SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

y herself in a house on the place* They never bothered her* She wasn't
kin to us but Moster Milton owned her and kept her fed# We raised sugar-
cane, hogs, corn, and goobers* The sugar-cane had no top* I got a, whoop**
ing every Monday* Mama whoop me* We go drink sugar-cane juice in the
trough at the mill* We got up in there with our feet* They had to wash
out the troughs* It was a wood house* It was a big mill* He sold that
good syrup in Atlanta* It wasn f t sorghum* The men at the mill would scare
us but we hid around* They come up to the house and tell on us*
n We had moved from the farm when they burned Atlanta* From the place
where Moster Milton refugeed I could hear a roaring all the time nearly$
sometimes clearer, and the roaring was broke sometimes*
n Moster Milton run the farm when he run the hotel cept I was born at
the hotel and Mistress Thursday lived there then too* He had all Negro
overseers* Each overseer had a certain lot of hands to do what he told
them* He didn't have no trouble* He told them if they made something for
them and him too it would be fine, if they didn't work they would have to
do without* They had plenty they said*
"My mama was sold on the block in Virginia when she was twelve years
old. She and her little brother sold the same day* Moster Milton Stevens
bought her* The same man couldn't buy them both, didn't have money enough*
They had a little blanket and she and her brother cut it into and put it
around their shoulders* They been sleeping together and Moster Milton
brought her home on his horse up behind him* Her mama was crying when she
left her* She never heard nor seen none of her folks no more she told me*
(The old Negro cried*)
"My mama and papa was dark but both was mixed* They never told
*» if it was white or Indian* Papa was a tall, big bony man*
s* 48