One of my brother's former negroes came to me and said, "I think you could make money by baking pies and bread for the colored Northern troops."
Those soldiers were quartered on my father's plantation. My dear, war was nothing compared to the horrors of that reconstruction period. For six months we never went to bed without bidding one another good-by, not expecting to be alive the next morning. We sold our jewelry, all that was left, to the soldiers, and they would come to the house, march around it with bayonets drawn, and curse us with the vilest oaths. We would gather the little ones around us, bar the door, and wait, for we knew not what.
When you are old enough, Dorothy, dear, read "The Leopard's Spots," which gives a better description of what we endured, than I ever can write.
However, we needed money to buy food with. I, therefore, set to work making bread, and any number of green-apple pies. Tom, a negro, built us a clay oven and we secured a negro's service for the baking; I got up at four o'clock in the morning, and by ten o'clock Tom was off with the pony and wagon, to sell articles for us. We had enough to live on, but no meat except bacon.
By request of every white person the Government removed the colored troops six months after the war, and sent white troops in their place.
Poor grandpa would sit all day with bowed head and say over and over, "My poor daughters, my poor daughters." We tried to appear brave and cheerful and would say in reply, "Why we can manage; do not trouble about us." But father's heart was broken and though he appeared well, he instinctively felt that his days were numbered and asked to have our former pastor called.
When the minister came, we and some neighbors gathered together in a little supply store that was "thrown up" after the war, and there we stood, or sat on the counters, during service. It was a touching scene. Your mother was a little girl of five years, and she feeling the sadness of it all, wept through the whole service. Father gathered her in his arms and tenderly wiped her tears away.
As service closed an old church member and father advanced to shake hands with each other saying simultaneously: "We shall drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until we drink in our Father's Kingdom."
It seemed in the nature of a prediction, for three days afterwards father passed peacefully away, without apparent illness.
Mother lived until her eighty-seventh year, weary, sad years for her. She lived with her children, but none were able to make her comfortable. Poverty reigned everywhere, and still exists in that once luxurious country. We thanked God that father had not to endure, for long, the sight of our want and distress. Before he died, however, we left the large house in which we first took refuge, and started housekeeping separately in outhouses or cabins in the pinelands, which were formerly used for storerooms, kitchens, laundries, etc.