“There was some masters that would go in the woods hunting their niggers. Sometimes they’d carry bloodhounds with them. They never did run my father with the bloodhounds though.
“My mother’s master and mistress was good to her. They never drove her around. Old man Judge died and left her mistress and she lived a widow the balance of her life. But she never gave my mother no trouble.”
Sales and Separations
“There was plenty of slaves being put up on the block and sold. My mother was sold. Her father was a Cooper and she was sold to Judge. He bought my mother’s mother and her both, so that made her a Judge. He bought her and she had to go in his name. Her husband was left with the Coopers. She was put up on the block. ‘Who will give me a bid on this woman?’ The old man was bid back. The Coopers bid him back.”
School
“My mother didn’t get no schooling no more’n what I learned her after freedom. She never went to school in her life. Still she saw she could read the Bible, the hymn-book, and such things like that as she wanted to before she died.”
What the Slaves Got
“They said that the President and the Governor was going to give land to the niggers—going to take it off the owners that they worked for. But they never did get it.”
Ku Klux Klan
“I heered talk of the Ku Klux. I can remember once when they come through there (Enfield). That was eight or ten years after the War. They would ketch some of the niggers and whip them. The young niggers got their guns and rigged up a plan to kill them and laid out in a place for them, but they got wind of it and stopped coming.”