A Negro boy came to the door and asked Jeff to tell him about some work. As Jeff arose he said: "If you is through with me, I'll have to go now and holp this boy. I'se 'titled to one of them books with my story in it free, 'cause I'se a preacher, and I knows I'se give you the best story you has wrote up yit."
PLANTATION LIFE, AS VIEWED BY AN EX-SLAVE
Uncle Robert Henry, an active 82, now lives with his daughter on Billups Street in Athens. At the time of our visit he was immaculate in dark trousers, a tweed sack coat, and a gayly striped tie. Naturally the question came to mind as to whether he found life more pleasant in his daughter's neat little cottage, with its well kept yards, or in the quarters on "Ole Marster's plantation." He seemed delighted to have an opportunity to talk about "slave'y days"; and although he could not have been more than 11 years old at the time, he has a very vivid recollection of the "year de war broke and freedom came."
His parents, Robert and Martha Henry, were born in Oglethorpe County and were later purchased by P.W. Sayles, who owned a 1,000-acre plantation about 18 miles from Washington, in Wilkes County. Ga. "Marster didn't have many niggers, not more'n 70," he stated.
Uncle Robert was the oldest of 8 children, 5 boys and 3 girls. "Pa wuz de butler at de big house," he declared with pride in his voice; and he went on to tell how his mother had been the head seamstress on the plantation and how, at the tender age of 8, his father had begun training him to "wait on Marster's table".
The picture of "Old Marster's" household, as the old man unfolds it to his listeners, is one of almost idyllic beauty. There was the white-pillared "big house" in a grove of white oaks on the brow of a hill with a commanding view of the whole countryside. A gravelled driveway led down to the dusty public road where an occasional stagecoach rattled by and which later echoed with the hoofbeats of Confederate Cavalry.