"The patterollers visited our house every Saturday night, generally. We set traps to catch the patterollers. The patterollers were poor white men. We stretched grape vines across the roads, then we would run from them. They would follow, and get knocked off their horses. I knew many of the patterollers. They are mostly dead. Their children, who are living now in Wake County and Raleigh, are my best friends, and I will therefore not tell who they were. I was caught by the patterollers in Raleigh.
"I would have been whipped to pieces if it hadn't been for a white boy about my age by the name of Thomas Wilson. He told them I was his nigger, and they let me go. We had brought a load of lightwood splints in bundles to town on a steer cart. This was near the close of the war. We had sold out one load of splints had had been paid for them in Confederate money. We had several bills. We went into a bar and bought a drink, each paying one dollar a drink, or two dollars for two small drinks. The bar was in the house where the Globe Clothing Store is now located on the corner of Wilmington and Exchange Streets. Just as I swallowed my drink a constable grabbed me by the back of the neck, and started with me to the guard house, where they done their whippin'. Down at the guard house Nick Denton, the bar tender, told Thomas Wilson 'Go, tell the constable that is your nigger'. Thomas came running up crying, and told the constable I was his nigger. The constable told him to take me and carry me on home or he would whip both of us. We then hitched our ox to the cart and went home."
[TR: The editor indicated with lines that the following three paragraphs should be moved to page 2 of this interview (page 318 of the volume).]
"When I was a child I played marbles, 'Hail over', and bandy, a game played like golf. In striking the ball we knocked it at each other. Before we hit the ball we would cry, 'Shins, I cry', then we would knock the ball at our playmates. Sometime we used rocks for balls.
"We got Christmas holidays from Christmas to New Years day. This was also a time when slaves were hired out or sold. You were often put on the auction block at Christmas. There was a whipping post, an auction block, and jail located on Court House Square where the news stand is now located on Fayetteville Street. There was a well in the yard.
"We were treated by doctors when sick. We were given lots of herbs.
"I do not believe in ghosts.
"I did not feel much elated over hearing I was free, I was afraid of Yankee soldiers. Our mistress told us we were free. I farmed first year after the war. We had no horses, the Yankees had taken the horses, and some of us made a crap with grubbing hoes.
"I think Abraham Lincoln was a man who aimed to do good, but a man who never got to it. I cannot say anymore than that his intentions were good, and if he had lived he would have done more good."
[HW: —— Insert from p. 6.]