"I wonder if Molly's got them sweet 'taters cooked what I dug this morning. They warn't much 'count 'cause the sun has baked them hard and it's been so dry. If you is through with me, I wants to go eat one of them 'taters and then lay this old Nigger on the bed and let him go to sleep."
[HW: Dist 5]
Josephine Lowell
[HW: ELIZA WILLIAMSON]
[TR: This interview contained many handwritten edits; where text was transposed or meaning was significantly changed, it has been noted.]
Just a few recollections of life in slavery time, as told me by [TR: illegible] who was Eliza Taliaferro Williamson, daughter of Dickerson and Polly Taliaferro. My mother was born at Mt. Airy, North Carolina, near the Virginia line, and always went to school, across the line, in Virginia. Her grandfather was John Taliaferro, slave holder, tobacco raiser, and farmer. The Negro quarters were near the main or Big House. Mother said that great-grandfather would go to the back door each night and call every slave to come in for family prayer. They came and knelt in the Big House, while old marster prayed. Mother said it was like a camp-meeting when he died—wailing and weeping by the Negroes for their old Marster. She said the slaves had the same food that the white family had and the same warm clothes for winter. All clothing, bed sheeting, table linen, towels, etc. were hand woven. They raised sheep for wool, and flax for linen, but I don't know where they got the cotton they used. The work of the house and farm was divided as with a big family. Some of the women cooked, sewed, wove, washed, milked, but was never sent to the field. None of the Toliver family believed in women working in the field. When each of great-grandfather's children married, he or she was given a few slaves. I think he gave my grandfather, Dickerson Taliaferro, three slaves, and these he brought with him to Georgia when they settled in Whitfield County.
My grandfather was a member of the Legislature from Whitfield County for two terms. He was as gentle with his slaves as a father would have been, and was never known to abuse one of them. One of his slaves, who was a small boy at the close of the War, stayed with my grandfather until he was a grown man, then after a few years away from home, came home to old Marster to die. This is the picture of good slave holders, but sad to say all were not of that type. [TR: deleted: 'See next sheet for'] a picture of horror, which was also told me by my mother. [TR: deleted: 'The thought of it'] was like a nightmare to my childish mind.
The Story of little Joe.