“My father said his white people weren’t very wealthy.  He and his brother had to go and cut cordwood, both summer and winter.  And they was allowed so much work for a task.  Their task was nine cords a week for each man.  That was equal to a cord and a half a day for each man each day.  My father would cut his wood like a man ought to cut it.  But he said my uncle wouldn’t git at his task.  He would drink whiskey all the week.  They’d get after him about bein’ behind with his work, but he would say, ‘Never mind that; I won’t be behind Monday morning.’  On Sunday morning at nine o’clock, he would get up and begin to cut on that wood.  And on Monday morning at nine o’clock, he would have nine cords cut for his white folks and four or five for himself.  It would all be done before nine o’clock Monday morning.

Living Brother

“I recently seen my brother Jeff Davis Street.  I haven’t seen him before for sixty-one years.  He blew in here from Texas with a man named Professor Smuggers.  He lives in Malakoff, Texas.  It’s been sixty-one years since he was where I could see him, but he says he saw me fifty-nine years ago.  He came back home and I was ’sleep, he says, and he didn’t wake me up.  He rambled around a little and stood and looked at me awhile, he says.  He was seventeen years old and I was twelve.

“My brother had a lot of children.  He had four girls with him.  He had a boy somewheres.  He is older than I am.

“I heard my father say that in time of war, they were taking up folks that wouldn’t join them and putting them in prison.  They picked a white fellow up and had him tied with a rope and carried him down to a creek and were tying him up by his thumbs.  He saw my father coming and said:  ‘There’s a colored man I know.’  My father said he knew him.  They let him go when my father said he knew him and that he didn’t harbor bushwhackers.  Every time he saw my father after that he would say, ‘Bill, you sure did save my life.’

“My father and mother lived in a log cabin.  They had homemade furniture.  They had a bunk up side the wall and a trundle bed.  That was the cabin they lived in in slavery time.

Soldiers

“My father said once that when the men were gone, the soldiers came in and asked the women to cook for them.  They wouldn’t do it; so the soldiers made them bring them a chunk of fire.  They throwed the fire on the bed and when it got to burning good, the officer wouldn’t let them put it out.  But he told them that they could get some of the boys to help them carry out their things if the boys were willing to do it.  It was the officers who wanted the women to cook for them.  It wasn’t the slaves they asked; it was the white folks.

Sold His Master