[TR: Additional topic moved from subsequent page.]
[TR: Personal information moved from bottom of interview.]
I wuz a young lady in the time of surrender. I am a slave chile. I am one of them. I had a gran' time in slavery time. I wuz born wid de white foks. I stayed wid mah muthah at night but mah mistress raised me. I nussed mah mutha's gran'chile. I churned and sot de table. When de baby go to sleep in de evenin' I put hit in de cradle. An' I'd lay down by the cradle and go to sleep. Every evenin' I'd go git lida knots. I played a lots. I wuz born 1849. We played Susanna Gals, and we just played jump rope. Jes' we gals did. We played calling' cows. Dey'd come to us and we run from um. My [TR: 'I' corrected to 'My'] mistess wuz a millionaire. I went to school a while. I can count only lit bit. One uz de girl made fun uz me. She kotch me nodding and we fit dare in de school house. Old log school house. Dey had two big rooms. Ah went to de ole fokes' church. Young un too. We'd cry if we didn't git ter go ter church wid ma and pa.
Our table was sot under a china berry tree and ooo-eee chile I can see hit now. We et on a loal (oil) table cloth. When dey called us to de table dey would ring a bell. We didn' eat out uz plates. We et outn gourds. We all et outn gourds. When I got big nuff ter cook I cooked den. We had plenty to eat. We raised who-eee plenty meat. We raised our sugar, rice, peas, chikens, eggs, cows. Who-eee chile we had plenty to eat. Our mistess had ovah a hunert (100) niggers. Ole moster nevah did whip none uv us niggers. He tended de men and mistess always tended to us. I wudden (wasn't) quite grown when I wuz married. We cooked out in de yard an' on fireplaces too in dose big ubbens (ovens). We cooked greens in a wash pot jes like you boil clothes, dats de way we cook greens. We cooked ash cakes too an we cooked persimmon braid (bread). An evah thing we had wuz good too. We made our churns in dem days. Made dem outn cypress.
Evahbody cried when dem yankees cried out: "Free." We cried too; we hated hit so bad. We had such a good time. I is gittin so ole I can't member so ever' thin' I done. Now chile ah cain't member evah' thin' I done but in dem days we didn' have ter worry 'bout nothin'. Ole mistress wuz de one ter worry. Twasn't den like hit is now. No Twasn't. Tother niggers say dey had er hard time foe dem Yankee cried "Free" but it waz den jes like hit is now if you had a hard time we done hit ourselves.
[HW: Negro food]
PERSIMMON PIE Make a crust like you would any other pie crust and take your persimmons and wash them. Let them be good and ripe. Get the seed out of them. Don't cook them. Mash them and put cinnamon and spice in and butter. Sugar to taste. Then roll your dough and put in custard pan, and then add the filling, then put a top crust on it, sprinkle a little sugar on top and bake.
PERSIMMON CORNBREAD Sift meal and add your ingredients then your persimmons that have been washed and the seeds taken out and mash them and put in and stir well together. Grease pan well and pour in and bake. Eat with fresh meat.
PERSIMMON BEER Gather your persimmons, wash and put in a keg, cover well with water and add about two cups of meal to it and let sour about three days. That makes a nice drink.
Boil persimmons just as you do prunes now day and they will answer for the same purpose.
ASH CAKE Two cups of meal and one teaspoon of salt and just enough hot water to make it stick together. Roll out in pones and wrap in a corn shuck or collard leaves or paper. Lay on hot ashes and cover with hot ashes and let cook about ten minutes.
CORNBREAD JOHNNY CAKE Two cups of meal, one half cup of flour about a teaspoon of soda, one cup of syrup, one-half teaspoon salt, beat well. Add teaspoon of lard. Pour in greased pan and bake.
[HW: Water or Milk added?]
(Old Mistress wud give us this corn bread johnny cake about four o'clock in de evening and give us plenty of buttermilk to drink wid it. Dey had a long trough. Dey kep' hit so clean fur us. Ev'ry evening about four dey would fill de trough full uv milk and wus abut 100 of us chilluns. We'd all get round de trough and drink wid our mouth and hold our johnny cake in our han's. I can jes see mahself drinkin now. It wus so good.)
