“The white folks had a parrot that always sat on top of a door in this room and when the mistress came in the room the mean old bird hollered out at the top of his voice, ‘Its in the rocker.  It’s in the rocker’.  Well the Missus found the cookies and told her husband where upon the husband called his man that done the whipping and they tied the poor cook to the stake and whipped her till she fainted.  Next morning the parrot was found dead and a slave was accused because he liked the woman that had been whipped the day before.  They whipped him than until the blood ran down his legs.”

“Spirits?  Yessir I believe in them, but we warnt bothered so much by them in them days but we was by the wild animals.  Why after it got dark we children would have to stay indoors for fear of them.  The men folks would build a big fire and I can remember my Pappy a settin on top of the house at night with a old flint lock across his legs awaiting for one of them critters to come close enough so he could shoot it.  The reason for him being trusted with a gun was because he had been raised by the poor white man who worked for the slaveholder.  My Pappy did not work in the fields but drove a team of horses.”

“I remembers that when we left the plantation and come to Washington County, Ohio that we traveled in a covered wagon that had big white horse hitched to it.  The man that owned the horse was Blake Randolls.  He crossed the river 12 miles below Parkersberg.  W. Va. on a ferry and went to Stafford, Ohio, in Monroe County where we lived until I was married at the age of 15 to Mr. Burke, by the Justice of the Peace, Edward Oakley.  A year later we moved to Curtis Ridge which is seven miles from Stafford and we lived their for say 20 year or more.  We moved to Rainbow for a spell and then in 1918 my husband died.  The old man hard luck came around cause three years my home burned to the ground and then I came here to live with my boy Joe and his family.”

“Mr. Burke and myself raised a family of 16 chilluns and at that time my husband worked at farming for other people at $2.00 a month and a few things they would give him.”

“My Pappy got his education from the boy of the white man he lived with because he wasn’t allowed to go to school and the white boy was very smart and taught him just as he learned.  My Pappy, fought in the Civil War too.  On which side?  Well, sho nuff on the site of the North, boy.”

Hallie Miller, Reporter Audrey Meighen, Author-Editor

Folklore:  Ex-slaves
Gellia County, District 3

James Campbell
Age 86

[Illustration:  James Campbell]

“Well, I’se bo’n Monro’ County, West Virginia, on January 15, 1852, jes’ few miles from Union, West Virginia.”

“My mammy wuz Dinnah Alexander Campbell an’ my pappy wuz Levi Campbell an’ dey bof cum frum Monro’ County.  Dat’s ’bout only place I heerd dem speak ’bout.”