[TR: Date stamp: AUG 6 1937]
ELIAS THOMAS
84 years of age
521 Cannon Ave., Raleigh, N.C.
"I was here when the Civil war was goin' on an' I am 84 years old. I was born in Chatham County on a plantation near Moncure, February 1853.
"My marster was named Baxter Thomas and missus was named Katie. She was his wife. I don't know my father's name, but my mother was named Phillis Thomas.
"It took a smart nigger to know who his father was in slavery time. I just can remember my mother. I was about four or five years old when she died.
"My marster's plantation was fust the 'Thomas Place'. There was about two hundred acres in it with about one hundred acres cleared land. He had six slaves on it.
"When I was eight years old he bought the Boylan place about two miles from his first home and he moved there. There was about one thousand acres of land of it all with about three hundred acres cleared for farming. On the Thomas place his house had six rooms, on the Boylan place the house had eight rooms. He brought in more slaves and took over all the slaves after John Boylan died.