SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

Llama wasn't so big and stouter* His never tried to get away from his owners*
He belong to Sam Ritchie five or six miles away* I never heard much about
them* They had Negro overseers* Papa was a foreman* He tanned the cow
hides and made shoes for all the hands on Bitchie's place* He made our
shoes over there too* They said Stevens and Ritchies didn f t keep bad dogs#
Mistress Eliza Ritchie was a Stevens before she married* Papa never was
sold* He said they was good to them* Mama was named Eliza too and papa
George Ritchie*
n When freedom was on papa went to Atlanta and got transportation to
Chattanooga* I don't know why* He met me and mama* She picked me up and
run away and met him* We went in a freight box* It had been a soldier 1 s
home — great big house* He at on the first story out of tin pans© We had
white beans or peas, crackers and coffee* Meat and wheat and cornbread we
never smelt at that place* Somebody ask him how we got there and he showed
them a ticket from the Freedmans bureau in Atlanta* He showed that on the
train every now and then* Upstairs they brought out a stack of wool
blankets and started the rows of beds* Each man took his three as he was
numbered* Every night the same one got his own blankets* The room was full
of beds and white guards with a gun over his shoulder guarded them all night
long. We stayed there a long time — nearly a year* They tried to get jobs
fast as they could and push em out but it was slow work* Mama got a place
to cook at — Mrs. Crutchfield f s« She run a hotel in town but lived in the
country• We stayed there about a year* Papa was hired somewhere else there»
"Papa got us on a farm in middle Tennessee after that* We come to Mr*
Hooper 1 s place and share cropped one year, then we went to share crop for
Wells Brothers close to Murfreesboro* I been on the faim all my life since
then*
3. 49