Father and Mother
“My father was a soldier (Confederate). He got sick with the scrofula and they sent him back to his old master, Dr. Harris, in Enfield, North Carolina. He was a field hand at first, but after he come back with the scrofula, they just made him a carriage driver. That’s how I came to be born in 1864. My father married Betsy Judge right after he came back. They didn’t marry then as they do now. Just jumped over the broom.”
Patrollers
“A slave couldn’t go nowhere without a pass. If they caught you out without a pass, they’d whip you. Jus’ like if I wanted to go to a girl’s house, my master would hand me a pass. If he didn’t, they’d ketch me and whip me if I got out and wasn’t able to run away from them.”
What the Freedmen Expected
“When the slave was freed, he was looking to get a home. They were goin’ to do this and goin’ to do that but they didn’t do nothin’. They let us stay on the place until we made the crop, told us we was free to go wherever we wanted to go. That is all they give us and all we got. Some said, ‘You promised to give us a home’, and they said to them, ‘Well, you can stay here as long as you live.’”
How Freedom Came
“The old master called them together and told them they was free. ‘Peace declared. You all have to go for yourselves. Won’t whip no more now. You are all free.’”
Runaways and Mean Masters
“My father’s master was right smart mean to him. It was partly my father’s fault. He wouldn’t take no whipping much. If they would get after him he would run off. Whenever there was anything they wanted him to do and he didn’t go and do it just that minute, they wanted to whip him. Jus’ like a child, you know. He had to move when he was told. If he didn’t do it then he got a whipping. He would run away in the woods and stay a week or two before he’d come back. Sometimes some of the boys would see him and they would say to him, ‘Old master says for you to come back home; he ain’t goin’ to do nothin’ to you.’ Nobody would go in the woods and hunt him. Some of them would go in there and get hurt.