Texas Slave Narratives

 

 

 

 

Texas Slave Narrative

  Mary Reynolds

Mary Reynolds claims to be more than a hundred years old. She was born in slavery to the Kilpatrick family, in Black River, Louisiana. Mary now lives at the Dallas County Convalescent Home. She has been blind for five years and is very feeble. My paw's name was Tom Vaughn and he was from the north, born free man and lived and died free to the end of his days. He wasn't no eddicated man, but he was what he calls himself a piano man. He told me once he lived in New York and Chicago and he built the insides of pianos and knew how to make them play in tune. He said some white folks from the south told he if he'd come with them to the south he'd find a lot of work to do with pianos in them parts, and he come off with them. He saw my maw on the Kilpatrick place and her man was dead. He told Dr. Kilpatrick , my massa, he'd buy my maw and her three chillun with all the money he had, iffen he'd sell her. But Dr. Kilpatrick was never one to sell any but the old niggers who was part workin' in the fields and past their breedin' times. So my paw marries my maw and works the fields, same as any other nigger. They had six gals: Martha and Panela and Josephine and Ellen and Katherine and me. I was born sometime as Miss Sara Kilpatrick . Dr. Kilpatrick's first wife and my maw come to their time right together. Miss Sara's maw died and they brung Miss Sara to suck with me. It's a thing we ain't never forgot.

My maw's name was Sallie and Miss Sara allus looked with kindness on my maw. We sucked till we was a fair size and played together, which wasn't no common thing. None the other li'l niggers played with the white chillun. But Miss Sara loved me so good. I was jus' 'bout big 'nough to start playin' with a broom to go 'bout sweepin' up and not even half doin' it when Dr. Kilpatrick sold me. They was a old white man in Trinity and his wife died and he didn't have chick or child or slave or nothin'. Massa sold me cheap. 'cause he didn't want Miss Sara to play with no nigger young'un. That old man bought me a big doll and went off and left me all day, with the door open. I jus' sot on the floor and played with that doll. I used to cry. He'd come home and give me somethin' to eat and then go to bed, and I slep' on the foot of the bed with him. I was scart all the time in the dark. He never did close the door. Miss Sara pined and sickened. Massa done what he could, but they wasn't no pertness in her. She got sicker and sicker, and massa brung 'nother doctor. He say, 'You li'l gal is grievin' the life out her body and she sho' gwine die iffen you don't do somethin' 'bout it.' Miss Sara says over and over. 'I wants Mary .' Massa say to the doctor, 'That a li'l nigger young'un I done sold.' The doctor tells him he better git me back iffen he wants to save the life of his child. Dr. Kilpatrick has to give a big plenty more to git me back than what he sold me for, but Miss Sara plumps up right off and grows into fine health. Then massa marries a rich lady from Mississippi and they has chillun for company to Miss Sara and seem like for a time she forgits me. Massa Kilpatrick wasn't no piddlin' man. He was a man of plenty. He had a big house with no more style to it than a crib, but it could room plenty people. He was a medicine doctor and they was rooms in the second story for sick folks what come to lay in. It would take two days to go all over the land he owned. He had cattle and stock and sheep and more'n a hundred slaves and more besides. He bought the bes' of niggers near every time the spec'lators come that may. He'd make a swap of the old ones and give money for young ones what could work. He raised corn and cotton and cane and 'taters and goobers. 'sides the pens and other feedin' for the niggers. I 'member I helt a hoe handle mighty unsteady when they put a old women to larn me and some other chillun to scrape the fields. That old woman would be in a frantic. She'd show me and then turn 'bout to show some other li'l nigger, and I'd have the young corn cut clean as the grass. She say, 'For the love of Gawd, you better larn it right, or Solomon will beat the breath out you body.' Old man Solomon was the nigger driver. Slavery was the worst days was over seed in the world. They was things past tellin', but I got the scars on my old body to show to this day. I seed worse than what happened to me. I seed them put the men and women in the stock with they hands screwed down through holes in the board and they feets tied together and they naked behinds to the world.

