According to "Mammy Dink", and otherwise verified, every time a Negro baby was born on one of his plantations, Major Dalton gave the mother a calico dress and a "bright, shiny", silver dollar.
All Walton slaves were well fed and clothed and, for a "drove" of about fifty or sixty little "back-yard" piccaninnies, the Waltons assumed all responsibility, except at night. A kind of compound was fenced off for "dese brats" to keep them in by day.
When it rained, they had a shelter to go under; play-houses were built for them, and they also had see-saws, toys, etc. Here, their parents "parked dese younguns" every morning as they went to the fields and to other duties, and picked them up at night. These children were fed about five times a day in little wooden trough-like receptacles. Their principal foods were milk, rice, pot-licker, vegetables and corn dumplings; and they stayed so fat and sleek "dat de Niggers calt 'em Marse Major's little black pigs."
The average weekly ration allowed an adult Walton slave was a peck of meal, two "dusters" of flour (about six pounds), seven pounds of flitch bacon, a "bag" of peas, a gallon of grits, from one to two quarts of molasses, a half pound of green coffee—which the slave himself parched and "beat up" or ground, from one to two cups of sugar, a "Hatful" of peas, and any "nicknacks" that the Major might have—as extras.
Many acres were planted to vegetables each year for the slaves and, in season, they had all the vegetables they could eat, also Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, roasting ears, watermelons and "stingy green" (home raised tobacco). In truth, the planters and "Niggers" all used "stingy green", there then being very little if any "menufro" (processed tobacco) on the market.
The standard clothes of the slaves were: jeans in the winter for men and women, cottonades and osnabergs for men in the summer, and calicos and "light goods" for the women in the summer time. About 75% of the cloth used for slaves' clothing was made at home.
If a "Nigger come down sick", the family doctor was promptly called to attend him and, if he was bad off, the Major "sat up" with him, or had one of his over-seers do so.
Never in her life was "Mammy Dink" whipped by any of the Waltons or their over-seers. Moreover, she never knew a Negro to be whipped by a white person on any of the dozen or more Walton plantations. She never "seed" a pataroler in her life, though she "has heard tell dat Judge Henry Willis, Marses Johnnie B. Jones, Ned Giddens, Gus O'Neal, Bob Baugh, an Jedge Henry Collier rid as patarolers" when she was a girl.
When the Yankee raiders came through in '65, "Mammy Dink" was badly frightened by them. She was also highly infuriated with them for "stealin de white fokes' things", burning their gins, cotton and barns, and conducting themselves generally as bandits and perverts.
In 1875, the year of the cyclone "whooch kilt sebenteen fokes twixt Ellesli (Ellerslie) and Talbotton", including an uncle of her's. "Mammy Dink" was living at the Dr. M.W. Peter's place near Baughville. Later, she moved with her husband—acquired subsequent to freedom—to the Dr. Thomas D. Ashford's place, in Harris County, near Ellerslie. There, she lost her husband and, about thirty-five years ago, moved to Columbus to be near Mrs. John T. Davis, Jr., an only daughter of Dr. Ashford, to whom she long ago became very attached.