eone from another plantation, the master of the wife owned
all the children. For the wedding the groom wore ordinary clothes,
sometimes you could not tell the original outfit for the patches, and
sometimes Kentucky jeans. The bride's trousseau, she would wear the
cast-off clothes of the mistress, or, at other times the clothes made by
other slaves.

"It was said our plantation contained 10,000 acres. We had a large
number of slaves, I do not know the number. Our work was hard, from
sunup to sundown. The slaves were not whipped.

"There was only one slave ever sold from the plantation, she was my
aunt. The mistress slapped her one day, she struck her back. She was
sold and taken south. We never saw or heard of her afterwards.

"We went to the white Methodist church with slave gallery, only white
preachers. We sang with the white people. The Methodists were christened
and the Baptists were baptised. I have seen many colored funerals with
no service. A graveyard on the place, only a wooden post to show where
you were buried.

"None of the slaves ran away. I have seen and heard many patrollers, but
they never whipped any of Mason's slaves. The method of conveying news,
you tell me and I tell you, but be careful, no troubles between whites
and blacks.

"After work was done, the slaves would smoke, sing, tell ghost stories
and tales, dances, music, home-made fiddles. Saturday was work day like
any other day. We had all legal holidays. Christmas morning we went to
the big house and got presents and had a big time all day.

"At corn shucking all the slaves from other plantations would come to
the barn, the fiddler would sit on top of the highest barrel of corn,
and play all kinds of songs, a barrel of cider, jug of whiskey, one man
to dish out a drink of liquor each hour, cider when wanted. We had
supper at twelve, roast pig for everybody, apple sauce, hominy, and corn
bread. We went back to shucking. The carts from other farms would be
there to haul it to the corn crib, dance would start after the corn was
stored, we danced until daybreak.

"The only games we played were marbles, mumble pegs and ring plays. We
sang London Bridge.

"When we wanted to meet at night we had an old conk, we blew that. We
all would meet on the bank of the Potomac River and sing across the
river to the slaves in Virginia, and they would sing back to us.

"Some people say there are no ghosts, but I saw one and I am satisfied,
I saw an old l