"When she gone, mammy eat some and give me some, and mammy git up next mornin' and say: 'Sis, my white folks' missus am so good and kind, I am goin' to work for her today, best I can'. She went but she wasn't good well yet. Missus Poindexter many times fetch me a piece of candy or somethin' when she go to town and back.
"No, I never see Columbia burn in 1865, but we reckon that it was burnin' that night in February, 1865, 'cause we smell it and de whole east look lak some extra light is shinin' and pretty soon, some folks come ridin' by and tell us the whole city in flames. De next time I see it, I guess there wasn't fifty houses standin'. Chimneys standin' 'round, is about all there was where most of de city was standin' befo'.
"My daddy was killed down 'bout Aiken, shortly after 1865. Me and mammy come to Columbia and live in a cabin in de alley back of Senate Street, where mammy take in washin' and cook for some white folks, who know her; I helped her. She die in 1868, and I goes 'way with four other nigger gals to Durham to work in a tobacco factory. Both white and nigger women work there, but de nigger women do most of de hard work, strippin' de leaves, stemmin' them, and placin' them to dry. White women finish them for de trade.
"In 1870 when I comes back to Columbia de city am acomin' back. Big buildin's up along de streets, but most of them was made of wood. Soon after that I gets work in a hotel, but Columbia at that time was not so big and Durham was smaller still, although Durham had more brick houses. I was happier on de Poindexter plantation and had fewer things to worry 'bout than when I was ascratchin' 'round for myself.
"You ask has I been married? Yes, I marry a dandy lookin' young man, 'bout my own age, 'bout a year after I comes back to Columbia. His name, so he say, is Sam Allen. He make fun of some other niggers who work at one thing or another to live. One day he come to where I work and say he bound to raise ten dollars. I hands him de cash, and he gives me a good kiss right there befo' de folks, but I never see him again. I hear, after he gone, that he win some more money at a gamblin' place on Assembly street, and reckon he decided to blow 'way, while blowin' was good.
"De folks who know me always call me Sarah Poindexter and I got it honestly, like other honest slaves who never know what their real name was, and so I keeps it to the end of the road.
"I am now livin' with a distant relative and firmly trustin' in Jesus, as I have done for more than fifty years, that he will keep me to the end of the trail here and greet me when I pass on 'way up Yonder'."
[Sam Polite]
Interview with Sam Polite, age 93
—Mrs. Chlotilde R. Martin, Beaufort County
"W'en gun shoot on Bay Pint (Bay Point) for freedom, I been sebenteen year old wuking slabe. I born on B. Fripp Plantation on St. Helena Island. My fadder been Sam Polite and my mudder been Mol Polite. My fadder b'long to Mister Marion Fripp and my mudder b'long to Mister Old B. Fripp. I don't know how mucher land, neider how much slabe he hab, but he hab two big plantation, and many slabe—more'n a hundred slabe.