"Now, about the clothes we wore in the days of the war, I couldn't rightly say, but my Mother said we had good comfortable garments. In the summer weather, boys and men wore plain cotton shirts and jeans pants. The home-made linsey-woolsy shirts that we wore over our cotton shirts, and the wool pants that we wore in winter, were good and warm; they had brogan shoes in winter too. Folks wore the same clothes on Sundays as through the week, but they had to be sure that they were nice and clean on Sundays. Dresses for the women folks were made out of cotton checks, and they had sunbonnets too.
"Marse George Sellars, him that married Miss Ca'line Angel, was my real master. They had four children, Bud, Mount, Elizabeth, and, and er; I just can't bring to recollect the name of their other girl. They lived in a two-story frame house that was surrounded by an oak grove on the road leading from Franklin, North Carolina, to Clayton, Georgia. Hard Sellars was the carriage driver, and while I am sure Marse George must have had an overseer, I don't remember ever hearing anybody say his name.
"Really, Miss, I couldn't say just how big that plantation was, but I am sure there must have been at least four or five hundred acres in it. One mighty peculiar thing about his slaves was that Marse George never had more than 99 slaves at one time; every time he bought one to try to make it an even hundred, a slave died. This happened so often, I was told, that he stopped trying to keep a hundred or more, and held on to his 99 slaves, and long as he did that, there warn't any more deaths than births among his slaves. His slaves had to be in the fields when the sun rose, and there they had to work steady until the sun went down. Oh! Yes, mam, Marse Tommy Angel was mighty mean to his slaves, but Miss Jenny, his sister, was good as could be; that is the reason she gave my mother to her sister, Miss Ca'line Sellars; because she thought Marse Tommy was too hard on her.
"I heard some talk as to how after the slaves had worked hard in the field all day and come to the house at night, they were whipped for mighty small offenses. Marse George would have them tied hand and foot over a barrel and would beat them with a cowhide, or cat-o'-nine tails lash. They had a jail in Franklin as far back as I can recollect. Old Big Andy Angel's white folks had him put in jail a heap of times, because he was a rogue and stole everything he could get his hands on. Nearly everybody was afraid of him; he was a great big double jointed man, and was black as the ace of spades. No, mam, I never saw any slaves sold, but my father's mother and his sister were sold on the block. The white folks that bought 'em took them away. After the war was over my father tried to locate 'em, but never once did he get on the right track of 'em.
"Oh! Why, my white folks took a great deal of pains teaching their slaves how to read and write. My father could read, but he never learned to write, and it was from our white folks that I learned to read and write. Slaves read the Bible more than anything else. There were no churches for slaves on Marse George's plantation, so we all went to the white folks' church, about two miles away; it was called Clarke's Chapel. Sometimes we went to church at Cross Roads; that was about the same distance across Sugar Fork River. My mother was baptized in that Sugar Fork River by a white preacher, but that is the reason I joined the Baptist church, because my mother was a Baptist, and I was so crazy about her, and am 'til yet.
"There were no funeral parlors in those days. They just funeralized the dead in their own homes, took them to the graveyard in a painted home-made coffin that was lined with thin bleaching made in the loom on the plantation, and buried them in a grave that didn't have any bricks or cement about it. That brings to my memory those songs they sung at funerals. One of them started off something like this, I Don't Want You to Grieve After Me. My mother used to tell me that when she was baptized they sung, You Shall Wear a Lily-White Robe. Whenever I get to studying about her it seems to me I can hear my mother singing that song again. She did love it so much.
"No, mam, there didn't none of the darkies on Marse George Sellar's place run away to the North, but some on Marse Tommy Angel's place ran to the West. They told me that when Little Charles Angel started out to run away a bird flew in front of him and led him all the way to the West. Understand me, I am not saying that is strictly so, but that is what I heard old folks say, when I was young. When darkies wanted to get news to their girls or wives on other plantations and didn't want Marse George to know about it, they would wait for a dark night and would tie rags on their feet to keep from making any noise that the paterollers might hear, for if they were caught out without a pass, that was something else. Paterollers would go out in squads at night and whip any darkies they caught out that could not show passes. Adam Angel was a great big man, weighing about 200 pounds, and he slipped out one night without a pass. When the paterollers found him, he was at his girl's place where they were out in the front yard stewing lard for the white folks. They knew he didn't belong on that plantation, so they asked him to show his pass. Adam didn't have one with him, and he told them so. They made a dive for him, and then, quick as a flash, he turned over that pot of boiling lard, and while they were getting the hot grease off of them he got away and came back to his cabin. If they had caught Adam, he would have needed some of that spilt grease on him after the beating they would have give him. Darkies used to stretch ropes and grapevines across the road where they knew paterollers would be riding; then they would run down the road in front of them, and when they got to the rope or vine they would jump over it and watch the horses stumble and throw the paterollers to the ground. That was a favorite sport of slaves.
"After the darkies got in from the field at night, ate their supper, and finished up the chores for the day, on nights when the moon shone bright the men would work in their own cotton patches that Marse George allowed them; the women used their own time to wash, iron, patch, and get ready for the next day, and if they had time they helped the men in their cotton patches. They worked straight on through Saturdays, same as any other day, but the young folks would get together on Saturday nights and have little parties.
"How did they spend Sundays? Why, they went to church on Sunday and visited around, holding prayermeetings at one another's cabins. Now, Christmas morning! Yes, mam, that was a powerful time with the darkies, if they didn't have nothing but a little sweet cake, which was nothing more than gingerbread. However, Marse George did have plenty of good things to eat at that time, such as fresh pork and wild turkeys, and we were allowed to have a biscuit on that day. How we did frolic and cut up at Christmas! Marse George didn't make much special to do on New Year's Day as far as holiday was concerned; work was the primary object, especially in connection with slaves.
"Oh-oo-h! Everybody had cornshuckings. The man designated to act as the general would stick a peacock tail feather in his hat and call all the men together and give his orders. He would stand in the center of the corn pile, start the singing, and keep things lively for them. Now and then he would pass around the jug. They sang a great deal during cornshuckings, but I have forgotten the words to those songs. Great excitement was expressed whenever a man found a red ear of corn, for that counted 20 points, a speckled ear was 10 points and a blue ear 5 points, toward a special extra big swig of liquor whenever a person had as many as 100 points. After the work was finished they had a big feast spread on long tables in the yard, and dram flowed plentiful, then they played ball, tussled, ran races, and did anything they knew how to amuse themselves.