"We done a good day's work, but didn' have to work after night 'less it was necessary. We was allowed to stop at 12 o'clock and have time for rest 'fore goin' back to work. Other slave owners roun' our place wasn't as good to dere slaves, would work 'em hard and half starve 'em. And some marsters or overseers would whip dere niggers pretty hard, sometimes whip 'em to death. Marster Johns didn' have no overseer. He seed to the work and my father was foreman. For awhile after old Marster died, in 1862 or 1863, I forget which now, we had a overseer, John Sewell. He was mean. He whipped the chillen and my mother told Miss Lucy, old marster's oldest girl.
"We was allus well treated by old marster. We was called, 'John's free niggers,' not dat we was free, but 'cause we was well treated. Jesse Todd, his place joined ours, had 500 slaves, and he treated 'em mighty bad. He whipped some of 'em to death. A man sold him two big niggers which was brothers and they was so near white you couldn' hardly tell 'em from a white man. Some people thought the man what sold 'em was their daddy. The two niggers worked good and dey hadn' never been whipped and dey wouldn' stand for bein' whipped. One mornin' Todd come up to 'em and told de oldest to take his shirt off. He say, 'Marster, what you wan' me to take my shirt off for?' Todd say, 'I told you to take your shirt off.' De nigger say, 'Marster, I ain' never took my shirt off for no man.' Todd run in de house and got his gun and come back and shot de nigger dead. His brother fell down by him where he lay on de groun'. Todd run back to load his gun again, it bein' a single shot. Todd's wife and son grabbed him and dey had all dey coul' do to keep him from comin' out and killin' de other nigger.
"Marse Johns had 12 chillen. De house dey lived in was Colonyal style and had 12 rooms. I was bo'n in dat house.
"De slaves had log cabins. We wore some cotton clothes in de summer but in de winter we wore wool clothes. We allus had shoes. A shoemaker would come 'round once a year and stay maybe 30 days, makin' shoes for everybody on de place; den in about 6 months he would come back and half-sole and make other repairs to de shoes. We made all our clothes on de place. We wove light wool cloth for summer and heavy for winter.
"I could take raw cotton and card and spin it on a spinnin' wheel into thread, fine enough to be sewed with a needle. We woun' de thread on a broche, make like and 'bout de size of a ice pick. De thread was den woun' on a reel 'bout de size of a forewheel of a wagon, and de reel would turn 48 times and den 'cluck'. Dat was for dem to be able to tell we was workin'.
"Dere was plenty wild game, possums, rabbits, turkey and so on. Dere was fish, too, in de creek. I was de leader of de bunch. We would ketch little fish in de creek. We'd cook a lot of fish and den we'd put a rag rug in de yard under a big mulberry tree and pour de fish out on dat and den eat 'em.
"Old marster never beat his slaves and he didn' sell 'em. But some of de owners did. If a owner had a big woman slave and she had a little man for her husban' and de owner had a big man slave, dey would make de little husban' leave, and make de woman let de big man be her husban', so's dere be big chillen, which dey could sell well. If de man and woman refused, dey'd get whipped.
"Course whippin' made a slave hard to sell, maybe couldn' be sold, 'cause when a man went to buy a slave he would make him strip naked and look him over for whip marks and other blemish, jus' like dey would a horse. But even if it done damage to de sale to whip him, dey done it, 'cause dey figgered, kill a nigger, breed another—kill a mule, buy another.
"I'll never forget de rice patch. It shore got me some whippin's, 'cause my daddy tell me to watch de birds 'way from dat rice, and sometimes dey'd get to it. It jus' seem like de blackbirds jus' set 'round and watched for dat rice to grow up where dey could get it. We would cut a block off a pine tree and build a fire on it and burn it out. Den we would cut down into it and scrape out all de char, and den put de rice in dere and beat and poun' it with a pestle till we had all de grain beat out de heads. Den we'd pour de rice out on a cloth and de chaff and trash would blow away.
"Our marster he drilled men for de army. De drill groun' was 'bout a mile from our place. He was a dead shot with a rifle and had a rifle with an extry long barrel.