“Marster John Crawford, son of the distinguished William H. Crawford, was my owner.  Indeed, he was good to us.  I’ll tell you after awhile about the time he wouldn’t let the town marshal whip my mother.  They told me his wife was a fine woman and that she was as good to her slaves as she could be.  She died very young in life and Marse John’s sisters, Miss Fannie and Miss Susan, kept house for him after that.  Marse John’s three children were Miss Fannie, Miss Rosa, and Marse Allie.  Miss Rosa married Marse Tom Golden, and Miss Fannie married a Gerdine; I’ve forgotten his first name.

“Marse John may have had an overseer on one of his plantations, but I don’t remember.  I do know he didn’t have a carriage driver for he didn’t have a carriage.  I don’t believe I can describe the peculiar shape of his fine eight-room house.  It was on Dougherty Street, right back of Scudder’s School.  The Crawfords were considered very uppity people and their slaves were uppish too.  Marse John didn’t have many slaves and they had to get up and get going early every morning.  Marse John was postmaster of Athens and had to be in his office by eight o’clock every morning so he ordered that his breakfast be served regularly at seven-thirty.

“No Mam, our white folks didn’t teach their slaves to read and write because it was against the law.  However, they did read the Bible to us, and the slaves that were smart enough, were asked to repeat the verses they had learned from hearing Miss Fannie, Miss Sue, and Marse John read.  The Crawford children were caught teaching my mother to read and write, but they were made to stop.  Mother was quick to learn and she never gave up.  She would steal the newspapers and read up about the war, and she kept the other slaves posted as to how the war was progressing.  She knew when the war was over, almost as soon as Marse John did.

“I don’t recall any certain reason why the slaves were punished; they needed it, I’m sure of that.  Some folks need to be punished now.  Miss Sue, as we called her, whipped the slaves for misbehavior.  I remember one time there was quite a commotion.  The town marshal came to our house to whip my mother.  It had been told that she had been writing letters, asking people to buy whiskey from her, but Marse John wouldn’t let the marshal touch her.  There was a jail, but I don’t recall that any of Marse John’s slaves were ever put in there.  I was told that his slaves were, as a rule, well behaved and that they gave him no trouble.

“Yes Mam, we went to church, that is, those of us who cared to go did.  There wasn’t any separate church for colored people in Athens, that I can remember.  We went to church and Sunday School at the First Presbyterian Church, where the slaves were allowed to sit in the gallery.  I recall that Dr. Hoyt used to pray that the Lord would drive the Yankees back.  He said that ‘Niggers were born to be slaves.’  My mother said that all the time he was praying out loud like that, she was praying to herself:  ’Oh, Lord, please send the Yankees on and let them set us free.’  I wasn’t enough of a singer to have a favorite song, and I was too happy playing with the Crawford children to be interested in going to baptizings and funerals.