Solomon the overseer beat them with a big whip and massa look on. The niggers better not stop in the fields when they hear them yellin'. They cut the flesh most to the bones and some they was when they taken them out of stock and put them on the beds, they never got up again. When a nigger died they let his folks come out the fields to see him afore he died. They buried him the same day. take a big plank and bust it with a ax in the middle 'nough to bend it back, and put the dead nigger in betwixt it. They'd cart them down to the graveyard on the place and not bury them deep 'nough that buzzards wouldn't come circlin' round. Niggers mourns now, but in them days they wasn't no time for mournin'. The conch shell blowed afore daylight and all hands better git out for roll call or Solomon bust the door down and git them out. It was work hard, git beatin's and half fed. They brung the victuals and water to the fields on a slide pulled by a old mule. Plenty times they was only a half barrel water and it stale and hot, for all us niggers on the hottes' days. Mostly we ate pickled pork and corn bread and pens and beans and 'taters. They never was as much as we needed. The times I hated most was pickin' cotton when the frost was on the bolls. My hands git sore and crack open and bleed. We'd have a li'l fire in the fields and iffen the ones with tender hands couldn't stand it no longer, we'd run and warm our hands a li'l bit. When I could steal a 'tater. I used to slip it in the ashes and when I'd run to the fire I'd take it out and eat it on the sly. In the cabins it was nice and warm. They was built of pine boardin' and they was one long row of them up the hill back of the big house. Near one side of the cabins was a fireplace. They'd bring in two, three big logs and put on the fire and they'd last near a week. The beds was made out of puncheons fitted in holes bored in the wall, and planks laid 'cross them poles. We had tickin' mattresses filled with corn shucks. Sometimes the men build chairs at night. We didn't know much 'bout havin' nothin'. though. Sometimes massa let niggers have a li'l patch. They'd raise 'taters or goobers. They liked to have them to help fill out on the victuals. 'Taters roasted in the ashes was the best tastin' eatin' I ever had. I could die better satisfied to have jus' one more 'tater roasted in hot ashes. The niggers had to work the patches at night and dig the 'taters and goobers at night. Then if they wanted to sell any in town they'd have to git a pass to go. They had to go at night, 'cause they couldn't ever spare a hand from the fields. Once in a while they'd give us a li'l piece of Sat'day evenin' to wash out clothes in the branch. We hanged them on the ground in the woods to dry. They was a place to wash clothes from the well, but they was so many niggers all couldn't git round to it on Sundays. When they'd git through with the clothes on Sat'day evenin's the niggers which sold they goobers and 'taters brung fiddles and guitars and come out and play. The others clap they hands and stomp they feet and we young'uns cut a step round. I was plenty biggity and liked to cut a step.

We was scart of Solomon and his whip, though, and he didn't like frolickin'. He didn't like for us niggers to pray, either. We never heared of no church, but us have prayin' in the cabins. We'd set on the floor and pray with our heads down low and sing low, but if Solomon heared he'd come and beat on the wall with the stock of his whip. He'd say, 'I'll come in there and tear the hide off you backs." But some the old niggers tell us we got to pray to Gawd that he don't think different of the blacks and the whites. I know that Solomon is burnin' in hell today, and it pleasures me to know it. Once my maw and paw taken me and Katherine after night to slip to 'nother place to a prayin' and singin'. A nigger men with white beard tol d us a day an comin' when niggers only be slaves of Gawd. We prays for the end of Trib'lation and the end of beatin's and shoes that fit our feet. We prayed that us niggers could have all we wanted to eat and special for fresh meet. Some the old ones say we have to bear all, 'cause that all we can do. Some say they was glad to the time they's dead. 'cause they'd rather rot in the ground than have the beatin's. What I hated most was when they'd beat me and I didn't know what they beat me for, and I hated them strippin' me naked as the day. I was born. When we's comin' back from the prayin', I thunk I heared the nigger dogs and somebody on horseback. I say, 'Maw, its them nigger hounds and they'll eat us up.' You could hear them old hounds and sluts a bayin'. Maw listens and say, 'Sho 'nough, them dogs am runnin' and Gawd help us!' Then she and paw talk and they take us to a fence corner and stands us up 'gainst the rails and say don't move and if anyone comes near, don't breath he loud. They went to the woods, so the hounds chase them and not git us. Me and Katherine stand there, holdin' hands, shakin' so we can hardly stand. We hears the hounds come nearer, but we don't move. They goes after paw and maw, but they circles round to the cabins and gits in. Maw say its the power of Gawd. In them days I weared shirts, like all the young'uns. They had collars and come below the knees and was split up the sides. That's all we weared in hot weather. The men weared jeans and the women gingham. Shoes was the worstes' trouble. We weared rough russets when it got cold, and it seem powerful strange they'd never git them to fit. Once when I was a young gal, they got me a new pair and all brass studs in the toes. They was too li'l for me, but I had to wear them. The brass trimmin's cut into my ankles and them places got mis'ble bad. I rubs tallow in them sore places and wraps rags round them and my sores got worser and worser. The scars are there to this day. I wasn't sick much, though, Some the niggers had chills and fever a lot, but they hadn't discovered so many diseases then as now. Dr. Kilpatrick give sick niggers ipecac and asafoetida and oil and turpentine and black fever pills. They was a cabin called the spinnin' house and two looms and two spinnin' wheels goin' all the time, and two nigger women sewing all the time. It took plenty sewin' to make all the things for a place so big. Once massa goes to Baton Rouge and brung back a yaller gal dressed in fine style. She was a seemster nigger.

