ate.  My mother and father lived at the cabin in the yard and my mother did the cooking for the family.  My father did the work on the farm with the help that was hired from the neighbors.  I was too young to remember much about the slave days, but I never heard of any slaves of the neighbors being punished.  My “Mistus” always took me to the Baptist Church with her.  I do not remember any preacher’s names or any songs they sang.”

Bibliography: 
Interview with Aunt Belle Robinson, Ex-Slave of Garrard County.

Monroe County.  Folklore. 
(Lenneth Jones-242) [HW:  Essay]

Uncle Edd Shirley (97): 
    Janitor at Tompkinsville Drug Co. and Hospital,
    Tompkinsville, Ky.
[TR:  Information moved from bottom of page.]

Slaves: 

I am 97 years old and am still working as janitor and support my family.  My father was a white man and my mother was a colored lady.  I was owned three different times, or rather was sold to three different families.  I was first owned by the Waldens; then I was sold to a man by the name of Jackson, of Glasgow, Kentucky.  Then my father, of this county, bought me.

I have had many slave experiences.  Some slaves were treated good, and some were treated awful bad by the white people; but most of them were treated good if they would do what their master told them to do.

I onced saw a light colored gal tied to the rafters of a barn, and her master whipped her until blood ran down her back and made a large pool on the ground.  And I have seen negro men tied to stakes drove in the ground and whipped because they would not mind their master; but most white folks were better to their slaves and treated them better than they are now.  After their work in the fields was finished on Saturday, they would have parties and have a good time.  Some old negro man would play the banjo while the young darkies would dance and sing.  The white folks would set around and watch; and would sometimes join in and dance and sing.

My colored grand father lived to be 115 years old, and at that age he was never sick in his life.  One day he picked up the water bucket to go to the spring, and as he was on his way back he dropped dead.

Garrard County.  Ex-Slave Stories.  (Eliza Ison)

Interview with Ex-Slave Uncle Wes Woods: 

My first visit to uncle Wes Wood, and his wife Aunt Lizzie Wood, found them in their own comfortable little home in Duncantown, a nice urban section of the town, where most of the inhabitants are of the better class of colored people.  A small yard with a picket fence and gate surround the yard, which had tall hollyhocks, rearing their heads high above the fence.

A knock on the front door brought the cordial invitation “to come in”.  Upon entering, I was invited to have a chair and “rest my hat”.  After seating myself and making inquiry as to their health, I told them the object of my visit, and their faces beamed when I asked if they remembered “slave days”.  Aunt Lizzie set down the can of beans she was preparing for their meal and said with a clasp of her hands, “Lawsey, Honey, what I do know would fill a book”.