“I never did see none sell naked.  I seen men took from their wives and mothers and children.  Let me tell you they didn’t have no squalling around or they would get took off and a beating.

“Master Alex Buntin was Dr. Buntin.  He said, ’I worked like one of my slaves and bought my slaves with what I made and I am not going to have them ’bused by the patrollers.  George and Kit and Johnson was his cousins.  Kit wasn’t so good to his slaves.

“It was my job to brush the flies off the table.  I had a fly brush.  I would eat out of Bob’s and Fannie’s plates.  Miss Sue say, ’Bell, I’m going to whoop you.’  I say, ‘Miss Sue, please don’t, I’m hungry too.’  She say, ‘You stop playing and eat first next time.’  Then she’d put some more on their plates.  We sat on a bench at the table.  We et the same the white folks did all cooked up together.

“One time Dr. Buntin got awful mad.  The dogs found some whiskey in a cave one of his slaves had hid there.  They would steal and hide it in a cave.  He got a beating and they washed it in salt water to keep them from getting sore and stiff.

“Some folks kept dogs trained to hunt runaway niggers.  They was fat, and you better not hit one or hurt it if it did bite or you would git a awful beating.

“Master Alex was a legislator.  He had to leave when the Yankees come through.  They killed all the legislators.  I loved him.  He run a store and we three children went to the store to see him nearly every day.  He took us all three on his knees at the some time.  I loved him.  When he was gone, I said, ‘Miss Sue, where is Master Alex?’ She say, ’Maybe he be back pretty soon.’  While he was gone they had a battle in a little skirt of woods close by.  We hung to Miss Sue’s skirt tail.  I seen the Yankees run by on horses and some walking.  Mr. Jordan, a southern soldier, was shot in his ribs.  Mr. Buford was shot in his knee.  Some of the other southern soldiers drug them up to our house.  Miss Sue nursed them.  I think they got well and went home.

“Three days before Master Alex left they sent all the stock off and put the turkeys and geese under the house, and chickens too.  It was dark so they kept pretty quiet.  When the Yankees got there they stripped the smoke-house.  We had a lots of meat and they busted the storehouse open and strowed (strewed) meat and flour all along the road.  They hired Mammy (Charlotte) to cook a big meal for them.  She told the man she was ’fraid Miss Sue whoop her.  He said, ’Whooping time near ‘bout out.’  He asked her ‘bout some chickens but she wasn’t goin’ to tell him ’cause it was her living too for them to waste up.  They never found the geese, turkeys, and chickens.  They rambled all through the house looking for Master Alex and went through every drawer and closet upstairs and down.  It was scandalous.  They had Miss Sue walking and crying and us three children clinging to her skirt tail scared to death and crying too.  When they left, the big lieutenant rode off ahead on a fine gray horse.  They come back when we just got the table sot and et every crumb of our dinner.  They was a lively gang.  I hate ’em.  I was hungry.  Rations was scarce.  They wasted the best we had.  Master Alex hod three stores and he kept the middle one.