Willis Williams is in good health, attends Ebenezer Methodist Episcopal Church of which he is a member.  He possesses all of his faculties and is able to carry on an intelligent conversation on his fifty years in Jacksonville.

FEDERAL WRITERS’ PROJECT American Guide, (Negro Writers’ Unit)

James Johnson, Field Worker
Lake City, Florida
November 6, 1936

CLAUDE AUGUSTA WILSON

In 1857 on the plantation of Tom Dexter in Lake City, Columbia County, Florida, was born a Negro, Claude Augusta Wilson, of slave parents.  His master Tom Dexter was very kind to his slaves, and was said to have been a Yankee.  His wife Mary Ann Dexter, a southerner, was the direct opposite, she was very mean.  Claude was eight years old when Emancipation came.

The Dexter plantation was quite a large place, covering 100 or more acres.  There were about 100 slaves, including children.  They had regular one room quarters built of logs which was quite insignificant in comparison with the palatial Dexter mansion.  The slaves would arise early each morning, being awakened by a “driver” who was a white man, and by “sun-up” would be at their respective tasks in the fields.  All day they worked, stopping at noon to get a bite to eat, which they carried on the fields from their cabins.

At “sun-down” they would quit work and return to their cabins, prepare their meals and gossip from cabin to cabin.  Finally retiring to await the dawn of a new day which signalled a return to their routine duties.  At Sundays they would gather at a poorly constructed frame building which was known as the “Meeting House,” In this building they would give praise and thanks to their God.  The rest of the day was spent in relaxation as this was the only day of the week in which they were not forced to work.

Claude Augusta worked in the fields, his mother and sister worked in the Dexter mansion.  Their duties were general house work, cooking and sewing.  His Mother was very rebellious toward her duties and constantly harrassed the “Missus” about letting her work in the fields with her husband until finally she was permitted to make the change from the house to the fields to be near her man.

The “missus” taught Claude’s sister to sew and to the present day most of her female descendants have some ability in dress making.

The mansion was furnished with the latest furniture of the tine, but the slave quarters had only the cheapest and barest necessities.  His mother had no stove but cooked in the fire place using a skillet and spider (skillet, a small metal vessel with handle used for cooking; spider, a kind of frying pan, Winston’s Simplified Dictionary, 1924).  The cooking was not done directly on the coals in the fire place but placed on the hearth and hot coals pulled around them, more coals being pulled about until the food was cooked