In 1888, I was married, at 27 Pemberton Street, to Samuel H. Burton, by Dr. O. P. Gifford.  After my marriage, Mr. Burton got a place in Braintree as valet to an old gentleman who was slightly demented, and he could not be satisfied until I joined him.  So I put our things into storage and went to Braintree.  I remained there ten months, and then came back to Boston.  Then I got a position as head matron in the help’s dining-room in a hotel at Watch Hill, R. I. My husband was also there as waiter.  At the end of the season we both came home, and rented a lodging-house, and lost money on it.

REMINISCENCES

The times changed from slavery days to freedom’s days.  As young as I was, my thoughts were mystified to see such wonderful changes; yet I did not know the meaning of these changing days.  But days glided by, and in my mystified way I could see and hear many strange things.  I would see my master and mistress in close conversation and they seemed anxious about something that I, a child, could not know the meaning of.

But as weeks went by, I began to understand.  I saw all the slaves one by one disappearing from the plantation (for night and day they kept going) until there was not one to be seen.

All around the plantation was left barren.  Day after day I could run down to the gate and see down the road troops and troops of Garrison’s Brigade, and in the midst of them gangs and gangs of negro slaves who joined with the soldiers, shouting, dancing and clapping their hands.  The war was ended, and from Mobile Bay to Clayton, Ala., all along the road, on all the plantations, the slaves thought that if they joined the Yankee soldiers they would be perfectly safe.

As I looked on these I did not know what it meant, for I had never seen such a circus.  The Yankee soldiers found that they had such an army of men and women and children, that they had to build tents and feed them to keep them from starving.  But from what I, a little child, saw and heard the older ones say, that must have been a terrible time of trouble.  I heard my master and mistress talking.  They said, “Well, I guess those Yankees had such a large family on their hands, we rather guessed those fanatics on freedom would be only too glad to send some back for their old masters to provide for them.”

But they never came back to our plantation, and I could only speak of my own home, but I thought to myself, what would become of my good times all over the old plantation.  Oh, the harvesting times, the great hog-killing times when several hundred hogs were killed, and we children watched and got our share of the slaughter in pig’s liver roasted on a bed of coals, eaten ashes and all.  Then came the great sugar-cane grinding time, when they were making the molasses, and we children would be hanging round, drinking the sugar-cane juice, and awaiting the moment to help ourselves to everything good.  We did, too, making ourselves sticky and dirty with the sweet stuff being made.  Not only were the slave children there, but the little white children from Massa’s house would join us and have a jolly time.  The negro child and the white child knew not the great chasm between their lives, only that they had dainties and we had crusts.