As a result of this form of matrimony at emancipation there were no slaves lawfully married.  Orders were given that if they preferred to live together as man and wife they must marry according to law.  They were given nine months to decide this question, after which if they continued to live together they were arrested for adultery.  A Mr. Fryer, Justice of the Peace at Gainesville, was assigned to deal with the situation around the plantation where Mary and her family lived.  A big supper was given, it was early, about twenty-five slave couples attended.  There was gaiety and laughter.  A barrel of lemonade was served.  A big time was had by all, then those couples who desired to remain together were joined in wedlock according to civil custom.  The party broke up in the early hours of the morning.

Mary Biddie, cognizant of the progress that science and invention has made in the intervening years from Emancipation and the present time, could not help but remark of the vast improvement of the lighting system of today and that of slavery.  There were no lamps or kerosene.  The first thread that shearer spun was for a wick to be used in a candle, the only means of light.  Beef tallow was used to make the candle; this was placed in a candle mould while hot.  The wick was then placed in the center of the tallow as it rest in the mould; this was allowed to cool.  When this chemical process occured there was a regular sized candle to be used for lighting.

Mary now past the century mark, her lean bronze body resting in a rocker, her head wrapped in a white ’kerchief, and puffing slowly on her clay pipe, expressed herself in regard to presidents:  “Roosevelt has don’ mo’ than any other president, why you know ever since freedom they been talkin’ ‘bout dis pension, talkin’ ’bout it tha’s all, but you see Mr. Roosevelt he don’ com’ an’ gived it tu us.  What?  I’ll say he’s a good rightus man, an’ um sho’ go’ vot’ fo’ him.”

Residing in her little cabin in Eatonville, Florida, she is able to smile because she has some means of security, the Old Age Pension.

DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA, FOLKLORE Ex-Slaves

REV.  ELI BOYD

Reverend Eli Boyd was born May 29, 1864, four miles from Somerville, South Carolina on John Murray’s plantation.  It was a large plantation with perhaps one hundred slaves and their families.  As he was only a tiny baby when freedom came, he had no “recomembrance” of the real slavery days, but he lived on the same plantation for many years until his father and mother died in 1888.

“I worked on the plantation just like they did in the real slavery days, only I received a small wage.  I picked cotton and thinned rice.  I always did just what they told me to do and didn’t ever get into any trouble, except once and that was my own fault.

“You see it was this way.  They gave me a bucket of thick clabber to take to the hogs.  I was hungry and took the bucket and sat down behind the barn and ate every bit of it.  I didn’t know it would make me sick, but was I sick?  I swelled up so that I all but bust.  They had to doctor on me.  They took soot out of the chimney and mixed it with salt and made me take that.  I guess they saved my life, for I was awful sick.