My GGGGrandmother was Rebecca Neugin. Born Rebecca Tickaneesky, at the age of four years old, she walked the Trail of Tears from northern Georgia to Oklahoma. In 1932, she was interviewed by historian Grant Foreman for the WPA.
“When the soldiers came to our house my father wanted to fight, but my mother told him the soldiers would kill him if he did and we surrendered without a fight. They drove us out of our house to join other prisoners in a stockade. After they took us away, my mother begged them to let her go back and get some bedding. So they let her go back and she brought the bedding and a few cooking utensils she could carry, and had to leave behind all of our household possessions.
“My father had a wagon pulled by two spans of oxen to haul us. Eight of my brothers and sisters and two or three widow women and children rode with us. My brother Dick who was a good deal older than I was walked along with a long whip which he popped over the backs of the oxen and drove them all the way. My father and mother walked all the way also.
“The people got so tired of eating salt pork on the journey that my father would walk through the woods as we traveled, hunting for turkeys and deer which he brought into camp to feed us. Camp was usually made at some place where water was to be had and when we stopped and prepared to cook our food other emigrants who had been driven from their homes without opportunity to secure cooking utensils came to our camp to use our pots and pans.
“There was much sickness among the emigrants and a great many little children died of whooping cough.”