and Washington were my
five brothers, and my sisters were Zelia, Elizabeth, and Candace. Why,
Miss, the only thing I can remember right off hand that we children done
was fight and frolic like youngsters will do when they get together.
With time to put my mind on it, I would probably recollect our games and
songs, if we had any.

"Our quarters was on a large farm on Sugar Fork River. The houses were
what you would call log huts and they were scattered about
promiscuously, no regular lay-out, just built wherever they happened to
find a good spring convenient. There was never but one room to a hut,
and they wern't particular about how many darkies they put in a room.

"White folks had fine four-poster beds with a frame built around the top
of the bed, and over the frame hung pretty, ruffled white curtains and a
similar ruffled curtain was around the bottom of the bed; the curtains
made pretty ornaments. Slaves had beds of this general kind, but they
warn't quite as pretty and fine. Corded springs were the go then. The
beds used by most of the slaves in that day and time were called
'Georgia beds,' and these were made by boring two holes in the cabin
wall, and two in the floor, and side pieces were run from the holes in
the wall to the posts and fastened; then planks were nailed around the
sides and foot, box-fashion, to hold in the straw that we used for
mattresses; over this pretty white sheets and plenty of quilts was
spreaded. Yes, mam, there was always plenty of good warm cover in those
days. Of course, it was home-made, all of it.

"My grandfather was a blacksmith and farmhand owned by Old Man Dillard
Love. According to my earliest recollection my grandmother Van Hook was
dead and I have no memories about her. My great, great grandmother,
Sarah Angel, looked after slave children while their mothers were at
work. She was a free woman, but she had belonged to Marse Tommy Angel
and Miss Jenny Angel; they were brother and sister. The way Granny Sarah
happened to be free was; one of the women in the Angel family died and
left a little baby soon after one of Granny's babies was born, and so
she was loaned to that family as wet nurse for the little orphan baby.
They gave her her freedom and took her into their home, because they did
not want her sleeping in slave quarters while she was nursing the white
child. In that settlement, it was considered a disgrace for a white
child to feed at the breast of a slave woman, but i