SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

She would make them by hand because they didn't have any machines then* Of
course, she made all the underwear * She put up preserves and jellies for us
to eat in the winter* She used to put up kraut and stuff by the barrel* I
have seen some happy days when I was with my daddy and mother* He raised pigs
and hogs and chickens and cows* He raised all kinds of peas and vegetables*
He raised those things chiefly for the home, and he made cotton for money* He
would save about eight or ten bales and pat them under his shed for stockings
and clothes and everything* He would have another cotton selling in March*
"When my father was in the army, he would sometimes be out in the
weather, he told us, and he and the other soldiers would wrap up in their
blankets and sleep right in the snow itself*
"I farmed all my life until 1897* I farmed all my life till then* I
was at home. I married in 1895* Hy first husband and I made three crops
and then he stopped and went to public work* After that I never farmed any
more but went to cooking and doing laundry work* I came from Clarendon here
in 1901a
"I never had any experiences with the Yankees* My mother used to tell
how they took all the old master 1 s stuff—mules and sugar—and then throwed
it out and rode their horses through it when they didn't want it for their-*
selves*
n I married a second time* I have been single now for the last three
years* My husband died on the twentieth of August three years ago* I
ain v t got no business here at all* I ought to be at my home living well*
But I work for what I get and I'm proud of it*
"A working woman has many things to contend with* That girl down-
stairs keeps a gang of men coming and going, and sometimes some of them
sometimes try to come up here* Sunday night when I come home from church,
3 * 802