Describing the clothing worn in summer time by the slaves, he said they mostly went barefooted. The men and boys wore homespun, three-quarter striped pants and sometimes a large funnel-shaped straw hat. Some wore only a shirt as a covering for their body.
"In winter oxhide shoes were worn, much too large, and the soles contained several layers of paper. We called them 'program' shoes, because the paper used for stuffing, consisted of discarded programs. We gathered herbs from which we made medicine, snake root and sassafras bark being a great remedy for many ailments."
Williams, though himself not a slave by virtue of the fact that his grandmother was an Indian, was considered a good judge of healthy slaves, those who would prove profitable to their owners, so he often accompanied slave purchasers to the Baltimore slave markets.
He told of having been taken by a certain slave master to the Baltimore wharf, boarded a boat and after the slave dealer and the captain negotiated a deal, he, Williams, not realizing that he was being used as a decoy, led a group of some thirty or forty blacks, men, women and children, through a dark and dirty tunnel for a distance of several blocks to a slave market pen, where they were placed on the auction block.
He was told to sort of pacify the black women who set up a wail when they were separated from their husbands and children. It was a pitiful sight to see them, half naked, some whipped into submission, cast into slave pens surrounded by iron bars. A good healthy negro man from 18 to 30 would bring from $200 to $800. Women would bring about half the price of the men. Often when the women parted with their children and loved ones, they would never see them again.
Such conditions as existed in the Baltimore slave markets, which were considered the most important in the country, and the subsequent ill treatment of the unfortunates, hastened the war between the states.
The increasing numbers of free negroes also had much to do with causing the civil war. The South was finding black slavery a sort of white elephant. Everywhere the question was what to do with the freeman. Nobody wanted them. Some states declared they were a public nuisance.
"Uncle Rezin", by which name some called him, since slavery days, was, besides being engaged in preaching the Gospel, journeying from one town to another, where he has performed hundreds of marriages among his race, baptised thousands, performed numerous christenings and probably preached more sermons than any Negro now living. He preached his last sermon two years ago. He says his life's work is now through and he is crossing over the River Jordan and will soon be on the other side. Since the Civil War he has made extra money for his support during depression times by doing odd jobs of whitewashing, serving as a porter or janitor, cutting wood, hauling and running errands, also serving as a teamster, picking berries and working as a laborer. He has had several miraculous escapes from death during his long life. Twice during the past quarter of a century his home at Mount Winans has been destroyed by fire, when firemen rescued him in the nick of time, and some years ago, when he was suddenly awakened during a severe windstorm, his house was unroofed and blew down. When workmen were clearing away the debris in search for "Uncle" Rezin, some hours later, a voice was heard coming from a large barrel in the cellar. It was from Williams, who somehow managed to crawl in the barrel during the storm, and called out: "De Lord hab sabed me. You all haul me out of here, but I'se all right." Scabo, his pet dog, was killed by the falling debris during the storm. Firemen at Westport state that three years ago, when fire damaged "Uncle" Rezin's home, the aged negro preacher refused to be rescued, and walked out of the building through stifling smoke, as though nothing had happened. When veterans of a great war have been mowed down by the scythe of Father Time until their numbers are few, an added public interest attaches to them. Baltimore septuagenarians remember the honor paid to the last surviving "Old Defenders", who faced the British troops at North Point in 1814, and now the few veterans of the War of Secession, whether they wore the blue or the gray, receive similar attention. A far different class, one peculiarly associated with the strife between the North and the South, are approaching the point of fading out from the life of today—the old slaves, and original old freemen. "Parson" Williams tops the list of them all.