If a slave became sick, a doctor was promptly called to attend him. My mother was also a kind of doctor and often rode all over the plantation to dose ailing Negroes with herb teas and home medicines which she was an adept in compounding. In cases of [HW: minor] illness, she could straighten up the sick in no time.
Before the war started, I took my young master to get married, and we were certainly dressed up. You have never seen a Nigger and a white man as dressed up as we were on that occasion.
An aunt of mine was head weaver on our plantation, and she bossed the other women weavers and spinners. Two or three seamstresses did all the sewing.
In winter time we slaves wore wool, which had been dyed before the cloth was cut. In summer we wore light goods.
We raised nearly every thing that we ate, except sugar and coffee, and made all the shoes and clothes worn on the place, except the white ladies' silks, fine shawls, and slippers, and the men's broadcloths and dress boots.
My young master went to the war, but his father was too old to go. When we heard that the Yankees were coming, old mister refugeed to Dooly County—where he bought a new farm, and took his Negroes with him. But the new place was so poor that, right after the war closed, he moved back to his old plantation. I stayed with Mr. Henry for a long time after freedom, then came to Hawkinsville to work at the carpenter's trade. And I did pretty well here until I fell off a house several years ago, since which time I haven't been much good—not able to do hardly any work at all."
Now old, feeble, and physically incapacitated, "Uncle" Bob lives with a stepdaughter—a woman of 72—who, herself, is failing fast. Both are supported mainly by Pulaski County and the Federal Government.