Jane Holloway

Jane Holloway had been sick in bed for weeks with the flu when she was interviewed in Alabama, but she sat up, recognized her visitor, and told what she could remember. She was born in North Alabama to Carrie and Traylor Holloway, and had one brother, Maryland. They lived in a one-room mud-and-log house with a big fireplace, on Billy Taylor's small plantation. Children were fed bread and milk from long wooden troughs with wooden spoons, and when someone called "Children, bread!" she said they "burnt the wind getting there," because they were always hungry.

She remembered men running and screaming that the Yankees were coming, and the soldiers riding in and taking everything from the smokehouse, along with the livestock. She joined the church at ten. When interviewed she lived alone except for a twelve-year-old grandson, and she was "plumb proud" to come out on the porch and have her picture taken.