SLAVE NARRATIVES - Library of Congress

My cousin was the one had to go out and call the children; and you could see
them runnin* up from every which way, little shirt tails flyin f and hair
sticking out* Then they would pour the food out in different vessels till
the children could git around them with those muscle-shell spoons* Many of
them as could get f round a vessel would eat out of it and when they
finished that one, they'd go to another one, and then to another one till
they all got fed*
"My master worked seventy hands they said* He had two colored over-
seers and one white one* He didn't allow them overseers to whip and slash
them niggers*. They had to whip them right* Didn f t allow no pateroles to
bother them neither* That's a lot of help too* * Cause them pateroles would
eat you up# It was awful* Niggers used to run away to keep from beta 1 beat
up,
"I knowed one gal that ran away in the winter time and she went up into
the hollow of a tree for protection* When she came in, she was in sich a
bad condition they had to cut off both her legs* They had froze out there*
They taken care of her* They wanted her to worko She was jus f as nice a
seamstress as you ever saw. And she could do lots of things* She could get
about some* She could go on her knees* She had some pads for them and was
just about as high as your waist when she was goin f along on her hands and
knees, swinging her body between her arms*
Ate in the Big House
"The cooks and my mother stayed in the white folks 1 yard* They
weren't in the quarters* My mother was seamstress and she was rigjrt
in the house all the day long sewing* The children like me and my
sister, they used us T round the house and yard for whatever we could do*
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