He builds her a house 'way from the quarters and she done fine sewin' for the whites. Us niggers knowed the doctor took a black woman quick as he did a white and took any on his place he wanted, and he took them often. But mostly the chillun born on the place looked like niggers. Aunt Cheyney allus say four of hers was massas, but he didn't give them no mind. But this yaller gal breads so fast and gits a mess of white young'uns. She larnt them fine manners and combs out they hair. Onct two of them goes down the hill to the doll house where the Kilpatrick chillun am playin'. They wants to go in the dollhouse and one the Kilpatrick boys say, 'That's for white chillun.' They say, 'We ain't no niggers, 'cause we got the same daddy you has, and he comes to see us near every day and fetches us clothes and things from town.' They is fussin' and Missy Kilpatrick is listenin' out her chamber window. She heard them white niggers say, 'He is our daddy and we call him daddy when he comes to our house to see our mama.' When massa come home that evenin' his wife hardly say nothin' to him, and he ask her what the matter and she tells him, 'Since you asks me, I'm studyin' in my mind 'bout them white young'uns of that yaller nigger wench from Baton Rouge. He say, 'Now, honey, I fetches that gal jus' for you, 'cause she a fine seamster.' She say. 'It look kind of funny they got the same kind of hair and eyes as my chillun and they got a nose looks like yours.' He say, 'Honey, you jus' payin' 'tention to talk of li'l chillun that ain't got no mind to what they say.' She say, 'Over in Mississippi I got a home and plenty with my daddy and I got that in my mind.' Well, she didn't never leave and massa bought her a fine, new span of surrey hosses. But she don't never have no more chillun and she ain't so cordial with the massa. Margaret , that yallow gal, has more white young'uns, but they don't never go down the hill no more to the big house. Aunt Cheyney was jus' out of bed with a sucklin' baby one time, and she run away. Some say that was 'nother baby of massa's breedin'. She don't come to the house to nurse her baby, so they misses her and old Solomon gits the nigger hounds and takes her trail. They gits near her and she grabs a limb and tries to hist herself in a tree, but them dogs grab her and pull her down. The men hollers them onto her, and the dogs tore her naker and et the breasts plumb off her body. She got well and lived to be a old woman, but 'nother woman has to suck her baby and she ain't got no sign of breasts no more. They give all the niggers fresh meat on Christmas and a plug tobacco all round. The highes' cotton picker gits a suit of clothes and all the women what had twins that year gits a outfittin' of clothes for the twins and a double, warm blanket. Seems like after I got bigger. I member' more'n more niggers run away. They's most allus cotched. Massa used to hire out his niggers for wage hands.

