met me with a mule-rope, and ordered me to cross my hands.  I crossed my hands and she tied me to the bedstead.  Here her husband said, ’my dear, now let me do the fighting.’  In her mad fit she said he shouldn’t do it, and told him to stand back and keep out of the way or I will give you the cowhide she said to him.  He then ‘sot’ down in a ‘cheer’ and looked like a man condemned to be hung; then she whipped me with the cowhide until I sunk to the floor.  He then begged her to quit.  He said to his wife she has begged and begged and you have whipped her enough.  She only raged ‘wus;’ she turned the butt end of the cowhide and struck me five or six blows over my head as hard as she could; she then throwed the cowhide down and told a little girl to untie me.  The little girl was not able to do it; Mr. McCaully then untied me himself.  Both times that I was beat the blood run down from my head to my feet.

“They wouldn’t give you anything to eat hardly.  McCaully bore the name of coming by free colored children without buying them, and selling them afterwards.  One boy on the place always said that he was free but had been kidnapped from Arkansas.  He could tell all about how he was kidnapped, but could not find anybody to do anything for him, so he had to content himself.

“McCaully bought me from a man by the name of Landers.  While in Landers’ hands I had the rheumatism and was not able to work.  He was afraid I was going to die, or he would lose me, and I would not be of any service to him, so he took and traded me off for a wagon.  I was something better when he traded me off; well enough to be about.  My health remained bad for about four years, and I never got my health until Moore bought me.  Moore took me for a debt.  McCaully owed Moore for wagons.  I was not born in Missouri but was born in Virginia.  From my earliest memory I was owned by Conrad Hackler; he lived in Grason County.  He was a very poor man, and had no other slave but me.  He bought me before I was quite four years old, for one hundred dollars.  Hackler bought me from a man named William Scott.  I must go back by good rights to the beginning and tell all:  Scott bought me first from a young man he met one day in the road, with a bundle in his arms.  Scott, wishing to know of the young man what he had in his bundle, was told that he had a baby.  ’What are you going to do with it?’ said Scott.  The young man said that he was going to take it to his sister; that its mother was dead, and it had nobody to take care of it.  Scott offered the young man a horse for it, and the young man took him up.  This is the way I was told that Scott came by me.  I never knowed anything about my mother or father, but I have always believed that my mother was a white woman, and that I was put away to save her character; I have always thought this.  Under Hackler I was treated more like a brute than a human being.  I was fed like the dogs; had a trough dug out of a piece of wood for a plate.