"Our quarters was good, builded out of pine logs with a bed in one corner, no floors and windows. Us wore old loyal clothes and our shirt, it open all down the front. In winter massa gave us woolen clothes to wear. Us didn't know what shoes was, though.
"Massa, he look after us slaves when us sick, 'cause us worth too much money to let die jus' like you do a mule. He git doctor or nigger mammy. She make tea out of weeds, better'n quinine. She put string round our neck for chills and fever, with camphor on it. That sho' keep off diseases.
"Us work all day till jus' 'fore dark. Sometimes us got whippin's. We didn't mind so much. Boss, you know how stubborn a mule am, he have to be whipped. That the way slaves is.
"When you gather a bunch of cattle to sell they calves, how the calves and cows will bawl, that the way the slaves was then. They didn't know nothin' 'bout they kinfolks. Mos' chillen didn't know who they pappy was and some they mammy 'cause they taken 'way from the mammy when she wean them, and sell or trade the chillen to someone else, so they wouldn't git 'tached to they mammy or pappy.
"Massa larn us to read and us read the Bible. He larn us to write, too. They a big church on he plantation and us go to church and larn to tell the truth.
"I seed some few run away to the north and massa sometime cotch 'em and put 'em in jail. Us couldn't go to nowhere without a pass. The patterrollers would git us and they do plenty for nigger slave. I's went to my quarters and be so tired I jus' fall in the door, on the ground, and a patterroller come by and hit me several licks with a cat-o-nine-tails, to see if I's tired 'nough to not run 'way. Sometimes them patterrollers hit us jus' to hear us holler.
"When a slave die, he jus' 'nother dead nigger. Massa, he builded a wooden box and put the nigger in and carry him to the hole in the ground. Us march round the grave three times and that all.
"I been marry once 'fore freedom, with home weddin'. Massa, he bring some more women to see me. He wouldn't let me have jus' one woman. I have 'bout fifteen and I don't know how many chillen. Some over a hunerd, I's sho'.
"I 'member plenty 'bout the war, 'cause the Yankees they march on to Richmond. They kill everything what in the way. I heared them big guns and I's scart. Everybody scart. I didn't see no fightin', 'cause I gits out the way and keeps out till it all over.
But when they marches right on the town I's tendin' hosses for massa. He have two hosses kilt right under him. Then the Yankees, they capture that town. Massa, he send me to git the buggy and hoss and carry missus to the mountain, but them Yankees they capture me and say they gwine hang that nigger. But, glory be, massa he saves me 'fore they hangs me. He send he wife and my wife to 'nother place then, 'cause they burn massa's house and tear down all he fences.