FEDERAL WRITERS' PROJECT
American Guide, (Negro Writers' Unit)
Cora Taylor
Frances H. Miner, Editor
Miami, Florida
RIVANA BOYNTON
[TR: also reported as Riviana.]
1. Where, and about when, were you born?
Some time in 1850 on John and Mollie Hoover's plantation between Savannah and Charleston near the Georgia line.
2. If you were born on a plantation or farm, what sort of farming section was it in?
They raised rice, corn wheat, and lots of cotton, raised everything they et—vegetables, taters and all that.
3. How did you pass the time as a child? What sort of chores did you do and what did you play?
I had to thin cotton in the fields and mind the flies at the table. I chased them with a fly bush, sometimes a limb from a tree and sometimes wid a fancy bush.
4. Was your master kind to you?