He relates another incident in regard to his mistress as follows:  To his mother and father was born a little baby boy, whose complexion was rather light.  Mrs. Matair at once began accusing Colonel Matair as being the father of the child.  Naturally the colonel denied, but Mrs. Matair kept harassing him about it until he finally agreed to his wife’s desire and sold the child.  It was taken from its mother’s breast at the age of eight months and auctioned off on the first day of January to the highest bidder.  The child was bought by a Captain Ross and taken across the Suwannee River into Hamilton County.  Twenty years later he was located by his family, he was a grown man, married and farming.

Young Douglas had the task each morning of carrying the Matair children’s books to school.  Willie, a boy of eight would teach Douglas what he learned in school, finally Douglas learned the alphabet and numbers.  In some way Mrs. Matair learned that Douglas was learning to read and write.  One morning after breakfast she called her son Willie to the dining room where she was seated and then sent for Douglas to come there too.  She then took a quill pen the kind used at that time, and began writing the alphabet and numerals as far as ten.  Holding the paper up to Douglas, she asked him if he knew what they were; he proudly answered in the affirmative, not suspecting anything.  She then asked him to name the letters and numerals, which he did, she then asked him to write them, which he did.  When he reached the number ten, very proud of his learning, she struck him a heavy blow across the face, saying to him “If I ever catch you making another figure anywhere I’ll cut off your right arm.”  Naturally Douglas and also her son Willie were much surprised as each thought what had been done was quite an achievement.  She then called Mariah, the cook to bring a rope and tying the two of them to the old colonial post on the front porch, she took a chair and sat between the two, whipping them on their naked backs for such a time, that for two weeks their clothes stuck to their backs on the lacerated flesh.

To ease the soreness, Willie would steal grease from the house and together they would slip into the barn and grease each other’s backs.

As to plantation life, Dorsey said that the slaves lived in quarters especially built for them on the plantation.  They would leave for the fields at “sun up” and remain until “sun-down,” stopping only for a meal which they took along with them.

Instead of having an overseer they had what was called a “driver” by the name of Januray[TR:?].  His duties were to get the slaves together in the morning and see that they went to the fields and assigned them to their tasks.  He worked as the other slaves, though, he had more priveliges.  He would stop work at any time he pleased and go around to inspect the work of the others, and thus rest himself.  Most of the orders from the master were issued to him.  The crops consisted of cotton, corn, cane and peas, which was raised in abundance.