One time he hired me and a nigger boy, Turner , to work for some ornery white trash name of Kidd . One day Turner goes off and don't come back, Old man Kidd say I knowed 'bout it, and he tied my wrists together and stripped me. He hanged me by the wrists from a limb on a tree and straddled my legs round the trunk and tied my feet together. Then he beat me. He heat me worser than I ever been beat before and I faints dead away. When I come to I'm in bed. I didn't care so much iffen I died. I didn't know 'bout the passin' of time, but Miss Sara come to me. Some white folks done it word to her. Mr. Kidd tries to talk hisself out of it, but Miss Sara fetches me home when I'm well 'nough to move. She took me in a cart and my maw takes care of me. Massa looks me over good and says I'll git well, but I'm rain for breedin' chillun. After while I taken a notion to marry and massa and missy marries us same as all the niggers. They stands inside the house with a broom held crosswise if the door and we stands outside. Missy puts a li'l wreath on my head they kept mere and we steps over the broom into the house. Now, that's all they was to be marryin'. After freedom I gits married and has it put in the book by a preacher.  One day we was workin' in the fields and hears the conch shell blow, so he all goes to the back gate of the big house. Massa am there. He say, 'Call the toll for every nigger big 'nough to walk. and I wants them to go to the river and wait there. They's gwine be a show and I wants you to see it.' They was a big boat down there. done built up on the sides with boards and holes in the boards and a bit gun barrel stickin' through every hole. We ain't never seed nothin' like that. Massa goes up the plank onto the boat and comes out on the boat porch. He say, 'This am a Yankee boat.' He goes inside and the water wheels starts movin' and that boat goes movin' up the river and they says it goes to Natches.  The boat wasn't more'n out of sight when a big drove of sojers comes into town. They say they's Fed'rals. More'n half the niggers goes off with them sojers, but I goes on back home 'cause of my old mammy.  Next day them Yankees is swarmin' the place. Some the niggers wants to show then somethin'. I follows to the woods. The niggers shows them sojers a big pit in the ground, bigger'n a big house. It is got wooden doors that lifts up, but the top am sodded and grass growin' on it, so you couldn't tell it. In that pit is stock, hosses and cows and mules and money and chinaware and silver and a mess of stuff them sojers takes. 

We jus' sot on the place doin' nothin' till the white folks comes home. Miss Sara come out to the cabin and say she wants to read a letter to my mammy. It come from Louis Carter, which is brother to my mammy, and he done follow the Fed'rals to Galveston. A white man done write the letter for him. It am tored in half and massa done that. The letter say Louis am workin' in Galveston and wants mammy to come with us, and he'll pay our way. Miss Sara say massa swear, 'Damn Louis Carter. I ain't gwine tell Sallie nothin'.' and he starts to tear the letter up. But she won't let him, and she reads it to mammy.  After a time massa takes all his niggers what wants to Texas with him and mammy gits to Galveston and dies there. I goes with massa to the Tennessee Colony and then to Navasota. Miss Sara marries Mr. T. Coleman and goes to El Paso. She wrote and told me to come to her and I allus meant to go.  My husband and me farmed round for times, and then I done housework and cookin' for many years. I come to Dallas and cooked seven year for one white family. My husband died years ago. I guess Miss Sara been dead these long years. I allus kep' my years by Miss Sara's years, 'count we is born so close.  I been blind and mos' helpless for five year. I'm gittin' mighty enfeeblin' and I ain't walked outside the door for a long time back. I sets and 'members the times in the world. I 'members now clear as yesterday things I forgot for a long time. I 'members 'bout the days of slavery and I don't 'lieve they ever gwine have slaves no more on this earth. I think Gawd done took that harden offen his black chillun and I'm aimin' to praise him for it to his face in the days of Glory what ain't so far off.


