“My mother was named Silla Davis.  She had four children.  Her owners was Jep Davis and Tempy Davis.  She died and he married her niece, Sally Davis.  He had fifteen children by his first wife and five more by his second wife.  Wasn’t that a plenty children doe?  Mama was a field hand.  She ploughed in slavery right along.  My father was named Bob Lee (Lea?).  I never knowed much about him.  His folks moved and took him off.  Mother was sold but not on a stand.  She belong to Bill Davis.  He was Jep’s brother.  They said Bill Davis drunk up mother and all her children.  He sold Aunt Serina to a man in Elberton, Georgia and all he had left then was grandma.  He couldn’t sell her.  She was too old and Aunt Kizziah and Aunt Martha lived with her.  Mother was born in Georgia.  When a child was sold it nearly grieved the mothers and brothers and sisters to death.  It was bad as deaths in the families.  Jep Davis had forty or fifty niggers.  He had six boys.  They all had to go to war.  They was in the Confederate army.  Billy Davis was his daddy’s young overseer.  He had been raised up with some of the nigger boys then come over them.  They wouldn’t mind his orders.  He tried to whoop them.  They’d fight him back, choke him, throw him on the ground.  Then the old man would whoop them.  We all wanted ’em all to come home but Billy.  Billy Davis got killed at war and never come home.  His sisters was afraid some of the nigger boys raised up with him on the place would kill him and wanted Jep to make him stay at the house.  Jep Davis was a good master and he was bad enough.

“I seen mama whooped.  They tied some of them to trees and some they just whooped across their backs.  It was ‘cordin’ to what they had done.  Some of them would run off to the woods and stay a week or a month.  The other niggers would feed them at night to keep them from starving.

“Jep Davis made a will after his first wife died and give out all his young niggers to his first set of children.  His young wife cried till he destroyed it.  She said, ’You kept the old ones here and me and my children won’t have nothing.’  I was willed to Miss Lizzie.  They was fixing the wagon for me to go in.  I wanted to go to Jefferson on the train.  I told them so.  I wanted to ride on the train.  I never did get off.  His young wife started crying.  Miss Lizzie lived with her brother.  They didn’t want this young woman to have their father and he did.  They kept a fuss up with her and all left.  Then he divided the land.

“I nursed for his second wife, Miss Sally.  I was five years or little older when I started nursing for his first wife.  I nursed for a long time.  I don’t like children yet on that account.  I got so many whoopings on their blame.  I’d drap ’em, leave ’em, pinch ’em, quit walking ’em and rocking ’em.  I got tired of ’em all the time.