Wash Wilson

Wash Wilson was about eighteen when the war came. He was born in Louisiana near the Ouachita Road, enslaved by Tom Wilson along with his mother, Julia, his sister Sally and brother Harry; his father was Bill Wilson. Tom Wilson expected the Union to win and end slavery, so he sold the family off the block to Bill Anderson of Texas, who took the risk because they were "a likely bunch of children" and Julia was a fine cook. Anderson owned 27,000 acres in Robertson County, near Calvert, granted for fighting Native people. They traveled by ox cart and horseback, most of them on foot.

They were freed on the road to Texas. After some people came to talk with Anderson one night at camp, he told them the next morning they were as free as he was, only sixteen miles from their destination. Knowing no one and having nothing, they all stayed. Wash helped clear land and build cabins. He described the plantation in detail: the quarters each with a barn and mule, the potato house banked with earth, lye hoppers for making soap, bottle lamps of tallow and rag, and possum and coon hunting in the river bottoms. When interviewed at 94 he lived in Eddy, Texas.