Mary Reynolds claims to be over a hundred years old. She was born in slavery to the Kilpatrick family in Black River, La. near Trinity, La. She now lives at Dallas County Convalescent Home. She has been blind for about five years and she is very feeble. My paw's name was Tom Vaughn and he was from the North, born free man and lived and died a free man to the end of his days. He wasn't no educated man but he was what he calls himself a piano man. He told me that once he lived in New York and Chicago and that he built the insides of pianos and that he knew how to make them play a tune. He said some white folks from the South told him that if he would come with them to the South that he could find a lot of work to do with pianos in them parts and that he come off with them. He saw my maw on the Kilpatrick place and her man was dead. He told Dr. Kilpatrick , my marster, that he would buy my maw and her three chilluns with all the money he had iffen he would sell her. But Dr. Kilpatrick was never one to sell any but the old Niggers who was past workin' in the fields and past their breedin' times. My paw marries my maw and works the fields the same as any other Nigger. They had six girls; Martha , Panela , Josephine , Ellen , Katharine and me. I was born the same time as Miss Sara Kilpatrick . Dr. Kilpatrick's first wife and my maw come to their time right together. Miss Sara's maw died and they brought Little Miss Sara to suck with me. It is a thing we ain't never forgot. My maw's name was Sallie and Miss Sara always looked with kindness on my maw. We sucked until we was a fair size and we played together which wasn't no common thing. None of the other little Niggers played with the white chillun. But Miss Sara loved me so good. I was just about big enough to start playing with a broom to go about sweepin' up and not even half doing it when Dr. Kilpatrick sold me. There was a old white man in Trinity whose wife died and he didn't have chick nor chile nor slave nor nothing. Marster sold me cheap 'cause he didn't want Miss Sara to play with no Nigger younun. That old man bought me a big doll and he went off and left me all day long with the door open. I just set on the floor and played with that doll. I used to cry. He would come home and give me something to eat and then go to bed and I slept on the foot of the bed with him. I was scared all the time in the dark. He never did close the door. Miss Sara pined and sickened. Marster did what he could but there wasn't no peartness in her. She got sicker and sicker and Marster brings another Doctor. The doctor says, Your little girl is grievin' the life out'n her body and she sho' going to die iffen you don't do something about it. Miss Sara says, over and over, I wants Mary. Marster says to the doctor, That is a little Nigger youngun I done sold. The doctor tells him that he better get me back if he wants to save the life of his chile. Dr. Kilpatrick has to give a big plenty mo' to get me back than he sold me for. But Miss Sara plumped up right off and grew into fine health. Marster married a rich lady from Mississippi and they had children as company to Miss Sara and seems like for a time Miss Sara forgets me. Marster wasn't no piddlin' man, he was a man of plenty. He had a big house with no more style to it than a crib 'ud have but it could room plenty people. He was a medicine doctor and there was rooms in the second story for sick folks that come to lay-in. It would take two days to go all over the land that he owned. He had cattle and stock and sheep and over a hundred slaves and more besides. He bought the best of Niggers nearly every time the speculators come that way. He would make a swap of the old ones and give money for the young ones that could work. They raised corn, cotton, cane, chicken feed, taters and goobers besides the peas and other feedin' for the Niggers. I members that I held a hoe handle mighty onsteady when they put a old woman to teach me and some other chilluns to scrape the fields. The old woman would be in a frantic. She would show me and then turn about to show some other little Nigger and then I would have the young corn cut clean as the grass. She said, For the Love of God you had better learn it right or Solomon , he was the Nigger driver, will beat the breath out'n yo' body.

She learned me how to scrape and how to chop and how to plow. Slavery was the worst days that was ever seen in the world. They was things past the tellin'. But I got the scars on my old body to show to this day. I seen worse than what happened to me. I seen them put the mens and the womens in the stock with their hands screwed down through the holes in the board and their feet tied together and their naked behinds to the world. Soloman and the overseer would beat them with a big whip and Marster would look on. The Niggers better not stop in the fields when they hear them yellin'. They could cut the flesh 'most to the bone and some there was that when they took them out of stock and put them on the beds they never got up again. When a Nigger died they let his folks come out'n the field to see him afore he died. They buried him the same day he died iffen they had the time. They would take a big plank and bust it with a ax in the middle enough to bend it back and put the dead Nigger in betwixt it. They 'ud cart them down to the graveyard on the place and they wouldn't bury them deep nuf that the buzzards wouldn't come circlin' roun. Niggers mourn now but in them days there wan't no time for mournin. The conch shell blew afore daylight and all hands better get them out. It was work hard, get beatins' and half fed. They brought the vittles and the water to the fields on a slide pulled by a old mule. Plenty times they was only a half barrel of water and it stale and hot for all the Niggers on the hottest days. Mostly we ate pickled pork, corn bread, peas, beans and taters. They never was as much as we needed. The times I hated most was pickin' cotton when the frost was on the bolls. My hands would get so sore that they would crack open and bleed. We would have a little fire in the fields and iffen the ones with tender hands couldn't stan' it no longer we would run and warm our hands a little bit. When I could steal a tater I used to slip it in the ashes and when I would run to the fire I'd take it out and eat it on the sly. In the cabins it was nice and warm. The cabins was built of pine boarding and there was one long row of them up the hill back of the big house. Nearly one whole side of the cabins was a fireplace. The mens would bring two or three big logs and put them on the fire and they would last nearly a week. The beds was made out'n puncheons fitted in holes bored in the wall with planks laid across the poles. We had tickin' mattresses filled with corn shucks. Some times the mens would build chairs at night out'n poles and splices of wood for the cabins. We didn't know much about havin' nothing though. Sometimes Marster let Niggers have a little patch. They 'ud raise taters or goobers. They liked to have them to help fill out on the vittles. Taters roasted in the ashes was the best tasting eatin' I ever had. I could die better satisfied to have just one more tater roasted in hot ashes. The Niggers would have to work their patches at night and dig the taters and goobers at night. Then if they wanted to sell them in the town they would have to get a pass to go. They had to go at night 'cause they couldn't ever spare a hand from the fields. Once in a while they would give us a little piece of Saturday evenin's to wash our clothes in the branch. We hung them on the groun' in the woods to dry. There was a place to wash clothes from the well but they was so many Niggers that all couldn't get 'round to it on Sundays. When they got through with they clothes on Saturday evenin's the Niggers which had sold their goobers and taters and bought fiddles and guitars would come out and play. The others w'ud clap they hands and stomp they feet and we young ones would cut a step around. I was plenty biggity and liked to cut a step. I liked fiddle music. We was so scared of Solomon and his whip though and he didn't like frolicin'. He didn't like for the Niggers to pray nuther. We never heard of no church but the Niggers would have prayin's and singings in they cabins. We ud sit on the floor and pray with our heads down low and sing low but if Solomon could hear he would come and beat on the wall with the stock of his whip. He 'ud say you cant pray all night and work tomorrow, I'll come in there and tear the hide off yo' backs. But some of the old ones tell us that we got to pray that God don't think no different of the blacks and the whites. I know that Solomon is burnin' in hell today and it pleasures me to know it. An' though they was good white folks that I heard tell of I think they is plenty mo' of them in hell too.

