother, Susan, whom she called "Sis Sue," and as a child she tended her Aunt Matilda's babies. The white girl had a china doll; Emma had a rag doll tied with strings. Enslaved children ate with their fingers and used mussel shells for spoons.

She remembered the day another woman of the household took up a whip to beat her mother, and her mother grabbed the whip and said, "You ain't going to do that." A few days later the family was ordered to leave. They walked down the road until a family took them in, and a month later, when her mother fell sick, Sis Sue brought food daily and told them to come home. Her mother died when Emma was about ten.

She stayed with the Forresters until she was 22, receiving food and clothes but never wages. She married in a white Swiss dress, walking across the fields to the preacher, and set up housekeeping farming on half-shares. When interviewed she lived with her daughter at 318 Allen Street in Dallas.