Mary Kindred

Mary Kindred thought she was about eighty when interviewed. She was born on Luke Hadnot's place in Jasper County, Texas. Her mother was Hannah Hadnot. Her father, Baffin Hadnot, later carried the mail between Weiss Bluff and Jasper, and in 1881 he was ambushed on the road, killed and robbed. Her grandmother worked as a licensed healer; Mary said the enslaver thought so highly of her that he gave her forty acres and a house of her own, which was still standing in Jasper. Her grandmother doctored with herbs, boiling thorn-tree bark for toothache, and sang the children old songs Mary could still recite.

She remembered supplies coming by steamboat to a landing on the Angelina River, and wartime coffee made from parched bran, peanuts and okra seed. She described molasses called "long sweetening" and sugar called "short sweetening," dances with fiddle and accordion, and songs about Shiloh. She also told of her Aunt Harriett, whose predictions, people said, always came true.

She married twice, first to Anthony Adams and later to Alfred Kindred, and had twelve children, three of whom were living when she was interviewed. She lived in Beaumont, Texas, where one of her sons served as a guard at a lodge.