Josh Miles

Josh Miles was born in 1859 in Richmond, Virginia, enslaved by a man named Miles who lived in the city and owned three nearby plantations and, Josh said, about 1,500 people. His father was the family coachman, driving four or six horses in a tall hat and blue uniform with brass buttons. In 1860, at the big races, the horses were named for Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, and Josh remembered the betting song.

When Virginia joined the Confederacy and the capital moved to Richmond, Miles decided to get out of the war's path and, in 1862, set out for Texas with his family, enslaved people, livestock and wagons. The trip took two years, with long stops in Nashville, Memphis and Vicksburg, where he traded horses, mules and people along the way. Josh saw the warehouse sales: people fed well the day before to look cheerful, chained the night before, stripped to the waist and examined. He watched an old woman's two sons sold to one man and her two daughters to another; she carried on so that her enslaver threw her in with the girls, saying she was too old to be worth much.

They settled at Franklin, Texas. A few months after the war ended, Miles freed them and gave Josh's father some money, and the family rented land near Milligan. When Josh was nearly grown he went to work for the I.&G.N. railroad, helping build the line from Houston to Waco, and worked for it until he was laid off for age. When interviewed at 78, he lived in Mart, Texas.