BEEF DUMPLINS Take the brough (meaning broth) from boiled beef and season with salt, peper and add you dumplins jus as you would chicken dumplins.
Pick and wash beet tops just as you would turnip greens and cook with meat to season. Season to suit taste. This makes the best vegetable dish.
POTATO BISCUIT Two cups flour. Two teaspoons of baking powder, pinch of soda, teaspoon of salt, tablespoon of lard, two cups of cooked, well mashed sweet potatoes and milk to make a nice dough.
IRISH POTATO PIE Boil potatoes, set off and let cool, then mash well and add one cup sugar, two eggs, butter size of an egg, milk, spice to suit taste, bake in pie crust. Irish potatoes make a better pie than sweet potatoes.
Radios from half a dozen houses blared out on the afternoon air. Ben[TR:?] Winslow was popular but ran a poor second to jazz bands in which moaning trombones predominated.
At one or two houses a knock or jangling bell had roused nobody. "They's all off at work," a neighbor usually volunteered. But in this block of comfortable cottages fronting on the paved section of Walnut evidently there were a goodly number of stay-at-homes. A mild prosperity seemed to pervade everything. The Walnut section is in the "old part of town". Some of the houses had evidently been built during the 90s; but they were well kept up and painted.
There was evidence here and there of former dependence on wells for water. One or two had been simply boarded over. One, a front yard affair had been ingeniously converted into a huge flower pot. The well had been filled in, its circular brick walls covered with a thick layer of cement. Into this, while still damp, had been pressed crystals. Even in January the vessel bore evidence of summer blooming.
"PREPARE TO MEET YOUR GOD" admonished the electrified box sign attatched to the front porch of one dwelling. Its border was of black wood. The sign itself was of white frosted glass. Letters of the slogan were in scarlet.
Next doer was another religious reminder. It was a modest pasteboard window card and announced Bible Study at 2: P.M. daily.
Three blocks up Walnut the pavement ends. Beyond that sidewalks too, listlessly peter out. A young, but enthusiastically growing ditch is beginning to separate path from street. Houses begin to take on a more dilapidated appearance. They lean uncertainly.
A colored woman stops to stare at the white one, plants herself directly in the stranger's path and demands, "Is you the investigator? No? Well who is you looking for? Oh, Mose, he's at his son's. Good thing I stopped you. Cause you would have gone too far. He's at his son's. His grandson just done had his tonsils out. He's over there."
The interviewer climbed the ladder-like steps leading to "his son's house". No Mose wasn't there. He had just left. Maybe he'd gone home. The de-tonsiled child proved to be a bright eyed, saddle-colored youngster of three, enormously interested in the stranger. He wore whip-cord jodphurs—protruding widely on either side of his plump thighs—and knee high leather riding boots. Plump and smiling, he looked for all the world like a kewpie provided with a kink ey crown and blistered to a rich chocolate by a friendly sun.
The child eyed the interviewer's pencil. Since, she was carrying a "spare" she offered it to him. He smiled and accepted with alacrity. Later when the interviewer had found Mose and brought him back to the house to be questioned, the grandson brought forth his long new pencil and showed it with heartfelt pride.
On up the street went the interviewer. Arrived at 451 she approached the house through a yard strewn, with wood chips and piled with cordwood. Nobody answered her knock. Two blocks back toward town she was stopped by the same woman who had accosted her before. "Did you find him?" "No," replied the interviewer. "Well he's somewhere on the street. He's a'carrying a cane. You just stop any man you see with a cane and ask him if he ain't Mose Evans." The advice was sound/ The first elderly man coming north was carrying a cane. He was Mose Evans.
"So you-all got together?" called the officious neighbor. "Mose, you ought of asked her—when you see her coming up the street if she wasn't looking for you." "Maybe," said Mose, "but then I didn't know, and I don't want to butt into other folks business" "Huh," snorted the woman, "spose I hadn't butted in. Where'd you be. You wouldn't have found her and she wouldn't have found you!" Both Mose and the interviewer wore forced to admit that she was right—but from Mose's disapproving expression he, like the interviewer, was sorry of it.
