Father, Mother and Family

“My father’s name was Jeff Williams.  He’s been dead a long time.  Nobody living but me and my children.  My mother’s name was Malinda Williams.  My father had seven children, four girls and five boys.  Four of the boys were buried on the Cummins (?) place.  It used to be the old place of old Man Flournoy’s.  My oldest brother was named Isaac.

“I had sixteen children; four of them are still living—­two boys and two girls.  The boys is married and the daughters is sick.  No, honey, I can’t tell how many of em all was boys and girls.

House

“My folks lived right in the white folks’ yard.  I don’t know what kind of house it was.  My mother used to cook and do for the white folks.  She caught her death of cold going backward and forward milking and so on.

How the Children were Fed

“They’d put a trough on the floor with wooden spoons and as many children as could get around that trough got there and eat, they would.

How Freedom Came

“Dolly and Evelyn were upstairs spinning thread and overheard the old master saying that peace was declared but they didn’t want the niggers to know it.  Father had them to throw their clothes out the windows.  Then he slipped out with them.  Malinda Williams, my mother, came with them.  Dolly and Evelyn were my sisters.  I don’t know my master’s name, but it must have been Williams because all the slaves took their old master’s names when they were freed.  I was a baby in my daddy’s arms when he ran away.

Patrollers

“I heard my papa talk about the patrollers.  He said they used to run them in many a time.  That is the reason he had to cross the bridge that night going over the Mississippi into Georgia.  The slaves had been set free in Georgia, and he wanted to get there from Alabama.

What the Slaves Got

“The slaves never got nothin’ when they were freed.  They just got out and went to work for themselves.

Marriage

“My father tended to the white folks’ mules.  He wasn’t no soldier.  When he married my mother, he was only fifteen years old.  His master told him to go pick himself out a wife from a drove of slaves that were passing through, and he picked out my mother.  They married by stepping over the broom.  The old master pronounced them master and wife.

Slave Droves

“The drove passed through Alabama, but my father didn’t know where it came from nor where it went.  They were selling slaves.  They would pick up a big lot of them somewhere, and they would drive them across the country selling some every place they stopped.  My master bought my mother out of the drove.  Droves came through very often.  I don’t know where they came from.