"One of the songs sung by the slaves on the plantation I can remember a part of it. They sang it with great feeling of happiness----
Oh where shall we go when de great day comes
An' de blowing of de trumpets and de bangins of de drums
When General Sherman comes.
No more rice and cotton fields
We will hear no more crying
Old master will be sighing.
"I can't remember the tune, people sang it according to their own tune."
Maryland
Sept. 23, 1937
Rogers
MARY MORIAH ANNE SUSANNA JAMES, Ex-slave.
Reference: Personal interview with Mary James, ex-slave,
Sept. 23, 1937, at her home, 618 Haw St., Baltimore, Md.
"My father's name was Caleb Harris James, and my mother's name was Mary Moriah. Both of them were owned by Silas Thornton Randorph, a distant relative of Patrick Henry. I have seen the picture of Patrick Henry many a time in the home place on the library wall. I had three sisters and two brothers. Two of my sisters were sold to a slave dealer from Georgia, one died in 1870. One brother ran away and the other joined the Union Army; he died in the Soldiers' Home in Washington in 1932 at the age of 84.
"How let me ask you, who told you about me? I knew that a stranger was coming, my nose has been itching for several days. How about my home life in Virginia, we lived on the James River in Virginia, on a farm containing more than 8,000 acres, fronting 3-1/2 miles on the river, with a landing where boats used to come to load tobacco and unload goods for the farm.
"The quarters where we lived on the plantation called Randolph Manor were built like horse stables that you see on race tracks; they were 1-1/2 story high, about 25 feet wide, and about 75 feet long, with windows in the sides of the roofs. A long shelter on the front and at the rear. In front, people would have benches to sit on, and on the back were nails to hang pots and pans. Each family would have rooms according to the size of the family. There were 8 such houses, 6 for families and one for the girls and the other for the boys. In the quarters we had furniture made by the overseer and colored carpenters; they would make the tables, benches and beds for everybody. Our beds were ticking filled with straw and covers made of anything we could get.
"I have a faint recollection of my grandparents. My grandfather was sold to a man in South Carolina, to work in the rice field. Grandmother drowned herself in the river when she heard that grand-pap was going away. I was told that grandpap was sold because he got religious and prayed that God would set him and grandma free.