“‘First thing I knowed, he had his feet on my hoe and he said, “Isom, they tell me you can’t be whipped.” “I’d be willing to be whipped if I’d done anything.” “Huh!” said my master, “Right or wrong, if my overseer asked you for your shirt give it to him.”’
“He held a pistol on him. They made him pull off his shirt and tied him up to a gin post. The overseer hit him five times and kept him there till noon trying to get him to say that he would give his shirt to him the next time. Finally Isom promised and the overseer untied him. When the overseer untied him, Isom took his shirt in one hand and the overseer’s whip in the other and whipped him almost all the way to the big house. Then he ran away and stayed in the woods for three or four days until his old master sent word for him to come on back and he wouldn’t do nothing to him.
“When he went back, his master took him off the farm because he and my father was nursed together and he didn’t want Isom killed. So from that time on, my father never worked as a field hand any more. And they put Isom’s wife as a cook. She couldn’t chop cotton fast enough and they couldn’t handle Isom as long as she was in the field; so they put her to washing, and ironing, and cooking, and milking.
“The second time father ran away was once when they missed some groceries out of the storeroom. Master asked him if he took them because he made the keys to the place and not a person on the place but him could know anything about getting in there. He didn’t own it, so they tied him up and whipped him two days. When night come they took him and tied him in his house and told his wife that if he got loose they would put the portion on her. He didn’t try to get loose because he knowed if he did they would whip her, so he stayed. At noon time when they went to get the dinner they poured three buckets of water in his face and almost drowned him. Then after dinner they came back and whipped him again. Finally he said, ‘I didn’t do it but nothing will suit you but for me to say I did, so I will say I did it.’ So he owned up to it.
“A few days later Mr. Horn who owned the adjoining plantation came over and asked him if he had missed anything,—any rations he said. Old master told him ‘Yes’ and went on to explain what had been taken and what he had done about it. Then Mr. Horn took Mr. Blackshear over to his house and showed him the rations and they were the one he had whipped my old father about. Then Blackshear came back and told my father that he was sorry, that he never had known him to steal anything. He turned him loose and apologized to him but he made him work with the bloody shirt that they whipped him in sticking to his back.
“The third time he ran off he was in the army working on the batteries at Vicksburg. He worked there till he got to thinking about his wife and children, and then he ran off. He got tired and hungry and he went to Mopilis and give himself up. The jailer written to his master, that is to his mistress, about it, and she got her father to go and see about him and bring him home. They’d had a big storm. The houses were in bad shape. The fences was blown down. The plows was broken or dull and needed fixin’. And they were so glad to see Isom that they didn’t whip him nor nothin’ for runnin’ away.
“Isom’s mother was named Winnie Blackshear. She was Luke’s wife. She was a light brownskin woman and weighed about one hundred fifty pounds. I have seen her, but Luke was dead before I was born. Grandmother Winnie has been dead about twenty years now. She labored in the field.
“My mother’s mother was named Nancy Martin and her father was named Jordan Martin. We kept a Jordan in the family all the way down. Both of them farmed. They were slaves.
“There were fourteen children of us,—eleven sisters and three brothers. The brothers were Jordan, Prince, and John. The sisters were Margaret, Eliza, Nancy, Tempy, Bell, Abbie, Caroline, Frances, Dosia, Mattie, Lucy, Louisa, Ida.”