Richard Jackson

Richard Jackson was born in 1859 on Watt Rosborough's plantation along the Sabine River, nine miles south of Marshall, Texas. His mother had been brought from North Carolina. His father died when he was a baby, and his mother later married Will Jackson. He had six brothers and three sisters. His grandfather Jack told stories of fighting on the frontier.

His mother's stepfather, Kit, was made the driver and did the whipping, except of his mother, whom the white overseer punished himself. Once, when the overseer came to whip her, she threw a shovelful of live coals at him and ran; he chased her across the plantation, caught her, and tied her down to whip her. Richard's mother told him the enslaved had to pray out in the woods because they weren't allowed to make noise near the house. As a small boy he carried fire from the house to light a stump in the field so his mother could light her pipe. His older brother Jack was secretly learning to read until the overseer found letters written on a cabin wall in charcoal and ordered him to stop.

The family left the Rosboroughs right after the war and moved near Woodlawn. He remembered hiding under the bed when Klansmen came to the house, calling each other by numbers instead of names. He married at twenty-five and moved to a neighboring farm, which he owned when he was interviewed.