Others of his neighbors during these early years were abolition-minded white residents of the area.  These, he says would take in runaway slaves and “either work ’em or hide ’em until they could try to get North.”  When they’d get caught at it, though, they’d “take ’em to town and beat ’em like they would us, then take their places and run ’em out.”

Later he came to know the “pu-trols” and the “refugees.”  Of the former, he has only to say that they gave him a lot of trouble every time he didn’t have a pass to leave—­“they only give me one twice a week,”—­and of the latter that it was they who induced the slaves of Campbell to remain and finish their crop after the Emancipation, receiving one-fourth of it for their share.  He states that Campbell exceeded this amount in the division later.

After ‘surrinder’ Thomas and his relatives remained on the Campbell place, working for $5 a month, payable at each Christmas.  He recalls how rich he felt with this money, as compared with the other free Negroes in the section.  All of the children and his mother were paid this amount, he states.

The old man remembers very clearly the customs that prevailed both before and after his freedom.  On the plantation, he says, they never faced actual want of food, although his meals were plain.  He ate mostly corn meal and bacon, and squash and potatoes, he adds “and every now and then we’d eat more than that.”  He doesn’t recall exactly what, but says it was “Oh, lots of greens and cabbage and syrul, and sometimes plenty of meat too.”

His mother and the other women were given white cotton—­he thinks it may have been duck—­dresses “every now and then”, he states, but none of the women really had to confine themselves to white, “cause they’d dye ’em as soon as they’d get ’em.”  For dye, he says they would boil wild indigo, poke berries, walnuts and some tree for which he has an undecipherable name.

Campbell’s slaves did not have to go barefoot—­not during the colder months, anyway.  As soon as winter would come, each one of them was given a pair of bright, untanned leather “brogans,” that would be the envy of the vicinity.  Soap for the slaves was made by the women of the plantation; by burning cockle-burrs, blackjack wood and other materials, then adding the accumulated fat of the past few weeks.  For light they were given tallow candles.  Asked if there was any certain time to put the candles out at night, Thomas answers that “Mr. Campbell didn’t care how late you stayed up at night, just so you was ready to work at daybreak.”

The ex-slave doesn’t remember any feathers in the covering for his pallet in the corner of his cabin, but says that Mr. Campbell always provided the slaves with blankets and the women with quilts.

By the time he was given his freedom, Thomas had learned several trades in addition to farming; one of them was carpentry.  When he eventually left his $5 a month job with his master, he began travelling over the state, a practice he has not discontinued until the present.  He worked, he says, “in such towns as Perry, Sarasota, Clearwater and every town in Florida down to where the ocean goes under the bridge.” (Probably Key West.)