"No, ma'am. I ain't been here long. Just about two weeks. You want to talk to me. Let's go on up to my son's house. We'll stop there. I's tired. Seems like I get tired awful quick. Had to go down to the store to get some coal." (He was carrying a paper sack of about two gallon capacity. "Coal" was probably charcoal—much favored among wash women for use in a small bucket-furnace for heating "flat-irons".) My wife has to work awful hard to earn enough, to buy enough coal and wood.
Did I say I'd been here two weeks? I meant I has been here two years. I's lived all over. Came here from Woodruff county. Yes, ma'am. I can't work no more. My wife she gets 2-3 days washing a week. Then she gets some bundles to bring home and do. She got sick, same as me and her brothers come on down to bring her up here to look after. They provided for me too. They took good care of us. Then one of 'em got sick himself, and the other he lost out in a money way. So she's a washing.
Can't remember very much about the war. I was just a little thing when it was a'going on. Was hardly any size at all. I does remember standing in the door of my mother's house and watching the soldiers go by. Men dressed in blue they was. Wasn't afraid of them—didn't have sense enough to be, I guess. Looked sort of pretty to me, dressed all in blue that way. And they was riding fine horses. Made a big noise they did. They was a'riding by in a sort of sweeping gallop. I won't never forgot it.
Guess Confederates passed too. I was too small to know about them. They was all soldiers to me. Folks told me they was on their way to Vicksburg. I heard tell that there was lots of fighting down around Vicksburg.
I was born on a place which belonged to a man named Thad Shackleford. Don't remember him very well. They took me away from his place when I was little. But I never did hear my mother say anything against him. Awful fine man, she said, awful fine man. I had lots of half sisters—5 of 'em and 6 half brothers. There was just one full sister.
Farm? Not until I was 14. Just stayed around the house and nursed the children. Nursed lots of children. Took care of them and amused them. Played with them. But for four, five, maybe six years I helped my mother farm. Went out into the fields and worked.
Then I went to myself. Yes, ma'am, I share cropped. Share cropped up until about 1908. By that time I had got together a pretty good lot and bought stock and tools. Then I rented—rented thirds and fourths. I liked that way lots best. It's best if a body can get himself stocked up.
But let me tell you, ma'am. It's a lot easier to get behind than it is to catch up. Falling behind is easy. Catching up ain't so simple. I sort of lost my health and then I had to sell my stock. After that it was share-crop again. I share cropped right up until 1935. That's when we come here.
Yes, ma'am we moved around a lot. Longest what I worked for any man was 12 years. He was J.W. Hill, the best man I ever did see. Once I rented from a colored man, but he died. Was with him 6 years before another man came into possession. Rented from Cockerill 4 years and Doss 2 years, and Doyle 3 years. But now I's like an old shoe. I's worn out. Been a good, faithful servant, but I's wore out."
[HW: Mother Stole to Get Food]
"My mother said she had a hard time getting through. Had to steal half the time; had to put her head under the pot and pray for freedom. It was a large pot which she used to cook in on the yard. She would set it aside when she got through and put it down and put her head under it to pray.
"My father, when nine years old, was put on the speculator's block and sold at Charlottesville, North Carolina. My mother was sold on the same day. They sold her to a man named Paul Barringer, and refugeed her to a place near Sardis, Mississippi, to the cotton country. Before he was sold, my father belonged to the Greers in Charlottesville. I don't know who owned my mother. I never did hear her say how old she was when she was sold. They was auctioned off just like you would sell goods. One would holler one price and another would holler another, and the highest bid would get the slave.
"Mother did not go clear to Sardis but to a plantation ten miles from Sardis. This was before freedom. We stayed there till two years after freedom.
"I remember when my mother moved. I had never seen a wagon before. I was so uplifted, I had to walk a while and ride a while. We'd never seen a wagon nor a train neither. McKeever was the place where she moved from when she moved to Sardis.
"The first year she got free, she started sharecropping on the place. The next year she moved. That was the year she moved to Sardis itself. There she made sharecrops. That was the third year after freedom. That is what my father and mother called it, sharecropping. I don't know what their share was. But I guess it was half to them and half to him.
