Stearlin Arnwine

Stearlin Arnwine was born in 1853 on Gum Creek, near Jacksonville, Texas. His mother was one of four women, along with his grandmother Gracie and his aunts Winnie and Mary, enslaved by Albertus Arnwine, an unmarried man who owned no enslaved men except these women's children. His father was Ike Lane. Arnwine lived in the house with Stearlin's grandmother.

Before the war Arnwine died, leaving everything he owned, including 900 acres, to the women he had enslaved. A judge named Jowell promised on Arnwine's deathbed to take them to a free state. Instead he kept them working on his own place for two years, and the women never received the land. Stearlin believed he still had a share in it, but said it took money to fight for it in court.

When the war began he was rounded up from the fields with dogs and sold to John Moseley of Rusk, separated from the rest of his family. He became Moseley's houseboy, carrying meals, fanning him during naps, and taking his stepdaughters to school on horseback. He learned to spin, weave and knit. He saw people stripped to the waist and sold on the auction block, and women and children begging not to be separated. The enslaved held their only church services secretly in the woods at night. After freedom his mother gathered the children and moved near Jacksonville, where Stearlin lived the rest of his life. He got his first pair of pants at fourteen.