hearing of it, sent troops to Charles County to protect her, they brought her to Baltimore, later she was taken to Washington where she was set free.  She married a Government employe, reared a family of 3 children, one is a doctor practicing medicine in Baltimore and the other a retired school teacher, you know him well if I were to tell you who the doctor is.  This attack was the result of being goodlooking, for which many a poor girl in Charles County paid the price.  There are several cases I could mention, but they are distasteful to me.

“A certain slave would not permit this owner to whip him, who with overseer and several others overpowered the slave, tied him, put him across a hogshead and whipped him severely for three mornings in succession.  Some one notified the magistrate at Bryantown of the brutality.  He interfered in the treatment of this slave, threatening punishment.  He was untied, he ran away, was caught by the constable, returned to his owner, melted sealing wax was poured over his back on the wounds inflicted by him, when whipping, the slave ran away again and never was caught.

“There was a doctor in the neighborhood who bought a girl and installed her on the place for his own use, his wife hearing of it severely beat her.  One day her little child was playing in the yard.  It fell head down in a post hole filled with water and drowned.  His wife left him; afterward she said it was an affliction put on her husband for his sins.

“During hot weather we wore thin woolen clothes, the material being made on the farm from the wool of our sheep, in the winter we wore thicker clothes made on the farm by slaves, and for shoes our measures were taken of each slave with a stick, they were brought to Baltimore by the old mistress at the beginning of each season, if she or the one who did the measuring got the shoe too short or too small you had to wear it or go barefooted.

“We were never taught to read or write by white people.

“We had to go to the white church, sit in the rear, many times on the floor or stand up.  We had a colored preacher, he would walk 10 miles, then walk back.  I was not a member of church.  We had no baptising, we were christened by the white preacher.

“We had a graveyard on the place.  Whites were buried inside of railing and the slaves on the outside.  The members of the white family had tombstones, the colored had headstones and cedar post to show where they were buried.

“In Charles County and in fact all of Southern Maryland tobacco was raised on a large scale.  Men, women and children had to work hard to produce the required crops.  The slaves did the work and they were driven at full speed sometimes by the owners and others by both owner and overseers.  The slaves would run away from the farms whenever they had a chance, some were returned and others getting away.  This made it very profitable to white men and constables to capture the runaways.  This caused trouble between the colored people and whites, especially the free people, as some of them would be taken for slaves.  I had heard of several killings resulting from fights at night.