"Folks had good times Christmas. Dancin' and big dinner. They give 'em two or three day holiday then. They give Christmas gif', maybe a pair stockin's or sugar candy. The white folks kill turkey and set table for the slaves with everything like they have, bread and biscuit and cake and po'k and baked turkey and chicken and sich. They cook in a skillet and spider. The cullud folks make hoe cake and ash cake and cracklin' bread and they used to sing, 'My baby love shortenin' bread.'
"When a hand die they all stop work the nex' day after he die and they blow the horn and old Uncle Bob, he pray and sing songs. They have a wake the night he die and come from all 'round and set up with the corpse all night. They make the coffin on the place and have two hands dig a grave.
"The way they done when 'mancipation come, they call up at twelve o'clock in June, 1865, right out there in Duncan Wood, 'twixt the old field and Beaumont. They call my mother, who done come to live there. They say, 'Now, listen, you and your chillen don' 'long to me now. You kin stay till Christmas if you wants.' So mother she stay but at Christmas her husban' come and they all go but me. I was the las' nigger to stay after freedom come, and the marster and I'd would go huntin and fishin' in the Naches River. We ate raccoon then and rabbit and keep the rabbit foot for luck, jus' the first joint. The 'Toby' what we call it, and if we didn' have no 'Toby' we couldn' git no rabbit nex' time we goes huntin'."
[A.M. Moore]
A.M. Moore, aged preacher and school teacher of Harrison Co., Texas, was born in 1846, a slave of W.R. Sherrad who, in the 1830's, settled a large plantation eight miles northeast of Marshall. Moore worked as a farmhand for several years after he left home, but later attended Bishop and Wiley Colleges, in Marshall, and obtained a teacher's certificate. He taught and preached until age forced him to retire to his farm, which is on land that was once a part of his master's plantation.
"My name is Almont M. Moore and I was born right here in Harrison County, in 1846, and belonged to Master W.R. Sherrad. My master was one of the first settlers in these parts and owned a big plantation, eight miles northeast of Marshall. My father was Jiles D. Moore and he was born in Alabama, and my mother, Anna, was born in Mississippi. They came to Texas as slaves. My grandmother on my mother's side was Cherry and she belonged to the Sherrads, too. She said the Indians gave them a hot time when they first came to Texas. Finally they became friendly to the white people.
"My mistress was Lucinda Sherrad and she had a world of children. They lived in a big, log house, but you wouldn't know it was a log house unless you went up in the attic where it wasn't ceiled. The slaves helped master build the house. The quarters looked like a little town, with the houses all in lines.
"They had rules for the slaves to be governed by and they were whipped when they disobeyed. Master didn't have to whip his slaves much, because he was fair to them, more than most of the slaveowners. Lots of masters wouldn't let the slaves have anything and wouldn't let them read or even look at a book. I've known courts in this county to fine slaveowners for not clothing and feeding their slaves right. I thought that was right, because lots of them were too stingy to treat the slaves right unless they made them do it.
"Corn shucking was a big sport for the Negroes and whites, too, in slavery time. Sometimes they gave a big dance when they finished shucking, but my master's folks always had a religious service. I went to a Methodist church and it had too floors, one for the slaves and one for the whites. Just before the war they began to let the Negroes preach and have some books, a hymn book and a Bible.
"After the war they treated the slaves fine in this part of the country. The industrious ones could work and save money. Down in Louisiana lots of owners divided syrup, meat and other things with the slaves. My brother and I saved enough to buy five hundred acres of land. Lots of white men took one or more slaves to wait on them when they joined the army, but my master left me at home to help there.