INTERESTING CUSTOMS
On one southern plantation soap was made at a certain time of the year and left in the hollowed-out trough of a big log.
Indigo was planted for blueing. Starch was made out of wheat bran put in soak. The bran was squeezed out and used to feed the hogs, and the starch was saved for clothes.
A hollow stump was filled with apples when cider was to be made. A hole was bored in the middle, and a lever put inside, which would crush the apples. As Mary put it, "you put the apples in the top, pressed the lever, the cider come out the spout, and my, it was good!"
DRESS
Most of the old ex-slave women interviewed wore long full skirts, and flat loose shoes. In spite of what tradition and story claim, few of the older negroes of this district wear head clothes. Most of them wear their wooly hair "wropped" with string. The women often wear men's discarded slouch hats. Though many of the old woman were interviewed in mid-summer, they wore several waists and seemed absolutely unaware of the heat.
One man, wearing the typical dress of the poverty-stricken old person of this district, is Tim Thornton, who used to live on the Virginia plantation of Mrs. Lavinia Tinsley. His ragged pants are sewed up with cord, and on his coat nails are used where buttons used to be. In the edges of his "salt and pepper" hair are stuck matches, convenient for lighting his pipe. His beard is bushy and his lower lip pendulous and long, showing strong yellow teeth. His manner is kindly, and he is known as "Old Singing Tim" because he hums spirituals all day long as he stumps around town leaning on a stick.
NUMBER OF SLAVES
Plantations owned by Dr. Balding Miller in Burke County had about eight hundred slaves. Governor Pickens of South Carolina was said to have had about four hundred on his various plantations. The William Morris plantations in Burke County had about five hundred slaves.