SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

"Emma and Betty went to school at Richmond in a buggy* They had a
colored boy driver* He was the carriage driver* Emma and Betty would play
with me too. Miss Betty fed me all the time* She made me a bonnet and I
can't get shed of my bonnet yet* I got four bonnets now*
"When the white folks had a wedding it lasted a week* They had a
second day dress and a third day dress and had suppers and dinner recep-
tions about among the kin folks* They had big chests full of quilts and
coverlets and counterpanes they been packing back* Some of them would have
big dances* A wedding would last a week, night and day*
"They had a farm right* We had peacocks, white guinea and big black
turkeys, cows, sheep, goats# hogs; he had deer* He kept their horns cut off
and some of the cow f s horns were off* We had a acre in a garden and had
roses and all kinds of flowers* I like flowers now* Tries to have f em*
Tliey had a gin on the place* He raised corn, rye, cotton, and tobacco* The
Tf,
hends got their supplies on Saturday* On rainy days all the women would
knit, white and colored both* Miss Betty knitted some at night in winter*
They had a shop to sharjten and keep all the tools in* A particular old man
iiiude the brooms and rakes*
"It seem like there wasn't so many flies* Miss Betty mixed up molasses
and flour and poison and killed flies sometimes* She spread it on bronn
?a;?er» We had fly weed tea to set about too sometimes* We didn f t have to
use anything regular* We didn't have no screens* We had mighty few
nosraitoes* We had peafowl fly brushes* They was mighty pretty*
"One thing we had was a deep walled well and an ice-house* They cut
ice m blocks and put it up for winter^' We had one spring on the place I
iaaow*
a. 43