"I do general housework. I been doing that for eleven years. I never have any trouble. Whenever I want to I get off.
"The slaves used to live in one room log huts. They cooked out in the yard. I have seen them huts many a time. They had to cook out in the yard in the summertime. If they didn't, they'd burn up.
"My mother seen her master take off a big pot of money to bury. He didn't know he'd been seen. She didn't know where he went, but she seen the direction he took. Her master was Paul Barringer. That was on McKeever Creek near Sardis. It was near the end of the war. I never heard my mother say what became of the money, but I guess he got it back after everything was over.
"They had to work all the time. When they went to church on Sunday, they would tell them not to steal their master's things. How could they help but steal when they didn't have nothin'? You didn't eat if you didn't steal.
"My mother never would have been sold but the first bunch of slaves Barringer bought ran away from him and went back to the places where they come from. Lots of the old people wouldn't stay anywheres only at their homes. They would go back if they were sold away. It took a long time because they walked. When my mother and father were sold they had to walk. It took them six weeks,—from Charlottesville, North Carolina to Sardis, Mississippi.
"In Sardis my father was made the coachman, and mother was sent to the field. Master was mean and hard. Whipped them lots. Mother had to pick cotton all day every day and Sunday. When I first seen my father to remember him, he had on a big old coat which was given to him for special days. We called it a ham-beater. It had pieces that would make it set on you like a basque. He wore a high beaver hat too. That was his uniform. Whenever he drove, he had to dress up in it.
"My mother tickled me. She said she went out one day and kill a billygoat, but when she went to get it it was walking around just like the rest of them. My mother couldn't eat hogshead after freedom because they dried them and give them to them in slave time. You had to eat what you could git then.
"My mother said you jumped over a broomstick when you married.
"My father and mother were not exactly sold to Mississippi. My father was but my mother wasn't. When Paul Barringer lost all of his niggers, what he first had, his sister give him my mother and a whole lot more of them. I don't know how many he had, but he had a great many. My father went alone, but all my mother's people were taken—four sisters, and three brothers. They were all grown when I first seen them. I never seen my mother's father at all.
"There was a world of yellow people then. My mother said her sister had two yellow children; they were her master's. I know of plenty of light people who were living at that time.
"My mother had two light children that belonged to her sister. They were taken from her after freedom, and were made to cook and work for their sister and brother (white). All the orphans were taken and given back to the people what owned them when freedom came. My mother's sister was refugeed back to Charlottesville, North Carolina before the end of the war so that she wouldn't get free. After the war they were set free out there and never came back. The children were with my mother and they had to stay with their master until they were twenty years old. Then they would be free. They wouldn't give them any schooling at all. They were as white as the white children nearly but their mother was a colored woman. That made the difference.
"My mother said that the Ku Klux used to come through ridin' horses. I don't remember her saying what they wore.
"When the Yanks came through, they took everything. Made the niggers all leave. My mother said they just came in droves, riding horses, killing everything, even the babies.
"I was born in Sardis, Mississippi, Panolun (?) County, April 10, 1863."
"My mama come from Virginia. Her owner was Moses Crawford. He had a bachelor son Prior Crawford. My papa's owner was Step Crawford. They was in Arkansas during the Civil War I know because I was born close to Cotton Plant. Papa's folks had lived in Tennessee but grandma and grandpa was raised in Indian Nation; they called it Alabama afterwards. She was a full blooded Creek and he was part Cherokee.
"Mama had twelve sisters and they was all sold. They took them to Texas. She never seen one of them again. Mama had scrofula and her owners let a woman take her North. She cured her. She wanted to keep her but they didn't let her. They kept her till freedom.
"The owners told them they was free. Stayed on a while. We never have got very fur off from where I was born. I had thirteen children of my own. Three living now.
"I know times was mighty hard when I was a child. Biscuits was big rarity as cake is now. I don't have much cake. Little cornbread and meat, molasses and proud to get that. We didn't have much clothes but we had plenty wood. We had wood to keep up the fire in the fireplace all night. They saw the back sticks in the woods and roll em up. In the coldest part of the winter they throw on a back log of green wood and pull the seats, had benches, didn't have chairs, way back in the middle of the room. It be snow and ice all over the ground. I got wood many a day. Yes, I plowed many a day. I done all kinds of field work, cook and wash and iron. Mid-wife is my talent. I been big and strong and work was the least of my worries.
