“The house I was born in was a log house, sealed inside.  The cracks were chinked with dirt and mud, and it was weather boarded on the outside.  You couldn’t tell it was a log house.  It had two rooms.  In them times you didn’t cook in the house you lived in.  You had a kitchen built off from the house you lived in just like you have servant quarters now.  You went across the yard to do your cooking.  The smokehouse was off by itself.  Milk was off by itself too.  The dairy house was where you kept the flour and sugar and preserves and fruit and pickles and all those kind of things.  No food was kept in the house.  The milk house had shelves all up in it and when you milked the cows the pans and bowls and crocks were put up on the shelves.  Where it was possible the milk house was built on a branch or spring where you could get plenty of cold water.  You didn’t milk in the milk house.  You milked in the cow pen right out in the weather.  Then you carried it down to the milk house and strained it.  It was poured out in vessels.  When the cream rose it was skimmed off to churn for butter.

“Feed for the stock was kept in the corn crib.  We would call it a barn now.  That barn was for corn and oft’times we had overhead a place where we kept fodder.  Bins were kept in the barn for wheat and peas.

Slaves on Other Places

“I seen the slaves outside the colonies.  I was little and didn’t pay any attention to them.  Slaves would run away.  They had a class of white people known as patrollers.  They would catch the slaves and whip them.  I never saw that done.  I heard them talking about it.  I was only a child and never got a chance to see the slaves on the places of other people, but just heard the folks talking about them.

Within the Yankee Lines

“When the War broke out, the free colored people became fearful.  There was a great deal of stuff taken away from them by the Confederate soldiers.  They moved into the Yankee lines for protection.  My family moved also.  They lost live stock and feed.  They lost only one horse and then they came back home.  I can see that old horse right now.  He was a sorrel horse, with a spot in his forehead, and his name was John.  My father was inside the Yankee lines when he volunteered for the service.  I don’t know how much he got or anything about it except that I know the Yankees were holding Portsmouth, Norfolk, Hampton Roads, and all that country.

Expectations of the Slaves

“I could hear my mother and uncle talk about what the slaves expected.  I know they was expecting to get something.  They weren’t supposed to be turned out like wild animals like they were.  I think it was forty acres and a mule.  I am not sure but I know they expected something to be settled on them.

What They Got