“I was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in the year 1840.

“My father was killed in the Civil War when they taken South Carolina.  His name was Charles Dunwoody.  My mother’s name was Mary Dunwoody.  My father was a free man and my mother was a slave.  When he courted and married her he took the name of Dunwoody.

Houses

“Ain’t you seen a house built in the country when they were clearing up and wanted to put up somethin’ for the men to live in while they were working?  They’d cut down a tree.  Then they’d line it—­fasten a piece of twine to each end and whiten it and pull it up and let it fly down and mark the log.  Then they’d score it with axes.  Then the hewers would come along and hew the log.  Sometimes they could hew it so straight you couldn’t put a line on it and find any difference.  Where they didn’t take time with the logs, it would be where they were just putting up a little shack for the men to sleep in.

“Just like you box timber in the sawmill, the men would straighten out a log.

“To make the log house, you would saw your blocks, set em up, then you put the sills on the blocks, then you put the sleepers.  When you get them in, lay the planks to walk on.  Then they put on the first log.  You notch it.  To make the roof, you would keep on cutting the logs in half first one way and then the other until you got the blocks small enough for shingles.  Then you would saw the shingles off.  They had plenty of time.

Food

“The slaves ate just what the master ate.  They ate the same on my master’s place.  All people didn’t farm alike.  Some just raised cotton and corn.  Some raised peas, oats, rye, and a lot of different things.  My old master raised corn, potatoes—­Irish and sweet—­, goober peas (peanuts), rye, and wheat, and I can’t remember what else.  That’s in the eating line.  He had hogs, goats, sheep, cows, chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks.  That is all I can remember in the eating line.  My old master’s slaves et anything he raised.

“He would send three or four wagons down to the mill at a time.  One of them would carry sacks; all the rest would carry wheat.  You know flour seconds, shorts and brand come from the wheat.  You get all that from the wheat.  Buckwheat flour comes from a large grained wheat.  The wagons came back loaded with flour, seconds, shorts and brand.  The old man had six wheat barns to keep the wheat in.

“All the slaves ate together.  They had a cook special for them.  This cook would cook in a long house more than thirty feet long.  Two or three women would work there and a man, just like the cooks would in a hotel now.  All the working hands ate there and got whatever the cook gave them.  It was one thing one time and another another.  The cook gave the hands anything that was raised on the place.  There was one woman in there cooking that was called ‘Mammy’ and she seed to all the chilen.