"I can barely recollect seeing soldiers. They must have just got home from the war. The shiny buttons is about all I can recollect.
"I recollect the Ku Klux. They rode at night, some dressed in dark and some white clothes. They come through our house one time. I got under the cover. I was scared nearly to death.
"Near Cotton Plant there was a log cabin (Methodist?) church—Negro church two and one-half miles northeast direction. They had a Negro preacher. When they went to church they whooped and hollowed along the road. White people lived close to the road. The Ku Klux planned to break it up. They went down there and went in during their preaching, broke up and scattered their seats. One was killed. He may have acted 'smarty' or saucy or he may have been the leader."
"My mother was named Silla Davis. She had four children. Her owners was Jep Davis and Tempy Davis. She died and he married her niece, Sally Davis. He had fifteen children by his first wife and five more by his second wife. Wasn't that a plenty children doe? Mama was a field hand. She ploughed in slavery right along. My father was named Bob Lee (Lea?). I never knowed much about him. His folks moved and took him off. Mother was sold but not on a stand. She belong to Bill Davis. He was Jep's brother. They said Bill Davis drunk up mother and all her children. He sold Aunt Serina to a man in Elberton, Georgia and all he had left then was grandma. He couldn't sell her. She was too old and Aunt Kizziah and Aunt Martha lived with her. Mother was born in Georgia. When a child was sold it nearly grieved the mothers and brothers and sisters to death. It was bad as deaths in the families. Jep Davis had forty or fifty niggers. He had six boys. They all had to go to war. They was in the Confederate army. Billy Davis was his daddy's young overseer. He had been raised up with some of the nigger boys then come over them. They wouldn't mind his orders. He tried to whoop them. They'd fight him back, choke him, throw him on the ground. Then the old man would whoop them. We all wanted 'em all to come home but Billy. Billy Davis got killed at war and never come home. His sisters was afraid some of the nigger boys raised up with him on the place would kill him and wanted Jep to make him stay at the house. Jep Davis was a good master and he was bad enough.
"I seen mama whooped. They tied some of them to trees and some they just whooped across their backs. It was 'cordin' to what they had done. Some of them would run off to the woods and stay a week or a month. The other niggers would feed them at night to keep them from starving.
"Jep Davis made a will after his first wife died and give out all his young niggers to his first set of children. His young wife cried till he destroyed it. She said, 'You kept the old ones here and me and my children won't have nothing.' I was willed to Miss Lizzie. They was fixing the wagon for me to go in. I wanted to go to Jefferson on the train. I told them so. I wanted to ride on the train. I never did get off. His young wife started crying. Miss Lizzie lived with her brother. They didn't want this young woman to have their father and he did. They kept a fuss up with her and all left. Then he divided the land.
"I nursed for his second wife, Miss Sally. I was five years or little older when I started nursing for his first wife. I nursed for a long time. I don't like children yet on that account. I got so many whoopings on their blame. I'd drap 'em, leave 'em, pinch 'em, quit walking 'em and rocking 'em. I got tired of 'em all the time.
"Me and Zack (white) was raised up together. He was one of the old set of children. The baby in that set. I'd set on the log across a branch and wait till Zack would break open a biscuit and sop it in ham gravy and bring it to me after he eat his breakfast. One morning the sun was so bright; he run down there crying, said his mama was dead. He never brought me no biscuit. He had just got up. I was five years old. I said I was glad. Emily was the cook and she come down there and kicked me off the log and made my nose bleed. I cried and run home. My mother picked me up in her arms, took me in her lap and asked me about it. I told her I was glad 'cause she kept that little cowhide and whooped me with it. They took me to the grave. She wanted to be buried in a pretty grave at the side of the house off a piece. She was buried there first. There was a big crowd. I kept running up towards the grave and they would pull me back by my dress tail. She was buried in a metal coffin. Susan was the oldest girl. She fainted. They took her to a carriage standing close. The whole family was buried there. Took back from places they lived to be buried in that graveyard. That was close to Nuna, Georgia.
