"The kitchen was a separate log house out in the back yard. The fireplace, where the cooking was done, took up one end of the kitchen, and there was a rack acrost it to hang the cook-pots on for biling. Baking and frying was done in ovens and heavy iron skillets that sat on trivets so coals could be piled underneath, as well as over the lids.
"The long shirts slave boys wore in summer were straight like a meal sack open at both ends, with holes in the sides for your arms to go through. You stuck your head in one end and it came out the other; then you were fully dressed for any whole summer day. These summer shirts were made of thin osnaburg. Our winter clothes were made of woolen cloth called merino. Old Boss kept enough sheep to provide plenty of wool and some mighty good food. Slave children had no extra or special clothes for Sunday; they wore the same kind of gowns, or long shirts, seven days a week. Old Boss provided brass-toed brogans for winter, but we never thought of such a thing as shoes to wear in hot weather.
"My owners were Marse Solomon and his wife, Miss Ann Willbanks. We called them Old Boss and Old Miss. As I saw it, they were just as good as they could be. Old Boss never allowed nobody to impose on his slave children. When I was a little chap playing around the big house, I would often drop off to sleep the minute I got still. Good Old Boss would pick me up and go lay me on his own bed and keep me there 'til Ma come in from the field.
"Old Boss and Old Miss had five children. The boys were Solomon, Isaac, James, and Wesley. For the life of me I can't bring to memory the name of their only daughter. I guess that's because we frolicked with the four boys, but we were not allowed to play with Little Miss.
"It was a right decent house they lived in, a log house with a fine rock chimney. Old Boss was building a nice house when the war come on and he never had a chance to finish it. The log house was in a cedar grove; that was the style then. Back of the house were his orchards where fruit trees of every kind we knew anything about provided plenty for all to eat in season as well as enough for good preserves, pickles, and the like for winter. Old Boss done his own overseeing and, 'cording to my memory, one of the young bosses done the driving.
"That plantation covered a large space of land, but to tell you how many acres is something I can't do. There were not so many slaves. I've forgot how they managed that business of getting slaves up, but I do know we didn't get up before day on our place. Their rule was to work slaves from sunup to sundown. Before they had supper they had a little piddlin' around to do, but the time was their own to do as they pleased after they had supper. Heaps of times they got passes and went off to neighboring plantations to visit and dance, but sometimes they went to hold prayer-meetings. There were certain plantations where we were not permitted to go and certain folks were never allowed on our place. Old Boss was particular about how folks behaved on his place; all his slaves had to come up to a certain notch and if they didn't do that he punished them in some way or other. There was no whipping done, for Old Boss never did believe in whipping slaves.
"None of the slaves from our place was ever put in that county jail at Jefferson. That was the only jail we ever heard of in those days. Old Boss attended to all the correction necessary to keep order among his own slaves. Once a slave trader came by the place and offered to buy Ma. Old Boss took her to Jefferson to sell her on the block to that man. It seemed like sales of slaves were not legal unless they took place on the trading block in certain places, usually in the county site. The trader wouldn't pay what Old Boss asked for her, and Old Miss and the young bosses all objected strong to his selling her, so he brought Ma back home. She was a fine healthy woman and would have made a nice looking house girl.
"The biggest part of the teaching done among the slaves was by our young bosses but, as far as schools for slaves was concerned, there were no such things until after the end of the war, and then we were no longer slaves. There were just a few separate churches for slaves; none in our part of the country. Slaves went to the same church as their white folks and sat in the back of the house or in a gallery. My Pa could read the Bible in his own way, even in that time of slavery; no other slave on our place could do that.
"Not one slave or white person either died on our plantation during the part of slavery that I can bring to memory. I was too busy playing to take in any of the singing at funerals and at church, and I never went to a baptizing until I was a great big chap, long after slavery days were over.
"Slaves ran off to the woods all right, but I never heard of them running off to no North. Paterollers never came on Old Boss' place unless he sont for them, otherwise they knowed to stay off. They sho was devils in sheeps' clothing; that's what we thought of them paterollers. Slaves worked all day Saddays when there was work to be done, but that night was their free time. They went where they pleased just so Old Boss gave them a pass to protect them from paterollers.