SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

"My mother f s name was Susanna Briggs* Her father f s name was Isaac
Metz* The children left him in South Carolina* The white folks sold them
away from him. My mother just had three children: me, and my two brothers*
I don't know how many my grandfather had* There were four sisters that I
know besides my mother and two boys: Aunt Melissa, and Aunt Jane, and Aunt
Annie, and Aunt Sarah, and Uncle Albert Mitchell, and Uncle Ben* My grand**
mother f s name was Betsy* I never got to see her but they told me about her*
Good Masters
"I have heard them say that their white folks didn f t whip them* My
master was a good man* My young master, when it come to the surrender
slipped back home and told them they was going to be free as ever he was*
His name was Joe Mitchell* I never seed my white folks whip anybody in my
life* They just never whipped anybody* They never whipped me* I have seen
the white folks next to us whip their Negroes and I asked grandma about it*
She said that those were their Negroes and she would explain what they was
being whipped for* They was on another farm* I don't remember what they
was being whipped for*
"My young master told the slaves when he notified them they was free
that if they didn f t want to stay with him, he would give them enough to go
on till they could make it, you know, to keep them from starving* He was a
good man*
"The old man, Joe f s father, was named Thomas Mitchell* He died before
I was born* I never seed him, just knowed his name* Joe f s mother was
named Isabel Mitchell* I came to be named Briggs because her husband 1 s name
was Briggs* He belonged to a Briggs* I don f t know what his name was else*
They didn't belong to the same master* They used to let them marry*
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