"When the old man Jep Davis married again, Miss Sally must have me sleep in her room on a pallet so I could tend to the baby. The older girls would pick me and I would tell them what they talked about after they went to bed.
"When the War come on, the boys and Jep Davis dug a hole in the henhouse, put the guns in a box and buried them. They was there when the War ended. They had some jewelry. I don't know where they kept it. They sent all of the niggers fifteen miles on the river away from the Yankees. Not a one of us ever run off. Not a one ever went to the War or the Yankees. Jep Davis had been to get his mail on his horse. A Yankee come up at the gate walking and took it. He asked for the bridle and saddle but the Yankee laughed in his face. We never seen our horse no more. 'Babe' we called her. She was a pretty horse and so gentle we could ride her bare back.
"Jep Davis was religious. They had preaching at his church, the Baptist church at Nuna, for white folks in the morning and a white preacher preach for the niggers at the same church in the evening. He'd go to prayer meeting on Wednesday night and Thursday night he would come to the boys' house and read the Bible to his own niggers. We would sing and pray. He never cared how much we would sing and pray but he never better ketch 'em dancing. He'd whoop every one of 'em.
"I learned same of the ABC's in playing ball with the white children. We never had a book. I never went to school in my life. The boys not married but up grown lived in a house to their own selves. They got cooked fer up at Jep Davises house till they got a house built for them and give them a wife. Maybe they would see a woman on another plantation and claim her. Then the master had to talk that over.
Freedom
"Jep Davis had been to town. He got a notice to free his niggers. He had the farm bell rung. We all went out up to his house. He said, 'You are free. Go. If you can't get along come back and do like you been.' They left. Went hog wild. I was the last one to go. He said, 'Mattie, come back if you find you can't make it.' I had a hard time for a fact. I had a sister married in Atlanta. I went with them in 1866. I married to better my living. We quit. I met a man come to Arkansas and sent back for me when he got the money. I was in Atlanta thirty years. I was married in Arkansas in 1895. Been here ever since 'ceptin' visits back in Georgia. My husband was a good farmer and a good shoemaker. He left me six good rent houses and this house here when he died." (She has an income of forty dollars per month—rent on houses.) "He was a hard worker.
"I'd go to see my white folks after freedom. I loved 'em all.
"Jep Davis died out of the church. Him and Jack (Robertson, Robson, Robinson?) was deacons together in the Baptist church and their farms j'ined. Jack had two boys, John and Ed. Ed was killed by Hinton Right over his sister Mollie. Then she married Hinton Right. The quarrel started at La Grange but they had a duel during preaching on the church yard at the Baptist church at Nuna, Georgia. Jack was mean. He had a lot of Negroes and a big farm. He had two boys and four girls. Jennie died. Florence and Lula, old maids; John and Ed and Mollie.
"Jack caused Jep Davis to be put out of the church 'cause he said after freedom he didn't believe in slavery. He always thought they ought to be free but owned some to be like all the other folks and to have a living easy. He was afraid to own that, fear somebody kill him before freedom. When Jack was sick, Jep went to see him. He wouldn't let Jep come in to see him and he died.
"I worked in the field, washed and ironed. I never cooked but a little. In Atlanta when my first baby could stand in a cracker box I started cooking for a woman. She was upstairs. Had a small baby a few days old. I didn't have time to do the work and nurse and get my baby to sleep. It cried and fretted till I got dinner done. I took it and got it to sleep. She sent word for me to leave my baby at home, she wasn't going to have a nigger baby crying in her kitchen and messing it up. She was a Yankee woman. I left and I never cooked out no more.
"I never had no dealings with the Ku Klux. I was in Atlanta then. I heard my mother say they killed and beat up a lot of colored people in the country where she was. Seem like they was mad 'cause they was free.
"Times was hard after freedom. Times is hard now for some folks. Times running away with the white and black races both. They stop thinking. The thing what they call education done ruined this country. The folks quit work and living on education. I learned to work. My husband was a good shoemaker. We laid up all we could. I got seven houses renting around here. I gets about forty or forty-five dollars a month rent. It do very well, I reckon."
