I heard mother say she went to a lot of quiltings.  I suppose they had them much the same as they do now.  Everybody took a part of the quilt to finish.  They talked and sang and had a good time.  And they had somethin’ to eat at the close just as they did in the corn shucking.  I never went to a quilting.

Worship

Some of the Niggers went to church then just as they do now, and some of them weren’t allowed to go.

Reverend Winfield used to preach to the colored people that if they would be good niggers and not steal their master’s eggs and chickens and things, that they might go to the kitchen of heaven when they died.

An old lady once said to me, “I would give anything if I could have Maria in heaven with me to do little things for me.”  My mother told me that the niggers had to turn the pots down to keep their voices from sounding when they were praying at night.  And they couldn’t sing at all.

Weddings

I can remember that they used to have weddings when I was a child around the years 1867 and 1868.  My mother told me of marriages and weddings.  She never saw no paint on anybody’s face.  They used to have powder, but they never used any paint.  Girls were better then than they are now.

Fight with Master

My mother’s first master was named Rasly, and her second was named Neely.  She and her young master, John McNeely, who was raised with her and who was about the same age as she was, got to fighting one day and she whipped him clear as a whistle.  After she whipped him that fight went all over the country.  She was between sixteen and seventeen years old an he was about the same.  She had never been whipped by the white folks.

She was in the kitchen.  I don’t know what the trouble started over.  But they had an argument.  There were some other white boys in the kitchen with her young master, and they kept pushing the two of them up to fight.  He wanted to show off; so he told her what he would do to her if she didn’t hush her mouth.  She told him to just try it, and the fight was on.  So they fought for about an hour, and the other white boys egged them on.

She said that her old master never did whip her, and she sure wasn’t going to let the young one do it.  I never heard that they punished her for whipping her young master.  I never heard her say that anybody tried to whip her at any other time.  My mother was a strong woman.  She could lift one end of a log with any man.

Slave Uprisings