and a few cooking utensils.  Mr. Favors says:  “We didn’t have plank floors like these on some of the other plantations; the plain bare ground served as our floor.”  As he made this statement he reminded this worker that he meant his mother and some of the other house servants lived in these cabins.  He himself always lived in the house with the “Widow Favors,” who had provided a comfortable bed along with a small chair for his use.  These slaves who worked in the fields lived in several cabins that were somewhat nearer to their fields than the other two cabins mentioned above.

The remaining buildings on the Favors’ plantation were the smokehouse and the cook house where in addition to the cooking the younger children were cared for by another old person.  The woman who cared for these children had to also help with the cooking.

Whenever any of the slaves were sick the doctor was called if conditions warranted it, otherwise a dose of castor oil was prescribed.  Mr. Favors stated that after freedom was declared the white people for whom they worked gave them hog-feet oil and sometimes beef-oil both of which had the same effect as castor oil.  If any were too ill to work in the field one of the others was required to remain at the cabin or at some other convenient place so as to be able to attend to the wants of these so indisposed.

When Mr. Favors was asked if the servants on this plantation ever had the chance to learn how to read or to write he answered:  “They was all afraid to even try because they would cut these off,” and he held up his right hand and pointed to his thumb and forefinger.  At any rate the “Widow,” nieces taught him to read a few months before the slaves were set free.

On Sunday all were required to attend the white church in town.  They sat in the back of the church as the white minister preached and directed the following text at them:  “Don’t steal your master’s chickens or his eggs and your backs won’t be whipped.”  In the afternoon of this same day when the colored minister was allowed to preach the slaves heard this text:  “Obey your masters and your mistresses and your backs won’t be whipped.”  All of the marriages ware performed by the colored preacher who read a text from the Bible and then pronounced the couple being married as man and wife.

Although nobody was ever sold on the Favors plantation Mr. Favors has witnessed the selling of others on the auction block.  He says that the block resembled a flight of steps.  The young children and those women who had babies too young to be separated from them were placed on the bottom step, those in their early teens on the next, the young men and women on the next, and the middle-aged and old ones on the last one.  Prices decreased as the auctioneer went from the bottom step to the top one, that is, the younger a slave was the more money he brought if he was sold.