[HW: Tale of a "Nigger Ruler"]
"I was born in North Carolina. I can't tell when. Our names are in the Bible, and it was burnt up. My old master died and my young master was to go to the war, the Civil War, in the next draft. I remember that they said, 'If them others had shot right, I wouldn't have had to go.'
"He talked like they were standing up on a table or something shooting at the Yankees. Of course it wasn't that way. But he said that they didn't shoot right and that he would have to do it for them. They all came back, and none of them had shot right. One sick (he died after he got home); the other two come back all right.
"When my old master died, the son that drawed me stayed home for a little while. When he left he said about me, 'Don't let anybody whip him while I am gone. If they do, I'll bury them when I come back.' He was a good man and a good master.
Brutal Beating
"There were some that weren't so good. One of his brothers was a real bad man. They called him a nigger ruler. He used to go from place to place and handle niggers. He carried his cowhide with him when he went. My master said, 'A man is a damn fool to have a valuable slave and butcher him up.' He said, 'If they need a whipping, whip them, but don't beat them so they can't work.' He never whipped his slaves. No man ever hit me a lick but my father. No man. I ain't got no scar on me nowhere.
"My young master was named Wiley Grave Sharpe. He drawed me when my old master, Teed Sharpe, Sr., died. He's been dead a long time. Teed Sharpe, Jr., Gibb Sharpe, and Sam Sharpe were brothers to Wiley Grave Sharpe. Teed Sharpe, Jr. was the brutal one. He was the nigger ruler that did the beating up and the killing of Negroes.
"He beat my brother Peter once till Peter dropped dead. Wiley Graves who drawed me said, 'My brother shouldn't have done that.' But my brother didn't belong to Wiley and he couldn't do nothing about it. That was Teed, Jr.'s name. He got big money and was called a nigger ruler. Teed had said he was going to make Peter do as much work as my sister did. She was a young girl—but grown and stout and strong. In the olden time, you could see women stout and strong like that. They don't grow that way now. Peter couldn't keep up with her. He wasn't old enough nor strong enough then. He would be later, but he hadn't reached his growth and my sister had. Every time that Peter would fall behind my sister, Teed would take him out and buckle him down to a log with a leather strap and stand 'way back and then he would lay that long cowhide down, up and down his back. He would split it open with every stroke and the blood would run down. The last time he turned Peter loose, Peter went to my sister and asked her for a rag. She thought he just wanted to wipe the blood out of his face and eyes, but when she gave it to him, he fell down dead across the potato ridges.
Family
"Mary Farmer was my mother. William Farmer was my father. I never knowed any of my father's 'lations except one sister. She would come to see us sometimes.
"My father's master was Isaac Farmer. My mother didn't 'long to him. She 'longed to the Sharpes. Just what her master's name was I don't recollect. She lived five miles from my father. He went to see her every Thursday night. That was his regular night to go. He would go Saturday night; if he went any other time and the pateroles could catch him, they would whip him just the same as though he belonged to them. But they never did whip my father because they never could catch him. He was one of those who ran.
"My father and mother had ten children. I don't know whether any of them is living now or not besides myself.
How Freedom Came
"Freedom was a singsong every which way when I knowed anything. My father's master, Isaac Farmer, had a big farm and a whole world of land. He told the slaves all of them were free. He told his brother's slaves, 'After you have made this crop, bring your wives and children here because I am able to take care of them.' He had a smokehouse full of meat and other things. He told my father that after this crop is gathered, to fetch his wife and children to him (Isaac Farmer), because Sharpe might not be able to feed and shelter and take care of them all. So my father brought us to Isaac Farmer's farm.
"I never did anything but devilment the whole second year of freedom. I was large enough to take water in the field but I didn't have to do that. There were so many of them there that one could do what he pleased. The next year I worked because they had thinned out. The first year come during the surrender. They cared for Sharpe's crop. The next year they took Isaac Farmer's invitation and stayed with him. The third year many of them went other places, but my father and my mother and brothers and sisters stayed with Isaac Farmer for awhile.