Once my maw and paw taken me and my sister Katherine after night to slip to another place to go to a prayin' and singin. We slips off out of the cabin and follow by the roadside to the place and we pray with Niggers we ain't never seen befo'. I 'members we sang a song then we used to sing a lot after that time, Lord I Give Myself Away, Tis All that I Can Do. We sang, They Nailed Him to the Cross and He Never Said a Word, Not a Mumbling Word. A Nigger Man with a white beard and white hair told us that a day would come when Niggers only be slave of God. We prayed for the end of tribulation and the end of beatings and for shoes that fit our feet. We prayed that Niggers could have all they wanted to eat and special for fresh meat. Some of the old ones said we have to bear all 'cause that is all that we can do. Some said they was glad to the time they was dead that they would rather to rot in the ground than have the beatings. I hated the beatings and them as beat me but I couldn't understand that about being dead. What I hated most was when they beat me and I didn't know what they beat me for and I hated them strippin' me naked as the day I was born. When we was coming back from the prayin' following near to the road I stopped in my tracks once to listen. I had sharper ears than my maw and paw and I thought I heard the Nigger dogs and somebody on horseback. I said, Maw its them Nigger hounds, they will eat us up. You could hear them old dogs and sluts a bayin'. Maw listens and says, Sho nuf the Nigger dogs are runnin'. God help us. Then she come up and she and paw talk. They take us to a fence corner and stands us up against the rails and they say don't move but stand still and quiet and if any one comes near not to breathe loud. They went away towards the woods so the dogs will chase them and not get us. We stand there holding hands, me and Katherine , shaking so that we can hardly hold on to each other. We hear the dogs come nearer but we don't move. Then the dogs go another way and after a while Maw and Paw come back and we circle 'round our cabins and get in and never had nothing done to us. Maw said it was the power of God. In them days I wore shirts like all the young girls and boys. They was made with collars like boys have today and they come below the knees and were split up the sides. Thats all we wore in hot weather. The older men wore jeans and the women wore ginghams. Shoes was the worstest trouble. We wore rough russels when it got cold and it seems powerful strange that they never could get them to fit. Once when I was a young gal they got me a new pair and they was all brass studded in the toes and in the heels and ankles. They was too little for me but I had to wear them. The brass cut into my ankles and the places got miserable bad. I rubbed tallow in the sore places and wropped rags around my ankles and worked in the fields and my sores got worser and worser. The scars are there to this day. I thought my feet would rot off of me. I wasn't sick much though.

