"Work used to start on the plantation at four o'clock in the morning, when the people went in the garden. At eight or nine o'clock they went into the big fields. Everybody was given a task of work. When you finished your task you could quit. If you didn't do your work right you got a whipping.

"The babies were taken to the Negro house and the old women and young colored girls who were big enough to lift them took care of them. At one o'clock the babies were taken to the field to be nursed, then they were brought back to the Negro house until the mothers finished their work, then they would come for them.

"Dr. Rose gave me to his son, Dr. Arthur Barnwell Rose, for a Christmas present. After the war Dr. Rose went back to England. He said he couldn't stay in a country with so many free Negroes. Then his son Dr. Arthur Barnwell Rose had the plantation. Those was good white people, good white people.

"The colored people were given their rations once a week, on Monday, they got corn, and a quart of molasses, and three pounds of bacon, and sometimes meat and peas. They had all the vegetables they wanted; they grew them in the gardens. When the boats first came in from Africa with the slaves, a big pot of peas was cooked and the people ate it with their hands right from the pot. The slaves on the plantation went to meeting two nights a week and on Sunday they went to Church, where they had a white preacher Dr. Rose hired to preach to them.

"After the war when we came back to Charleston I went to work as a chimney-sweep. I was seven years old then. They paid me ten cents a story. If a house had two stories I got twenty cents; if it had three stories I got thirty cents. When I got too big to go up the chimneys I went back to Rose plantation. My father was still overseer or driver. I drove a cart and plowed. Afterwards I worked in the phosphate mines, then came back here to take care of the garden and be caretaker. I planted all these Cherokee roses you see round here, and I had a big lawn of Charleston grass. I aint able to keep it like I used to."

Henry is intensely religious. He says "the people don't notice God now because they're free." "Some people say there aint no hell," he continued, "but I think there must be some kind of place like that, because you got to go some place when you leave this earth, and you got to go to the master that you served when you were here. If you serve God and obey His commandments then you go to Him, but if you don't pay any attention to what he tells you in His Book, just do as you choose and serve the devil, then you got to go to him. And it don't make any difference if you're poor or rich, it don't matter what the milliner (millionaire) man says."

He seemed so proud of his garden, with its broad view across the Ashley River, showing his black walnut, pear and persimmon trees, grape vines and roses, that the writer said, "Henry, you know a poet has said that we are nearer God in the garden than anywhere else on earth." "Well ma'am, you see," he replied, with a winning smile, "that's where God put us in the first place."

Project #-1655
Augustus Ladson
Charleston, S. C.
EX-SLAVE BORN 1857
GRAND PARENTS CAME DIRECTLY FROM AFRICA

I was nickname' durin' the days of slavery. My name was Henry but they call' me Toby. My sister, Josephine, too was nickname' an' call' Jessee. Our mistress had a cousin by that name. My oldes' bredder was a Sergeant on the Charleston Police Force around 1868. I had two other sister', Louise an' Rebecca.

My firs' owner was Arthur Barnwell Rose. Then Colonel A. G. Rhodes bought the plantation who sol' it to Capen Frederick W. Wagener. James Sottile then got in possession who sol' it to the DeCostas, an' a few weeks ago Mrs. Albert Callitin Simms, who I'm tol' is a former member of Congress, bought it. Now I'm wonderin' if she is goin' to le' me stay. I hope so 'cus I'm ol' now en can't work.