he
kitchen of the manor house, where the cooking was done by the kitchen
help for the master, mistress and their guests, and from which each
slave received his or her weekly ration, about 20 pounds of food each.

"The food consisted of beef, hog meat, and lamb or mutton and of the
kind of vegetables that we raised on the farm.

"My position was second nurse for the doctor's family, or one of the
inner servants of the family, not one of the field hands. In my position
my clothes were made better, and better quality than the others, all
made and arranged to suit the mistress' taste. I got a few things of
femine dainty that was discarded by the mistress, but no money nor did I
have any to spend. During my life as a slave I was whipped only once,
and that was for a lie that was told on me by the first nurse who was
jealous of my looks. I slept in the mistress' room in a bed that we
pushed under the mistress' in the day or after I arose.

"Old Master had special dogs to hunt opossum, rabbit, coons and birds,
and men to go with them on the hunt. When we seined, other slave owners
would send some of their slaves to join ours and we then dividing the
spoils of the catch.

"We had 60 slaves on the plantation, each family housed in a cabin built
by the slaves for Nellums to accommodate the families according to the
number. For clothes we had good clothes, as we raised sheep, we had our
own wool, out of which we weaved our cloth, we called the cloth 'box and
dice'.

"In the winter the field slaves would shell corn, cut wood and thrash
wheat and take care of the stock. We had our shoes made to order by the
shoe maker.

"My mistress was not as well off before she married the doctor as
afterward. I was small or young during my slave days, I always heard my
mistress married for money and social condition. She would tell us how
she used to say before she was married, when she saw the doctor coming,
'here comes old Dr. Nellums'. Another friend she would say 'here comes
cozen Auckney'.

"We never had any overseers on the plantation, we had an old colored man
by the name of Peter Taylor. His orders was law, if you wanted to please
Mistress and Master, obey old Peter.

"The farm was very large, the slaves worked from sunup to sundown, no
one was harshly treated or punished. They were punished only when proven
guilty of crime charged.

"Our master never sold any slaves. We had a six-room house, where the
slaves entertained and h