"When the war between the states came I staid on the Joseph Davis plantation all during the fighting. In '62 or '63, anyway, after the battle of Corinth, the Yankees commenced overrunning the South and Mr. Joe, took all his stock and colored people to Jackson, and later on to Alabama. He had me return to the plantation with my mother and act as sort of caretakers and we were there when Admiral Porter's Mississippi squadron made its way up the river. It seems sometime before a gunboat, the Indianola, had been sunk in the river, just off the Hurricane plantation and folks in the neighborhood had dismantled her. "When Admiral Porter came up the river he stopped at the plantation so as to look at the wreck and see if her guns could be found. But they had been thrown overboard and had gone down in the quicksand. The Admiral asked me if I wanted to go with him as cabin boy. I said yes, and ran to get my mammy's consent which was given. This was in April of '63 and a few months later I was with the Admiral in the siege of Vicksburg and later the battle at Grand Gulf. Soon afterwards I got a sickness from drinking Red River water and when I was sent back to Hurricane I found my parents had gone to Cincinnati and when I got word of this to Admiral Porter he secured transportation there for me. "When the war was over Mr. Joe Davis got in touch with my father and had him come back to Hurricane plantation and after we got there he made a proposition that we could buy the two plantations, Hurricane, that Mr. Joe owned, and Brierfield, of 4,000 acres, that Mr. Jeff Davis owned. While he could not sell to colored people under the existing laws, through a court action by which my father, Benjamin T. Montgomery, and my brother William T. and myself, agreed to pay $300,000 for the combined properties, they were turned over to us and we were to pay six per cent a year on the whole until it was paid off. "Our first year working the plantation resulted in almost disaster as we suffered from an overflow and when the first payment came around we were only able to pay $6,000. When we sent this to Mr. Joe Davis with our excuses he sent us back a canceled note for the rest of the $18,000. The Davis brothers, were gentlemen, sir. Well, we kept the plantation going for thirteen years and in that time we ranked as third in the production of cotton in Warren county. While we were growing cotton I became very well acquainted with Captain John W. Cannon, the commander of the famous steamboat the Robert E. Lee. He and Captain Tom Leathers, the commander of the Natchez, were always having some sort of a fight or another and I saw the famous race between the two when they actually settled the matter for good and all.