Some of the Niggers would have chills and fever a lot and some other ailments but the chills was what we dreaded. It 'ud come back on you. But they hadn't discovered as many diseases then as they have now. Dr. Kilpatrick 'ud give sick Niggers ipecac, asfiddity (asafetida), oil, turpentine and some black fever pills. There was a house called the spinning house where there was two looms and two spinning wheels going all the time, and two Nigger womens sewing all the time. It took lots of sewing to make all the things for a place so big and so many Niggers to make clothes for. Once Dr. Kilpatrick went to Baton Rouge and brought back a yellow gal dressed in fine style. She was a seamster Nigger. He built her a house away from the quarters and she did the cuttin' of clothes and the fine sewing for the Kilpatrick family. The Niggers knew that Dr. Kilpatrick took a black woman as quick as he did a white and he took any on his place he wanted and he took them often. But mostly the younguns born on the place looked like Niggers. Aunt Cheyney always said that four of hers were Marsters but he didn't give them no mind. But this yellow gal breeds so fast and gets a mess of white younguns. She teaches them fine manners and combs out they hair. Once the two olders of them younguns goes down the hill through the back gate into the yard by the doll house where the Kilpatrick chilluns are playing. The little Niggers want to go in the doll house. One of the little Kilpatrick boys said, You cant go in the doll house 'cause that is for white chillun. Nigger chillun don't have no doll house. The little Nigger chile says, But I ain't no Nigger, we aint no Niggers 'cause we got the same dada you got. The Kilpatrick boy says, Naw you ain't, our dada is a white man and he owns all this place; you is a Nigger. The little Nigger says, The one which is your dada is our dada and he comes to see us every day and fetches us our clothes and things from town. They got to fussin' and Mrs. Kilpatrick is looking out her chamber window. She says down to her chillun, What are you playing with them little Niggers for? The boy answers back, We ain't playing, we is fussin'; he says that our dada is they dada. The little Nigger says, He is our dada and we calls him dada when he comes down to our house to see our mama. The tales from the house is that when Marster comes home that evenin' that his wife says howdy to him but she dont say it so nice--or just like he thinks she ought to. He axes her what is the matter and she tells him, Since you axes me, I'm studying in my mind about them white younguns of that yellow Nigger wench from Baton Rouge. He says, Now honey I fotch that gal just for you 'cause she is such a fine seamster. She says, It looks kinda funny that they got the same kind of hair and eyes as my chillun and they got a nose that looks like yours. He says, Honey you is just payin' 'tention to the talk of little chillun that ain't got no mind to what they say. She said, Over in Mississippi I got a home and plenty with my dada and I got that in my mind. Missus didn't never leave and the Marster bought her a fine new span of surrey horses. But she don't never have no more chillun and since that time ain't so cordial with the Marster. Margaret that yellow gal had more white younguns but they don't go down the hill no more to the big house. Aunt Cheyney the woman which I told you about was just out of bed with a sucklin' baby, and she runs away. Some say she had words with the Marster and some say that the baby was another of Marster's breedin'. She runs to the woods and when she don't come to the house where the old womens 'tend the little bables to nurse her baby, they misses her. The Niggers is forced to tell that she ran into the woods. Then the overseer, Old Solomon and some other mens gets them Nigger hounds and takes her trail. They gets near upon her and she grabs a limb and tries to hist herself into a tree but the dogs grab her and pulls her down. The mens holler, who-o-o-e-e-e-e sick her, and agged them on to her. The dogs tore her naked and et the breasts plumb off'n her body. She got well and lived to be a old woman but another woman has to let her baby suck and she ain't got no sign of breasts no more.

