The soldiers told the colored people that they free, but she said that didn't signify much to her mind. Some time afterwards, she said her father came and carried her and her mother to his master's place. Later, she came to Spartanburg and got a job as a cook and washerwoman.
When asked if she knew anything about conjuring, she stated that she had heard of it but didn't know anything about it. When asked if she had ever seen a ghost, she said, "No, but I heard one once." She said that one night after her master had killed "hisself" in the barn with a pistol, she heard the doors being shut, the windows being slammed, and the chairs rocking on the front porch all by themselves. She declared that the wind was not blowing and that a "ghost was doing all dem things."
She stated that she had been married twice; had reared a houseful of children; had adopted some and reared them, but that she didn't have anybody to work for her now but "him," referring to her husband who was sitting on a trunk.
"Thank the Lord for coming to see me," she said, as the writer left.
SOURCE: Jane Smith, Concord St., Spartanburg, S.C. Interviewer: F.S. DuPre
Project 1885-1
Folklore
Spartanburg, Dist. 4
Nov. 9, 1937
Edited by:
Elmer Turnage
STORIES FROM EX-SLAVES
"I liked to went crazy when my brother, Bob, went to Arkansas. Den Marse George Young wrote our names in a book and give it to my ma. It was jes' a small mem'randum book. We kept it till Miss Addie, dat is Mrs. Billy, give ma de Bible storybook, and den she copied our names in dat one. De little book was about wore out den; so it was burned up when Miss Addie had done finished writing our names in de storybook. Us gwine to keep dat book and hand it down atter we done left dis earth. Ma been dead now over fifty years.
"I sho nu'sed Marse George's chilluns fer him, when I was a little gal. Jimmie, Willie, Conquest, Jack, Katie and Annie was Marse's chilluns. Conquest dead now. Marse George had a great big house. He was a jes'tice of de peace or something or 'nother den. I don't know what year my ma died, but Marse had her buried at New Chapel. Dat same year we raised a big crop of corn, cotton and peanuts, and had plenty hogs. Marse let us have all we wanted. He let us hang our meat in his smokehouse dat year.