The words of the “old ones” have always been the archives of the people.  This which is here transcribed is the statement of Jack Black, now deceased, but long known as the “oldest man in Travis County.”  His statement was taken down by Eugene V. Giles of Austin, a member of the 41st legislature, and son of a Civil War officer, who has been throughout his life deeply interested in preserving local history.  The statement refers to the coming to Texas of the ancestors of many of today's well-known families. 

Jack Black's Statement. “I was born in Virginia, August 10th, 1852, of slave parents belonging to Wallace Maxwell, father of J.C. and Thomas Maxwell. In 1859 Mr. Maxwell emigrated to Texas with his family - his wife and two sons - together with Sam Black and his wife, Mary Jane, and their children: Nancy, Harriett, Bill, Tommie and myself, - my brother George being left in Mack Madison and his wife, Maria, and two boys, Tom and Charlie; Fannie Allen and three children: Mary Frank, and Lewis, and my grandmother, Fannie, whose last name I cannot remember.

We traveled from Arlington, Washington County, Virginia to the coast by stagecoach and then by steamboat to Galveston.  There the boss secured a yoke of black oxen and a wagon.  Then we made the trip overland to the custard place near what is now Sprinkle (a whistle stop on the Katy Railroad about ten miles northeast of Austin.) 

We were on the boat about a week or ten days and it took us about ten or twelve days the rest of the way.  The roads - trails, really - were dry and we had no trouble with them.  Most of us walked and we camped out at night.  This was in the early fall.  Next year - 1860 - we made a crop of corn on the Custard place - 35 or 40 bushels per acre. 

J.C. and Thomas Maxwell had come out to Texas ahead of the rest of us with five mules, and they made the arrangements for us to stay at the Custard place.  Next year - 1861 - Mr. Maxwell brought land from Mr. Allen Burdett, who originally owned several thousand acres on Big Walnut Creek, Land was very cheap then. 

The Giles Burdett mill on Little Walnut was run by water power and ground both corn and wheat for the community.  A four-year-old steer sold for ten or twelve dollars and cows for six or eight dollars. 

The neighbors “swapped beef.” (That is one would kill a beef and “send the meat around” - then the next week the next neighbor would kill.)  We used a spinning wheel and loom.  We had our own tanyard and made our own shoes, as well as our clothes.  We made sorghum molasses every year and used it to sweeten coffee - when we had coffee.  Mostly we used parched wheat and barley to make coffee. 

There was another mill powered by oxen belonging to Mr. William Hill in what is now the Gregg Community.  The nearest cotton gin in 1862 was on the Jim Manor Place - now Manor Town.  This was a horse powered outfit.  Later (after the Civil War) the J.C. Maxwell had a mule-powered gin, V.S. Edrington was the engineer.  Mrs. Maxwell fed the one-stand gin and they put out ten bales of cotton on a long day's run.  Cotton seed had no cash value and were dumped in piles out of the way. 

The tools used in making a crop were the turning plow and the double-shovel single-stock sweep.  Corn and cotton were planted by hand.  Grain was cut with a scythe and cradle.  Later after the wire binder came, lots of cattle were killed from swolling the wire binds left in the straw from the thrasher. (Wages “after the war” were fifty cents a day and board.) 

After the war closed, my father and the other Maxwell Negroes rented land from Mr. Maxwell.  In 1872 my father rented land from F. Jourdan (Mr. Giles maternal grandfather and the father of Mrs. J.C. Maxwell).  My father stayed with Mr. Jourdan for twelve years.  Then he bought 41 and half acres of Rutherford land where he and my stepmother spent the rest of their lives. 

“In 1877 I was married to Pauline McFarland - a widow with four girls: Evaline, Dorothy, Ella and Jonnie.  Then we had four girls:  Ruth, Sarah, Hattie and Jeanette.  We lived on the F. Jourdan place from 1877 to 1879. Then we moved to the Henry Neans place on Walnut Creek and made a crop.  In December, 1880, we moved to this place ( still in Walnut Creek Community) where we lived continuously ever since, and where we own our house and five acres of land.