William Branch

William Branch was born May 13, 1850, on Lawyer Woodson's tobacco and cotton plantations in Lunenburg County, Virginia, about 75 miles southwest of Richmond, where 75 people were enslaved. He said there was no whipping, but the work was hard. The women carded and spun, and clothes were made on a hand-cranked sewing machine, one woman turning the wheel and another sewing.

In 1861, when Union troops came into Virginia, a Union sergeant took William up on his horse and carried him to Washington. Having run away, he stayed there, working as a house boy for a hack driver named Frank Cayler, until 1870. Then he went to Baltimore and enlisted in the U.S. Army. His unit was shipped to Galveston and marched across Texas to Fort Duncan, sleeping under trees and living on beans, hardtack and the occasional unbranded "maverick" cow. He served at Fort Duncan, Fort Clark and Fort Davis, where he joined the Indian Scouts in Company K, and fought Comanches, Apaches and Cheyennes on the way to Fort Sill in Indian Territory.

When interviewed he lived at 322 Utah Street in San Antonio. His eyesight was so poor that someone had to lead him to the store or church, and every evening at five he knelt by his bed and spent half an hour or more chanting spirituals.