"As time went on, I farmed with success myself.
"I stayed in North Carolina a long time. I had a wife and children in North Carolina. Later on, I went to Louisiana and stayed there one year and made one crop. Then I came here with my wife and children. I don't know how long I been here. We came up here when the high water was. That was the biggest high water they had. I worked on the levee and farmed. The first year we came here, we farmed. I lived out in the country then.
Occupation
"While I was able to work, I stayed on the farm. I had forty acres. But after my children left me and my wife died, I thought it would be better to sell out and pay my debts. Pay your honest debts and everything will be lovely. Now I manages to pay my rent by taking care of this yard and I get help from the government. I can't read and I can't write.
"I went down yonder to get help from the county. At last they taken me on and I got groceries three times. After that I couldn't get nothin' no more. They said my papers were made out incorrectly. I asked the worker to make it out correctly because I couldn't read and write. She said she wasn't supposed to do that but she would do it. She made it out for me. A short time later, the postman brought me a letter. I handed it to a lady to read for me, and she said, 'This is your old age check.' You don't know how much help that thing's been to me.
Ku Klux
"The Ku Klux never bothered me and they never bothered any of my people.
Opinions
"The young people pass by me and I don't know nothing about 'em. I know they are quite indifferent from what I was. When I come old enough to want a wife, I knowed what sort of wife I wanted. God blessed me and I happened to run up on the kind of woman I wanted. I made an engagement with her, and I didn't have a dollar. I was engaged to marry for three years before I married. I knowed it wouldn't do for me to marry her the way she was raised and I didn't have nothing. It looked curious for me to want that woman. I wanted her, and I had sense. I had sense enough to know how I must carry myself to get her. Now it looks like a young man wants all the women and ain't satisfied with nary one.
"My youngest son had a fine wife and was satisfied. He took up with what I call a whiskey head. He's been swapping horses ever since. That is the baby boy of mine. You know good and well a man couldn't get along that way.
"These young men will keep this one over here for a few days, and then that one over there for a few days. It shows like he wants them all.
Voting
"I have voted. I don't now. Since I lost out, I ain't voted.
Slave Houses
"You might say slave houses was nothing. Log houses, made out of logs and chinked up with sticks and mud in the cracks. Chimneys made with sticks and mud. Two rooms in our house. No windows, just cracks. All furniture was homemade. Take a two by four and bore a hole in it and put a cross piece in it and you had a bed.
"They made stools for chairs and made tables too. Food was kept in the smokehouse. For rations, they would give so much meat, so much molasses, and so much meal. No sugar and no coffee. They used to make tea out of sage, and out of sassafras, and that was the coffee.
Marriages
"I been married twice. The first time was out in North Carolina. The last time was in this city. I didn't stay with that last woman but four days. It took me just that long to find out who and who. She didn't want me; she wanted my money, and she thought I had more of it than I did. She got all I had though. I had just fifty dollars and she got that. I am going to get me a good woman, though, as soon as I can get divorced.
Memories of Work on Plantation
"My mother used to milk and I used to rope the calves and hold them so that they couldn't get to the cow. I had to keep the horses in the canebrake so they could eat. That was to keep the soldiers from getting a fine black horse the master had.
Soldiers
"But they got him just the same. The Yankees used to come in blue uniforms and come right on in without asking anything. They would take your horse and ask nothing. They would go into the smokehouse and take out shoulders, hams, and side meat, and they would take all the wine and brandy that was there.
Dances After Freedom
"Two sisters stayed in North Carolina in a two-room house in Wilson County. There was a big drove of us and we all went to town in the evening to get whiskey. There was one man who had a wife with us, but all the rest were single. We cut the pigeon wing, waltzed, and quadrilled. We danced all night until we burned up all the wood. Then we went down into the swamp and brought back each one as long a log as he could carry. We chopped this up and piled it in the room. Then we went on 'cross the swamp to another plantation and danced there.
"When we got through dancing, I looked at my feet and the bottom of them was plumb naked. I had just bought new boots, and had danced the bottoms clean out of them.
"I belong to the Primitive Baptist Church. I stay with Dr. Cope and clean up the back yard for my rent."