“My grandma on my mother’s side was named—I can’t remember her name, but I knowed her. I can’t remember what the old man’s name was neither. It’s been so long it just went from my memory. They never told me much neither. Folks didn’t talk much to children in those days. I wouldn’t hardly have thought of it now anyway.”
House and Furniture
“A old log house was what I was born in,—when I come out from Mississippi that old house was still standing. Aw, they put up houses them days. It had one room. Didn’t have but one room,—one window, one door,—didn’t have but one door to go in and out. I remember that well. Didn’t have no whole parcel of doors to go in and out. Plank floors. I wasn’t born on the dirt! I was born on planks. Our house was up off the ground. We had a board roof. We used four foot boards. Timber was plentiful then where they could make boards easy. Boards was cheap. There wasn’t no such things as shingles. Didn’t have no shingle factories.
“We didn’t have nothing but on old wooden bed. It wasn’t bought. It was made. Made it at home. Carpenter made it. Making wooden beds was perfect then. They’d break down every two or three years. They lasted. There was boards holding then. Wasn’t no slats nor nothing. Nail them boards to the post and to the sides of the house, and that was the end of it with some people. We had a corded bed. Put them ropes through the sides and corded them up there as tight as Dick’s hatband—and they stayed. They made their own boards, and made their own ropes, and corded them together, and they stayed. Chairs! Shucks! They just took boxes. They made chairs too—took shucks and put bottoms in them. Them chairs lasted. Them shucks go way, they’d put more there. Wish I had one of them chairs now. We made a box and put our rations in it. Them days they made what they called cupboards. They made anything they wanted to. When they got free, they’d buy dishes. When they got free, boxes and cupboards went out of style. They bought safes. There wasn’t no other furniture. We used tin pans for dishes in slavery time. When we got free, we bought plates.
“When them pans fell they didn’t break. They even as much as made their own trays to make bread in. They would take a cypress tree and dig it out and them scoundrels lasted too. Don’t see nothin’ like that now. Tin pan is big enough to make up bread in now. In them days they made anything. Water buckets,—they did buy them. Old master would give ’em a pass to go get ’em. Anything they wanted, he would give ’em if he thought it necessary. Old master would get ’em all the buckets. He was good and he would buy what you would ask him for. They made milk buckets. They made ’em just like they make ’em now.”
Work of Family in Slave Time
“My people were all field hands. My master had a great big farm—three or four hundred acres. I waited table when I was a little chap and I learned to plow before the War was over.”
Good Master
“Old Man Bibb was as good and clever a man as ever you knowed. That overseer down there, if he whipped a man Old Man Bibbs would say, ‘Here’s your money. Don’t want you beating up my niggers so they can’t work. I don’t need you.’ He’d tell ’im quick he don’t need him and he can git. That’s the kind of man he was. Wouldn’t let you be mobbed up. He was a good christian man. I’ll give that to him. In the time of the War when they was freeing slaves and I was a little old eight-year-old kid, there was a little old Dutchman, a Tennessee man, he came out in the country to get feed. Out there in Alabama.
“I was in Alabama then. The white woman that raised me had taken me there. She had done married again and left me with mama awhile. While I was little, that was. When I was about seven, she came and got me again and carried me down in Alabama and raised me with her children. That white woman never called me nothin’ but baby as long as she lived. You know she cared for me just like I was one of her’s. When a person raise a child from a month old she can’t help from loving it.