Christmas was the best time of the year. No matter what day in the week it come on we don't have to work. They give all the Niggers fresh meat on that day and them that uses it a plug of tobacco around. The highest cotton picker gets a suit of clothes and all the womens that has twins that year gets a outfittin of clothes for the twins and a double warm blanket. My sister Charity , which was by my maw's first husband was made plenty much over by the white folks. Every time she has twins. And she thinks she is something special. They tell her that she wrops her hair in a nice style and every now and then she goes down to the big house. Seems like after I got bigger I members that more and more Niggers ran away. They was most near always caught. Some of them told after they was caught that there was white familys that would take them in and let them do piddlin' jobs around the house and when the hounds come there that the white folks would hide them and swear they ain't seen no strange Niggers. But in the endings of things they would get caught and be brought back to Marster. Marster used to hire his Niggers out as wage hands. Sometimes his Niggers went to work for trashy whites. One year he hired me and Turner a young Nigger boy to work for some onery white trash by the name of Kidd. We worked a spell and then one day Turner says to me, I got to go down the fence row a ways. I knowed that he was sickenin of the place but I didn't know he was leaving for sho'. He goes off and don't come back. Old Man Kidd say that I knowed all along that Turner was leaving. He took me to the woods. He tied my wrists together and stripped me. He hung me by the wrists from a limb on a tree and spraddled my legs 'round the trunk and tied my feet together. Then he beat me. I couldn't tell where Turner was 'cause I didn't know. I member he beat me worser than I had ever been beat before. I know that I took to slobberin' at the mouth. I fainted dead away. When I come to I was in bed. I didn't care so much if I died. I didn't know about the passin' of time but Miss Sara come to me. She said some white folks had got word to her about me. Mr. Kidd tried to talk hisself out of it but Miss Sara said that as soon as I got over being so low she was going to fotch me home. When I was able to go she came after me in a cart and took me to my mammy. Marster looked me over good and said I would get well but that I was ruined for breedin' chillun. I took a notion to get married and so we went to the big house and told them. The Marster and Missus married us the same as they did the other Niggers. They stood on the inside of the house with a broom held cross-wise the door and we stood on the outside. Missus puts a little wreath on my head they kept there and we stepped over the broom into the house. Now that was all there was to the marrying. After the freedom I got married and had it put in the book by a preacher. One day when we was workin' in the fields we heard the conch shell blow, so we all went to the back gate of the big house. Marster was there. He said, call the roll for every Nigger on my place that is big enough to walk, have them come through the back gate, go out the front and wait there. When he done that he come out and told us, I wants every Nigger to go to the river bank and wait there. There is going to be a show and I wants you all to see it. We was tickled that we was going to see a show and so we all went down to the river bank. There was a big boat down there and it is done built up the sides with boards and there is holes in the boards with big gun barrels sticking through every hole. We ain't never seen nothing like that. Marster comes down and goes up the plank on to the boat and comes out on the boat porch. He says, Can you all see me? We says, yes. He says, This is something you ain't never seen before, this is a Yankee boat. He goes inside and we just stand there. The water wheels start moving and the boat goes moving up the river and I heard later that it went to Natchez.The boat wasn't more than good out of sight when a big drove of sojers come into the town. They say they is Federals. More than half of the Niggers goes off with them Yankee sojers. I went on back home 'cause of my old mammy.The next day them Yankee sojers is swarmin' the place. Some of the Niggers tell them that they will show them something and I follows the sojers and the Niggers to the woods. The Niggers show the sojers a big pit in the ground that is bigger'n a big house. It is got wooden doors that lifts up but the top is sodded and grass growin' on it so you couldn't tell it from any of the groun' round it. In that pit is stock, horses, cows, mules and money and chiny ware and silver ware and a mess of stuff that the sojers took.We just set on the place doing nothing til the white folks come back home. Miss Sara come out to the cabin and says she wants to read a letter to Sallie , my mammy.

She says a letter is done come from Louis Carter which is a brother to my mammy and that he done followed the Federals to Galveston Texas. She says a white man wrote to Marster for him. The letter is tore in half and she says that Marster done it. The letter says to Marster: I am working in Galveston and I bought my chillun some shoes just like your chilluns wears. I am doing right well and I wants my sister Sallie which is a widow to come to Galveston and bring her gals. I am aiming to save the money to pay they way if you will tell her. Miss Sara says old Marster say, Damn Louis Carter , I ain't going to tell Sallie nothing, and he starts to tear the letter up. But she says, Give me the letter and I will read it to Sallie . Miss Sara says that the Marster says he will take all Niggers to Texas with him that wants to go and that mammy can go to Galveston. She says, Mary I hates to part with you on account of we sucked together. You and your man can go with us if you wants.My mammy went to Galveston and died there. My paw was dead afore that time. I went with the Kilpatricks to a place called Tennessee Colony, and to a place called Catfish. Then we lived in Navasota.Miss Sara married a man called T. Coleman and went to live in El Paso Texas. She wrote after a time and told me if I wanted to come to her that I could stay with her til' I died. I keptthe letter for a long time and I always meant to go to Miss Sara . My husband and me farmed around for times and then I done housework and cooking for many years. I came to Dallas and I cooked seven years for one white family. My husband died years ago. I guess Miss Sara is been dead these long years. I always kept my years by Miss Sara's years on account of we was born so close. I been blind and most helpless for five years. I'm getting mighty enfeeblin' and I ain't walked outside the door for a time back. I sets and members the times in the world. I members now clear as it was yesterday things I forgot for a long time. I members about the days of slavery and I don't believe they ever going to have slaves no more on this earth. I think God done took that burden off his black chillun and I'm aiming to praise him for it to his face in the days of Glory that ain't so far off.


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