During pre-war days my father owned a plantation near Point, in Rains County, as well as a large number of slaves, including one Uncle Dave . After the Negroes were emancipated, my father placed a large number of them on tracts of land within the plantation and furnished them with a mule team, a few sheep, some chickens, and the implements needed to cultivate the land. The Negroes were privileged to occupy the land for seven years and to keep whatever they made during that time. After the expiration of the seven years they were to pay in money er percentage of crops for the use of the land. This plan was followed by a number of plantation owners. Uncle Dave was an exceptional Negro. He was a natural mechanic, but could do carpenter work, blacksmithing, shoemaking and many other things equally well. We was a good manager, frugal and industrious, and it is doubtful if he paid out $50.00 in a year's time for food, clothing and other necessities during the seven years that he lived on the seventy-five acres on our plantation. He never bought a horsecollar, but made them himself, shaping them to prevent galling and packing them with corn husks. He made the homes from oak timber and made the metal accessories. The shoes for Dave's family he made from hides of animals slaughtered for the meat supply. About the only farm implements he bought were these that required high grade steel. Aunt Julia . his wife. did her part. She was adept at cooking and preserving, and knew how to cure meat. Salt and spices were purchased, but they raised barley and roasted it. to use in the place of tea or coffee. They raised sugar and ribbon cane and made their own sugar and molasses. Aunt Julia told father that eggs were traded for any articles of food that could not be obtained from the farm.

Following the Civil War the production of cloth by power driven machines enabled manufacturers to sell cloth at a price that did not warrant continuance of the hand method. But that did not interest Dave and Julia . They had a spinning wheel and a loom made by Uncle Dave himself, and they made all the cloth needed by the family, dying it with the bark of blackoak, cherry or other trees. When the seven year period ended, my father thought that Uncle Dave would stay on the land. He had cleared it, built a house and barn and other structures, which all belonged to my father under the agreement. But Uncle Dave was not interested in renting the land. He had saved enough money to buy a thousand acres between the towns of Point and Emery. He built a house and barn and moved his family. Uncle Dave came home one day from a trip to town with a load of cotton. He had a ten gallon keg, which he painted black. He cut a slit in the side of the keg and made a plug for the hole and told Julia the keg was to hold his surplus cash. Uncle Dave hid the keg and during the next twenty years refused to tell his wife, children or anyone else where it was. It is obvious that all the money he received for his crops, except a small sum, was surplus. Julia often asked Uncle Dave to tell her where the keg was, and told my father that Uncle Dave had not been well and she feared the possibility of his dying without disclosing the secret. Not long after, Uncle Dave was found dead one morning. Money was needed for funeral expenses, but the keg could not be found and Julia had to borrow the required amount. The family searched first in the more likely locations, then made a minute search of the whole place, but the keg was never found. On Uncle Dave's farm a fortune is cached. The keg must have long ago disintegrated, but the gold and silver money, the savings of twenty years, remain in their hiding place.