“I used to say I wish I’d died when I was little.  But now I thank De Lord I’m here and I want to stay here as long as Lilly (my daughter) lives.

“Missis wanted all of us little niggers to call Kate, Missis’ little daughter, Miss Kate.  But missis say, “They will call me old missis then”.

“Kate had red hair.  A little nigger boy say, ’Look!  Harriet, the town’s on fire’, I say git away from here nigger, I ain’t goin’ to have you makin’ fun of my chil’en.

“Me and missis was goin’ to a neighbor’s house one day in a sleigh.  The baby was wrapped up in a comfort (it had a hole in it).  The baby slipped out.  I say, ‘Lor’ missis, you’re lost that baby.’

“No, I haven’t, Missis say.  We stopped and shook the comfort and John was gone.  ‘Ain’t that awful, Miss Mat?’ We went back and found him a mile behind.”

I asked Aunt Harriet to sing.  She said, “I have to wait for the speret to move me”. (S.  Higgins).

BOYD CO.  (Carl F. Hall)

Rev. John R. Cox: 

It is probable that slave labor was more expensive to the white masters than free labor would have been.  Beside having cost quite a sum a two-year old negro child brought about $1,500 in the slave market, an adult negro, sound and strong, cost from $5,000 up to as high as $25,000, or more.  The master had to furnish the servant his living.  The free employee is paid only while working; when sick, disabled or when too old to work, his employer is no longer responsible.

A slave owner, in West Virginia, bought a thirteen year old black girl at an auction.  When this girl was taken to his home she escaped, and after searching every where, without finding her, he decided that she had been helped to escape and gave her up as lost.  About two years after that a neighbor, on a closely farm, was in the woods feeding his cattle, he saw what he first thought was a bear, running into the thicket from among his cows.  Getting help, he rounded up the cattle and searching the thick woodland, finally found that what he had supposed was a wild animal, was the long lost fugitive black girl.  She had lived all this time in caves, feeding on nuts, berries, wild apples and milk from cows, that she could catch and milk.  Returned to her master she was sold to a Mr. Morgan Whittaker who lived near where Prestonsburg, Kentucky now is.

A Dr. David Cox, physician from Scott County, Virginia, who treated Mr. Whitaker for a cancer, saw this slave girl, who had become a strong healthy young woman, and Mr. Whitaker unable to otherwise pay his doctor bill, let Dr. Davis have her for the debt.

At this time the slave girl was about twenty-one years of age, and Dr. Davis took her home to Scott County, Virginia where he married her to his only other slave, George Cox, by the ceremony of laying a broom on the floor and having the two young negroes step over the broom stick.