"Us children played lots of games, like rolly-hole. There are two holes and you try to roll a ball in one hole. The white folks had corn-shuckings, lots of them, as they raised lots of corn on de farms. Dey had cotton pickings, too, and carding and spinning bees, quilting bees. I used to feed de shippers when women folks spin de yarn, when I was a small boy. We raised plenty corn, cotton, and other things. We had a big garden, too.
"When freedom come all of us left and went off. I went back to get something to eat. I married Mattie Kinard who belonged to old Maj. John Kinard. We had nine children.
"I 'member de red shirts when dey come through our place. I like it better now dan in slavery times."
[Richard (Look-up) Jones]
Interview with Richard Jones (Dick Look-up), age 93 [HW: 125?]
County Home, Union, S.C.
—Caldwell Sims, Union, S.C.
Dick has an upward stare all the time, and holds his head as if he were always looking up into the sky, consequently he has won the sobriquet, 'Look-Up'.
"Everybody dat knows me knows dat I was born on de Jim Gist plantation, and it used to jine Mr. Winsmith's and de Glenn Peak plantations. Mr. Winsmith was a doctor. Marse Jim sho was a good man to his darkies.
"My father was named Ned Jones and he belonged to Marse Berry Jones. His plantation was across de forest, next to West Springs. Mother was Lucy Gist, belonging to Marse Jim. My parents had de following chilluns: Esther, Bella, Ephriam, Griggs, John, Penfield, me and Richard. Dey married and so we was all Jones.
"De slaves in de Gist Quarter lived well. All nigger chilluns in dat quarter had very small tasks until dey was seventeen or eighteen years old. De quarter had nine houses. Dere was seventeen hundred acres in our plantation; or dat is, de part where we lived and worked. We lived in one-room log cabins dat had to be well kept all of de time.
"All de chilluns in de Quarter was well fed, clothed, housed and doctored until dey was strong and well developed younguns. Den dey was give tasks and learnt to do what de master and de mistress thought dey would do well at.